The Non Fiction Five Challenge ends today. I intended to read this book as a fifth, but didn’t manage to finish it in time. I did read a fifth non fiction book, though, another Italian one alas (scroll down for the review).

So here’s my wrap-up. Read five non fiction books in five months, here’s the reviews:

• Giuste nozze
• Prima lezione di grammatica
• Gomorrah
• How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator
• La matematica e l’esistenza di Dio (see below)

Alas, this is all that I’ve done for the challenge. Read other participants’ reviews? Rarely. Commented? I think not. Interacted with bloggers in any other way? Definitely not.

I am sorry about that, I really am. I’ve never been a great commenter, but challenges are a good way to interact. Unfortunately, I seem to be dedicating less and less time to blogging, so interaction suffers from that as well. Which is bad, because I like blogging, and I like blogging interaction, and I love bloggers (especially Nymeth who is always so kind as to come by and leave comments although I rarely comment back on her blog!).

So I am wondering about what to do now, and here’s question #1 for you: should I step back from challenges? Should I stop, and try again when I have more time to follow them through? Or should I go the other way round, sign up for more, and consider them not only as reading challenges but also as commenting/interaction challenges? I’d like to hear your thoughts on that.

*****

So, you may now ask, non fiction and challenges, ok; but what is it with God and mathematics? Well, that was the subject of the fifth book I read, whose title in English would read: Mathematics and God’s Existence. The author, Antonio Ambrosetti, is a great mathematician and a believer in God, and the point of this book is to prove that the two aspects do not clash with each other, because science and faith concern two separate aspects of our life and our reality.

I appreciated this book, and the author’s nerve in publishing it. I know it is always difficult for scientist to admit that they believe, because a common idea since the Enlightment is, that a real scientist should only believe in what his/her reason can prove real. And I think it is even more difficult in Italy, where people who say they believe in God are looked down on, and cut out of the cultural world altogether (I know, I know, we seem to have a weird relationship with the Catholic Church in my country…). I agree with the idea of this book: you believe in God with your heart, you believe in science with your mind, and there’s no contradiction between the two.

On the other hand I am not completely convinced by the way the book was carried through: a big part of it deals with retorting against other books, namely those that stand for the idea that science and religion are incompatible. Alas, authors of books such as Mathematics and God’s Existence often fall in this trap: instead of saying “You can be a believer and a scientist at the same time: here’s why and how” they say “People say it’s not possible, but they’re WROOONG!”, which is not really the same thing.

And here’s question #2 for you: can you suggest any title that does not fall in the same trap? Thank you for your input!

Povero blogghino mio, quanto ti trascuro! Soprattutto in questa sezione dove non sono “obbligata” a pubblicare recensioni, quanto ti trascuro! È già un mese che non ti scrivo! Oggi comunque ho una piccola perla divertente per i miei tre trascurati lettori (da me! Nel senso che non sono loro a essere trascurati, ma io che li trascuro!). Ancora una volta a notarlo non sono stata io, ma i miei occhi Guardate qui:

Ok, lo so, non si vede molto e in più è in francese (ma era uguale in tutte le lingue che apparivano sulla confezione). Ecco cosa dice:

12 gallette al burro fresco

Ingredienti: farina di grano tenero 50%, burro fresco 31%, zucchero di canna 25%, uova…

A voi tornano i conti? Perché a noi no…

The book: Gomorrah, by Roberto Saviano

Synopsis: a journalist’s personal experience turned into a report about the Neapolitan Camorra, exposing the “System”’s far-reaching economical interests and businesslike structure, its violence, its ways of dealing with power and wealth.

My thoughts: I found this book really difficult to review, because of very contrasting feelings I had about it. So I asked readers for questions, and got two (thanks). I’ll start from there:

1. Would you recommend it? Yes.  While I don’t think it is nearly as revolutionary as it is supposd to be, I still think people should know about the world in which they live. And it is true that Camorra is often represented as a short-reach, Naples-only kind of problem, which it actually isn’t. It is too easy to hide our heads in the sand and think we have nothing to do with it, whereas actually the System’s economical interests are so widespread that we may be all dealing with them day in and day out (and when I say “we” I don’t mean Italians alone, but reach much further). So yes, I do recommend it.
2. Did you like it? The short answer is no, sorry, but no. And it’s not only to do with the sloppy edition, although that disturbed me too: they knew it was going to be a best-seller, you would expect some more attention than typos and unfinished sentences (that may have been solved in translation, though). What disturbed me the most is, it was constructed to build up a best-seller, not to really expose reality. There’s the gore, for example, not as much as you would expect from a book on this subject, but carefully placed to keep you reading (the opening scene is one of the goriest). And all in all, the book does not give you a clear, complete look at things, but ends up merely being a list of small facts, Saviano was here and there, met this and that, saw this and that. You feel there’s much more to know, to read about, but it never comes. And you are left with no clear ideas.

The bottom line: a good subject, not so good a book. Why is it that books on relevant subjects that everybody should read about always get written by the wrong person?

Counts as: Non Fiction Five book #4, Orbis Terrarum book #6 (Italy), Orbis Terrarum Bi-Lingual book #3 (Italian)

The book: How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator, by Corinne McKay

The author: beside being a successful translator, Corinne is also a successful blogger here.

What it is: a self-help book on the non-linguistic aspects of running a translation business.

From the cover blurb: “Many would-be language entrepreneurs fail, not because they don’t have strong language skills, but because they make common and avoidable business mistakes.”

My thoughts: if you are right at the beginning of such a career (a translation student, say, or a doctor/lawyer/technician/write-here-your-current-occupation looking for a completely new career), this book contains all you need to know, from how to find clients to how to deal with them, from tax records to office furniture. It’s clear, down to earth, and full of useful tips. The only downside I could find is that if you have already been in the translation business for some time (even if only on its outskirts, as I have been doing), you already have heard most of it time and again, in newsgroups and forums and the like. All in all a good book.

Counts as: book #3 for the Non Fiction Five Challenge.

The book: Blindness, by José Saramago

The edition: Italian translation by Rita Desti

The story: a man in his car, waiting at a traffic light, suddenly finds himself blind. An inexplicable event that turns out to be a just-as-inexplicable, contagious illness. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but inside, anarchy and crime soon prevail. And to no avail: one by one, everybody falls victim to this new disease, the whole city, the nation, who knows, maybe the whole world. Except for a woman, who — inexplicably — remains safe in the middle of it all, and able to bear eyewitness to what happens.

My thoughts: scary. I’m not too much into the philosophical/metaphorical side of it (as in: what does blindness represent, is the woman immune because blindness can only have a meaning if opposed to vision, etc.), but to me this book is a clear, lucid representation of the horrors we can bring upon our race, horrors that we already did experience in human history. It could be colour, it could be ethnicity, it could be a white blindness with no cure, there’s no difference to it: people treating each other as animals, as inferiors, as non-human. Will we ever learn? And again, anarchy, hunger, crime, war: human beings have already been there, and still get back to it every time. For civilized that we think our society to be, we could fall back into it anytime. That’s what scares me when I think of the future. So I found this book scary, good but scary.

What I liked most: Saramago’s convoluted but fluid style, and the translator’s ability to render it. Bravo!

Read this if: if you like dystopic novels, if you enjoyed The Handmaid’s Tale, and if you like convoluted style.

Counts towards: Orbis Terrarum Challenge (Portugal)

*****

Dear reader, I recently finished reading Gomorrah, but I don’t know where to start that review. So please, would you help me write it? Leave me a question about the book here, and I’ll answer soon! Thank you!

(Photo credits: marta.tci on Flickr)

La Mattina, che va pazza per le belle storie, ritarda ancora di più, attenta alla voce del Vento [e] causa una confusione irrimediabile negli orologi, obbligati a rallentare il ritmo di pendoli e lancette, legati come sono all’arrivo della Mattina per segnare le cinque in punto. Molti orologi impazzirono, non riuscirono più a segnare l’ora giusta, sempre avanti o indietro, a scambiare il giorno per la notte. Altri si fermarono per sempre. Un certo orologio universalmente noto, posto sulla torre della fabbrica universalmente nota di orologi universalmente noti (i più puntuali al mondo), campione olimpico di ora esatta, si suicidò, impiccandosi alle lancette, perché non sopportava più la lentezza della Mattina e il ritardo generale della produzione. Era un orologio svizzero con un senso di responsabilità esemplare e un immenso patriottismo industriale.

(Photo credits: Barbara Porto on Flickr)

Tradotta in lingua umana non c’è storia che resista e conservi il suo fascino puro; si perdono la musica e la poesia del Vento.

(Photo credits: saxen4u on Flickr)

Così era l’amore del Gatto Tigrato per Miss Rondinella. Quanto a ciò che succedeva nel piccolo ma valente cuore di Rondinella, non speriate che ve lo spieghi o ve lo venga a raccontare. Non sono così sciocco da credermi capace di capire il cuore di una donna, tantomeno quello di una rondine.

(brani tratti da: Gatto Tigrato e Miss Rondinella, traduzione mia)

I know the Orbis Terrarum Challenge asks us to diversify our reading geographically, but I happened to read three Brazilian books lately and I thought challenge participants could be interested in all three of them — so here they are, all in the same post. Please note that all three review refer to original Portuguese (Brazilian) versions, not translations, so they count as one for both the Orbis Terrarum and the Orbis Terrarum Bi-Lingual.

*****

The book: My Sweet Orange Tree, by José Mauro de Vasconcelos
The story: an autobiographical Bildungsroman, this is the story of Zezé, a six-year-old Brazilian boy having to deal with too much for such a young child. With a working mother, an unemployed father and a numerous family (I’m not sure how many brothers and sisters in all) he is sweet at heart, but has a wild fantasy that ends him up being considered an imp at home. Somehow ignored (when not abused) by older siblings, he finds a friend and a refuge in Minguinho, an orange tree that talks to his heart, and later wins the friendship of a foreign businessman, Manuel “Portuga” Valadares. But life’s lessons are at times hard to learn: Zezé will see his childhood, and his fantasy world, end abruptly well before time.
My thoughts: this book is beautiful and it made me cry. The story is told in such a way that each chapter is almost a story in itself, and each time you see Zezé starting out with the best intention ever in his big heart, you see how he finds a way to create what he wants (a Christmas present for his father, a rose for his teacher) and how he ends up in trouble because of it. The world is too harsh a place for so young a boy, that’s why they need fantasy to cope. And Zezé’s fantasy lets him sing. As long as he can keep it, at least. I thought I was in for a children book, but this is not one: it is a book for adults who want to remember the tenderness of being a child, and who want to be able to give that tenderness onto their children.
What I liked most: Zezé building up his fantasy world for his younger brother to share. Receiving so little love himself, it would be easy to leave Luis alone, but he doesn’t. Children have big hearts before the world chimes in, and this book shows it perfectly.
What I didn’t like: Brazilian Portuguese and its use of “voce”, but that’s me not knowing enough Portuguese to enjoy it completely. The same goes for not knowing enough of the social setting of the book.
Read this if: read this book if you have a chance, but be ready to shed a tear.

*****

The book: The Swallow and the TomCat, by Jorge Amado.
The story: it’s a Romeo-and-Juliet-meet-Aesop’s-Fables kind of thing. The TomCat is the bad guy in this garden, no one ever speaks to him, except for cheeky Miss Swallow, who strikes up a conversation only because she knows she shouldn’t. Things get out of hand as they fall in love, but how could such a thing ever work?
My thoughts: are all Brazilian children book so sad? Apparently, Amado wrote this story as a present for his son’s first birthday, and only published it decades later, when a painter found out about it and offered him with drawings to go with it. So, this was a present for a one-year-old child, and it deals with emargination and desperate love. Dont’ get me wrong, I think it is good to tell children not to judge people before they know them, and in the whole garden, Miss Swallow is the only one not to judge the TomCat without ever speaking to him: she asks him about his life, she asks him why he is as bad as other animals believe him to be, and finds out that he is altogether a different person — uhm, animal — than she thought. But desperate love? Shouldn’t children be told about happy love, before?
Read this if: if you are looking for a very short read and ready to shed a tear.

*****

The book: The Witch of Portobello, by Paulo Coelho
The story: all through her life, Athena tries to come to terms with some supernatural powers of hers. Exactly what these powers are is not really clear. And, as her story is told after her death through the voices of the people who knew her, neither is it clear whether these powers exists or whether they were just a way for her to deceive and cheat people.
My thoughts: I don’t know why Coelho still gets me. Each time I read his books, I am baffled and disturbed by the way he mixes different religions, almost trying to get Paganism accepted as part of Christianism. Then, I don’t know why, I forget about it and buy/borrow another of his books. I don’t know why this happens, and I truly hope not to fall for it again. In my view, this book belongs together with The Da Vinci Code: it can be read as a simple novel, one that you want to get through to the end even though it is a bad one (you want to know what happens to Athena) — but at the same time it is clearly a novel written to confuse people, and written with the clear intent of exploiting a “hot” subject, as religion is, to sell more copies.
Read this if: if you have nothing else, and only if you are ready to take it as a simple novel and don’t mind nonsense talk. Otherwise, just don’t bother. Don’t read this if you can’t stand religious confusion and eyewash.