A trip to Israel and Jordan

I went to Israel again, for the third time - there is a lot to see in this small Mediterranean country, with all its History and cultural diversity. This time I headed South, with a side trip to Jordan.

On arrival, I spent a day in Tel Aviv; having been there twice before, I just walked along the beach and the bustling streets in the centre, had dinner by the sea and rented a car to go south.

It was not easy to get out of Tel Aviv - lousy directions - but we made it and drove to Ashkelon, where we met a great Israeli friend, and had lunch in her garden, a most pleasant time of conversation over excellent Israeli food. Then we drove along a beautiful road across the Negev desert until Eilat - impressive landscape of rugged dry cliffs. Lots of warning signs about camels, but we saw none (we would later see several by the road in Jordan, in the same kind of desert landscape).

Eilat is not very interesting, just a resort like in the Algarve, very kitsh, with all the hotels and the roundabouts, but with a view over Jordan to the East and Egypt to the West, and a nice underwater observatory.

From Eilat, we went to Jordan, to visit Petra. The border crossing was uneventful - a no-men's-land between Israel and Jordan, lots of stamps in our passports, and then Aqaba, a small Arab town, with a lot of hotels and new buildings made possible by the touristic boom. Our Jordanian guide told us how the tourism had gone down because of the IS problems in the Middle East; they don't have any problems in Jordan - for the moment - but people are scared of going there anyway.

Southern Jordan is just a desert, there are some camels and Bedouins with goats along the road. We slept at Wadi Musa, and in the morning went to Petra.

Petra is an uber-famous place, and so I was expecting to be a little disappointed, but I wasn't. It actually deserves all its fame, it's stunning. First of all, the location - surrounded by mountains, only accessible through a narrow gorge, the Siq. From the site entry to the canyon, there are several carved rocks, tombs, houses and palaces, just a foretaste of what's to come. The Siq itself is one of the most impressive sights - the winding canyon, with a few carved tombs and palaces, the colours of the rock, the ancient waterpipe still visible today. And at the end, the sudden sight of the Tresoury, the most famous façade in Petra, it's absolutely beautiful.

After the Treasory, with all the tourist bustle, the camels and souvenir sellers, the ancient city opens before us - the gorgeous façades, the theater, the Roman ruins. We took a donkey ride to the Monastery, the second most famous site. It was a first for me, but I managed to stay seated until the end of the steep climb, even if I found the ride not that comfortable and the donkey a little hectic. But the Monastery was worth the ride, and we rested in a café in a cave lined with Bedouin rugs and a little skinny lamb greeted us there. We walked the way down, enjoying the beautiful views.

If it was cool in the morning when we arrived at Petra, it was quite hot when we left it, so we took the horse ride from the Siq until the entrance - another first for me, but I realized a horse is a much more comfortable ride than a donkey!

After a hearty Jordanian lunch, we headed South and took a jeep tour of Wadi Rum, which was also quite impressive. The desert landscape is beautiful in a unique way (and how very different this desert was, for example, from the red desert of Central Australia!), with the sand dunes, the basalt and limestone cliffs. We saw the ancient Bedouin inscriptions in the cliffs and camels movng slowly in the sun as they have done for centuries. Our guide, Sallah, was a very nice and sunny dispositioned young man, he took us for tea in the Lawrence canyon and, after talking about camel races, he took us to a camel race track where they were training young camels.

We went back to Eilat; I really enjoyed this side trip in Jordan, a country that seemed quiet and with nice people yearning for prosperity, as in any other place, I think. I'm sure there is much more to see, maybe I'll go back some day.

The road from Eilat to the Dead Sea, along the Jordanian border, is totally uninteresting - desert, without the rock formations we saw crossing the Negev on our way South. So the Dead Sea appears as quite a beautiful sight - a bright and shining green lake in the middle of the brown barrenness. We stopped at Ein Bokek - a hideous waterside resort, full of Russians - to have the bathing experience. It's true the water feels different, and the impulsion is much bigger than usual, but one cannot still walk over the water! I guess it's worth to try it once.

We slept at the Masada Hostel, and headed for the fortress in the morning. Masada is really stunning - the location is incredibly beautiful, a true eagle's nest over the bright Dead Sea. We took the cable car, figuring the ascent on foot by the Snake Path would be too burdensome. The views are amazing, as are the ruins. One can just imagine how impressive Herod's palace must have been when it was still standing - three terraces over the abyss. The Roman attack ramp is equally impressive, and it gives an idea of the Roman's military prowess. There were people celebrating in the remnants of the oldest surviving synagogue, and a happy bar mitzvah party, whose musicians went down with us in the cable car.

We drove then North to Jerusalem. It was my third time there, and I never get tired of that beautiful and fascinating city. There is more sightseeing than one can do in a lifetime, and all the History and the cultural and ethnic diversity are just delightful.

As a not religious - actually anti-religious - there are some things that annoy me in Jerusalem: the lots of ultra-orthodox Jews one sees everywhere, the way angry young Arabs and soldiers shoo us away when we come near the accesses to the Temple Mount, the people on their knees rubbing candles and images on the stone at the Holy Sepulchre, the crowds of Russian pilgrims in holy tours. But then, as someone who has been always fascinated by History, I remember all the complex - and so important for our own European history - it have been all the changes this city has endured, all the peoples and cultures and religions so affected by its life, and I regard those aspects as the expression of the intricate cultural melting pot it has become. Also, I feel I'm looking at a pivotal place in a young country in one of the most troubled regions in the world, where one can sense history happening, and not being sure of how the outcome will look like in a few years, which is extremely interesting. So, if you add the incredible beauty of the city, you can see how one can never get tired of it.

This time, I visited the Citadel, the fortress in the Old City, the Israel Museum - a very good archeological museum, especially the pre-Roman part - and wondered through the Old City, buying tiles in the Armenian shops and enjoying the sights. It was the centennial of the Armenian genocide, so there was a ceremony at the Holy Sepulchre and we watched the Orthodox priests go by, in their solemn black robes and hats and gold pectoral crosses.

And we had dinner again with another dear Israeli friend in the beautiful YMCA building, and once again I was pleased to hear a real - and intelligent - Israeli voice talking about the problems they face there, with all the nuances and human details that never reach us throught the media, always shallowly promoting a black and white picture of the situation.

So, I'm glad I went to Israel again, and Jordan, and I hope I will be back.

Le Côté de Guermantes, de Marcel Proust

What a pleasure to read Proust. Le Côté de Guermantes is huge, in form and content. The long scenes of the soirée chez Madame de Villeparisis and the dinner at the Guermantes' are masterpieces, and the description of the Grandmother's illness and death realistic and touching. I never get tired of reading Proust, and I'm looking forward for Sodome et Gomorrhe to arrive so I can go on.

Les Rois Maudits - Le Roi de Fer, La Reine Étranglée, Les Poisons de la Couronne - de Maurice Druon

I always liked historical novels, it's such a pleasant way to learn about the past, especially when they're serious and well researched and are also enjoyable to read. The novels in this cycle of Les Rois Maudits are all this, so they were a most fortunate find. And one can see, reading these accounts of real events, that series like A Game of Thrones are not that far fetched... Already ordered the other 4 books of the series!

You Can't Read This Book, by Nick Cohen

I like to read Nick Cohen's newspaper column, and I likde very much his book What's Left?. I think his is a sensible voice in a not usually sensible press in not that much sensible times. I totally agree with his views about the loony left and the present day censure, which he exposes so well in the cases of religion, the workplace and the state. A very good read.

Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein, de Marguerite Duras

I hadn't read anything by Marguerite Duras in many years; lately I read an article about her, I think it was in the Times Literary Supplement, and I felt like reading her again, so I ordered this book from Amazon. I liked several of her books, especially Le Vice-Consul, and also Un Barrage contre le Pacifique and Le Marin de Gibraltar. Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein is a beautiful book, beautifully written, dreamy, an evocation of nostalgia and longing. Marguerite Duras is always at her best when she writes about feelings and emotions, and her writing is austere and just beautiful.

Strange Days Indeed, by Francis Wheen

A very good book about the '70s, that "golden age of paranoia". An easy read, very funny, and sometimes scary when you stop to consider how all this really happened and how very much of the paranoid spirit has endured and still influences politics today. I remember a lot of this - I was a child then, but never forgot the mood of impending catastrophes (there would be no natural resources in a few years! the bomb would blow up!), the catastrophe movies, the alien and paranormal furore. Remembering it left me vaccinated against alarmist predictions, since none of those became true, which was in itself a good thing, I guess.

Generations of Love, de Matteo B. Bianchi

A nice coming of age book, funny and sometimes moving, very evocative of the '80s. I heard about it through a friend, and read it in a Spanish translation, not being able to read Italian and not finding any other translation.

Waiting for an Angel, by Helon Habila

A good book about what the life under a dictatorship is like, in this case in Nigeria. Harsh and nevertheless hopeful, trusting in the basic humanity of people, it's a good reminder of the fragility of the rights we take for granted in Western democracies. And it made me, as usual, mad at the people who neglect to vote and say that everything is the same everywhere - they should spend some time in these countries to see how it isn't.

Monsieur Ibrahim et les Fleurs du Coran, de Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt

A little jewel of a book I found thanks to the suggestion of a friend. Short and simple like a Sufi or Zen tale, expressing the view that it's our humanity that counts, more than race or religion. And it's a good thing to remind people, in this time of Islamic fundamentalism, that not all Muslim tradition is of intolerance.

Deux Jours, Une Nuit, de Jean-Pierre et Luc Dardenne

A very good movie, austere and humane, the proof that you can make an excellent film with a good script, good direction and a few actors. The portrait of a very real Europe, a good example of the present trend in working conditions and the state we're in concerning solidarity and work security; also, in a way a picture of an ethnic mix that is optimistic for a change. Marion Cotillard is superb as always, one of the great actresses of today.

Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I was a small child then, but I still remember seeing the pictures of the Biafran famished people; Biafra was the synonym of hunger, starvation. I knew very little about this forgotten war until I read this book, and there is not really much to know - a secession war, that became a horrible war like so many others, just remarkable for the degree of starvation and the pictures we all saw.

Half of a Yellow Sun is a novel about that war, and it could be about so many other wars. It's a very good book, sometimes terrible because it's so evocative. It shows the effects of the war on normal people, it could be us, caught in the dehumanizing horror of it all. It's impressive and humbling.

And I got to know the beautiful Igbo-Ukwu bronzes thanks to it.

A Writer's World, by Jan Morris

A few years ago, talking to a friend, I mentioned how I enjoyed reading travel books, and he asked me if I knew Jan Morris. I didn't, and he told me she was a great travel writer, the best, and strongly advised me to read her books. I forgot about it for a long time, until a couple of months ago, when I was browsing through Amazon, and I ordered this collection of essays to sample her writing. Well, I liked it, it's good and a very enjoyable reading, but it doesn't make me dream of travelling to the places she writes about, unlike Patrick Leigh Fermor or Bruce Chatwin, for instance. But I found it very interesting nevertheless, especially because, more than a travel book, it's a testimony of the world through the second half of the 20th century: in an impressionist way, Jan Morris shows us how the world was and changed. She's an intelligent and attentive observer, and knows how to vividly depict places and events. The writing is good, even if sometimes bothersome by the use of the same expressions in several of the texts, but then, they were written at different times. I don't think I'll be looking for more Morris books, but it was a nice read.

David Hockney, the biography - A Rake's Progress, by Christopher Simon Sykes

I first knew about David Hockney when I saw a reproduction of his probably most famous painting, A Bigger Splash, later I saw Mr. and Mrs. Clarke and Percy, and then a series of paintings of the same trees in different weathers. I like his style, very sharp and colourful, a kind of sunny version of Hopper, he's one of the contemporary artists whose work I enjoy. I knew nothing about his life, but am usually curious about the lives of artists I like, and enjoy reading biographies, they're so informative not only about their subjects but also about their times.

So it was interesting reading about his life and the art scene in London in the Swinging Sixties. He seems like a nice man, devoted to his work and able to escape from the traps of contemporary painting, that so often is just pretentious and unoriginal. It's curious how the author depicts his work and ideas as ground breaking and original; I don't agree, think most of what he does has lots of similar precedents throughout the history of European art - just consider Flemish Renaissance portraits, for instance -, but he's certainly a very talented painter and has known how to masterfully depict his contemporaries and California.

Mani - Travels in the Southern Peloponnese, by Patrick Leigh Fermor

A very good travel book; Patrick Leigh Fermor clearly loved Greece and he can convey his fascination with the country in the most enjoyable way. Reading his descriptions and his dilletantish digressions about its culture and history, one really wants to go there, and how more successful can a travel book get? It's very well written, even if not as good as A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water, which are his best books. It's very interesting to read about Greece under the Byzantine and the Ottoman Empires, and know about the continuity of its history from the Classical times until the 20th century.

Sweet Tooth, by Ian McEwan

As always, Ian McEwan writes supremely well, the book is enjoyable and easily readable, but I was again somewhat disappointed. I still think his last truly great book was Atonement. His books used to surprise and make us shudder inside, we felt like we found something hidden and scarily true about our human nature; these last books are just nice.

À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleur, by Marcel Proust

How wonderful to reread Proust, and how beautiful it is in French. After the wonderful start with Du côté de chez Swann, it's in the second book that the work really takes off - we meet Saint-Loup, Madame de Villeparisis, Bergotte, Elstir and, last but not least, Albertine. I never get tired o reading it, and when I pick it up to read a few pages, I never put it down before reading some 20 or 30. The pages about his renunciation to Gilberte are still the best I've read about the end of a love (or a friendship, or a relationship); the ones about his relations with Saint-Loup and Bloch the best meditation about friendship; and the development of his love for Albertine, from the initial vague and mostly imagined figure among the bouquet of the young girls n bloom, is simply perfect. As is the description of Balbec and its summer society.

I already have Le côté de Guermantes waiting, but will take a pause - great pleasures must be savored slowly.

Vile Bodies, by Evelyn Waugh

I had seen this book mentioned several times over the years, the last time was in Patrick Leigh Fermor's biography. I didn't read much by Waugh - actually I can only remember The Loved One, a funny satire I read long ago - so I decided to give it a try. I was pleasantly surprised. It's a bitter funny book, witty and cruel, but also very moving, about a generation who didn't know what to believe or what values to uphold - sound familiar? Yes, actually I think it could be written today, about the present younger generation - they, too, believe they are a sort of Bright Young People but are mostly clueless.

The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James

I have read a few books by Henry James, but he never impressed me much - he writes extremely elegantly, but in a somewhat too "wordy" way for my taste, and I besides I tend to forget his books soon after finishing them, even when I liked them - I'm thinking, for instance, of The Ambassadors. I somehow always considered his writing too over elaborate for the content - how much more I appreciate the no less elegant and also elaborate writing of Virginia Woolf or Lytton Strachey!

I bought The Portrait of a Lady on a sale more than a year ago, and its sheer size - and the misgivings about James - always made me put off its reading. Then, about a week ago, having finished my books supply and waiting for the last order from amazon, I decided to take it up, and it was actually a very nice surprise. The writing is as over elaborate as ever, but this time the characters were fetching, the social relations and psychology very insightful and the plot clever and interesting, including the ending. I knew more or less how it was, having seen the movie adaptation by Jane Campion years ago, but the book is much more complete and satisfying. It's actually a very good book, and I read it very quickly.

A moment in life

Recently, a post on the facebook page of A Máquina da Arte - a site created by young Portuguese artists I recommend - reminded of a brief encounter I once had with Mário Botas. I was 16, and out Portuguese teacher took our class to the National Library to see an exhibition of drawings inspired by Fernando Pessoa and Mário de Sá-Carneiro, and the painter, Mário Botas, was there to show us around.

I was captivated and charmed by the drawings - small compositions, soft and delicate colors, of a kind of dreamy, fantastic and childlike nature. They were strange and enticing. The artist, a tall young man (I have a terrible memory for faces) went around with us, occasionally making vague remarks about a drawing, like "I was thinking of Mário de Sá-Carneiro at the time..." or "I kept listening this line in my head..." (this was about the first line of a poem by Pessoa, Antinous: The rain outside was cold in Hadrian's soul, written in a drawing - it was the first time I read it, and it has also haunted me ever since).

At some point, in front of a particular surreal drawing, somebody asked him: "Yes, but was does it mean?" "What do you mean by that?" "Yes, this figure, what is it? And who is this guy, and why is he flying?". He looked at us with an attentive and slightly puzzled expression through his thick round glasses, and answered very seriously, not at all condescendingly (we were after all a bunch of teenagers, and only a few were paying attention): "What does it mean?... Well... I wouldn't know... I know what I felt when I painted them, but I didn't plan them. I painted what I felt was right... Then sometimes a friend sees something, another something else. I myself see different things at different times when I look at them, you might call them meanings, but don't know if it's that... You know, after I finish it, I really don't feel it belongs to me; someone may see something, or other... I really couldn't say it means this or that."

I remember listening and being fascinated by his words, it felt like something was finally making sense. I knew nothing about Surrealism at the time, didn't know Klee, Kandinsky or Pollock, but the question of the meaning of works of art was a frequent subject of conversation with a group of older friends I used to hang out with at the time, around cuba libres in bars; I was the kid and looked up to them, and the subject came up usually about the meaning of poems or more or less abstruse rock lyrics, not painting. They used to say: if the author says it means this, then it's what it definitely means, you don't have to look further; but that statement somehow never satisfied me (how I wish I would have known then what Neil Young said about the purported meaning of the lyrics of After the Gold Rush: "I think I wrote each line under a different drug, how am I supposed to give it a meaning?"). And now, here I was listening to the real thing, a real artist telling what I suspected but never had been able to put in words. Somehow, I remember this casual encounter as a defining moment in my relation to art; maybe it's silly to attach importance (meaning?) to these small things, but I somehow believe our views in life, our life actually, is actually shaped by these kinds of moments, that often seem quite insignificant at the time.

Our teacher commented a few days later that Mário Botas was very ill, and in effect he died a few months later from leukemia, barely 30 years old. I think it was a great loss, he was an excellent artist and seemed genuinely a very nice guy. I remember I read Almeida Faria's books because the covers were designed by him. And I still feel grateful for having helped to shape me in some, even if modest, way.

(Note - This teacher - I was in 11th grade - was by far the best Portuguese teacher I had; I owe him the discovery of the beauty of the Troubadours' poetry, that I still love, and of Pessoa and Sá-Carneiro. He was a passionate and talented teacher, he even made Almeida Garrett look interesting!)

(Second note - I couldn't copy the drawing with the Pessoa line, but it's on the Mário Botas foundation website - very worth a visit.)

An admirable woman

One of the thing I most enjoy about my job is some of the people I get to know. For instance, there's this woman, about my age, whose doctor I have been for a few months. She has been a renal patient since childhood, was on peritoneal dialysis by 10, went through two renal transplants and is on hemodialysis for a year. She looks much older than her chronological age, she's not beautiful, and a cushingoid body bears witness to years of corticosteroid therapy. But every time I talk to her I just feel... awed. I can't imagine how hard her life must have been, being so ill from such an early age. But then she manages to be the opposite of a negative person. She grew up with her illness, but never let it defeat her. She studied, graduated as a language teacher, she has always ben working and her conversation is bright and intelligent. She doesn't complain about the health system, just the opposite: "People are always complaining about it, saying it's better abroad. I've lived in Switzerland and France and can attest that it's no better there at all". She's not bitter about her life. Her skin is prematurely wrinkled, but her smile comes easily and her face is deeply tanned by the beach sun, and when she speaks and smiles it's like the good weather fills the room. One can see she enjoys life. She discusses politics, the financial crisis, literature, languages, Latin etimology, the education system. She's so different from the average Portuguese patient - or the average Portuguese person actually - and always leave our appointments with a smile and a bittersweet sense of envy. Some people are endowed with this capacity for happiness, this talent for life. I can only admire them, and feel grateful and privileged to get to know them.

Augustus - a novel, by John Williams

I had never heard about this book - or the author - until I recently read about it on the New York Review of Books, and it made me curious to read it. I always liked historical fiction, and always found the period treated particularly interesting.

And I was very pleasantly surprised with the book. The epistolary form is a clever way to present the events in a way to make them look as they could be happening anytime, including now, which it stresses the timelessness of the issues, as the author intended. I think by far the best part of the book, and the most accomplished, is the first one, describing the rise of Octavius to power. The last, the long letter to a friend in which Augustus sums up his life and tries to make sense of what it meant, has some very interesting and insightful parts, but, in my opinion, tries a little too much to give meaning to what doesn't have to have an inherent meaning in the way it means a purpose. Anyway, all in all a good book.

O Ano da Morte de Ricardo Reis, de José Saramago

Como habitualmente, José Saramago parte de uma premissa interessante - o regresso a Portugal de Ricardo Reis, após a morte de Fernando Pessoa. A partir daí, traça um retrato do ano de 1936, focado no avanço do fascismo em Portugal e Espanha. Soberbamente escrito, num tom depressivo concordante com os acontecimentos narrados, e sempre extremamente fiel à caracterização de Ricardo Reis como o terá imaginado Pessoa.

Ricardo Reis é o heterónimo de Pessoa cuja poesia sempre me disse menos; a propósito desta leitura voltei a ler várias das suas odes, mas não mudei de opinião, continuo a preferir Pessoa ortónimo, a depressão apaixonada de Álvaro de Campos e o bucolismo de Alberto Caeiro.

Patrick Leigh Fermor - an adventure, by Artemis Cooper

I first read A Time of Gifts years ago, and enjoyed it immensely; later I read Between the Woods and the Water, and recently The Broken Road. In the meantime, I also read Ill Met by Moonlight, by Stanley Moss, the narrative of the mission to abduct the German General Kreipe in Crete during WWII. When I knew about this biography I was naturally curious, and it didn't let my expectations down.

What kind of life could be better than his? Living in lots of different places, traveling incessantly always with a keen observant spirit and a never-ending capacity to enjoy it, meeting scores of interesting people, writing splendid books, settling in a beautiful house in Greece, and in the meantime being a war hero! One can't help feeling jealous and awed. His vitality was probably exasperating sometimes, but I admire how he lived life to the full on his own terms, and how he knew to look at places and people and write beautifully about them. I love that kind of travel writing, dilettante as I also like to be.

Just a detail to finish - as the house in Kardamyli was described, I felt a sense of familiarity, then I checked, and saw it was where the movie Before Midnight was shot.

The Broken Road, by Patrick Leigh Fermor

The third and final book about Patrick Leigh Fermor's travel on foot from Holland to Constantinople is a joy to read, just the first two - A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water. Written before the others, and not finished during the author's life, it feels a little more personal and emotional, and it's not the least worst for it. I reread the other books before starting this one, and it didn't look at all inferior to the others. Leigh Fermor was a passionate traveler and a passionate writer, his curiosity and enthusiasm are contagious, and he is never boring nor sounds condescending, his youthful naiveté is assumed and, as all optimistic travelers, he tends to see the good everywhere.

His descriptions are always enthralling, the dilletantish digressions interesting and engaging, and I'm left with an immense yearning to travel again, and to visit those places that I never went to - the Rhineland, Hungary, Transylvania, Rumania, Bulgaria, the Danube - and to go to Greece again to see the monasteries in Mount Athos and Meteora. And what more can one wish from a travel book?

A Schoolboy's Diary, by Robert Walser

I didn't know Robert Walser, and I bought this book in Zurich when looking for Swiss authors. I wasn't very impressed at first - nice stories, elegant writing, but not really engaging. But as I read on there were a few I liked very much, so I think it is worth reading. There was particularly a small text that I found beautiful and I transcribe it here:

Morning and Night

Early in the morning, how good, how blindingly bright your mood was, how you peeked into life like a child and, no doubt, often enough acted downright fresh and improper. Enchanting, beautiful morning with golden light and pastel colors!
How different, though, at night - then tiring thoughts came to you, and solemnity looked at you in a way you had never imagined, and people walked beneath dark branches, and the moon moved behind clouds, and everything looked like a test of whether you too were firm of will and strong.
In such a way does good cheer constantly alternate with difficulty and trouble. Morning and night were like wanting to and needing to. One drove you out into vast immensity, the other pulled you back into modest smallness again.

Or this other piece, so immediately familiar to anyone who loves to read:

Reading

Reading is as productive as it is enjoyable. When I read, I am a harmless, nice and quiet person and I don't do anything stupid. Ardent readers are a breed of people with great inner peace as it were. The reader has his noble, deep, and long-lasting pleasure without being in anyone else's way or bothering anyone. Is that not glorious? I should think so! Anyone who reads is far from hatching evil schemes. An appealing and entertaining thing to read has the good quality of making us forget for a time that we are nasty, quarrelsome people who cannot leave each other in peace. Who could deny this clearly rather sad and melancholy-inducing sentence? No doubt books often also sidetrack us from useful and productive actions; still, all things considered, reading has to be commended as beneficial, since it seems to be utterly necessary to apply a restraint to our violent craving for belongings and a gentle anesthetic to our often ruthless thirst for action.[...]

How I feel about the reactions to the present Gaza war

I'm getting so depressed about the subject of the Gaza war. War is always terrible, people die, get hurt, lose everything, hate runs loose. Unfortunately, as History repeatedly shows, there are and probably will ever be times when countries will have to use violence and go to war. It's pretty obvious that this is one of those times: Israel had no other way to protect its people from the Hamas repeated aggressions but to respond with a war operation to dismantle their capacity to attack it.

But, apart from the terrible violence that war inevitably entails, the loss of lives and the suffering on both sides, it's most disheartening to feel that this conflict, even if Israel succeeds in the short term (and I hope it will), will not be over in the foreseeable future, probably not in decades. The Palestinian problem, even if it receives a lot more press than other and much bloodier conflicts, is just a tiny part of the Arab / Middle Eastern quagmire - it's just a part, and far from the worst, of the terrible mess the Arab world is in since the decadence of the Ottoman Empire, much worsened since WWII - just look at Syria, Iraq, Egypt, the obscene oil monarchies...

And most depressing of all is looking at all the hate circulating, all the outsiders in the West taking fanatical stands, shouting insults and slanders or cheering, as if they were watching a particularly fierce football game between teams that awaken strong feelings. The amount of news, videos, facebook posts, nasty arguments, hateful lies, is appalling. It's known that "truth is the first victim of war", and one can understand the need by the belligerent parts to use propaganda; but the outsiders should be able to keep a cooler head and take a more dispassionate and rational view. As a Portuguese journalist wrote today on her column, "when the mere mention of the conflict makes people in Europe and the US start shouting insults and coming to blows, how can we expect serenity from the ones directly involved, in the terrain and with guns?". There are a lot of good analysis of this Western frenzy (like this one) but it doesn't make it any less depressing and obscene. It's obscene people shouting death to the Jews, it's obscene all the manipulation and fotoshopping of gory images (as if the true pictures were not horrible enough), it's obscene the stereotyping and demonization of one people or the other, etc. Makes one wish all these warmongers on the couch got a one-way ticket to the Middle East and be left there to fend for themselves.

In the meantime, I worry about the friends I have in Israel, who are in the middle of it all - and, tellingly, are far from being the ones with the most hateful speeches - and wish and hope they and their close ones will get through it all unharmed. And I'm sad when I see other friends, who I know are decent and humane people giving way to the warmongering hate frenzy, taking things at front value, disregarding the big picture and neglecting to remember that most people on both sides are ordinary humans caught in a terrible and extremely difficult to solve situation.

That's why I post and comment less and less on facebook posts about the war. My Israeli friends know I care and support them, and I really don't want to fight with the others, it's not only depressing but useless.

Du Côté de Chez Swann, de Marcel Proust

I finally read the first volume of À la Recherche du Temps Perdu in French - and already ordered the second. I'm a little of a bookworm, read lots of books, and if I had to choose the BEST, it would be Proust's seven volume book. I'm reading it now for the fourth time, the first time in French, and the pleasure is always the same. Du Côté de Chez Swann is such a wonderful book. The first part, Combray, introduces one to its universe in a most delightful way; the second, Un Amour de Swann, is the best treatise on love and jealousy I ever came across, and the third makes you yearn for the next book... And reading it in French is a delight in itself, with such an elegant writing in such a beautiful language. Some people say "there's no time to read Proust in modern times". Wrong! He's timeless.

O Outono do Patriarca (The Autumn of the Patriarch), de Gabriel García Márquez

An interesting book, not as good, in my opinion, as Cien Años de Soledad or El Amor n los Tiempos del Cólera, but still engaging. The loneliness and alienating character of dictatorship are very well depicted; the writing is a little too baroque for my taste, but I think the translator did a very good job.

Kafka à Beira-Mar (Kafka on the Shore), de Haruki Murakami

I read and enjoyed before a few books by Haruki Murakami, even if it usually I forget them completely not long after having finished. He is a great story-teller, and his books are always a very enjoyable read, full of twists and turns of a kind that has a long and honorable tradition in story telling, from the Arabian Nights until Paul Auster - the story flowing somewhat erratically and unexpectedly, without an apparent plan, making us turn the pages wishing to know what happens next, making us enjoy its sheer unfolding. Murakami is very alluring to a reader like me, who enjoys literature, music and cinema, he's cultivated and the books are full of references to the kind of culture I like.

And yet, sometimes - and this book is one of those - he overdoes it, and the result sounds somewhat shallow and pretentious. Too many cultural references, too many pseudo-metaphysical, pseudo-philosophical details, a story too baroque because in the end completely meaningless. It is an entertaining read, but often annoying, and more than a couple of times I almost put it aside. So, not a very accomplished book, I think.

How to Live - A Life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer, by Sarah Bakewell

A delightful book. I don't remember how I knew about it, probably read some review, and since I love Montaigne and like to read biographies, I ordered it from amazon, and then waited till finishing to read the Essais in French to read it. I liked it a lot; one can see the author loves her subject, and has assimilated a lot from him - guess it's impossible to assimilate everything. A most enjoyable read, very informative, and above all capturing what I think it's the essence of Montaigne's intentions in writing. I think it's an excellent introduction to Montaigne if you never read him, and also very interesting if you already did - it makes us want to go back to it right away!

O Livro Negro (Bring up the bodies), by Hilary Mantel

The second book by Hilary Mantel about Thomas Cromwell, after Wolf Hall. Also a very good read, but I liked it less than the first - the historical plot is very interestingly and as accurately as can be told, but I didn't like much the writing, the flights of lyrical fancy that seem a little... far fetched. And I found Jane Seymour not very well accomplished as a character, hardly convincing and rather shallow.