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reading Atonement by Ian McEwan
Have you ever noticed how the beginning of a book can tell a lot about the whole story? I suggest you do this exercise. Pick your favorite books and read the beginning again…
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rereading is madness. but who knows where madness lies?
How many times do you find yourself reading a book you’ve already read? ...again? And if that happens a lot, what do you think you’re gonna find when doing that?
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we should reverse engineer the books we read in order to write better
Is that how you improve your writing? Pick a book, disassemble it, examine it, analyze it in detail, discover the concepts of its structure, produce something similar, pick a new book, repeat.
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imagine you’re cleaning a room
Imagine you’re cleaning a room, and you kill a cockroach with the door of a wardrobe… What would you do next? (A) keep cleaning the room?, or (B) think about your reason to exist? Or do both things belong to the same process readingthisweek Back to my Brazilian Literature project, I just started reading A PAIXÃO SEGUNDO G.H. (“The Passion According to G.H.”), by Clarice Lispector. Written in a very difficult moment for Clarice, the book is the monologue of a woman simply identified by G.H. drawn in an existential crisis after a random episode in her life. It all starts when G.H. decides to clean her maid’s room in…
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Currently Reading: Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand
What are you reading this week? And how do you feel about it so far?
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embrace reading, don’t take it for granted
What are you reading this week? Do you take reading for granted? Read this.
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on to Jane Austen’s most flawless work
Dear reader, She’s handsome. She’s clever and rich. She has a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence (whatever that means), and she had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her. I know what you’re thinking, but I’m not talking about Cher (or Alicia Silverstone in that coming-of-age teen film). She comes from another time (definitely not the 90s). She’s the kind of girl who likes trying to make people happy, you know? But in the following pages, I think she will realize that it’s not the lives of others she wants to transform…
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if the book you’re reading right now were the last…
•• if the book you’re reading right now were the last book you’d ever read, would you be happy with it? Relax, I don’t have an answer to that either. I still have too many pages ahead in Klara and The Sun (“Klara e o Sol”), by Kazuo Ishiguro. I already love the book, though. KLARA AND THE SUN is my first read in partnership with @companhiadasletras. I was chosen to be a member of their reader team for 2021, and I couldn’t be prouder and happier. Not only because Companhia das Letras is a great publisher in Brazil, with great titles and beautiful book designs, but also because it is…
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it does not take much strength to do things…
“It does not take much strength to do things, but it requires a great deal of strength to decide what to do.” Elbert Hubbard What are you reading this week? I’ve just shared a post on the blog about reading projects and creating them, and finishing them. I love reading and creating reading projects. I tried to share two important ideas there: (1) we should associate “projects” to the bad feelings coming from work and study, and (2) if you don’t organize your reading, you’ll never tackle that to-be-read pile you have there beside you. I really believe that we should try to dispel that association and start seeing projects…
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The earth is round…
The earth is round, and it rotates eastward around its own axis. One of the proofs of that is swinging and hanging under the dome of the Panthéon in Paris. It’s called Foucault’s Pendulum. I don’t know yet how this will relate to IL PENDOLO DI FOUCAULT by Umberto Eco, but I started reading it yesterday, and I can’t put it down. Here’s the first idea: A man named Casaubon hides in the Musée des Arts et Metiers in Paris after closing. He believes that his friend has been kidnapped by a secret society that is now after him, and they will meet in the museum. Meanwhile, he reflects on…
