Alexander the Great: The Anabasis and the Indica

What an extraordinarily epic book. I am stunned. This was an excellent read. Not only did I learn about Alexander the Great but through his voyage I learnt about geography—specifically of the Middle East—and things about people's perspective of Earth long ago. I would like to say that I used Oxford's University Press edition, which includes maps and notes on the text—which are immensely useful.
  I loved learning about Alexander's bisexuality, and of his relationship with Hephaestion. I loved the fact that Hephaestion was taller than Alexander. I also loved learning about the Persian Empire. At school I loved my History lessons but, understandably, there were so many things I did not learn there. So I just read Arrian's books with the same enthusiasm I had back at school. I imagine children at school in Europe being taught about Alexander the Great. I learnt about the Olmecs, the Mayans, and the Aztecs instead.
  I was also surprised to learn that since antiquity people have always had a negative opinion about immigrants. The people back then also feared having their ways and culture replaced by foreign homologues. Back then, just like nowadays, people thought their society was somehow better (more free, more civilised, more egalitarian) than those of other continents.
  Was Alexander great? Yes he was. But he was great in the most human way. He made mistakes, he had temper tantrums, he was at times extremely selfish. But he was also generous, courageous, adaptable, and most of all he faced life with full energy. He listened, and learnt from his mistakes. That is such a hard thing to do.
  I am so grateful I read this book.

La Belle Sauvage

Once again I am starting this post by thanking someone, this time my good friend Aidan for giving me this book as part of my birthday gift in 2019! He was, after all, part of the reason I read His Dark Materials, and he sometimes saw me reading it in the office.
  Whoa, well, this book was exactly what I thought it would be even before I started reading it. An expansion of the universe of the original trilogy, but that falls spectacularly short by a wide margin. If the original books could have been thought of as childrens' books, this one is undoubtedly nothing more than that. If from the beginning I was not particularly interested in Lyra's story, I was even less interested in the hollow new characters of this new novel. As I was reading this book I was reminded of some people's opinion of certain classic texts, saying that sometimes certain novels take hundreds of pages where nothing really happens. It was like that, except nothing really happened for the entirety of the book.
  If you are a kid, though, this book might be interesting to you. I would still advise kids to pursue something else, like cloud appreciation.

Why We Sleep

First of all, a huge thank you to my friend Chris for giving this book to me as my birthday present! I think part of the reason why Chris might have given me this book is that I once told him that I wake up at 4:00 a.m. to exercise, and he wanted me to know how important sleep was. For some reason I feel like I have always known, at least through folklore, that sleep is important, but I am glad to have learnt more about the scientific reasons behind this belief, and more about sleep and dreams, in general.

  Yes, I highly recommend reading this book to anyone because I do believe that having a better sleep will dramatically improve our health, and will make us have a better life, in all aspects. Of course, as very well pointed out by the author himself: "Just as describing the scientific dangers of how eating junk food leads to obesity rarely ends up with people choosing broccoli over a cookie, knowledge alone is not enough" (Walker, M. Why We Sleep. p. 329. United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland: Penguin Books, 2018).

  Indeed changing one's habits can be incredibly difficult. Fortunately for me, I think I have been trying much more consciously to change some of my habits, and I think it has gone well so far! I would like to believe that this book has helped me improve the quality of my sleep, and I think it can help many other people too.

  Despite my favourable opinion of this book, I must say I am still a bit skeptical about some of the results of the experiments that are described in the book. The results almost always seem to adhere very closely to the author's conjectures, and I wished I could see more of the statistical analyses that were done, as currently one might think that they might be too good to be true.

His Dark Materials

A very long time ago my father gave me the first book of this trilogy, in Spanish. I remember reading the first page and dedicing that it was too boring for me. Indeed I did not read the book for many, many years; certainly more than 15 years. But then there were several independent instances through the years where I heard people expressing high praise for these books. Finally, when Aidan told me he really liked the universe of these books, I made the executive decision of buying all of them in one volume and read them.

  I am happy that I made that decision, as the narrative is entertaining and the books are well-written. Without knowing anything about Phillip Pullman, I knew just by reading the book that it had to had been written by an English author since the writing is characteristically polite and elegant. Which made the scenes of violence surprising in a way that I had not read before. And I think the writing alone is the reason I would recommend reading His Dark Materials.

  The rest of the book —the universe that Pullman created, and the storyline— is pretty much just the excuse Pullman had to show to the world how beautiful his writing is. In fact, the rest of the book is standardly simple. Though I do appreciate that the author offers young readers an introduction to the debate on right and wrong, and to humanity's fraught relationship with Christianity.

  I am left with mixed feelings. Though, I think Michael Torpey would be of the opinion that if a book makes you think about things, and makes you feel feelings, then it is probably a good book.

The Invention of Nature

Oh, what a book! I am not sure if I hated it. This is a biography of Alexander von Humboldt, and I really like him. I have very fond childhood memories of going to the Museum of San Ildefonso to see an extremely beautiful exhibition of his life and work. But this book!
  I find it extremely repetitive in the most banal way. This novel could have most certainly been reduced to a short story without losing any of the main things that were said in it. The main point of the novel should definitely be restated here: it would be cool if more people knew about Alexander von Humboldt. I am actually not sure if that was the main point of the novel, but that is what I would like more people to know.
  Also, I really did not appreciate the many vague insinuations that Alexander von Humboldt was not heterosexual. I think that if that is what the author wanted to say, she should have said it explicitly. In conversation with my friend Jo, she pointed out that maybe nobody knows, and because he lived so long ago there might not be many records in that regard. Is that what the author wanted to convey? Who knows!

How to Win Friends and Influence People

First of all, thank you Chris for my wonderful birthday present. It took me a while to read this book, mainly because I have been lazy and I have not been reading as much as I would have liked.
  I did like this book. It very much reminded me of John Bridge's How To Be a Gentleman. Except this book goes more into the theory of dealing with other people, gives example scenarios, and strategies to solve particular problems. Overall, they are good advice. An issue I found with several of those strategies, however, is that they can be severely optimistic in what they are trying to achieve. The book does tend to be somehow repetitive, which makes me think that maybe the book would have benefited from being a little shorter.
  Certainly, I recommend this book to whomever wants a reminder on how to be a nice person. I was many times surprised by how often the book made me aware of my rude manners. I will try to be better.

The Man in the High Castle

The first few chapters of the book were not only promising, but the praise that the author received ("The most brilliant science fiction mind on any planet", Rolling Stone) helped convince me that this was going to be an excellent novel. Unfortunately, I did not enjoy the second half of the book and my final opinion is that one can skip this book altogether.
  I suppose it is to be expected that certain science fiction books start looking odd when the future they were imagining starts diverging from what actually happened in the future. Yes, this book tries to conceive a world with an alternative history but I am sure that even if Germany and Japan had won the Second World War, certain technological advances, such as being able to read the newspaper on your smartphone instead of having to wait for physical copies to be delivered, would come first than the ability to colonise other planets. Even though these discrepancies in the history of technological advances are fairly common in the novel, they are not enough to invalidate the whole story. Yet, certain aspects of the book, specifically the racist comments against white people and the anti-semitic remarks, seemed to me quite gratuitous.
  Trying to imagine a world where Germany and Japan won the Second World War is indeed a difficult thing to do, but I think this book does a bad job in its attempt.