Other People, by Frances Partridge

By this time, reading Frances Partridge's diaries feels like returning to an old friend's life - I like her very much. This volume is not as interesting as the precedent (Hanging On), one feels somehow that her son's death didn't affect her as much as her husband's, or perhaps she was better fitted to withstand loss by that time. But anyway, it depicts very nicely the way a life loving woman coped with her solitary life, focusing on her friends' lives to keep interested in living and enjoying life, and most successfully. One cannot but admire her for that.

Malabourg, by Perrine Leblanc

A good enough novel, somewhat a dark tale with a redemption, set in French Canada (it caught my eye in the bookstores of Montreal last year). The writing is beautiful, and it's interesting to read Canadian French, very different from France French in many ways, but the story left me unmoved.

The Story of the Stone - The Golden Days, by Cao Xueqin

I don't remember where I read about The Story of the Stone, maybe it was in the Times Literary Supplement or in the New York review of Books, but it roused my curiosity so I ordered the first volume. I enjoyed it very much - it starts as a picaresque novel, and it grew on me, depicting a lost world of beauty and privilege, about a civilisation - the Chinese - I know very little about. It's a surprisingly modern novel, considering it was written in the 18th century. After some time, the narrative gets a little tiresome, with the silly pointless intrigues and pettiness of the characters' lives, curiously so reminiscent of the Ancien Régime, that was their contemporary across the world in Europe. But the characters are extremely lively and convincing, and they really come to life. So I think I will read the next volumes in the saga.

SPQR, by Mary Beard

This is a very good History book. The first part especially, until the end of the Republic, is just brilliant - the way the author reconstructs Roman history according to Roman sources is really interesting and up to the point, it's the best I've read so far. The second part is clearly inferior and it disappointed me somehow, but even so the depiction of the Roman way of life was extremely interesting and engaging. All in all, it's an excellent book.

The danger in the absurd

I have written less and less about Jews and Muslims because dislike to fuel the hatred; it's such a charged subject and I have several friends that are already over incensed about it. But I can't resist writing my 2 bits about the news of the recent UNESCO resolution draft about the Temple Mount, that strikes me as particularly absurd and as a sign of what is saddening and frightening in our Western civilisation. The absurd starts with its very existence - why on earth would it be necessary to define a historical place in this way, as if it's not sufficiently known to all the parties interested. But there it is nevertheless. I can understand that some Muslim countries advance such proposition, as a political maneuver part of their usual strategy of playing victim and reinforcing the anti-semitic propaganda they use to demonize Jews as a scapegoat for their own failures, as xenophobia and minority groups discrimination has been used for centuries by many kinds of governments everywhere. I can also understand that immoral and corrupt governments like Russia's or China's support it, as a means to appease their own sizeable Muslim minorities while in a way undermining Western-styled democracies and thinking, so killing two rabbits with the same stone. But that Western democratic countries can support it or abstain to vote (as so many did, mostly abstaining), supporting in that way such a ridiculous and despicable rewriting of History for political reasons, is infuriating. It is the kind f misguided "political correctness" stemming from a ridiculous sense of colonial gilt allied to a coward ad counter-productive policy of appeasement that, by denying our Western values of honesty and democracy is corroding the very base of our civilisation. That is the real problem, not the refugees or the minorities. The Western problem is not standing for and upholding the values on which our civilisation - the most successful until now even if not perfect - allowing in that way intolerance and obscurantism to get a foothold and set in. That's how great civilisations fail, from within, and not because of the barbarians, who just take advantage of their weaknesses and tiredness and, in the end, become a kind of solution, as the famous poem by Cavafy so rightly expresses. This UNESCO pitiful vote is a sad sign of decadence, as is the Trump phenomenon in the US, the Brexit vote or the tolerance by the EU f its members' Hungary and Poland policies. In this case, it's mostly symbolic, but symbols are meaningful.

This is London, by Ben Judah

I liked this book very much, I think it's an excellent reportage about the immigrants in London today. It starts in the Victoria Coach Station and ends at a Muslim cemetery, and it gives portraits of several of the different immigrants that compose the 55% majority of non-white British inhabitants of London at the present time. It focuses mostly on the poor people, the "invisible" ones, and I would have liked to see something more about the Muslims that are so often referred but have much less space than the Africans or the East Europeans. The writing is sometimes a little tiresome, but all in all it's a great book.

You Are Not So Smart, by David McRaney

This is a very interesting book, about human psychology, how our mind constructs our memories and judgements based on our emotional background and experience. I was aware of most of it, so it didn't change my conceptions about memory and decision-making, but I enjoyed it very much. It's an easy and engaging reading, funny and very informative.

Hanging On, Diaries 1960-1963, by Frances Partridge

I was not expecting much of this volume of Frances Partridge's diaries, convinced they would get less interesting as they became farther from the golden age of Bloomsbury - since Frances Partridge's claim to fame is mostly as a witness and friend of the Bloomsbury set. I was pleasantly surprised - this volume deals with the loss and mourning of her husband and her happy marital life, and for the first time Frances Partridge becomes the main character, now it's her personality, herself that matters, interesting in her own right. The book depicts the way she coped with her loss and how she endured the mourning period and was able to build herself a new life, not as happy as the one she had lived before, but satisfactory and fulfilling enough, which I think it was quite an achievement. From her diaries, Frances Partridge doesn't strikes us as a particularly intelligent person, nor especially witty or creative; her main quality is warmth, a keen aptitude to enjoy life and friendships, a kindness that must have made her dear to the people who knew her, which it seems to me a wonderful gift in itself.

And so the narration of this woman's life journey, sprinkled here and there with some Bloomsbury anecdotes, and also stories about the post-Bloomsbury British literary and cultural set, makes for a very interesting and uplifting reading.

Guapa, by Saleem Haddad

I heard about this book in an article about modern Middle eastern fiction, and it seemed interesting. I was not disappointed, it's an excellent book. Very well written, moving and strong, a story about a young gay man coming of age in the Middle East, and the best depiction I've read so far of the feelings aroused in young local people by the Arab spring, a promise turned sour.

It reminded me very much of The City and the Pillar, by Gore Vidal, and it pained me a lot to think that 70 years later the situation for gay men has not changed in some parts of the world - actually, maybe it has gotten worse. Saleem Haddad is a very good writer, and I'm looking forward to his next book.

The Last Lecture, by Randy Pausch

I like to read books about life and death experiences, and this one seemed interesting. It is interesting, and somewhat uplifting - a celebration of life by a man who is doomed to die in a short time, of pancreatic cancer, and that leaves this collection of life lessons to his kids. I couldn't but empathize with the author's words - he lived fully a good life, he seemed like a really nice man and most of his advice is sound and sensible.

Yet, I couldn't help but think: "how American he is!". All the positive thinking, the sharing of his dire situation, the help groups he and his wife belonged to, it's really such a different reality from ours. It always impressed me how in the American culture people like to have everything so neatly organised and labelled - if you have cancer, you go to cancer supporting groups, if you find your son is gay, you join a gay men's mother's group, and so on. Also the use of therapy and counselling for all kinds of problems, in the optimistic belief that for every problem there are professionals who know better and that can help you deal with it. Of course there's nothing wrong about that, and if it's helpful, I guess people should go for that. But it's so different from my own individualistic approach to life and its problems, I never believed there to be neat labels and formulas to deal with problems and suffering.

Anyway, the book is a nice read and uplifting. And I heard about the alice.org project, that seems very interesting, I think I would like to explore it, maybe it will be a way for me to learn something about computer language!

Dynasty, by Tom Holland

I always loved the history of the Roman Empire in general, and the Cesar dynasty in particular. I've read it so many times, since I, Claudius to Suetonius, Tacitus, Cassius Dio and even Colleen McCullough, and I never get enough. So, I was curious when I read a positive review of Dynasty in the Times Literary Supplement, and I ordered it right away.

I thought it would be a history book, but it's more like a fictionalized history; the author bases his narrative on the known sources but surmises a lot, namely regarding the personalities of the main characters, and often the events themselves. Even so, it's an extremely interesting and enjoyable book. The author clearly loves its subject, and he comes at it with gusto and passion, and the whole book reads almost like a page turning thriller. What I found most interesting was the way the author weaves the story of the Cesar dynasty in the Roman history and Roman mores, the depiction of the transition from the Republic to the Empire, so the part from Augustus to Tiberius is the most well achieved, in my opinion.

All in all, a very good book about the Julio-Claudian dynasty.

The Queue, by Basma Abdel Aziz

I like dystopian novels, I think they're a clever way to depict present problems in a way that makes us think: what if it was lie this? The Queue is a very good dystopian novel, in the tradition of 1984, Brave New World or The Handmaid's Tale; it's clever and thought provoking. The kafkaesque absurdity of the totalitarian rule of a faceless dictatorship is extremely well described, as the struggle to keep leading normal lives under extreme circumstances, which is something I always find fascinating. The grim situation in Middle Eastern countries is indeed impressive, and one cannot but wonder how the sane people there can cope with sheer everyday insanity.

Everything to Lose - Diaries 1945-1960, by Frances Partridge

This volume of Frances Partridge's Diaries is far less interesting than the one before, mostly because Bloomsbury, without Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey, Roger Fry and Maynard Keynes, became less and less interesting. Even so, I always liked to know "what happens next" in any story, so I'm curious to know what happened to the minor Bloomsbury characters, including Ralph Partridge etc. Besides, Frances herself had a keen and observant mind, her narrative is interesting in itself, as are many of her reflections and small portraits. So I don't think it was a waste of time to read it, and maybe I will still check the next volume.

Voss, by Patrick White

I heard about this book from one of those "best books list" in some newspaper, and I was curious since I had never heard about its author - even being a Nobel laureate - and I love Australia and always like to read about places I love. I was surprised by this book. The writing is extremely beautiful, intricately convoluted, full of images that convey the feelings of the characters in a most emotional way; the story is impressive, somewhat depressing, like watching an inevitable disaster, like a train wreck, and not being able to change it in any way. One is left wondering, what really did drive explorers to such terrible voyages? Was the call of the unknown that powerful? I have been in the Australian desert, it is so big and overwhelming that left me speechless. It's beautiful and ruthless, fascinating. It makes one dream of the Outback, the red earth and spinifex.

At the Existentialist Café, by Sarah Bakewell

I read somewhere a review of this book, which made me interested, especially considering that I was fascinated by the existentialists in several times of my life. I didn't even notice that the author was the same of the excellent How to Live about Montaigne, which would have been an even stronger recommendation. And I was very glad I ordered it.

I first read La Nausée very young, I don't think I understood much, but the book left me a very lasting impression, I could never forget the sense of nausea, of a kind of detached feeling of disgust for the meaninglessness of things, of being; it wasn't an elaborate idea but it was an enduring feeling. Later, I read Mémoires d'une Jeune Fille Rangée, and I was bouleversé, Simone de Beauvoir spoke to my late adolescent self in such a meaningful way, it helped to bring sense to my growing pains and from then on I was hooked. Then L'Âge de Raison literally changed my life in a very personal way, with its concepts of freedom and commitment. From then on, I devoured many of Sartre's and Beauvoir's books, liking especially Les Chemins de la Liberté trilogy, her memoirs and Les Mandarins. And I yearned to live a life like that, talking, smoking and drinking at cafés with interesting people, living a truthful and uninhibited life.

I'm older now, and less romantic, namely about the smoking and drinking part of the café life, but I'm still an adept of the existentialist philosophy, that revived in a way the stoic and epicurean thinking, since it concerns life - how to live, how to feel meaningful and alive, how we are what we choose to be, and in that way we question ourselves, the eternal questions "what am I doing here?", the name I gave this blog. It's a philosophy of man and life. It's not by chance that Sarah Bakewell also wrote about Montaigne, that indefatigable questioner of life and how to live, and her book is extremely informative and insightful. She manages quite successfully to explain the origins of the existentialist thinking, and gives a very clear picture of Husserl's and Heidegger's ideas - at least for me, since I've never felt like reading them. Her affectionate and lucid portraits of Sartre, Camus, Simone de Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty and others are engaging and interesting. I mostly agree with her about Sartre - a fascinating man that was so many times enormously wrong in his political choices - and Beauvoir - whose memoirs I also consider one of the most fascinating and insightful depictions of her times. The character of Merleau-Ponty was a surprise for me, I had only known him from Beauvoir's memoirs, and he comes out from this book as a real philosophical hero.

And yes, I also think people are so much more interesting than abstract ideas, and that the true philosophy is the on that makes us question how to live.

Brittany in Spring

Like Proust - extensively - says so better than I could ever wish to, all places are for us first of all names. It's the name that we come across somehow - through a book, a movie, a television show, a tale from a friend or relative - and then we dream about the image it evokes in our mind, the idea we create of the place, intertwined with what we heard or read about it. Most of the times, the idea is quite different from the reality, but unlike Proust, that doesn't usually lets me down, much the opposite - the differences I find and the unexpected impressions I get are always a source of delight and one of the reasons why I always love to travel. I remember how surprised I was to be stunned by the Venus the Milo's beauty, I had seen it reproduced countless times and I thought it would be just a tick on a check list, but the real thing's beauty is unreproduceable, as so many other works of art and, much more, places and landscapes, are.

So, for me Brittany was at first the setting of the adventures of Astérix, then of Corentin and where the French corsairs came from; later I loved the stories of druids and megaliths and the Arthurian legends, then there were several exciting Arsène Lupin's cases, and the bande dessinée of Bourgeon. Of course, what I found was very different, but it was anyway mingled with the evocation of those memories - besides, all this preamble is mostly to try to convey how I choose my travel destinations.

We started our trip in Nantes, the historical capital of the Duchy of Brittany, even if today is not administratively part of Brittany. It's a very nice city; not stunning but very pleasant and it seems to be very liveable. Some nice historical buildings, lots of pleasant squares and lively cafés, terraces by the Loire, lots of young people. We visited the cathedral and the castle of the Dukes of Brittany, strolled along the streets and squares of the city centre, the beautiful Passage Pommeraye, the bank of the Loire with its terraces and the modern sculpture Les Anneaux. We also had our first taste of the Breton galettes de sarrasin, accompanied with cider in bowls, a dish we loved and ate everywhere during the trip. And to top the Nantes experience we met an internet friend from there who was an excellent and informative guide.

The girl at the car rental was called Tiphaine - another evocative name: Tiphaine Raguenel, Bertrand Du Guesclin! There are real girls called Tiphaine. We drove to Rennes, the capital of the Brittany region. It's smaller than Nantes, more beautiful - our first sight of lots of old timber framed houses. Again, an imposing cathedral, lively squares and café terraces - and of course tasty galettes! - the big Place du Parlement de Bretagne, and bilingual street signs, with the Germanic Breton language that unfortunately I didn't hear anyone speak (there are not many Breton speakers left).

Le Mont Saint-Michel - another magical name! It is an impressive sight, rising from the sea on the horizon of a green and golden plain with placid sheep grazing. It was getting late in the day, so we felt we didn't have enough time to visit it at leisure - and the busloads of tourist weren't exactly encouraging either - so we just contemplated it from the shore, in all its gothic fairytale splendour. I hope I will visit it properly some day, preferably in winter, it must be quite a sight in bad weather.

On the road to Saint-Malo we passed Cancale, a beautiful seaside village, a little reminiscent of our Sesimbra, with the bluest sea and shining like a colourful jewel under the late afternoon sun.

Saint-Malo - another magical name: the corsairs, Corentin, Chateaubriand! We stayed at a small hotel inside the walled city. Very touristic, but still evocative of its adventurous past, the walls are impressive and the small islands with its fortresses are beautiful - among them the Grand Bé with the tomb of Chateaubriand (I remembered his text detailing how he chose the place). We also sau the tomb of Jacques Cartier in Saint Vincent Cathedral - lots of Quebecois flags around the city, as well as the austere Breton flag with the ermine queues.

After Saint-Malo, Dinan, another beautiful walled city with a small castle, old timber framed houses and a beautiful romanesque church. There is a statue of Du Guesclin in a big square, and the city centre still reminds one of the Hundred Years War. And we had more tasty galettes in a nice and shady café terrace.

We took the coastal road and passed through Ploumanac'h, a nice beach resort in the pink granite coast - so named on account of the colour of the granite boulders. The weather was sunny and the sea shined blue. We then went inland, along the landes, rough flattish moors of shrubs. We stopped at Morlaix for a beer and a dinner of - guess what? galettes! - and went on to Quimper.

Quimper is another small Breton city, with timber framed houses, a canal, and a beautiful cathedral. One could think by this time we had had enough of these cities, but far from it; they're all different and each one has its peculiar charm.

From Quimper, we went to Carnac - menhir country. Hundreds, thousands of menhirs. One cannot but wonder why they should have assembled there so many big erect boulders, but then one remembers it was Obélix paying for a favour to the ancient owner of the field, and it becomes clear. Anyway, it makes for an eerie and somewhat nostalgic sight.

Concarneau is a small fishing town, with a little walled part, very touristic, full of shops selling Breton staples as kouign amann and kouignettes - a very buttery pastry.

We finished our trip in Vannes, yet another beautiful town with the usual timber framed houses, cathedral, cafés, galettes, and a nice marina.

I really enjoyed the short taste of Brittany I had - I would like to linger at that coast, take long walks along the cliffs and just laze in a long-chair with an ice cream under the mild Breton sun. And we didn't even have any rain! (Brittany is famous for its rainy weather all year long). I love France and its language so much, and the people are so much nicer outside Paris -
they were always kind and willing to help with directions and such. I look forward to go back.

La Prisonnière, de Marcel Proust

I absolutely love Proust, and it has been a major pleasure to finally read him in French. I don't think I ever found such a truthful depiction of feelings and human relationships, from love to jealousy and how one cares to be judged by others and judge others. And the writing is just SO beautiful I would like it to go on forever - yes, even longer than it already is.

Peste & Choléra, de Patrick Deville

I knew nothing about Yersin's life, just the name of the plague bacteria, Yersinia pestis. So this book was a discovery - what a life! The book is very well written, and the story of Yersin's life is fascinating, and the narrative very cleverly interweaves it with his times' history. This was one of 3 books I was recently given by a good friend, that brought them from France to acquaint me with some of the contemporary French fiction - the others were La Mort du Roi Tsongor and Parles-leur de natailles, de rois et d'éléphants. They are all good, and I just love to find new authors.

A likeable boy

There are some patients that awake paternal feelings, and we find ourselves caring for them in a somewhat tender way, even if rationally we sometimes feel annoyed by their mistakes or behaviour.

I first met this patient at the ER - a type 1 diabetic in his early twenties, blind from diabetic retinopathy, pale from a hemoglobin under 7 g/dl, swollen from accumulated fluid, vomiting from a urea level above 300 mg/dl, with a sky high blood pressure. A classic case of end-stage renal disease caused by diabetic nephropathy, that for lack of timely treatment had reached an advanced stage we fortunately seldom see today. My first reaction was to feel angry: "how on Earth someone reaches this state nowadays?". Then I talked to him. He came from a lower-class family; his mother had just died a few days before, his father had left them long ago, and he lived with a younger brother. His mother was his caretaker, not a very efficient one, struggling with the depression that drove her to suicide, and his care had been haphazard, he didn't even know he had renal disease. He was combative and argumentative, he didn't want to start dialysis at first - such is the bad reputation this treatment has, even if it's so undeserved and mostly based on ignorance - but of course he yielded, and we started to treat him. He was discharged from the hospital after a few days, slimmed down to his normal weight and mostly asymptomatic.

He has been my patient since then, and a difficult patient. Being blind and living most of the time by himself - his younger brother, though affectionate and caring towards him, is away most of the time, and he stubbornly refuses his father's help, who is not that interested in him anyway - his medication is totally haphazard, not to speak of his diet, and he often comes to dialysis with a 4 or 5 kg weight gain, a glycemia above 300, and a blood pressure in its 200s/100s. No matter how many medication charts we'd send home, we always knew he took his pills or his insulin in a completely aleatory way, and of course his diet was appalling.

But then, even as we nag him, we cannot stop ourselves from liking him. He's a young man from a tough neighbourhood, and he always tries to play the ruffian - he even managed to get himself arrested once, for stealing at a convenience store, which puzzled me, with him being blind and at the time in a wheelchair - he is always combative and argumentative, and sticks small rolls of toilet paper in his ears during dialysis, which make him look like a funny young Yoda. He's terribly resilient, the only diabetic I know to survive a Fournier's gangrene. But even when I joke with him about his getting an ear piercing to look prettier I'm always worried, I'm always waiting for the day he will have a brain bleeding because of his uncontrolled blood pressure, a ravaging sepsis or a fatal hypoglycemia.

So yesterday I was really happy because, after the nth medication change (I always try to make it as simple as I can), his blood pressure was perfect. I heartily congratulated him, and he smiled a proud grin, saying: "yeah, it looks like you got it right this time!", and I somehow felt moved, felt like stroking his head and giving him a fatherly kiss - which of course I didn't. Like so many of my patients, I feel responsible for him, and every therapeutic success, how small or short-lived it may be, feels like a victory. I know this will be short-lived, I know he will die soon, from one of the many complications he is vulnerable to, and I feel angry about my helplessness to help him, as to help so many other of my patients. This kid is old enough to be my son, I would like to protect him, to care for him,but there is so little I can do.

The Bloody Chamber, by Angela Carter

I had heard very flattering critics of Angela Carter's books, but had never read anything by her. I watched Neil Jordan's movie The Company of Wolves years ago, thought it was nice but didn't move me much. I was surprised and impressed by this book. The writing is absolutely stunning, like a colourful tapestry embroidered with jewels,and the tales are exquisitely rendered, reminding me of Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment, a book I loved when I read it, many years ago. Angela Carter's writing is strong, beautiful and erotic, and a joy to read.