Literatura | Discussão Geral

[Mayday]

vou passar na zona dele com os meus rapazes para lhe dar aperto

[Mayday]

E a Bertrand com 20% a 50%. Nada de especial, mas pronto.

[jean-luc godard]

comprei o geringonça da ines serra lopes na bertrand. tava com esperança que o carrinho no bookdepository descesse de preço mas ainda nao aconteceu

[Mayday]

18h depois ainda não consegui comprar no site da fnac. 

[Mayday]

.

Editado 30 Novembro 2019 por Mayday

[jean-luc godard]

Citação de Syn, há 14 horas:

comprei o geringonça da ines serra lopes na bertrand. tava com esperança que o carrinho no bookdepository descesse de preço mas ainda nao aconteceu

e aproveitei o 50% nos livros todos da Verso para comprar uns perigosos e subversivos textos de esquerda.

[Mayday]

Não vi nenhum livro com um desconto significativo, diferente do preço que costuma ter quando quando estão em promoção. 

Principalmente aqueles que tenho nas minhas listas da fnac, Bertrand e Wook.

[nopla]

O Afonso Cruz é uma pessoa especial. Sempre que leio algo escrito por ele, há sempre um clique qualquer a alumiar um pensamento, uma ideia perdida ou um sentimento que julguei ninguém entender. Se há escritor que edifica o que, na minha opinião, deve ser o acto de escrever, é ele.

Fabuloso. Acabei agora de ler o "Princípio de Karenina" e é uma obra de arte. Não é um "Para Onde Vão os Guarda-Chuvas", mas isso, muito dificilmente, algo será.

[bmfpcdm]

As minhas leituras favoritas de 2019:

“The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions”, David Quammen

Citação

 

“THERE’S a voice that says: So what?

It’s not my voice, it’s probably not yours, but it makes itself heard in the arenas of public opinion, querulous and smug and fortified by just a little knowledge, which as always is a dangerous thing. So what if a bunch of species go extinct? it says. Extinction is a natural process. Darwin himself said so, didn’t he? Extinction is the complement of evolution, making room for new species to evolve. There have always been extinctions. So why worry about these extinctions currently being caused by humanity? And there has always been a pilot light burning in your furnace. So why worry when your house is on fire?

Biologists and paleontologists speak of a background level of extinctions throughout the history of life. That background level is the routine average rate at which species disappear. It’s generally offset by the rate of speciation, the rate at which new species evolve. These two together, extinction and speciation, constitute still another form of turnover—in this case, on the global scale. Rates of extinction in the remote past can’t be calculated precisely, because gaps in the fossil record prevent us from knowing what has been lost. But a cautious paleontologist named David Jablonski has made an informed guess, placing the background level at “perhaps a few species per million years for most kinds of organisms.” A few mammal species, a few bird species, a few fish species lost to extinction every million years—with that rate, evolution can keep up, adding a few species to each group by speciation. Such losses, counterbalanced by gains, yield no net loss of biological diversity. Extinction at that level, the background level, is an ordinary and sustainable process.

Against that background, a small number of big events have emerged to the foreground. These cataclysms, anything but ordinary, are the mass extinctions that scientists now recognize as major punctuation marks in the history of life. Some of them are famous: the Cretaceous extinction, the Permian extinction. In such a mass extinction, compressed within a relatively brief span of years, the extinction rate far exceeds the rate of speciation, and the richness of the biosphere plummets. Niches fall vacant. Intricate networks of ecological relationships are thrown into disarray. Entire ecosystems are left raw and ragged. Millions of years pass, then, before speciation fills the gaps and brings the overall diversity back up to previous levels.

No one knows just what caused the mass extinctions of the distant past. The competing hypotheses range from gradual climate change (reflected in habitat changes that proved intolerable for many species) to a so-far-undetected Death Star that orbits mutually with our sun, exerting cosmic gravitational drag and pulling a shitstorm of killer asteroids through the vicinity of Earth every twenty-six million years. The debate over the competing hypotheses is a fascinating story but not one I’m going to pursue here. It’s enough to note that mass extinctions of the first magnitude occurred at just five points in distant geological time, and that each was caused by some indeterminate set of natural factors among which humanity (not yet on the scene then) can’t be implicated. The Cretaceous extinction, 65 million years ago, claimed the last of the dinosaurs; the Permian extinction, 250 million years ago, eliminated more than half the extant families of invertebrate marine creatures. Other mass extinctions struck at the end of the Ordovician period (440 million years ago), in the late Devonian period (370 million years ago), and at the end of the Triassic period (215 million years ago, give or take a few million). Additionally, a sizable roster of large-bodied animals disappeared during the later millennia of the Pleistocene epoch, only tens of thousands of years ago, and in this case humanity may have been partly responsible; those Pleistocene extinctions occurred about the time that humans began hunting in armed and cooperative packs. Compared to the five big events, though, the Pleistocene spasm was minor, mostly confined to mammals.

And there have been still others, lesser episodes during which the extinction rate only modestly exceeded the background level. One way of defining a mass extinction as distinct from a lesser episode, according to Jablonski, is that it entails an extinction rate double the background level among many different plant and animal groups.

By this rigorous standard, we’re experiencing one now.

It started a few thousand years ago, when humans from Neolithic cultures along the fringes of the continents began venturing across the open sea in primitive boats. Colonizing remote islands such as Madagascar, New Zealand, New Caledonia, and the Hawaiian archipelago, the human invaders promptly killed off some endemic bird species. Many of these extinct birds were giant forms, flightless and ecologically naïve. You’ve read enough by now to imagine how it went, island after island around the world. The Neolithic wave of human invasion had accomplished its damage centuries before the first Portuguese ship landed at Mauritius. But the results were similar, and the European-inflicted insular extinctions were actually just a second phase of the larger process. The case of the dodo was only one of hundreds.

From the time of the Neolithic voyages until the present, twenty percent of the world’s bird species have gone extinct. During recent centuries, the rate of extinction has increased further and the range of jeopardy has widened—from birds to animals and plants of all kinds, and from islands to continents—as humanity’s impact has grown in direct correlation with the growth of human population, technological efficaciousness, and hubris. Nowadays it’s not just a question of dodos and elephant birds and moas. Nowadays we’re losing a little of everything.

Within a few decades, if present trends continue, we’ll be losing a lot of everything. As we extinguish a large portion of the planet’s biological diversity, we will lose also a large portion of our world’s beauty, complexity, intellectual interest, spiritual depth, and ecological health. You’ve heard this doom song before, so I won’t chant all the dreary, important verses about how sterilizing our own biosphere represents a form of suicide. But I offer you, from some familiar authorities, a bit of numerical perspective on the scope of the damage being done. Paul Ehrlich, one of the grandfathers of conservation biology, who was a respected ecologist before he gained fame as a population-crisis maven, estimates that the current extinction rate, just among birds and mammals, is roughly a hundred times the background level. Ed Wilson, based on surveys of the diversity of invertebrates within tropical forests, estimates that the current loss of rainforest species is at least a thousand times above normal. Dan Simberloff, who is nobody’s idea of a careless alarmist, has published a skeptical review of the evidence, titled “Are We on the Verge of a Mass Extinction in Tropical Rain Forests?” Is the situation really so dire as the arm-wavers would have us believe? asks Simberloff. After thirteen pages of cool argument and conscientiously crunched numbers, he concludes that it is. Yes, Simberloff predicts, the current cataclysm of extinctions is indeed likely to stand among the worst half-dozen such events in the history of life on Earth.

This time around, we’re the Death Star.

But with a difference. Our own devastating impact on the biosphere will probably be a singular event, not part of a recurrent pattern. Why? Because we probably won’t survive long enough, as a species, to do it again. The richness of Earth’s ecosystems might recover to previous levels within, oh, ten or twenty million years, assuming that Homo sapiens itself has meanwhile gone extinct too. When we ourselves do go, the sparrows and the cockroaches and the rats and the dandelions that survive us should eventually give rise to a full new inflorescence of diversity. I’ll leave it to you to decide whether that represents a gloomy scenario or a cheery one.

Eons in the future, paleontologists from the planet Tralfamadore will look at the evidence and wonder what happened on Earth to cause such vast losses so suddenly at six points in time: at the end of the Ordovician, in the late Devonian, at the end of the Permian, at the end of the Triassic, at the end of the Cretaceous, and again about sixty-five million years later, in the late Quaternary, right around the time of the invention of the dugout canoe, the stone ax, the iron plow, the three-masted sailing ship, the automobile, the hamburger, the television, the bulldozer, the chain saw, and the antibiotic."

 

“The Prophet”, Kahlil Gibran

Citação

 

“And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.

And he said:

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the Archer’s hand be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.”

 

“Orlando”, Virginia Woolf

Citação

“(...) We may take advantage of this pause in the narrative to make certain statements. Orlando had become a woman—there is no denying it. But in every other respect, Orlando remained precisely as he had been. The change of sex, though it altered their future, did nothing whatever to alter their identity. Their faces remained, as their portraits prove, practically the same. His memory—but in future we must, for convention’s sake, say ‘her’ for ‘his,’ and ‘she’ for ‘he’—her memory then, went back through all the events of her past life without encountering any obstacle. Some slight haziness there may have been, as if a few dark drops had fallen into the clear pool of memory; certain things had become a little dimmed; but that was all. The change seemed to have been accomplished painlessly and completely and in such a way that Orlando herself showed no surprise at it. Many people, taking this into account, and holding that such a change of sex is against nature, have been at great pains to prove (1) that Orlando had always been a woman, (2) that Orlando is at this moment a man. Let biologists and psychologists determine. It is enough for us to state the simple fact; Orlando was a man till the age of thirty; when he became a woman and has remained so ever since. (...)”

“Wandering Ghosts”, F. Marion Crawford

Citação

“(...) Now I am going to tell you something. You have known me, man and boy, several voyages; and you are older than I am; and you have always been a good friend to me. Now, do you think I am the sort of man to think I hear things where there isn't anything to hear, or to think I see things when there is nothing to see? No, you don't. Thank you. Well now, I had passed the last becket, and I sang out to the men to sway away, and I was standing on the jaws of the spanker-gaff, with my left hand on the bolt-rope of the trysail, so that I could feel when it was board-taut, and I wasn't thinking of anything except being glad the job was over, and that we were going to heave her to. It was as black as a coal-pocket, except that you could see the streaks on the seas as they went by, and abaft the deck-house I could see the ray of light from the binnacle on the captain's yellow oilskin as he stood at the wheel—or, rather, I might have seen it if I had looked round at that minute. But I didn't look round. I heard a man whistling. It was "Nancy Lee," and I could have sworn that the man was right over my head in the crosstrees. Only somehow I knew very well that if anybody could have been up there, and could have whistled a tune, there were no living ears sharp enough to hear it on deck then. I heard it distinctly, and at the same time I heard the real whistling of the wind in the weather rigging, sharp and clear as the steam-whistle on a Dago's peanut-cart in New York. That was all right, that was as it should be; but the other wasn't right; and I felt queer and stiff, as if I couldn't move, and my hair was curling against the flannel lining of my sou'wester, and I thought somebody had dropped a lump of ice down my back. (...)”

“De Bello Gallico, and Other Commentaries of Julius Caesar”, Gaius Julius Caesar & Aulus Hirtius

Citação

 

“(...) XXV.—The breadth of this Hercynian forest, which has been referred to above, is to a quick traveller, a journey of nine days. For it cannot be otherwise computed, nor are they acquainted with the measures of roads. It begins at the frontiers of the Helvetii, Nemetes, and Rauraci, and extends in a right line along the river Danube to the territories of the Daci and the Anartes: it bends thence to the left in a different direction from the river, and owing to its extent touches the confines of many nations; nor is there any person belonging to this part of Germany who says that he either has gone to the extremity of that forest, though he had advanced a journey of sixty days, or has heard in what place it begins. It is certain that many kinds of wild beasts are produced in it which have not been seen in other parts; of which the following are such as differ principally from other animals, and appear worthy of being committed to record.

 

XXVI.—There is an ox of the shape of a stag, between whose ears a horn rises from the middle of the forehead, higher and straighter than those horns which are known to us. From the top of this, branches, like palms; stretch out a considerable distance. The shape of the female and of the male is the same; the appearance and the size of the horns is the same.

 

XXVII.—There are also [animals] which are called elks. The shape of these, and the varied colour of their skins, is much like roes, but in size they surpass them a little and are destitute of horns, and have legs without joints and ligatures; nor do they lie down for the purpose of rest, nor, if they have been thrown down by any accident, can they raise or lift themselves up. Trees serve as beds to them; they lean themselves against them, and thus reclining only slightly, they take their rest; when the huntsmen have discovered from the footsteps of these animals whither they are accustomed to betake themselves, they either undermine all the trees at the roots, or cut into them so far that the upper part of the trees may appear to be left standing. When they have leant upon them, according to their habit, they knock down by their weight the unsupported trees, and fall down themselves along with them.

 

XXVIII.-There is a third kind, consisting of those animals which are called uri. These are a little below the elephant in size, and of the appearance, colour, and shape of a bull. Their strength and speed are extraordinary; they spare neither man nor wild beast which they have espied. These the Germans take with much pains in pits and kill them. The young men harden themselves with this exercise, and practice themselves in this kind of hunting, and those who have slain the greatest number of them, having produced the horns in public, to serve as evidence, receive great praise. But not even when taken very young can they be rendered familiar to men and tamed. The size, shape, and appearance of their horns differ much from the horns of our oxen. These they anxiously seek after, and bind at the tips with silver, and use as cups at their most sumptuous entertainments. (...)”

 

“Kallocain”, Karin Boye

Citação

“(...) ‘I know what you are doing,’ she said, thoughtfully, and even her voice had taken on the same childlike quality as her face. ‘You want to know something. What is it? There is too much you ought to know. I have too much to tell you. I don't know where to start. I wanted to myself, you wouldn't then have had to force me. But perhaps I never would have done it otherwise. It's been like that over the years; it's something I wish to say, or do, and I don't know what it is. Perhaps a lot of small matters —friendliness, coziness, caresses—and when they were impossible then the big and important matters also were impossible. One thing I know for sure: I should like to kill you. If I could only be sure it never would be discovered I would kill you. Well, what does it matter if it is discovered—I'll do it anyway. It's better than keeping on like this. I hate you because you are unable to get me out of this, I would have killed you if I hadn't been afraid. Now I dare. But not as long as I can talk to you. I've never been able to talk to you. You are afraid, I am afraid, we're all afraid. Alone, completely alone, and yet not beautifully alone as when one was young. It's horrible. I've been unable to talk to you about the children, how I've sorrowed because Ossu is away, how afraid of the day when Maryl will be gone, and Laila. I thought you might despise me. Now you may despise me, I don't care. I often wish I were a young girl again, unhappily in love instead of happily. Do you know, it is enviable to be a young girl and unhappily in love, even though one doesn't understand it then? When one is young one believes there is something else, a freedom that will come with love, a sort of refuge with the one one loves, a sort of warmth, and a sort of rest—something that does not exist. Unhappily in love—one is so blissfully in despair because just I did not get the great happiness with just you—and one believes that the others, they might have found it, it is there to be found. And you must understand, when there is such joy in the world, and all thirst has a purpose, it is not hopeless even to be unhappy. Not desperate. But happily in love— that slips away into emptiness. Then there is no purpose, there is only loneliness. And why should there be anything else, why should there be a meaning for us individuals? I have loved you too greatly, Leo, and then you were gone also. I think I can kill you now.’ (...)”

“Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin”, Benjamin Franklin

Citação

 

“(...) It was about this time I conceived the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection. I wish'd to live without committing any fault at any time; I would conquer all that either natural inclination, custom, or company might lead me into. As I knew, or thought I knew, what was right and wrong, I did not see why I might not always do the one and avoid the other. But I soon found I had undertaken a task of more difficulty than I had imagined. While my care was employ'd in guarding against one fault, I was often surprised by another; habit took the advantage of inattention; inclination was sometimes too strong for reason. I concluded, at length, that the mere speculative conviction that it was our interest to be completely virtuous, was not sufficient to prevent our slipping; and that the contrary habits must be broken, and good ones acquired and established, before we can have any dependence on a steady, uniform rectitude of conduct. For this purpose I therefore contrived the following method.

In the various enumerations of the moral virtues I had met with in my reading, I found the catalogue more or less numerous, as different writers included more or fewer ideas under the same name. Temperance, for example, was by some confined to eating and drinking, while by others it was extended to mean the moderating every other pleasure, appetite, inclination, or passion, bodily or mental, even to our avarice and ambition. I propos'd to myself, for the sake of clearness, to use rather more names, with fewer ideas annex'd to each, than a few names with more ideas; and I included under thirteen names of virtues all that at that time occurr'd to me as necessary or desirable, and annexed to each a short precept, which fully express'd the extent I gave to its meaning.

These names of virtues, with their precepts, were:

1. Temperance

Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.

2. Silence.

Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.

3. Order.

Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.

4. Resolution.

Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.

5. Frugality.

Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i. e., waste nothing.

6. Industry.

Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.

7. Sincerity.

Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly; and, if you speak, speak accordingly.

8. Justice.

Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.

9. Moderation.

Avoid extreams; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.

10. Cleanliness.

Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation.

11. Tranquillity.

Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.

12. Chastity.

13. Humility.

Imitate Jesus and Socrates. (...)”

 

“The Mark of Zorro”, Johnston McCulley

Citação

 

“(...)Señor Zorro extended his blade, and with a glad cry Captain Ramón crossed it with his own. Captain Ramón had some reputation as a master of fence, and Señor Zorro evidently knew it, for he was cautious at first, leaving no opening, on defense rather than attack.

The captain pressed him back, his blade flashing like streaks of lightning in a troubled sky. Now Señor Zorro was almost against the wall near the kitchen door, and in the captain’s eyes the light of triumph already was beginning to burn. He fenced rapidly, giving the highwayman no rest, standing his ground and keeping his antagonist against the wall.

And then Señor Zorro chuckled! For now he had solved the other’s manner of combat, and knew that all would be well. The captain gave ground a little as the defense turned into an attack that puzzled him. Señor Zorro began laughing lightly.

‘’Twere a shame to kill you,’ he said. ‘You are an excellent officer, I have heard, and the army needs a few such. But you have spoken falsehood regarding me, and so must pay a price. Presently I shall run you through, but in such manner that your life will not emerge when I withdraw my blade.’

‘Boaster!’ the captain snarled.

‘As to that, we shall see presently. Ha! I almost had you there, my captain. You are more clever than your big sergeant, but not half clever enough. Where do you prefer to be touched—the left side or the right?’

‘If you are so certain, run me through the right shoulder,’ the captain said.

‘Guard it well, my captain, for I shall do as you say! Ha!’ (...)”

 

“Donovan’s Brain”, Curt Siodmak

Citação

 

“(...) I had to come to a decision. I had to make up my mind now. At once! Before it was too late. I did not feel exhausted any more. The opportunity was unprecedented. Too tremendous. This man was dying but his brain was still alive. It was an extraordinary brain, the dome large and of perfect shape, the skull broad, the forehead wide.

I tested its reactions with the encephalograph. It showed strong delta deflections.

An animal’s brain has weak reactions and very little resistance. An animal gives up when it is going to die. The brain is a minor organ of its body, less important than the weapons of defense. But the man on my table had exercised his brain all his life, trained it, strengthened it.

Here was the perfect specimen a scientist might wish for! (...)”

 

“Cassandra at the Wedding”, Dorothy Baker

Citação

 

“(...) I looked across the space behind the bar and saw my face in a blue mirror between two shelves of bottles. The bottles looked familiar enough, but I didn’t immediately recognise the face, mostly, I think, because I didn’t want to. It’s a face that’s given me a lot of trouble.

But I looked again in a moment or two, unable not to, and this time I let myself know who it was. It was the face of my sister Judith, not precisely staring, just looking at me very thoughtfully the way she always used to when she was getting ready to ask me to do something – hold the stopwatch while she swam four hundred metres, taste the dressing and tell her what she left out, explain the anecdote about the shepherd and the mermaid. They were the kind of thing a younger sister asks an older sister, and it was all right with me except that I wasn’t all that much older. I was only eleven minutes older. It was on our birth certificates that way. The one named Cassandra was two ounces heavier and eleven minutes older than the one named Judith.

By a firm act of will I forced the face between the shelves to stop being Judith’s and become mine. My very own face – the face of a nice girl preparing to be a teacher, writing a thesis, being kind to her grandmother, going home a day early instead of a day late or the day I said, and bringing something decent to wear. But it can give me a turn, that face, any time I happen to catch it in a mirror; most particularly at times like this when I’m alone and have to admit it’s really mine because there’s no one else to accuse.

I lifted my glass and said, ‘Here’s to you, Narcissus,’ and it was by no means the first time I’d been called by the wrong name, though it had never been this one. Lots of people refuse to commit themselves to any name-calling at all in our case. ‘Now which one are you?’ they say, and when I say I’m Cassandra they always say that’s what they thought, which would be exactly what they’d say if it had been Judith saying she was Judith. Or for that matter Judith saying she was Cassandra, or Cassandra saying she was Judith. They’d say that’s what they thought. We got very tired of it quite early in our lives. We never dressed alike. I was messy on principle, so that Judith could be neat; and then they’d forget which was the neat one, and have to ask. And we’d have to tell them. Very tiresome. (...)”

 

“Benighted”, J. B. Priestley

Citação

“(...) He had been in such a hurry to discover the table and the lamp that he had never noticed that door on the left. Now, as he walked slowly back, it invited his attention, then arrested it. There was nothing very odd about its appearance; it was merely a stout old door that had lost most of its paint; but there was something very odd about the way in which it was closed. Then he saw what it was. The door had two large bolts. It was fastened on the outside. Why should they have done that? Did they suppose someone would break into the house that way? The very idea of anyone breaking into this house was monstrous. Pondering these things, he had actually passed the door, when something pulled him up. He seemed to hear somebody moving about. Surely there was the sound of a voice too, a kind of muttering not very far away? It could only come from behind that door. There was somebody inside that room, the thickness of a wall away from him, behind that bolted door. And what about that stifled cry he had heard a few minutes ago, that battering noise? Curiosity, like a little flame in the mind, burned and brightened for a moment and then suddenly went out, leaving him in a crawling darkness, with doubt and terror. He felt suddenly sick and terrified of life. (...)”

“The Midwich Cuckoos”, John Wyndham

Citação

 

“(...)The dawn of the 27th was an affair of slatternly rags soaking in a dishwater sky, with a grey light weakly filtering through. Nevertheless, in Oppley and in Stouch cocks crowed, and other birds welcomed it more melodiously. In Midwich, however, no birds sang.

In Oppley and Stouch, too, as in other places, hands were soon reaching out to silence alarm clocks, but in Midwich the clocks rattled on till they ran down.

In other villages sleepy-eyed men left their cottages and encountered their work-mates with sleepy good mornings; in Midwich no one encountered anyone.

For Midwich lay entranced...

While the rest of the world began to fill the day with clamour, Midwich slept on… Its men and women, its horses, cows, and sheep; its pigs, its poultry, its larks, moles, and mice all lay still. There was a pocket of silence in Midwich, broken only by the frouing of the leaves, the chiming of the church clock, and the gurgle of the Opple as it slid over the weir beside the mill... (...)”

 

“The Dream of a Ridiculous Man”, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Citação

“(...) I mounted up to my fifth storey. I have a room in a flat where there are other lodgers. My room is small and poor, with a garret window in the shape of a semicircle. I have a sofa covered with American leather, a table with books on it, two chairs and a comfortable arm-chair, as old as old can be, but of the good old-fashioned shape. I sat down, lighted the candle, and began thinking. In the room next to mine, through the partition wall, a perfect Bedlam was going on. It had been going on for the last three days. A retired captain lived there, and he had half a dozen visitors, gentlemen of doubtful reputation, drinking vodka and playing stoss with old cards. The night before there had been a fight, and I know that two of them had been for a long time engaged in dragging each other about by the hair. The landlady wanted to complain, but she was in abject terror of the captain. There was only one other lodger in the flat, a thin little regimental lady, on a visit to Petersburg, with three little children who had been taken ill since they came into the lodgings. Both she and her children were in mortal fear of the captain, and lay trembling and crossing themselves all night, and the youngest child had a sort of fit from fright. That captain, I know for a fact, sometimes stops people in the Nevsky Prospect and begs. They won't take him into the service, but strange to say (that's why I am telling this), all this month that the captain has been here his behaviour has caused me no annoyance. I have, of course, tried to avoid his acquaintance from the very beginning, and he, too, was bored with me from the first; but I never care how much they shout the other side of the partition nor how many of them there are in there: I sit up all night and forget them so completely that I do not even hear them. I stay awake till daybreak, and have been going on like that for the last year. I sit up all night in my arm-chair at the table, doing nothing. I only read by day. I sit—don't even think; ideas of a sort wander through my mind and I let them come and go as they will. A whole candle is burnt every night. I sat down quietly at the table, took out the revolver and put it down before me. When I had put it down I asked myself, I remember, "Is that so?" and answered with complete conviction, "It is." That is, I shall shoot myself. I knew that I should shoot myself that night for certain, but how much longer I should go on sitting at the table I did not know. And no doubt I should have shot myself if it had not been for that little girl. (...)”

“Carboniferous Giants and Mass Extinction: The Late Paleozoic Ice Age World”, George McGhee

Citação

“(...)The Carboniferous giant arthropods began to appear in the Visean Age, not long after the end of the Tournaisian Gap. One notable example is the fossil of a giant scorpion, Pulmonoscorpius kirktonensis, discovered in East Kirkton in Scotland, that was 700 millimeters (28 inches) long. Here in North America, different living species of scorpions range in length from 37 to 127 millimeters (1.5 to five inches), and the “giant desert hairy scorpion” of the Southwest, Hadrurus arizonensis, reaches a length of 140 millimeters (5.5 inches) (Milne and Milne 1980). In comparison with Pulmonoscorpius kirktonensis, we can see that our modern “giant” scorpion is no giant at all—the Carboniferous scorpion was fully five times larger! Imagine hiking in the Arizona desert today and encountering a real giant scorpion, one that is as long as a midsize dog. How could a scorpion have achieved such a gigantic size? Yet it was only a harbinger of what was to come. (...)”

“Memories”, Katsuhiro Otomo

“Ethel & Ernest”, Raymond Briggs

 

Restantes obras que li ao longo do ano:

Spoiler

 

“The Divine Comedy”, Dante Alighieri

“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, William Shakespeare

“Samson Agonistes”, John Milton

“A Discourse Upon the Origin and the Foundation of the Inequality Among Mankind”, Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“Rapunzel”, Jacob & Wilhelm Grimm

“The Masque of the Red Death”; “The Pit and the Pendulum”; “The Black Cat” & “The Tell-Tale Heart”, Edgar Allan Poe

“Theresa Raquin”, Émile Zola

“A Little Book of Christmas”, John Kendrick Bangs

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Burn, Witch, Burn!”, A. Merritt

“O que é o Integralismo”, Plínio Salgado

“Gone with the Wind”, Margaret Mitchell

“Black Alibi”, Cornell Woolrich

“My Friend Maigret”, Georges Simenon

“The Birds”, Daphne du Maurier

“Adjustment Team”, Philip K. Dick

“The Cat in the Hat”, Dr. Seuss

“Witchfinder General”, Ronald Bassett

“The Last Unicorn”, Peter S. Beagle

“Duel”, Richard Matheson

“Carrie”, Stephen King

“The Rhinemann Exchange”, Robert Ludlum

“Dead Babies”, Martin Amis

“Julia”, Peter Straub

“Travesties”, Tom Stoppard

“The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke”, Rainer Maria Rilke

“The Bloody Chamber”, Angela Carter

“Shoeless Joe”, W. P. Kinsella

“Cabal”, Clive Barker

“The Girl Next Door”, Jack Ketchum

“Audition”, Ryū Murakami

“Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions”, Daniel Wallace

“The Bear Came Over the Mountain”, Alice Munro

“The Five People You Meet in Heaven”, Mitch Albom

“Flesh in the Age of Reason: The Modern Foundations of Body and Soul”, Roy Porter

“King of Thorn”, Yuji Iwahara

“Chasing Vermeer”, Blue Balliett

“Scott Pilgrim”, Bryan Lee O’Malley

“The Eyes of a King”, Catherine Banner

“The Informationist”, Taylor Stevens

“Nibbled by the Vamp”, Celia Kyle

 

 

[frnk th tnk]

Estou a 2/3 do Cem Anos de Solidão. Que livraço! É uma progressão lindissima, cheio de personagens ricos e que nos permite a conexão a cada um deles de maneiras diferentes e que vai mudando também essa mesma conexão de página para página.

Depois deste estou a pensar passar para o "Capitães de Areia" do Jorge Amado, mas gostava de voltar a Garcia Marquez mais tarde. Têm alguma recomendação a seguir a este?

[Black Hawk]

Citação de frnk th tnk, há 1 hora:

Estou a 2/3 do Cem Anos de Solidão. Que livraço! É uma progressão lindissima, cheio de personagens ricos e que nos permite a conexão a cada um deles de maneiras diferentes e que vai mudando também essa mesma conexão de página para página.

Depois deste estou a pensar passar para o "Capitães de Areia" do Jorge Amado, mas gostava de voltar a Garcia Marquez mais tarde. Têm alguma recomendação a seguir a este?

Correndo o risco de já os teres lido, tanto A Crónica de uma Morte Anunciada, como O Amor nos Tempos da Cólera, são obrigatórios. E muito, muito, mas mesmo muito, bons.

[nopla]

Acabei agora o "Dia" do Elie Wiesel. Fantástico. Consegui relacionar-me com ele tantas e tantas vezes, que chegou a ser assustador (da minha parte, visto ele ser um fatalista agarrado ao passado e que não consegue viver o presente). Recomendo. Lêem aquilo em dois dias.

[jean-luc godard]

alguém já leu cenas da malta da escola de frankfurt? por onde começar, Adorno? e que livros?

[Plagio o Original]

Citação de jean-luc godard, há 30 minutos:

alguém já leu cenas da malta da escola de frankfurt? por onde começar, Adorno? e que livros?

Eu tentei ler o dialect of enlightenment mas parece q n sou inteligente o suficiente

[jean-luc godard]

Citação de Plagio o Original, há 6 minutos:

Eu tentei ler o dialect of enlightenment mas parece q n sou inteligente o suficiente

Tou bué na mesma, sinto que se escolher um random vou ficar sem perceber nada do que se está a passar. Queria, sei lá, 1 guia eheh

[Mayday]

Spoiler

https://www.reddit.com/r/Biblioteca/

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/x7n86hbxv3179vv/AADphak8_x41f6VbaseyGHlFa?dl=0

Deixo aqui e depois cada um usa de acordo cm a sua consciência. 

Os livros vão sendo actualizados no dropbox.

Editado 19 Fevereiro 2020 por Mayday

[bobzz]

descarreguei todos. sem ter dropbox há maneira de saber as atualizações?

[Mayday]

Citação de bobzz, há 10 horas:

descarreguei todos. sem ter dropbox há maneira de saber as atualizações?

Indo lá diariamente.

Com Dropbox podes dar o teu e-mail e aquilo sincroniza automaticamente.

[BrunoCardoso]

Não consigo ler. O documento aparece em ficheiro incompatível @Mayday (opf).

[bobzz]

Citação de Mayday, há 3 horas:

Indo lá diariamente.

Com Dropbox podes dar o teu e-mail e aquilo sincroniza automaticamente.

A thread no reddit é atualizada com sinopses dos novos, certo?

[Mayday]

Citação de bobzz, há 15 horas:

A thread no reddit é atualizada com sinopses dos novos, certo?

Sim. E depois o gajo põe no Dropbox tudo o que é novo.

Eu não tenho conta, mas mesmo sem ter é possível filtrar pelos post recentes, da última semana, do último mês.

Editado 21 Fevereiro 2020 por Mayday

[Mayday]

https://www.incm.pt/portal/livros_edicoes_gratuitas.jsp

[Mayday]

http://projectoadamastor.org/audiolivros-para-criancas/

[Pablo Honey]

Acabei Frankenstein, da Mary Shelley. 

É uma boa leitura, mas tem os seus altos e baixos. Em primeiro lugar, é impressionante que a autora tenha escrito algo de tão boa qualidade literária com 17 anos. Não acho que a sua forma de escrita seja formidável - pelo menos, não é algo que me tenha deixado super deleitado - mas tem os seus momentos de brilhantismo, como o excerto que se segue, proferido pela criatura de Victor, que, numa altura em que tinha acabado de ser desdenhado por todos aqueles com quem tentara socializar, foi dominado pelo belo da natureza: "Half surprised by the novelty of these sensations, I allowed myself to be borne away by them; and, forgetting my solitude  and deformity, dared to be happy." Estas duas vertentes são as valências mais fortes do romance imo: criatura, e a relação homem/natureza e contemplação do sublime da última por parte do primeiro. A criatura/monstro/o que quer que lhe queiram chamar é uma personagem interessantíssima, assim como a sua complexa relação com o Frankenstein. Depois, há uma certa apreciação e busca pelo sublime em quase todas as personagens, um respeito pelas belezas do mundo, de que realmente gostei. A início pelo menos. 

Lá para o meio do livro senti que todas estas observações se tornaram extremamente repetitivas. Mencionei a criatura, que é o MPV disto. A verdade é que as restantes personagens são bastante insípidas. Parecem-me todas francamente iguais e há poucos traços que as distingam umas das outras. São todas bem-educadinhas, gostam da natureza, falam da mais mesureira das formas umas com as outras, e têm pouco de interesse. Como disse em cima, o apreço pelo sublime é algo que me cativou a início, mas fica chato sentir-me interessado pelo arco do Victor Frankenstein quando passa 200 páginas triste ou revigorado pela lembrança da cara dos amigos, da prima/irmã/mulher (e btw, que relacionamento desinteressante) ou pelo belo. Once again, boa leitura, bom livro, mas nada de extraordinário. Contudo, fiquei super interessado no conceito da criatura horrenda, mas benevolente. Conforme disse no meu post, é a cena que mais fascínio me despertou no romance. Como tal, brevemente, para além das adaptações cinematográficas dos anos 30 (O de 1931 vou ver de certeza, estou a ponderar se vejo o "spin off" de 35 com a noiva) devo também ver o Elephant Man do David Lynch e mais algum semelhante que descubra. 

 

De tempos a tempos, tenho lido "Mulheres" de Charles Bukowski, mas como o Frankenstein era leitura para uma cadeira do curso, disponibilizei-lhe maior atenção nas últimas semanas. Mas, porra, adoro a escrita do Bukowski. 

Editado 18 Março 2020 por Pablo Honey

[jean-luc godard]

agora que estamos todos fechados em casa

e alfarrabistas da net? que recomendam?