Scheherazade Goes West: Different Cultures, Different Harems by Fatema Mernissi

Fatema Mernissi is a feminist Moroccan writer. I had the possibility to discover her with the book that had made her famous, Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood, many years ago.
The current book is a discovery of the western world by an eastern female eye. The writer goes to travel around the West world trying to understand why in the western culture there is a happy idea of the harem, seen as an earthen paradise of sex and seduction, while in reality they are places of slavery and submission. This research touches philosophy, art and literature from France to New York, in a very fascinating way.
What emerges eventually is that the west is not the 'women happy world' as it is in the fantasy of every one. Women might not need to wear a veil but they are "forced" to respect a precise beauty standard that prevent them of another kind of freedom: the freedom to appear as they want!!
Of course the matter is not so simple and maybe the book lacks many other aspects that in my opinion define the concept of freedom. However, the broader point of view from the western culture is interesting and brings to discussion.
What is sad is that in 2014, in every country we are still discussion women rights, as something to conquer and not something that should be part of every culture and country.

The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas

We are in Australia where a family is hosting a bbq with friends. The atmosphere is relaxed and joyful, till one of the guest slaps a kid: he is not his son! The scene gets tense and all the guests get affected in a different way from the incident. Or at least this is what they think you should expect from the book.
But there is only one real thing happening in this book: SEX!! But not in a way that fits and adds something to the reading, no, just sex. The most used words in the text, and you don't need to count them to realize, are: fxck, cxck and cxnt; and don't think that things are subtle, NO! They are thrown on your face in a silly and sick way. I finished the book 'cause I was too shocked to think the book would be all like this, but yes, no hope, it is, till the end, where, if possible, gets even worse.

The concept and the idea of the book was nice and also the fact that every chapter evaluates the event in the perspective of one of the guest of the bbq, but the story itself could have been written in 50-70 pages, the other 300 are an offense to the intelligence of the reader.
Let's get things clear, if i want a porn book I buy one (and I am sure there are much better on the market), but if I buy a novel where nowhere is clarified to be a porn, I get pissed.

Dear Christos Tsiolkas I would like to "slap" this book on your face!

p.s. If someone here has read the book and found some deep meaning I didn't see, without rhetoric, I would like to discuss about it, really!

The Family Way by Tony Parsons

I started this book with no expectations; I was going through the phase of opening and closing books after few pages losing interest. This book got me from the beginning so for sure it has the merit to bring me out of my reading block.
The book is about 3 sisters, but is also about 6 men that cross, willingly or not, the life of the 3 protagonists. The 3 sisters have all different personalities but the family bond keep them together to face first youth and then adult life. The thinking and the behaviours of the protagonists are described so much in details that I find it difficult to believe the book was actually written by a man.

It was a nice reading, nothing exceptional; but if you are looking for something light and not demanding this might be the right books

p.s. be prepared to hate a bit the man kind during the reading!!!

Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel

I decided to buy this book 'cause I loved Life of Pi, I read it when it was just released, so long before the book became actually famous due to the movie- which, by the way, is a rare case of a great movie from a great book.

From the first pages I thought: "Wow, it seems like another writer", but not in a negative way, I liked the fact that a writer can write with such different styles but can still keep you reading and loving the book.
The common factor is, of course, the presence of animals as strong characters in the book(s). In this case they are a monkey and a donkey, two animals that you would probabily never see together in nature but that here seem somehow a good match. The first half of the book is magic, it is a story in a story, the story of a writer which helps another writer, a book in a book, but I would not spoil much the plot here 'cause the book is quite small.
What I have to spoil though is that in the last 40-50 pages the story changes so much, that all the sweetness and the trust you had in human, and animal relationship is lost like a slap on your face!
For what I understood the book is suppose to be a metaphor of the Holocaust and I guess the idea was to bring the reader to find the truth with violence, like during the war, where people were brought on a train for "freedom" and then they had to realize on their skin which kind of freedom was awaiting them.
 I just thought the book was very pretentious, and a bit disappointing, but I like and want  to believe that was the actual aim of the writer.

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez

He is gone, his books are not, there is no better way to remember him than through his books. So here it is my second reading of this masterpiece. A slow, emotional, touching one...

Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza fall secretly in love during their youth, a love made of letters, flowers, poems, a love at first sight that grew with time. But when a rich doctor (Dr. Juvenal Urbino) comes into the picture, this passionate love is forced to be put on hold, for more than 50 years...
And those 50 years you feel them all, coz the reading is for some sort of magic extended in time. I felt the last 100 pages lasted forever, every time I thought I was about to finish the book, still some pages where there to be read. And I think this is what can make you love or hate this book. Yes, this, along with the fact that nobody wishes to have to wait 50 years to embrace their love, coz you wish nobody sane would allow himself to such suffering for so long. But Florentino does, and I didn't feel for one single page to tell him to do otherwise.
As for every Márquez book, the engagement of different senses is the key, the first time Fermina and Dr. Juvenal Urbino make love are one of the most intense pages I have ever read on the topic, without rhetoric or explicit sexuality.

“Together they had overcome the daily incomprehension, the instantaneous hatred, the reciprocal nastiness, and fabulous flashes of glory in the conjugal conspiracy. It was time when they both loved each other best, without hurry or excess, when both were most conscious of and grateful for their incredible victories over adversity. Life would still present them with other moral trials, of course, but that no longer mattered: they were on the other shore.”

p.s. maybe one day I should convince myself to watch the movie adpted from the book, or maybe not...

If you follow a bit thig blog you'd know how hard is for me to share this news: Gabriel García Márquez is no more.
I grew up with him, I started to truly love books thank to him. There is a deep bond with me, his books, my family and lots of people I love.

Thanks Márquez, for all you gave us...

Green Parrots-Gino Strada

Did you know that there were land mine created specifically to target kids? They have a shape of a parrots, they are green and they look like toys. They don't explode when you take them from the ground, they have a mechanism that starts loading after they are collected and release after a little while. Now, imagine a kid in a poor part of the world seeing a "cute" thing on the ground, taking it and bringing it home, or maybe showing it proudly to his friends with joy. And now imagine what happen when the "bomb" explode. There is a chapter in the book when all of this is described step by step and you seriously cannot believe you are not reading a novel!
'Cause behind all this, there are some minds designing these things: they are drawing the best shape to be attracting and appealing, they are studying the best mechanism of explosion, probably the one that can make more damage.
It is insane!!!!! INSANE!!! Every war is insane, every war kills innocent people and bring to more violence and to more tragedies.

This book is from Gino Strada, co-founder of the organization Emergency, that provides free, high quality medical and surgical treatment to the victims of war, land mines and poverty. He has been in first line in most of the war of our ages, with courage and dedication. In this book he talks about random stories from different part of the world where he has been working, of the people he has been curing and of the people he couldn't cure.
The book is touching and it seriously make you angry, and Gino Strada is inspiring! Every body should have at least 10% of his courage and dedication.

Here you could listen to an interview where Gino Strada explain better his project.
And here you could support his work if you wish.

The entire author rights on the book goes to Emergency, so by buying this book you can already contribute.