Books and Pirates

Hello, guys… It’s been a long time…

I’ve just started my classes at the university last week. For some reason, I’m more eager to work on my post when I don’t have a lot of time to do it. On vacation being lazy was a full-time job but now that I have a schedule, I want to fulfil it with a lot of activities and things. Probably it doesn’t make any sense… but well, I was doing some organic chemistry homework when I felt the necessity of catching up with the blog… So you’ll probably see me more around here…

Ok, let’s see… Books… books are good; I think that’s a good start… right? Well, It’s quite difficult to say which are my favourites books, so I’m going to enumerate some books that bring up to mind when I heard those words and … yeah, as you may notice my entry are always very consistent. Also I’m going to avoid things the HP books (by the way Prisoner of Azkaban it’s my favourite, It was the last one when I started reading those and also because It’s the first Remus/Sirius appearance), the Sherlock Holmes stories and the LOTR ones because those probably on each of our bookshelf (or magic wardrobes).

The Gospel According to Jesus Christ  José Saramago

Saramago gives a complete new vision to the story of the son of god in this book; he made a really intrepid decision by re-telling Jesus Christ’s story but giving him human qualities, as doubt, confusion, passion, angst… In this story, he is not perfect, he doesn’t understand his father’s plan, and he doesn’t know the reason or the function of his existence through the eyes of god.

Also the writer “humanizes” other characters as for example Joseph, who in the bible is almost totally neglected. In this book he is more than a simple carpenter, he’s a character full of guilt and regret. He’s tormented by the idea that his son is also the son of god, and the complexity of that idea.

Despite of being an atheist, I’ve always liked religion related books; maybe this is not the best example (but I also really enjoyed reading the bible, the perfect activity for a Saturday night XD), considering that it’s full of ‘blasphemy’ and the Catholic Church referred to it as “anti-religious” but sincerely I think that it’s very respectful of christianism.  I feel like, by showing (what the author think are) Jesus thoughts, he criticism about certain interpretation given to the canonical gospels, the author is charging against the church not the faith.

Sailors/ Pirates books

Treasure Island  Robert Louis Stevenson

We are talking about the book that created the cheesy idealized Hollywood pirate, it’s impossible not to love it. Well, I don’t think there’s anything I can’t say about that it wasn’t said before. I just remember reading this while I was in primaria and being astonished, I think I never cheer for a character as much as I cheer for the poor Jim Hawkins (not ever for our beloved Harry Potter). The funny thing is that I always felt really nostalgic about the times before the planes were invented, when travelling by sea was the only way, even when I’m reading realistic pirate/sailors story with the hunger, the scurvy and the abuse of power.

By the way, I’m clearly on the Pirate side of the conflict…

Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe

Well another classic and probably my favourite book of all time (It’s a tie with Moby Dick). My love for this book is as bright and strong as the first time I read it, that’s why I can’t avoid seeing it with the eyes of an infant.  It’s a wonderful story adventure with pirates, capsizes, cannibals… It’s a story of friendship and love, about the strength of human relationships. I can’t describe the joy that invades me every time I read it.

  Moby Dick Herman Melville

I can’t probably a profound analysis of Moby Dick, because I didn’t read it in the original language, my English is not as good as it needs to be to comprehend some things on it and I don’t have great knowledge on literary theory( As I understand, Is your Don Quijote de la Mancha). So I’m going to talk about my experience and how I feel about the book. The first time I read it I was on primaria and for me it wasn’t more than the amazing story of a crazy man chasing a monstrous whale and his unstoppable desire of revenge. I remember thinking that Queequeg was one of the most awesome character ever written, I still think that, but in a different way, not just because he’s a badass XD.

While my bond with Robinson Crusoe is based on passion and a deep feeling of nostalgia, with Moby Dick is different, is fuelled by the seeking of knowledge and meaning. It’s a book that every time a read it astonishes me in a different way. It’s like sailing through a new region, comprehending a bit more the religious references after reading the bible, noticing the relationship between the characters, discovering new historical reference, contemplating the various philosophical dilemmas… even getting amused by the biological description of the white whale. It’s like an infinite book, I don’t know if someday I’m going fully discover it, but I think I’ll always enjoy exploring without a map.

  On Stranger Tides  Tim Powers

This a great pirate story, in the typical way… young man who for diverse reasons ends up under the command of greedy pirate who wants to discover the fountain of youth, meanwhile he has to save the love of his life… It involves voodoo magic, zombies, ghost, savages and even the mighty BlackBeard, in fact, is the book in which is based the last Pirates of the Caribbean movie, but I choose not to talk about it. It’s an amazing book, very well written with a bunch of enjoyable characters and situations. But for me, it has a much more important meaning that goes beyond the book itself. This was the book that inspired The Secret of Monkey Island, one of the first games I love, an old-school point-n-click adventure games… one of the best memories of my childhood full of old LucasFilms/LucasArts games… And I think that’s enough to put it on this entry (at least for me).

So, yeah, Pirates! (Like in the Sega Genesis’ jewel)

  Demian Herman Hesse

This is the book that every adolescent should read. It’s about a boy breaking into the world and destroying every structure he knew in the way. It’s full of beautiful symbolism and it’s a really interesting introduction to Gnosticism. I don’t know the disturbed adolescent version of myself love it… and he used to criticize everything, so… that’s something. Also I recommend Siddhartha, Narcissus and Goldmund and almost every novel by Hesse, even if you don’t like you surely found it interesting. But well, who am I to recommend classics, assuming that you didn’t read it already.

  No habrá mas penas ni olvido  Osvaldo Soriano

Translated as Funny Dirty Little War (an absurdly bad translation, even if you consider that the original title it’s a quote from a classic tango by Carlos Gardel) is an amazing reflection of the political and social life in the Argentina during the sixties and the seventies. Juan Domingo Perón is indubitably it’s the most important figure in my country modern history. When he abandoned the country or after he died, he left a very strong not defined movement without a leader, and that’s why sectors from the extreme left and the extreme right tried to hold the flag of peronism, because it was a really personal movement, it doesn’t have any manifest or doctrine. So this novel shows the absurd of the fight between both sectors for who is the most peronist. The book is settled in an small town so every member of those sector know each other, also it happens during a dictatorship so all of this violent fight goes on while the government is carrying a bloody witch hunt against ‘the guerrilla’, in which a lot of  innocent people die for being suspicious. Really, it’s hard to describe this story if you don’t know anything about our society or our history. I’m just going to say that Soriano is brilliant, he told the darkest events in a humorous but respectful way and always full of criticism, he was an amazing journalist.

  Triste, Solitario y Final (Sad, Lonely and Final) Osvaldo Soriano

This is novel you can relate more, its story about nostalgia. Soriano puts himself in a novel with Philip Marlowe (from the Raymond Chandler novels) to investigate why Lauren y Hardy doesn’t work on Hollywood any more. It’s a reflection of the profound love the author has to the books and movies he enjoyed while he was growing up, all presented with the deep acid humour he always had. The dialogs between the journalist who growth in the argentinean arrabal and the tough yanqui detective are priceless.

Well, I had to leave some books out of this entry because It was getting too long, well it’s too long. Also, I avoid any science fiction piece for the same reason, maybe someday I’ll write about Foundation, Dune or Hitchhiker’s… I don’t know.

So, Best Wishes and DFTBA!

Lucas