Books
2024
| Title | Score | Author | Language |
|---|---|---|---|
| NieR: Automata 少年ヨルハ (YoRHa Boys) | 7 | Jun Eishima (映島 巡), Yoko Taro |  |
| A side story from NieR Automata. I think it was originally a stage play, and then it was novelized. In the reviews they say it has 3 parts: the YoRHa boys part, the "flashback", and a treasure hunt side story. But the prologue in the YoRHa boys part is actually a separate story, where Model 2 (2B) is a girl. In the rest of the book all the characters are guys. The first part of the book was OK, but the whole story where they are trapped in the mountain dragged for too long. In fact, during the Flashback chapter everything is summarized in a few pages and I felt the story was better if told that way. There's an epilogue in the YoRHa boys part, but actually, I think the last chapter is a better epilogue to the book. The last chapter is about 3 rogue androids (non-YoRHa) on a treasure hunt, and they end up visiting some of the locations in the game, and meeting a few characters in the game as well. I think in general NieR Automata has a BDSM feeling to it, not only from the cloth design, but also by the theme of "if you are the one who kills me, then I'm happy". I think it works fine in the game, but in this novel it was a bit out of tune, specially in the prologue. At some point they just sound insane, so it's hard to feel emotional for such psychos. | |||
| NieR: Automata 長イ話 (Long story short) | 9 | Jun Eishima (映島 巡), Yoko Taro | |
| The novelized story of NieR Automata. It's exactly the same story of the game. If you stopped playing the game after the first ending, and you don't want to continue with the second half, you could either read this novel or watch the anime. Although the anime hasn't finished yet, at the time of writing this. Some secondary missions of the game aren't present in this book. So if you want to read about Emil, for instance, you have to read the other novel, "Short story long". Also, the introductory chapter where 9S and 2B first meet happens very quickly, in just a couple of pages. The other bits are more elaborate, though. Anyway, I had fun reading this because I could picture in my head scenes of the game, but I'm not sure if it would be the same if I hadn't played the game. | |||
| The Way of Nagomi | 8 | Ken Mogi |  |
| A new philosophy of life by Professor Ken Mogi (Sony CSL). It describes the balance that we must find in things in order to live a happy life. Prof. Mogi says NAGOMI 和み is the root of every aspect of Japanese culture and philosophy, including IKIGAI (of which he also wrote about) and WABI-SABI. The book makes you think and it introduces many interesting concepts and anecdotes, so it's an interesting read. But I felt it was a bit comical at some point, because everything can be thought as NAGOMI, even corruption in the government... 😅 | |||
| NieR: Automata 短イ話 (Short story long) | 9 | Jun Eishima (映島 巡), Yoko Taro | |
| A collection of 8 short stories that complement the story of NieR Automata. If you played the game, this is the perfect book to get a bit more context and revive some of the special moments in the game. It also helps a bit to bridge the gap between the events in NieR Replicant and NieR Automata. The story before the last one was particularly emotional, at least for me. Apparently the English translation has some errors, but if you've played the game you should be able to spot the errors and understand what they really mean. The book comes with some nice drawings by Itahana Toshiyuki. 2 of the stories are written by the director of the game, Yoko Taro, and the rest are written by Eishima Jun, whose real name is Emi Nagashima and who's written many other novels for Square-Enix, including Final Fantasy X, XIII, and XV novels. The NieR Automata anime follows the same story of the game, but it also includes some of the side stories from this novel. |
|||
2023
| Title | Score | Author | Language |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow | 10 | Gabrielle Zevin | |
| Apparently the most sold book on Amazon in 2022. A friend had read it and he said he thought of me all the time as he was reading it. He wanted to lend me the book but I decided to buy it on Kindle instead, because it's quite a big volume! My friend was right to think of me. The game is about a couple of game developers and their ups and downs. It's a business story with successes and failures. There's passion, and love, and drama. There are references to many games I know, and there are fictional games imagined for this novel, but with great level of detail. I would like to play them if they existed! Anyway, the way it was written really touched my geek heart. | |||
| 怪笑小説 (Funny humor novel) | 7 | Keigo Higashino (東野 圭吾) | |
| A collection of humorous short novels. Not really that funny. The end is always slightly weird and that's supposed to be funny, but perhaps just for half of them. They are all quite interesting, though. I like the first one, where you can hear people's thoughts in a train full of people commuting back from work, and a story about a "super tanuki", where they mock the paranormal & supernatural. I made a video review of these an other of Higashino's novels (voiced in Spanish): Keigo Higashino: Devoción del sospechoso X, Secretos, y más (youtube) | |||
| 秘密 (Secret) | 8 | Keigo Higashino (東野 圭吾) | |
| This novel has a Japanese movie adaptation, and a French remake, "Si j'étais toi", starred by David Duchovny. It's one of the most praised novels by Keigo Higashino, so I decided to read this one next. I read it without knowing anything about it, so it was quite surprising. But I need to spoil it a bit here in order to review it. The story is about a married couple with an 11 year-old daughter. The mother and daughter are in a bus tour to a ski resort, the bus crashes, and the mother dies. She saves her daughter, but the daughter enters a comma. She wakes up quickly from the comma, but it's the spirit of the mother who inhabits the body. The whole novel is about the couple trying to live a normal life in this strange situation. They keep the secret from everyone else. There are some awkward moments that I wondered if they were put there so a potential "lolicon" audience could phantasize about it... There's nothing that bad in the novel in that sense, but I felt the whole concept of the novel could be seen slightly suspicious... I suppose that's why in the movie adaptation the daughter is 18, not 11. Apart from the supernatural theme, there are other interesting topics like coming to terms with an accident like that for all parties involved. For instance, the widow of the driver gets harassed by relatives of the victims. Overall, it's a very good story and the ending was quite emotional. Since the novel starts with a tragedy, I wasn't exactly expecting a happy ending, but it was good. I read the 48th print from 2010 (1st print was from 2001), and it contains an interesting afterword by the Japanese actress that plays the girl in the movie. | |||
| 容疑者Xの献身 (The Devotion of Suspect X) | 9 | Keigo Higashino (東野 圭吾) | |
| I don't know when it happened, but the other day I realized that our bookshelf was full of books from the same author and that author was Keigo Higashino. According to the Wikipedia, he's not only popular in Japan, but he's the most popular novelist in China! And several of his books have a movie adaptation. The Devotion of Suspect X alone has 6 movie adaptations, including a recent project by Netflix. Obviously I got curious and I started reading this novel, even though I usually find novels written in Japanese hard to read. I was surprised that this one wasn't as hard as I expected. There's lots of dialogue and it is quite a page-turner! From the early start, you know who committed the crime, but the interesting thing is that you kinda side the killer, an abused woman. And the novel is basically following the investigators as they try to unravel the mystery. Interestingly, there are several mentions to graph-coloring, a maths subject, and my last technical blog post was precisely about that, Coloring graphs for a wireframe shader. I would give the novel a 10, but the ending was slightly unsatisfactory. I would like to know what happened to the daughter as well. | |||
| エゴイスト (Egoist) 🏳️🌈 | 8 | Makoto Takayama (高山 真) | |
| This LGTBQ novel was originally published under the pseudonym Makoto Asada (浅田 マコト) in 2019, and republished after his death under his real name (he died of liver cancer at 50, in 2020). The novel/essay has been adapted to a film in 2023 of the same name. We watched the movie in a movie theater close to Shinjuku 2-chome. The movie was good, but it had some sudden plot twists. So we bought the novel to compare. The story is basically the same, but in the novel it may seem the 2 characters date for a few years, while in the movie everything seems to happen quite suddenly. The novel starts with some recollection of the bullying the main character, Kosuke, suffered as a kid in school for looking gay (not for being gay, since he was still too young to know he was gay). Also, Kosuke talks about his mother illness and death, and about running away as soon as he could from that small town to the big city, Tokyo. Several years later he's become kinda selfish ("egoist"), until he meets the other main character, Ryuta, and they become boyfriends after some struggle. The later part of the story is about the relation between Kosuke and Ryuta's mother, who's also sick like his mum was. Without making too many spoilers, I think the title is not only about being "selfish", but also about allowing yourself to speak your real feelings. Japanese tend to be quite apologetic, and when they want to express their real desire they say expressions like "wagamama iwasete" (我がまま言わせて), literally "please let me say something selfish". Some people didn't like the ending, but I found it quite moving because it was about the mother of Ryuta saying something "selfish", that is, making a request, therefore, expressing her feelings freely. | |||
| La vida contada por un sapiens a un neandertal | 7 | Juan José Millás, Juan Luis Arsuaga |  |
| A series of interviews to paleontologist Arsuaga, by journalist Millás. It reads like a novel, but it talks about human history and evolution. They say it's a new genre, although they don't give a name for it. In Spanish, I would call it "género cuñado erudito", where your brother-in-law talks about scientific stuff over Christmas dinner. The problem I see to this book versus a more traditional non-fiction book (e.g. Steven Pinker books) is the lack of references. That's why it sounds a bit too informal ("cuñao")... There are some explanations that sounded a bit lacking. For instance, Arsuaga denies that every generation lives longer than their parents. He says that the reason behind the increase of life expectancy is the decrease of infant mortality. I think that's the main reason, but apparently longevity is also increasing thanks to advances in medicine and hygiene, among other factors. I think he's trying to make the point that our biological clock hasn't changed since the Paleolithic, which may be true, but that doesn't mean that adults during the Paleolithic had the same changes to reach an advanced age as we have right now. It is true that people have a poor understanding of statistics and if you tell them that the life expectancy at the time was 30 years, some people may think that there were no old people at the time, which it's not true. But even removing the deaths of infants, and using a different measure like "life expectancy at 5", the life expectancy was 45, not 80 as it is in many developed countries right now. | |||
2022
| Title | Score | Author | Language |
|---|---|---|---|
| Digital Minimalism | 8 | Cal Newport | |
| Social media platforms need our attention to make more money. Recently I felt like I was compulsively checking Twitter, Instagram and Facebook feeds for no reason. Those feeds are right now full of posts of people or companies I don't even follow. Digital minimalism philosophy explains ways to reclaim back your attention to use it more purposefully. You don't have to give up your smartphone, but rather use it as a tool to enhance your life. Humans aren't supposed to be connected to that many minds constantly asking for your attention! It may produce anxiety if we fall in the trap. | |||
| Sensei 3: diálogos con maestros del videojuego japonés | 9 | Luis García Navarro | |
| And more interviews with Japanese game developers! This is the last book in the series. I enjoyed "Sensei 2" more, but the last interview in the series, to Yoko Taro, it's a complete mic-drop 🤯😃 Chat with Luis: Gossip: game devs in Japan, with Ahgueo & Fibroluminique (youtube) |
|||
| Sensei 2: diálogos con maestros del videojuego japonés | 10 | Luis García Navarro | |
| More interviews with Japanese game developers (programmers, designers, directors, and musicians). Even better than the first book. The passion from these people and the interviewer himself is contagious! Apart from interesting anecdotes (including a full epilogue dedicated to the relation between Michael Jackson and SEGA), there are some interesting learnings from these "sensei", as well as some funny anecdotes (like when Kenji Kaido needed a pen to fill in a form to ask for a pen he needed, absurd bureaucracy short) | |||
2021
| Title | Score | Author | Language |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Future of the Mind | 9 | Michio Kaku | |
| Many topics that are repeated in his other books, but all from the perspective of understanding the mind. It covers all the scientific advances to understand brain illnesses, to understand its biology, the effect of drugs, physically duplicating the brain, defining conscience in a measurable way, storing the connectome of the brain, sending it to other planets, understanding animal minds, alien life, and more. | |||
| The Future of Humanity | 9 | Michio Kaku | |
| Nice summary of the major extinction events on Earth, and what other dangers humanity will face. In order to survive, we may need to colonize other planets and other stars. The books explains the physics behind it. It’s a very interesting journey, although some of the things written in this book already appear in some of Michio Kaku’s previous books, and the discussion on string theory appears again in his next book, The God Equation. | |||
| The God Equation | 8 | Michio Kaku | |
| Interesting review of the history of physics and the quest to try to understand how the universe got created. Starting with Einstein and then with quantum theory, things start getting complicated and I found it hard to follow at times. The last chapter tries to answer some philosophical questions, like whether there is a God, or whether a God is necessary to explain the creation of our universe. Kaku says there must be a creator to set the parameters of the initial formula, but then the explanations that can be given from string theory and M-theory (membranes) kinda contradicted that. At least it was how it sounded to me. Perhaps it was left ambiguous on purpose, but I felt slightly deceived in that last chapter. | |||
| Final Fantasy XV - The Dawn Of The Future | 9 | Jun Eishima (映島 巡) (real name: Emi Nagashima 永嶋 恵美) | |
| The first quarter of the novel explains the story of Ardyn, which it's exactly the same that we see in the DLC of Episode Ardyn. Then, there's less than one quarter dedicated to Aranea and what happened to Gralea, the capital of the Empire of Niflheim, followed by event that happen 10 years after that, making 60% of the book. The main characters of that 60% are Lunafreya, Sol (a new character, who is emperor Aldercapt's secret granddaughter), and Noctis. Although I don't usually read books in Japanese because I'm quite slow, it was a fun read. Reading it in Kindle is convenient because you can search words in the dictionary, even offline. The only problem that I see in this novel is that it gives us an alternative ending to the game, and I'm not very fond of alternative endings... What does it mean? Did the game ending not happen? Also, it would have been cool if they had released these as DLC, but only Ardyn's episode saw the light... (Video review de Final Fantasy XV: [Fokanálisis] Final Fantasy XV (sin spoilers)) | |||
2020
| Title | Score | Author | Language |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sensei: diálogos con maestros del videojuego japonés | 9 | Luis García Navarro | |
| Very interesting interviews. A unique chance to peek inside Japanese game developers minds. (Video teatralizando una de las entrevistas: Entrevista a Miyabe-san) | |||
2019
| Title | Score | Author | Language |
|---|---|---|---|
| Días Ajenos: Primavera-Verano | 6 | Bob Pop | |
| A couple of interesting quotes, but boring overall. | |||
2018
| Title | Score | Author | Language |
|---|---|---|---|
| La vida empieza a los 40 | 4 | Gregory Cajina | |
| Every chapter sounded the same. Not sure I took anything from it. | |||
| El món groc | 7 | Albert Espinosa |  |
| Learnings from a boy who battled cancer for many years. This inspired the TV series Polseres Vermelles. Interesting read. | |||
2014
| Title | Score | Author | Language |
|---|---|---|---|
| The better angels of our nature: Why violence has declined | 7 | Steven Pinker | |
| It's good to look back from time to time and see how much we've progressed. There's still a long way to go, but this book proves violence has decreased with centuries, contrary to popular belief that past times were better, or that savages are more peaceful than civilized people. The first chapter was very interesting, and I'd give it a 10, but the rest of the chapters contain too many statistics, and it can get really thick and boring at times. It made me really sleepy, to the point I've been using it to get fast asleep at night for a WHOLE year, because that's what took me to finish this book... | |||
| ひとにぎりの未来 (A tiny piece of the future) | 7 | 星新一 (Hoshi Shin'ichi) | |
| More short stories by Shin'ichi Hoshi. I like the irony in some of them, but I find some others a bit lame. The second next to the last, about a society where people used tears as the base of their social interactions, was specially long and boring. Also, he imagined a future all based in "telephony" and big machines with gears, but now that we live in the digital era, his vision of the future looks more like a "retro-future". It is cute, though, and envisioning the future of engineering is not the main point, anyway. I think these stories have not been translated to English. It's a pity. | |||
2012
| Title | Score | Author | Language |
|---|---|---|---|
| The language instinct | 8 | Steven Pinker | |
| How the mind creates language. It's a bit thick, and sometimes I wished he went more directly to the point, but I guess he has to try to convince everyone… I agree with almost everything he says, so much shorter explanations would do for me… | |||
| Musicophilia | 9 | Oliver Sacks | |
| A very interesting reading that tries to explain all that goes on in our brains when we listen to or play music, through moving cases of real patients. It's a very interesting reading who made me more curious about music. After reading it, I've started asking to some people in my surroundings and I've found out, for instance, that my piano teacher is a synesthete! Oliver Sacks is also the author of "Awakenings", the book that inspired the Oscar-nominated movie with the same name. | |||
| Thinking, fast and slow | 9 | Daniel Kahneman | |
| This is an important book that teaches you how your mind uses 2 types of thinking, a fast one that guides intuitions, and a slow one for deep deliberations. Common sense is born from fast thinking, by averaging and categorizing everything that surround us. It is indispensable for survival, but it has systematic errors that this book teaches us to recognize. For example, in the previous book review I mention something known as the "halo effect". There are many interesting concepts you better check up. Kahneman is also considered the father of "behavioral economics", and with a Nobel prize in economics, for sure you'll learn to think "slow" about money matters. | |||
| 僕が六本木に会社をつくるまで Story of the Social Networking Service "GREE" |
6 | Yoshikazu Tanaka | |
| A success story written in plain Japanese, so very easy to read. However, let me cite Daniel Kahneman: "stories of success and failure consistently exaggerate the impact of leadership style and management practices on firm outcomes, and thus their message is rarely useful" (from "Thinking, fast and slow"). I guess the lesson to be learned is that anyone trying hard enough can make a successful business. But of course, not everyone succeeds since I believe there's a component of luck -from the book of Kahneman, speaking about Google: "Of course there was a great deal of skill in the Google story, but luck played a more important role in the actual event than it does in the telling of it. And the more luck was involved, the less there is to be learned." | |||
2011
| Title | Score | Author | Language |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hijos de nuestro barrio Children of Gabalawi |
9 | Naguib Mahfouz | |
| The late Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz wrote this book in 1959, and it seems it's still banned by Islam… The book is very well written, with a dynamic style, and the allegories it contains could be considered as provoking for the time as "South Park" would be today. It is, of course, not so grotesque for today's standards ;) The synopsis from Wikipedia: "The story recreates the tied history of the three monotheistic Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), allegorised against the setting of an imaginary 19th century Cairene neighborhood. Gabalawi being an allegory for religion in general, the first four sections retell, in succession, the stories of: Adam (Adham أدهم) and how he was favored by Gabalawi over the latter's other sons, including Satan/Iblis (Idris إدريس); Moses (Gabal جبل); Jesus (Rifa'a رفاعة); and Muhammad (Qasim قاسم). Families of each son settle in different parts of the alley, symbolising Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The protagonist of the book's fifth section is Arafa (عرفة), who symbolises modern science and, significantly, comes after all prophets, while all of their followers claim Arafa as one of their own." | |||
| Obabakoak | 9 | Bernardo Atxaga | |
| I had no idea what this book was about. I just knew it was from a Basque author, and that it was originally written in Basque. I have no idea of Basque so I read the Spanish version, of course. The book has also English and Japanese translations. The title means "The ones from Obaba" in Basque, and it's a collection of short stories around an imaginary Basque town called "Obaba". The first 100 pages are short stories related to kids, and I think they are the best of the book. The later were loosely related one to another, but I would have preferred they were not, because this connection makes you expect more than what you get in the end. | |||
| Ángeles y demonios Angels & demons |
9 | Dan Brown | |
| This is really a page-turner! I couldn't stop reading the book! I finished it in a couple of days. I think it's far better than his next book, "Digital fortress". Perhaps it's because I was more familiar with the topic in "Digital fortress" and it seemed absurd… The only bad thing of the book is that the end is "too much"… In this sense, is similar to "Digital Fortress" and "Da Vinci's Code", where a very good guy is suddenly a very bad guy. It turns out to be very predictable, plus the negative effect that making the character that "very bad" suddenly gives an almost comical turn to the story… On a side note, it's been years since I last read a novel in Spanish. The translation was quite good, although the last joke about "mass" I couldn't get it without mentally translating it to English… | |||
| The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home | 8 | Dan Ariely | |
| The successor of "Predictably Irrational". Both books are on behavioral economics, but while the previous book was more about economics, this one is more about behavior itself. There's even a chapter about online dating, all seen from a market's perspective. Quite an interesting reading! | |||
| Predictably Irrational | 8 | Dan Ariely | |
| From Publisher's Weekly: "Irrational behavior is a part of human nature, but as MIT professor Ariely has discovered in 20 years of researching behavioral economics, people tend to behave irrationally in a predictable fashion. Drawing on psychology and economics, behavioral economics can show us why cautious people make poor decisions about sex when aroused, why patients get greater relief from a more expensive drug over its cheaper counterpart and why honest people may steal office supplies or communal food, but not money. [...]". Very interesting! | |||
| Physics of the future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100 | 9 | Michio Kaku | |
| From Publisher's Weekly: "Kaku (Physics of the Impossible), a professor of physics at the CUNY Graduate Center, gathers ideas from more than 300 experts, scientists, and researchers at the cutting edge of their fields, to offer a glimpse of what the next 100 years may bring. The predictions all conform to certain ground rules (e.g., "Prototypes of all technologies mentioned... already exist"), and some seem obvious (computer chips will continue to get faster and smaller). Others seem less far-fetched than they might have a decade ago: for instance, space tourism will be popular, especially once a permanent base is established on the moon. Other predictions may come true—downloading the Internet right into a pair of contact lenses—but whether they're desirable is another matter. Some of the predictions are familiar but still startling: robots will develop emotions by mid-century, and we will start merging mind and body with them. Despite the familiarity of many of the predictions to readers of popular science and science fiction, Kaku's book should capture the imagination of everyday readers." Highly recommended reading :) | |||
| Digital Fortress | 7 | Dan Brown | |
| Fast-paced hacking conspiracy thriller. Full of cliches. | |||
| Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos | 8 | Michio Kaku | |
| Very interesting book about the future of intelligent life in the universe. The physics on this book are a bit thick, though. If you want a shorter version of the same, probably better just to read "Physics of the impossible" by the same author. | |||
| South Park and Philosophy | 6 | Richard Hanley (and friends) | |
| Interesting book, but contains a lot of blabling... I enjoyed the introduction, that basically says that South Park is full of "Bullshit alarms", things that make us thing there's something wrong in the world today... And the last chapter is quite nice too, on fake physhics and "cold reading". The last chapter was written by the creator of DHMO.org. | |||
2010
| Title | Score | Author | Language |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gulliver's Travels | 7 | Jonathan Swift | |
| Everyone knows Gulliver's travels. Kids read simplified versions of this book. But I was curious about the original novel, and since it's out of copyright and you can download for free, I gave it a try. It's quite interesting to find out all the influence this book has. For instance, I learned that the computer terms "big-endian" and "little-endian" come from this book. Also, some anime fans fail to notice that the movie about the flying island of "Laputa" was also inspired by the flying island of the same name that Gulliver visits in one of his travels. Apart from that and some interesting references, I find that after almost 3 centuries, some of the explanatanions from the author sound now very naive. Obviously we now much more about physics now as to fall to the detailed pseudo-scientific explanations the author tries to give as if to add veracity to his tales. I would take out those... Anyway, check Wikipedia for a nice analysis of the book. | |||
| The Comet & The Tornado | 8 | Don Marinelli | |
| A touching and enlighting story about the creation of the Entertainment Technology Center, and about Randy Pausch, and his Last Lecture. Don Marinelli, co-founder of the ETC, gave a very inspiring talk in Siggraph this year, and I bought his book. It says more or less what he said in his talk: education should be about uniting the left and right brains. Art and technology should come together, and there's no better place for that than videogames. "Anyone who thinks there is a difference between entertainment and education doesn't know much about either" (Marshall McLuhan). | |||
| The God Delusion | 9 | Richard Dawkins | |
| This is an important reading in order to combat ignorance. On a side note, it's the first digital book I read, on my new Amazon Kindle DX :) | |||
| La Cadena de los abusos | 10 | Olga Gavilán | |
| A very interesting reading about harassment, at all levels: emotional, physical, at work, at home, ... A must-read for everyone so we can build a better world! Check tuPsicologa.es | |||
| Physics of the impossible | 10 | Michio Kaku | |
| Michio Kaku is the cofounder of string field theory. In this book he discuss things we see in sci-fi, like invisibility or teleportation, and explains wether these things will actually become possible or not. He talks about existing technology and ongoing research, so it's not only talking about sci-fi but about stuff that matters. It's also very easy to follow and some of the personals notes on important scientists in history are also quite interesting. | |||
2009
| Title | Score | Author | Language |
|---|---|---|---|
| My stroke of insight | 8 | Jill Bolte Taylor | |
| The author is a brain scientist who had a brain stroke on her left hemisphere. She tells her experience and gives and insight on how the brain works and how we can use the right hemisphere to feel happy. | |||
| The Stuff of Thought: Language as a window into human nature | 7 | Steven Pinker | |
| This is the third book of Steven Pinker I read. It's the link between "The language instinct" (which I haven't read yet), and "How the mind works". The book is interesting, but I give a lower mark than the previous ones for two (personal) reasons: (1) I already knew most of the stuff he talks about because of his previous books, so it's not "enlighting" any more; (2) I'm not a linguist, so some of the descriptions are a bit boring for me. I think the book would be much more shorter if he got straight to the point... | |||
| Metal Gear Solid | 7 | Raymond Benson | |
| Novel adaptation of Konami's Metal Gear Solid game for PS1. It's exactly as the game, although when I played I tried more stealth and less violence, hehe. The ending is a bit different though. Anyway, if you played the game long ago, it may be worth reading. | |||
| Crónicas Marcianas (The Martian Chronicles) | 8 | Ray Bradbury | |
| Very nice approach to colonization of Mars. Since its like a collection of short stories, it's very easy to read. What I don't like it's the pessimistic vision of human nature. I guess the author is influenced by the wars of his time, and the atomic bomb. I think this vision of humans being like "plague" is too old-fashioned (the book is from 1950, so it can't be helped, I guess). | |||
| 宇宙の声 ("Voice from outerspace") | 9 | 星新一 (Hoshi Shin'ichi) | |
| This SF novel contains two stories. If you let me translate them freely, "Voice from outerspace" (宇宙の声) and "The phantom planet" (まぼろしの星). Shin'ichi Hoshi is well known for his short stories, and although these are a bit longer, they are distributed in small chapters, each containing a small travel, that can be thought of a short story in itself. Because of this and its simple style (I guess it's SF for Japanese kids?), it's very easy to read (it took me 2 weeks, just reading on my way to work). I'd say it's almost phantasy, rather than SF. | |||
| Tabloid Tokyo 2: 101 All-New Tales of Sex, Crime and the Bizarre from Japan's Wild Weeklies | 7 | Mark Schreiber | |
| Can't hardly believe all those are true... but anyway, kindda funny. | |||
2008
| Title | Score | Author | Language |
|---|---|---|---|
| ありふれた手法 ("Commonplace technique") | 8 | 星新一 (Hoshi Shin'ichi) | |
| A collection of short stories by Shin'ichi Hoshi. In my opinion, not as deep as "Future Aesop" (未来いそっぷ), but interesting nevertheless. And since they are short, even in Japanese they are easy to ready. | |||
| The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature | 10 | Steven Pinker | |
| Another enlightning reading about the mind by Steven Pinker. Our brain is not a blank slate, despite people trying to prove so. | |||