Dune Messiah is the second book of Frank Herbert's Dune saga. It is two and a half times smaller than the first book and it feels almost completely different. Paul has been emperor for some time, not much, but enough for his jihad to bring the death of tens of billions. The government of the universe is now his, a combination of religion and bureaucratic despotism that he foresaw, but could not have prevented. The house of Ix and the Bene Tleilaxu make their appearance. There are conspiracies against Muad'dib and his family from every corner and, if the first book was of his victory over his enemies, however painful, the second book is all about his defeat at the hands of the future. He walks the edge, loses almost everything, all in the name of a better future for human kind. All the characters are weaker, more human, some less human but still weak.

All in all, it is a nice book, well written and interesting, but it felt like a kind of bridge between Dune and the next two books, which have their focus on Paul Atreides' children. We are certainly looking forward to brilliant stories and great writing, but Dune Messiah seemed a little too melodramatic, less focused, with less work done on it. Compared to its predecessor, it seems a disappointment; compared to most other books, it is still great.

Reread at 45

  It is amazing to me how each decade these books are telling me something different. I still see the flaws, but they are subtly different, I still see the greatness of it, but also altered by time. Every time I read Dune it changes me, like the spice melange, makes me more introspective and extrospective. I look at things with more depth, I examine myself with more care. I love that feeling and I enjoy myself more.

  One thing remains the same, though: I immediately identify with the Bene Tleilaxu and the House of Ix while reading the book. They are the tinkerers of their time, but without the whole ideology and set in ways behind the Bene Gesserit or the Fremen. Are they evil? Who cares! Therein lies freedom.

Anyway, back to the book. Just like in the first one, there are some important events that happen out of sight and we only hear from them or are explained by the characters. In Dune, the killing of Chani's first child was almost an afterthought. In Dune Messiah we just have to accept that Jessica, the loyal mother of Paul, just decided it's OK to leave Arrakis and move to Caladan, accompanied by Gurney Halleck, no less, the man who hated the Harkonnens with his whole being. Some important characters are summarily executed off screen, too, once they've done their job. I guess that's how the world works at any time, but as a reader, I would have liked more meat on those bones.

My instinct above, where I said it was a bridge between Dune and Children of Dune, was right. Even Brian Herbert wrote about this in his introduction. Many people were let down when they read Messiah, and the general view was that once Paul has become a classic hero, readers were not entertained by his downfall. But I don't think it's that. I think it was the vagueness of the book, the pompous implications of words that did not explain anything. That's both good and bad. Let me explain.

At first read, you feel like you are part of some mystical universe where each moment, each gesture, each word has world shattering implications. Coming from the boring world we feel we live in, it's a revelation. You feel like with just a little more attention to detail, a little more thinking about it, you will also glimpse the path things take. At second read, you are used to the feeling and you kind of know you will not get to the hidden truths of the book, but you still hold hope that a better person could see them, so it's still somehow inspiring. At later reads, you just understand that Herbert intimated secrets that he himself never deemed necessary to invent. You see the inconsistencies, how characters that had complete control of their minds and bodies act like children, or how the universe is ruled absolutely by Paul, with no constitution or legal organisms that are not subservient to him, but then he must obey the Fremen law whenever the plot sees it fit.

For me, this remains a thing of hope. The Dune series is great, but it could have been improved upon. Some writer somewhere will manage to write something similar that would upstage it by the sheer personal effort to be attentive to details and to imagine a world greater than our own.

  Dune, a mega-classic of sci-fi books, written in 1965 by the ecology obsessed Frank Herbert, tells the story of a future world that is dependent on the substance known as spice, of a vast stellar empire led by an emperor and the noble houses and shaped by religion. Dune is the first in a series of six books, each one increasing the level of "epicness" of the story. There is no way I can do justice to the book in my review, it is that good and that complex. All I can say is that I've read it every ten years from the time I was 15, and every time I read it, I interpret it differently. This also shows how different we are at various ages.

  Anyway, I was saying that Frank Herbert was obsessed with ecology. I am saying this after having read all of his books a while ago and noticing the pattern. The Dune Wikipedia article claims that this book was the result of events that started Herbert's interest in ecology, while he was working for the Department of Agriculture, trying to stabilize sand dunes using plants. Herbert is also the author of brilliant books like the Pandora series or like Hellstrom's Hive which, for many reasons, I consider masterpieces as well. However most of his books and short novels feature some interest in ecological systems.

  The story is set twenty millennia into the future. As it was written in the sixties, it had to solve the problem of exponential technological advancement that was obvious even then. How can one write a book about the future, when the future moves so fast? Herbert solved it in a simple way: he imagined a world where humans rebelled against the use of intelligent machines, for religious reasons, thus removing computer advancements from the equation. Also, in order to solve the issue of ever evolving weaponry, he imagined a world where energy shields were cheap and small and could be used personally or on buildings or ships; these shields would stop any object or energy moving fast enough. This reduces battles to hand to hand combat, with knives and slow needles that can penetrate the shield. It's not like Herbert had all the answers: there are obvious technological devices that would have rendered this version of a shield useless, as well as clear reasons while perfect control over technology could not have been enforced. But the way he envisioned this future world, where everything important was the human being - as a thinking, feeling, believing creature - made it close to timeless.

Now, the plot is vast and the beauty of the book is in its minutiae, not in the overall story. This has been proven, I think, by the way people have received the 1984 David Lynch film adaptation versus the 2000 version. The first took "poetic license" to change the story and make it more script like, but preserved the feel of the book, with the interior dialogues, the epic scenes and careful attention to minor details. The 2000 adaptation was completely faithful to the book in the way of following it scene by scene, but the lack of attention to punctual details made it unappealing and bland. There is a project called Dune for 2014, maybe that will give us another point of reference. So I will not talk about the plot and let you discover it for yourself. Enough to say that it is a great book.

It is important for me to talk about the difference between my personal interpretation of the book at different ages. When I was 15 I thought it was a glorious story of personal achievement, where Paul Muad'dib and Leto II were becomes gods by the sheer power of their thoughts and feelings. At 25 I thought it was a deep analysis of human interaction, of how logic, emotions and belief clash to mold our beings. And now, at 36, I feel like the book is brilliant, but I can read between the lines, see how the structure of the story was created from various sources; a bit of the mythos has lost its power, but gained more respect. If at 15 I was identifying with Paul and at 25 I was dreaming to become Leto II, now it's easier to me to identify with the likes of Gurney Halleck or even Feyd Rautha Harkonnen. I am not saying that I like them more, I just feel I gained more insight into the other characters. I say it again: Dune is a book of details (without being boring with them).

I cannot end this review without mentioning the Dune video games. I spent many an hour playing the adventure game Dune and many a day playing Dune II, the real time strategy game that was to inspire all others in the future. The game was so primitive that the controls were not designed for ease. Each unit was controlled individually and had very little autonomy, the result being that one rarely had time to blink when many units were constructed. This prompted my father to take me to a mirror and show me my own eyes. They were red and irritated. "Oh", I said, "it's from the spice!".

Review at 45

In between Villeneuve movie adaptations of Dune, it was time for another reread and, amazingly, I got something else out of the book, again! This time I saw through many of the flaws of the book. Small flaws, to be sure, but some contradictory facts like when to unsheathe a crysknife or where the origin of a mind altering substance was and stuff like that.

I also understood why it is so difficult to make an adaptation of the book to movie form. First of all, because the people in the Dune universe are supposed to be superhuman. They remember much, think fast, feel deeply, move fast, after going through harsh training regimens and being subjected to exotic substance, strange rituals and being subject to strong religious and political forces. I can even say now that I think Herbert didn't write well enough to convey what he wanted, as his book is inconsistent in how it portrays the abilities that noble people use at every moment of their existence. Lynch tried to make it work, while all others glossed over it. On paper you are shocked by the way the characters take in the world, observe and analyze minutiae, only to then act with ruthless swiftness. On the screen, you just see normal people in a fantasy world that makes little sense.

The first part of the book is also more consistent that the second. From the moment Paul and Jessica meet the Fremen, everything is done quickly, based on rituals and knowledge that is somehow common to characters from completely different cultures and, when that fails, there are premonitions or instincts that tell them how to act in order to move the story exactly as the author wanted. And failing that, there are always coincidences that help. The Fremen themselves are described in wildly oscillating ways: they are the noble savages, but they also have a very old culture, but they are also violent simpletons that are blindly driven by ritual and implanted religion, but they also have technology, they are honorable, unless they kill stabbing you in the back or in a fit of rage. They are superb fighters, but they are not trained, so Paul can defeat them, but not the super trained Sardaukar. And so on and so on.

At the end, some particular important events are written as happening "off screen", like Herbert wanted to get it over with.

And I understand that, too. The complexity of the story and characters, the careful (superhuman?) effort that must have been necessary to make this work - while writing it on typewriter 70 years ago and also trying to get people from that time to accept it - must have been titanic. Did you know that Dune was the first best seller science fiction novel? Before this book was (repeatedly rejected and only then) published, science fiction was a niche for people to write for themselves and not others.

I am not sure if I will, but I am thinking already to continue to read the entire Dune series of books, not only the mandatory first six, but also those written by Herbert's son - the biography of his father and the collaborations with Kevin J. Anderson.

This book (complete title: Wired for Love - How Understanding Your Partner's Brain and Attachment Style Can Help You Defuse Conflict and Build a Secure Relationship) is a layman's terms summarizing of research done in the area of romantic relationships. Stan Tatkin is not the greatest psychologist ever, but he does a good job in writing this reference book. He lists ten principles that would help people retain their relationship and improve on it. Simple things like making eye contact, hugging till the other relaxes in your arms and fighting smart - for the couple, not against your partner, can make huge impact with little effort. Tatkin suggests that we are all untrained in this relationship crap and so he goes towards making a sort of abridged manual in how to proceed.

Now that I've said all those nice things about him, Tatkin is clearly not God in all matters relationshippy. He admits that the reason why he started the research was the fact that he went through a divorce. That must be especially jarring for a psychologist. Wasn't he supposed to know about people? What happened? He then proceeds fast pace to categorize people and tell them which parts of the brain and which bits of education made them like that and what to do in order to get to the "good" category. I particularly disliked that he branded people into three categories, then was obviously biased towards only one. That doesn't mean he is wrong and certainly when going for simple straight results you just have to put caution aside and go all in. But that's just it: this book is not THE solution, it's just a solution, one that felt right to Stan Tatkin, and so you must take it with a grain of salt.

The basic ideas of the book start from brain structure. We have parts of the brain that are wired for war, what he calls primitives, like the amygdala, who is responsible for the fast reactions that keep us alive. When we get into fights, for example, the amygdala gets excited and furiously fires neurons that prepare your body for a physical conflict. At this time other parts of the brain are more suited to assess the situation and define danger and behavior, parts he calls ambassadors, like the hippocampus. If we are too focused on our basic emotions, we start arguing and hurting the other in order for us, the individual, to come up top in the battle and miss important cues on how our partner feels and what are the correct measures to make the couple get through the situation. Tatkin makes the simple case that as long as we go through episodes where we fight for us and against our partners, this hurts, obviously, the relationship. The thing we should strive towards is the "couple bubble" (I know, terrible name) where both parties can feel protected and safe together with the other significant.

The author splits people into three categories. There is the island, which in childhood was not engaged by their parents, not hugged enough, they did not feel protected. They come out as individualists valuing their personal space and sensible to any close or intimate contact. They believe that as long as two people are self reliant and have a good life, they can have a good relationship without actually needing each other, only enjoying the company. There is the anchor, someone who was loved and engaged during childhood, with lots of attention and careful interaction with caregivers. They are balanced in their emotions, easily empathize with others and form natural couple bubbles, are fond of affection and close personal contact. And there are the waves, who oscillate between the two, alternatively needing affection and intimacy, only to run away when they receive it, for fear of being rejected or abandoned. From all three categories, the anchor is "the way", while the others something our childhood regretfully forced us to be. Thankfully, treating our partner right and being treated right back can change our affiliation.

Needless to say, I don't wholly agree with the guy. The categories feel arbitrary and unidimensional. Of course that restricting your metric restricts your vision of the world, but at the same time one can take this book as an advocate for a specific system. It is the job of others to find and validate others. This is what worked for Tatkin and so he shares it with the reader.

Here are the ten guiding principles of the book. For details, read the book. It's pretty short.

1. Creating a couple bubble allows partners to keep each other safe and secure
2. Partners can make love and avoid war when their primitives are put to ease
3. Partners relate to one another primarily as anchors, islands or waves
4. Partners who are experts on one another know how to please and soothe each other
5. Partners with busy lives should create and use bedtime and morning rituals, as well as reunion rituals
6. Partners should serve as the primary go-to people for one another
7. Partners should prevent each other from being a third wheel when relating to outsiders
8. Partners who want to stay together must learn to fight well
9. Partners can rekindle their love at any time through eye contact
10. Partners can minimize each other's stress and optimize each other's health

Conclusion: A book that can open eyes. One must be careful not to close them in other directions or look only this way. As I said earlier, it seemed as a theory based on a single dimension, the need to feel safe, with little bleedthrough in other areas. Some of the things in the book are so easy to do that not trying them to see if they work would be a shame. Also, whenever something feels too obvious, try to remember when (and if) you actually rationalized this before. Sometimes obvious things need to be said.

Finally, it is all over! The Dark One is defeated and all the character stories have come to an end. Funny enough, having Brandon Sanderson write the last two books made me want to read more. You may have noticed that in the title I give no credit to Robert Jordan; I know it's his story and that he left a lot of notes on how the book would continue before he died, but Sanderson has made it a lot better and it feels a waste to end it just when it got good.

The last book of the Wheel of Time saga, A Memory of Light, continues where Towers of Midnight left off, pits everyone against everyone and ends all threads. The battle of the end is epic and, except some slight miscalculations, is pretty much consistent with the other books. No Nynaeve braid pulling or needless spanking or otherwise humiliating women in this one, instead a lot of characters blooming from the dried up husks that they were becoming in the last Jordan books. As before, I loved Mat's character, but also Perrin is now a lot more involved, intrigues abound, people die (even important ones) and the ending is... let us say intriguing. One may still hope some offshoots of the story. There were some unexplained or otherwise inconclusive bits. For example there is a scene where Mat sends a lot of villagers to die protecting a river, then, when it matters most, the same villagers return through a gateway. I have no idea what that was about. Also there was a little bit of a story with some soldiers that had all their metal turned to something squishy. It just went and gone without much continuation. Then some ideas of the battle seem brilliant at the end of it, but not used during it, making the entire "Mat's strategical genius" idea a bit flimsy. Also, Demandred almost kicked his ass (and a lot of others as well) before he got killed. If there is something that felt a bit off, it was the women. Robert Jordan was obsessed with the women and he often wrote the story from their point of view. Sanderson is clearly a man's man :) Women had pretty small roles and little introspection.

Bottom line: a fourteen book saga is a lot to read. As much it pains me that it is over, it makes me even more glad that it is over. Sometime you just have to learn to let it go. The quality of the writing is very good and I dare say that this is probably the best book of them all, which makes it a fitting finale. It is also very long, the third in length from the entire series, at approximately 360000 words. If you have read The Wheel of Time so far, there is absolutely no reason to not read the last book. If you haven't started to read the series, you might want to think it over if you want to spend so much time doing it, but I don't think you will regret it. And lastly, if you have started to read it and then abandoned it for whatever reason, the last two books are a level higher than the rest of them and should provide motivation to carry on.

Oh, and you if you wonder if I am going to read the prequel and the companion books: no, I won't! If you do, though, please make the effort to comment on one of the Wheel of Time posts. Thank you!

I was waiting for the moment when I would be reading a new sci-fi book. Based on a suggestion from some source I have long forgotten, I chose David Brin's Existence, a futuristic hard science fiction book.

And at first it felt good. It described a cyberpunk near future, after some sobering disasters that rallied the world against nuclear war and global warming. It was dialog based, like the books of Asimov. It delved into the political, economical, technical and personal aspects of the world. It even started with the discovery of an alien artefact and started an exploration into the Fermi paradox, the philosophical conundrum that asks: "if there are many civilisation in the galaxy and they all reach the sophistication to go to space, where are they?".

But soon it started to feel all wrong. The different stories were fragmented, in some parts badly written, in some parts conflicting, some never connecting to one another, like Brin got some texts he had worked on and mashed them all into the book. Then the "chapters" all starting with a little media announcement or quote that explained bits of the world, but in a reporter editorial style that said nothing and brought nothing new to the table. And then it started with the goading: an idea was forming, the characters were reaching a realization or another, and before the reader got to see what it was, another chapter was starting.

My conclusion after finishing the book is that, while filled with interesting ideas and also having a main plot that is, indeed, ingenious, this was not a good book! I've spent the time to read the acknowledgements at the end only to find I was right: Brin did publish a lot of the stuff in the book in short stories here and there. And after finishing all that material, he speeded things up to show the "future", because he really had been disconnected from all the stories he started, reaching that annoying fast-forward effect one often finds in the works of writing amateurs. And the thing is, David Brin is not an amateur - at least he shouldn't be after all the books he has written and prizes he has won. One possible reason is that it is the first book after a hiatus of 10 years. I hate to say it, but it looks like he needed some money and this is the way he chose to do it: frame a couple short stories, a couple essays and an old Usenet into a longer novella that feels like the patched mess it actually is.

The bottom line is that I can't recommend this book. The main idea is interesting, but it can be summarized in a few words, which I won't do for fear of spoiling it for you in case you do decide to read Existence.

We live now in a world where people get the same education, see the same movies, read the same books - if at all. We then watch the ones around us and see only ourselves and we get bored. That is why, I believe, we start to see various mental illnesses or strange behaviours as interesting. That is why, I think, The Drowning Girl, by Caitlín R. Kiernan has received so wonderful reviews.

That doesn't mean the book is not brilliant. Kiernan paints the world as seen from the eyes of a lesbian paranoid schizophrenic, combining ideas from paintings, old legends and written stories into a whirlpool of staggering creativity. However, I do have to wonder, would the book have received the same amount of positive reviews if the main character was a straight man?

All that aside, I have tried to keep an open mind when reading the book and I have found that the way the author mingles stories and goes back and forth, keeping the reader on their tows, is both excellent and terribly irritating. It builds up a lot of tension that needs to be released into a grand finale. However, the climax of the book seemed to me to be somewhere in the middle, with the ending lagging and wasting into pointless mental delusions.

It is hard for me to recommend or not recommend this book. It is clearly well written and very inspired. It not only delightfully weird, but also draws information and data from all kinds of art fields and mingles them together in an interesting way. The construction of the book aside, though, leaves a plot that doesn't really mean anything. It's the maelstrom of thoughts and feelings of a mentally troubled person with a slight mystical component which, even till the end, is not really clear if it is only in her mind or has some factual truth.

I did enjoy one thing, though, the idea that something can be "true", but not "factual". If you think about it, it makes sense, but usually words like "truth" hold an objective mask on them, when most of the uses of those words are actually subjective. Yep, it's true :) I also liked the way details about the artists led to connections to other works and facts, that a thorough analysis of art can show hidden worlds and interesting perspectives.

As a conclusion, what leapt into mind when trying to find a book that is similar to this was Geek Love, by Katherine Dunn. In a word: freaky. The Drowning Girl is much more interesting, though, and doesn't try so hard to shock with the character's sexuality or personal weirdness. But in the end, having read it, I felt like it said nothing. An interesting journey towards nowhere in particular.

Oh, the monster of a book! If you want to learn to do genetic programming, then this is the book for you. If you need an interesting presentation of what genetic programming is, then this book is way too heavy.

Let's start with the beginning. Genetic Programming: On the Programming of Computers by Means of Natural Selection (Complex Adaptive Systems) is a scientific book written by John R. Koza to explain why, how and what to do to make your computer find solutions to problems by using natural selection algorithms to automatically create programs to solve them. This is not a new field and a lot of research has been done in it, but this book takes it almost to the level of encyclopaedic knowledge.

First, Koza submits the idea that genetic programming can be used in most problems where computers are been used. That's a bold claim, but he proceeds on demonstrating it. He takes problem classes, provides code to create the programs that solve them, shows results and statistical analysis on the results and explains what the algorithm did to create said program at specific iterations. That's a lot to take in. If you are working on a program and you are using the book, you are more likely to find it extremely useful, both as a source for information and as a reference that can always be consulted.

However, if you are a casual reader like myself, reading all that code and statistical analysis in the subway can be difficult. And it's a lot of book, too. So, after some consideration, realising that I have no current project on which to apply the knowledge within the book, I've decided to stop reading it. I got to about a quarter of it, so I can safely say that it is a very thorough and well written book. You just have to need it in a certain way.

I have to say that most of the books I start reading, I am also finishing, no matter how bad they are. I will not be finishing Guns, Germs and Steel, but not because it is a bad book, but because it is too thorough.

I know, it sounds bad for me, but this book, as with the next one I am going to review, are true science books, going through all the arguments, all the proof, anecdotes and theories before making a point. It is not an overly large book, but each passage has meaning and there is a ton of data that must be assimilated in order to be able to say I read the book. Alas, I don't feel like assimilating this much and reading it to the end, just in order to pretend I've read it would be pointless.

The book, written by Jared Diamond, is trying to explain why some regions of the world are more developed than others, why some people are oppressed, while other are the oppressors, why some people get along fine having farms and cities and a thriving economy while others are fighting to stay fed or secure. The author immediately dismisses the idea of racial superiority. Given the biological incentives to stay alive and the selection process that still goes on in less developed areas of the globe, it would be silly to consider those people genetically inferior to well fed Westerners from countries where the leading cases of death are random diseases or accidents. So the reason must be something else.

Having done a lot of living and studying in Papua New Guinea and Polynesia, he has direct knowledge of the way people live there and extensive knowledge of their history. Especially Polynesia he considers a rich bed of "natural experiments" as the many islands have spawned numerous social, political, military and food systems that eventually had to interact. He doesn't stop here, though, giving examples from all parts of the world, the native Americans, Africa, Eurasia, etc.

As far as I could ascertain reading only half of the book, the reason the world looks like it does today is because of a lucky assortment of domesticable animals and crop plants that appeared in the Fertile Crescent. The advantage of such a food surplus allowing for all kind of social and administrative developments was too great to compete with. The culture that spawned from that area quickly overwhelmed the world. In the few areas where resistance appeared, technological advances, immunity to disease that they would still spread and the general historical knowledge gained from the written word made the dominance of said culture a certainty.

For a sociologist, a historian or a palaeontologist, this book should be a must read. It explains a lot, using a lot of arguments on very well documented facts. The style is sometimes too formal, eventually repeating some questions and answering them with overwhelming detail, but none of it is superfluous. As such, it was an interesting read, but a very difficult one. Something that would have ended up eating a lot of time and yielding little lasting knowledge.

So, having faith that I got the gist of it and hoping that maybe I will watch the PBS documentary based on the book to get to the end of it, I will end by recommending it to anyone in the field, but not so much for a casual reader.

I wanted to read this book as I knew the author experimented with LSD and sensory deprivation tanks. He was the inspiration for the brilliant film Altered States, which I enjoyed immensely. The third book of John C. Lilly, The Center of the Cyclone starts as an intense book, an exploration of the deep mind using arcane and sometimes forbidden techniques. A magnificent beginning... and a horrid ending.

Let me start from the beginning. Lilly is a psychoanalyst and a neuroscientist at the same time, perfect skills to explore and understand the limits of the human mind. He first starts his experiments with dolphins, trying to understand them and communicate with them. He starts an entire institute in order to research this field, but the book is not about that, but about the period starting with LSD experiments. At the time he begins taking the drug, it was legal. Parties were held where people would share the experience and entire schools of therapy were using LSD to facilitate access to the mind.

Having previously tried experiments of sensory deprivation, a sort of shutting down of all outside stimuli in order to explore inward, he attempts to mix the two techniques: LSD and sensory deprivation tanks. Something opens up and he gains access to repressed memories, deep understanding of self and incredibly fast and precise advances in pinpointing psychological hurdles, trauma points. Till this point, I have gobbled up the book, resonating profoundly with the scientific method of exploration aided by chemical substances that eliminate the barrier between consciousness and subconscious. But then it all changes.

If you intend to read the book and make up your own mind, I suggest you stop reading the review now and start with the book. I am going to express my own opinions on what I read there.

What I think happened is that Lilly had the spiritual openness that allowed him to connect empathically with himself and others, something I believe resides in the right hemisphere of the brain. This openness is facilitated by the catholic upbringing that he is subjected to as a child. He himself, under the influence of LSD, retrieves a repressed memory inside a church where he starts seeing angels flying around. He confesses this to a nun and she, bitchy as she was, gets terribly upset and tells him that only saints can have visions, not a seven years old boy. This makes him forcefully lock the door that he had opened in himself. But now, after he has dedicated himself to science and logic, he stumbles upon this drug which unlocks the memory and so the initial skill.

This should have been a momentous occasion, something to combine perfectly the scientific mind with a strong spiritual/emotional side. Unfortunately, he was truly unprepared for it all. From a scientific book, it quickly devolves into yogi and Eastern spiritual practices, combines knowledge gained from experiment with hearsay from ancient texts, mixes hallucination with perception. He acknowledges that he started writing the book, then, after experiencing all of this spiritual avalanche, he decided only the first three chapters were worth keeping. Unfortunately, those are the first three chapters that I loved and that made sense.

It is not just my own subjective disgust for his abandonment of reason that makes me think the book follows up with personal involution, but also the way the book is structured, the writing style, the use of information at the end which had not been introduced previously... it all gets worse.

Now, he is the second scientist I've read that reports some sort of mental or at least emotional connection at a distance, the first one being Kary Mullis, who also seemed rather wacky and experimented with drugs. I really wanted to believe that, as well as many of the extraordinary things reported in the book, and wanted to explore them for myself. But now... I am not so sure. Be it the LSD or some sort of giving up to the emotional side, I see this book as a diary of going bananas and not realising it.

That doesn't mean that the book doesn't contain valuable knowledge. The fact that, single or under guidance, the man could access hidden memories and background "programs" after the first LSD experience makes the entire business of psychotherapy laughable with their lengthy discussions and careful probing. Various methods to access the trance necessary to explore your inner spaces that don't even involve chemical aid (like the looping of a word and listening to it until entering the desired trance state) I bet are perfectly functional. Also, there was one collaborator of Lilly's, Ida Rolf, that used a technique combining deep tissue massage and trance to unlock the repressed memories that affected body stance.

Many more interesting and very useful facts are hidden in the book. Alas, it is difficult if not outright impossible to separate wishful thinking from actual fact, garbage from science. Or maybe, who knows, I am so biased that I can't understand some essential truths in the book. I guess it is up to you to read the book and decide for yourself. I loved the beginning and loathed the ending.

I really wanted for Forge of Darkness to be great, something that would wash away the disappointment of the tenth and final book in the Malazan Book of the Fallen. And, in a way, it is. However, with increases in the inner philosophical monologues and a downplay of magic, with a plethora of characters that, for anyone not reading (or remembering, like me) the entire Malazan series, don't yet make sense, it felt raw, pretentious, more in line with Steven Erikson's admission that after 20 years of writing, the voices have stopped nagging him (for a while at least, as evidenced by this book). If this was supposed to be a book to be read, understood and loved, then I cannot see it as a success. If it was only a way to unload the chaos of characters demanding voice in the author's head, then it is quite a realization.

I won't describe the plot in detail. Enough to say that it is all happening in the Tiste realm and it is the story of the beginning of the high magic used in the Malazan cycle. The Azathanai, magic creatures of unknown potential, start interacting with the world on a more personal level. Draconus marries a queen, while K'rull starts bleeding magic as a gift for anyone to use. Eleinth break open into the world and gates for the major flavours of magic are opening as a result of Draconus' love gift. Through all of that, the division of the Tiste and the break of civil war are preparing to shatter the realm of Kurald Galain.

I imagine the second book will be a lot more active, with magic breaking out wild in a world unprepared for it, however the first was more about presenting characters (a zillion of them) and setting the stage. My impression was that, even if Tiste people live for hundreds of years, not every soldier and common man can have pages of internal monologues about the philosophical aspects of living. That is the biggest failure of a book that is otherwise brilliant. I will continue reading the Kharkanas cycle (I doubt it will end as a trilogy), of course, but I am starting to ask myself when the next book of Ian Cameron Esslemont will come out.

I used the original name for the book, but I didn't read it in Swedish, I read it in English for obvious reasons. John Ajvide Lindqvist wrote this 2004 book and the screenplay for the 2008 Swedish movie with the same name, but not for the American version Let Me In, made in 2010.

Let the Right One In, as the title of the book translates into English, is the story of a bullied 12 year old that forms a relationship with a child vampire. And not the sparkly or stylish vampires, but the ones that kill for a living. The title comes from verses of Morrissey's song Let the Right One Slip In. Of course the Americans could not help but remake the film using beautiful people and more romance. Actually, I didn't see that version and maybe I should before I start saying bad things about it, but I did watch the Swedish version and it was a beautiful film and it was the reason for me reading the book. If you haven't seen any of the versions I highly recommend you read the book first. The film is more mellowed down, but also preserves some hints of the story in the book and has that same eerie alienated feel to it.

The movie transforms the story in a sort of romantic late childhood thing, but the book is only slightly like that as it covers uncomfortable subjects like the poor and artificial Socialist suburbs in Sweden, child gangs, bullying, paedophilia, homosexuality, murder. The story is both spooky and disturbing, but also weirdly comforting. I really don't want to spoil it, so I will end with the link to my review of the Swedish film and a short conclusion: the book is not brilliant, but it is decently written and has a good story. It would be a shame not to read it.

William Golding writes difficult books. They are not only complex in prose and detail, but dissecting difficult subjects as well. Best known for Lord of the Flies, which is a pretty dark and twisted tail of children getting trapped in what is basically a social experiment, he manages to write something even darker in Darkness Visible.

The book follows the story of several characters. There is Matty, a child that emerges from the burning wreck of a bombed building during WWII with half of the body burned. He grows up in the state social system, interacts with Mr. Pedigree, a teacher who is also a raving paedophile, and then spends the rest of his life seeking redemption. He is a simple, almost stupid person, easily influenced, but taciturn and withdrawn most of the time. There there are the two beautiful and very smart daughters of a rich man. With every opportunity given to them, they prefer to dwell on the remoteness of their father and screw their lives completely. And finally Sim and Edwin, two old men passionate about books and good friends, who despite their best intentions and education are not capable of understanding the world and people around them.

Golding uses themes I've seen before: the way people can perceive so differently a shared event, like in Rites of Passage and the almost clinical dissection of the motivations characters have in doing what they do, as in both Lord of the Flies and Rites of Passage. The way he explores the inner, most private triggers of his characters is almost creepy.

The book is not exactly a success. I had a hard time reading it, mostly because of its overly verbose prose, and the presentation of people's lives sometimes goes to incredible extremes, escaping the main story completely. That doesn't mean it is not a brilliant book. One just has to be in the right mood to be able to finish and understand it.

Any person that is remotely interested in the history of chess knows the name of José Raúl Capablanca. He was a great chess player and the world champion for 7 years in a row. I've just finished reading one of his books, entitled Chess Fundamentals, and I thought it was great. It featured clear chess principles, backed by real master games and, what I believe it is most important in the book, all the matches featured in Chess Fundamentals are annotated by Capablanca, who focuses on what moves he saw best, the ones he didn't like and, most fortuitous, what he thought when he played those moves, as many of the games are his.

Unfortunately, as with any chess book, one must spend time to focus on the details and to revisit it as many times as it takes to understand and learn what Capablanca wanted to express. I've read the book as part of an iPad application called "e+books". You get the free application, this Capablanca free book, then you have to pay for any other there. What I found really nice is that the positions and moves in the book are mirrored by a chess board that allows navigation between moves, variations, going back and forth, etc. It really helps reading the book and I recommend it, especially for beginners. Using a real chessboard to mirror the moves might be best, but it adds a layer of discomfort and complexity that might deter someone from finishing the book.

The book is structured into 6 chapters, the last being a series of 14 games in which Capablanca either lost or won. He begins with some principles of the endgame, the part of a game that he considers the most important. If you recall, Josh Waitzkin also highly recommended focusing chess training on the endgame, where there are few pieces and the principles become clearer. Also, since some chess games end with mates somewhere in the middle game, there is less opportunity to learn that part of chess. For openings Capablanca has only a few words, focusing on the healthy development of pieces, which he considers the most important. As stated previously, the games are the most important and their complexity is pretty high. Some say that the book is not fit for beginners for that reason alone, but I disagree. Even the most complex strategies are explained in the annotations and I believe they are a rare opportunity for anyone to glimpse in the mind of a chess master and realize where their aim as chess players lies.

All in all a rather easy to read book, with the help of the iPad application, but very hard to completely understand and remember. I intend to return to it, several times perhaps, in order to internalize some of the cool patterns of thought I saw in there. I warmly recommend it.

Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships is a sort of summarization of previous works by Eric Berne, the "father" of Transactional Analysis. It was written in 1964, but it is very actual (barring some author views that could be construed as not politically correct in this age of sensitivity). In fact it felt to me so to the point, that I am asking myself how come I've never heard of this book before.

The idea of the book is that all people are torn between their three major components:

• the Parent - exponent of the social environment, things that "are done" in the "proper" way
• the Adult - who reacts to the circumstances as they change
• the Child - the emotional being who craves satisfaction and enjoys life the most

As I see it, is a separation in things one learns from others, things one thinks for themselves and things one likes or dislikes. At the end of the book the author resorts to a similar division: the Jerk, the one that does everything based on what others would think of them, and the Sulk, the one that does everything in order to demonstrate to themselves and others that they are being mistreated by the world and they are justified in their feelings, similar to the Parent and the Child.

Then there is a presentation of Transactional Analysis, an area of psychology that feels more like economics applied to human beings, where people do things in order to settle debts or gain profit. A nice example is two people that work together and say "hi" to each other in passing whenever they meet first in the day. This is equivalent to settling a debt that each have for their level of relationship. If one of them fails to say "hi", the other will feel attacked, just as if one of the two would stop and say "well, hello! How are you?" which would also feel like an attack, one that indebts the other. These transactions are being categorized into simple transactions, pasttimes, etc.

But then the interesting part comes up. It is funny, I felt for the entire length of the read that the chapters are in the reverse order. Each chapter was more to the point and more interesting than the first. I would have organized the book starting from the introduction, then reversing the remaining chapters. The interesting part is about games, which seem like normal transactions, only they have an alternate "tricky" purpose, one that is not obvious to both people in the transaction.

Quite annoyingly, many of the games described in the book apply to the reader. One feels exposed while reading it. With a structured list of these games, one can use the book as a reference to be used for further study. Each game is presented with their purpose, their "thesis" or pretext and expectations, their actors and their "antithesis". A clear warning is sent by Berne, though: the antithesis of a game is just a way to shortcircuit it and refuse to play, not a "solution" for the problems raised by the playing of said game. Indeed, when faced with a person that refuses to play or, worse, blocks their own playing of the game, they become anxious, depressed, maybe violent, depending on how "hard" they play the game.

An interesting ending is the listing of the reasons why games exist from different standpoints: social, personal, emotional, etc. The games are learned and, in that sense, inherited from parents, then from the environment. People that play the same games stick together and people that play different games are growing apart. That pretty much explains why people that come from the same settings get to have the same social standings and work and live in the same world. Sadly, it also explains why social cases need to make enormous efforts to be accepted, to "make it".

Also, the author presents his view of the best psychological mindset, the one he calls Autonomy. It requires three ingredients: Awareness, to be able to see your surroundings as they are, not as you were taught to; Spontaneity, to be able to have access to your own thoughts, unfiltered by other mechanisms; Intimacy, to be able to share what you are, as you are. A kind of a Zen philosophy. He reckons anything less is not quite living, but only going through the motions. I am not sure how I feel about this, right now.

For me, the book was very interesting. In truth, I should reread it, or at least summarize it into a logical schema that I would add to this post. I am not sure I will do that, but I intend to. Afterwards, I would use it as a tool for introspection and for analyzing my interactions with others. Yes, but...

Ship of Fools is a sci-fi book written by Richard Paul Russo. It reads a lot like a journal, written in the first person, with little (or badly evoked) emotional involvement or dynamic action. Add to this that the main character is called Bartolomeo and he is on board of a ship with no history and going nowhere in particular, where there is always a struggle between the captain and the bishop and the people of the lower class, and you kind of get the impression you are reading a Spanish crewman ship log adapted to science fiction. The low focus on technology and the way people are thinking and acting increases the feeling that this is something futuristic only by accident, and the reality of it is some feudal world, only milder than one would expect those dark times to have been. Somewhere in the second half of the book the plot veers slightly towards Event Horizon, an opportunity to make some biblical references. Even then, the book is written in the same linear and descriptive way, despite being in the first person.

The title comes from a long existing concept in Western literature, usually depicting a bunch of ridiculous people travelling together, but without an aim, and also characterizing the society from which they came as a whole. However, the book doesn't really feel like a satire and the fact that it won the Philip K. Dick award in 2001 makes me think that maybe I missed something.

Bottom line: An interesting subject, but approached in a manner that I did not enjoy very much. I could empathize with the main character, but only to a point. When actual technical decisions were made, I thought everybody was kind of stupid. Luckily enough, it is not part of any series, it is a standalone book.