7. The World as I see it

Name : The World as I see it
Writer : Albert Einstein
Publishing year : 1949
Language : English
Type : Non-fiction
How come ? : I've been intending to read this book since a long time, just because, well, it's Einstein and it's how he sees the world. Sounds interesting.
Estimated time : Theoratically about 7 hours, but Gosh I spent way too much time not reading it after starting it. More about that in the review.
Main themes : Random stuff (collected articles and letters written by Einstein at different matters).
Recommended for : Anyone who wants to read random articles written by Einstein that are NOT related to science or relativity by any means.
The book in a few words : Already said it, random stuff.

The synonpsis : The book is a collection of articles and letters written by Einstein regarding many issues.


The Rating : Not bad 6/10

The Review :

Well, this book had me going through a lot of thinking, but NOT about its content .. but about my choice of books. I won't be reading any articles/letter collection any time soon.
The book as a read wasn't bad (hence the 6) but the structure of the book make it not only a tiresome book, but also an annoying one. It's because of the book's lack of cohesion that I stalled reading it (I'd read a couple pages then I go do something else .. it's like reading the 4 page of a journal) and therefore I lagged all my plan of reading this summer. Wrong, wrong choice of books.

The book is, as mentioned a couple times above, the book is not actually a flow of the genius insights about life and meaning and such as I actually expected. I was even tricked by the first pages of the book to believe that the book would be an awesome journey inside a mastermind's mind, only to be driven to boredom by the miscellaneous correspondences Einstein had in his time. It was a nice trick, though.
Okay, the book wasn't that bad (it was boring, though). Einstein, who was a scientific authority back in the day, was unexpectedly considered an authority in everything else! Journalists of the time wouldn't miss a chance to ask him about anything that was trending, and him being a man of large general knowledge (he's no more the science geek I expected him to be) didn't help him at all of losing this notoriety. He, however, conveniently denied his reputation in exemplary modesty. That didn't stop him from making influential comments on every subject he supported such as Zionism (in its social form) or Socialism.

Another "discovery" about this man is how big of a peace-lover he is. Like a third of a book is all about how atrocious War is and how it must be stopped at any price if there is any hope for humanity to flourish. Kind of ironical since he was the one to inspire the Manhattan Project that leaded to pretty much to the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and USA becoming a major nuclear threat worldwide. Nice job, Einstein.

The book also lives in the spirit of its time, that being the post WWI world, so many references have been made to the context of letters and attitudes. It is written for the post WWI reader who's ready to be influenced by the opinions of the Great Man of the era. This somehow made it distant from the casual-reader me. I didn't want to read about that bot because I hate history, but because I really hate it.

When the book says "Life", it somehow means it. When I picked up the book as my second non-fiction read, I expected it to be about the philosophical meaning of Life. Contemplation ,remarks and insights from one of Humanity greatest minds. But then what you get is not what you expect, and there you have arguments for socialism, for Zionism and even the reason why Einstein resigned from the German Academy of Science. I seriously couldn't care less about his reasons.

Einstein is a man with a big mind and this mind of him, coupled with his reputation back then and now, made even his plainest ideas worth be written on a book. It's not mind-blowing nor revolutionary book, it's what a man, a "simple" man, thinks of things around him, and no matter how "important", this man is, it's still a one man's take, nothing more. It wasn't even that impressive, especially with the complete lack of order the articles/notes were inserted in.
This books was a mind disappointment.

Joining the idea I started this review with, and after the fiasco reading this book was (I mean I literally couldn't read more than five pages a day because of how disordered it was ... and that set me way behind my plans of reading), I intend to change the change the "format" of reading cycles. Since I started this blog, I made the Novel > Classic > Non-fiction > Recommendation cycle. I turned out fine except the Non-fiction part. I have to read both books by necessity, not by passion, not by will. And so I won't make any conditions of the reads I'll pick up from now on, but I'll try as best as I can to have a mixed bag and not all novels (as I highly suspect I'll end up doing).


Favorite passages : 
All quotes were from the first third of the book. The rest is pretty .. 20-century-ish.

"A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labours of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving."

"I am strongly drawn to the simple life and am often oppressed by the feeling that I am engrossing an unnecessary amount of the labour of my fellow-men. "

"Schopenhauer's saying, that "a man can do as he will, but not will as he will," has been an inspiration to me since my youth up, and a continual consolation and unfailing well-spring of patience in the face of the hardships of life, my own and others'."

"The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the State but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling."

"That a man can take pleasure in marching in formation to the strains of a band is enough to make me despise him. He has only been given his big brain by mistake; a backbone was all he needed.", Einstein being a troll.

"War seems to me a mean, contemptible thing: I would rather be hacked in pieces than take part in such an abominable business. ".
Yes, sure Einstein, sure. That's why you've written that letter to Roosevelt.

"He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle."

"A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms--it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; "

"There we confided our experiences, ambitions, emotions to each other. We both felt that this friendship was not only a blessing because each understood the other, was enriched by him, and found ins him that responsive echo so essential to anybody who is truly alive."
Einstein on his friend Katzenstein. I "awww"-ed at this.

"In order that they may derive consolation from it and--not give a damn for what their teachers tell them or think of them.".
Einstein cursing, relatively cool :D (baad pun).

"What I have to say is nothing new and does not pretend to be anything more than the opinion of an independent and honest man who, unburdened by class or national prejudices, desires nothing but the good of humanity and the most harmonious possible scheme of human existence."
That's the book in a nutshell.

6. The Great Gatsby

Name : The Great Gatsby
Writer : F. Scott Fitzgerald
Publishing year :  1925
Language : English
Type : Classic / Novel
How come ? : When you say "American classic", it's impossible not to bring The Great Gatsby to the table, along with The Catcher in the Rye and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, reflecting each the zeitgeist of their author and his time. Add to that the fact that a DiCaprio movie is coming out as the hundredth (approximately) adaptation of the book, and there you got me interested.
Estimated time : About 7 hours.
Main themes : Decadence, Pursuing dreams (The American Dream), the meaning of Greatness, Family, Love, Money, Merit vs social inheritance, Morality..
Recommended for : The book is really a story, and who doesn't like stories ? It's the story that will appeal especially to people who dream, and people who don't believe in dreaming. It's also a novel of hope and the lack of it, a novel social satire of the time.
Really, it's the kind of book everyone can really (but will not be equally) appreciate.
The book in a few words : The story of a mysterious rich man who rose to Greatness out of the blue, become the man of its time with little to nothing known about him.

The synopsis : After moving to new grounds, Nick couldn't help noticing the huge mansion next to his new property, a mansion always full of life and excitement that belongs to a man with good intentions and unknown past.

The Rating : Excellent 9/10

The Review : 

The only bitter thing about reading this book is that, after being exposed to such greatness in style and story craft, I can no more enjoy "average" books anymore.
With hardly a week distancing this review and the previous one, and as much ridiculous this comparison is, it's imminent how big the difference is between a book and a Great book.
One of the turn-offs of the previous books as I stated was the lack of description in a supposedly post-apocalyptic, futuristic frame of time. If there were any dust of dissatisfaction I might have kept from my last read, this book, The Great Gatsby, blew it with big winds.
When not occupied narrating events, Nick, the narrator/pseudo-protagonist, enjoys describing. And we as readers get to enjoy as much reading those descriptions.
With an incredible gift of writing, Mr. Fitzgerald didn't only garnish his pages with remarkable descriptions of feasts and gowns and faces, he was of such sensitivity that he'd add a random detail to a scene that seems far off expectations yet so ingeniously appropriate, the kind of details that will make you smile if you read the sentence again, thinking of how the hell could his mind manage to integrate such little, rather volatile remarks into the silky flow of the story, and make you all along feel horrible and desperate for lacking such quintessential quality, if you're an aspiring writer (like me, me prior reading this book :v). He gave soul to random aspects of the novel that are otherwise very unneeded and forgettable; Even in the lavishly extravagant parties at Gatsby's, Nick would at times notice a quirk that would make a rather boring listing of names a true object of appreciation (When reading Persuasion, one the things I didn't like was the overflow of named faceless characters, or those people who are just in for one second and you're supposed to forget about them without asking why the author bothered giving them names in the first place..) .. In Gatsby, you'd find sentences like  "We were sitting at a table with a man of about my age and a rowdy little girl who gave way upon the slightest provocation to uncontrollable laughter." I just love to imagine how he came up with her existence, or even better "[long list of invited people] ..  and Edgar Beaver, whose hair they say turned cotton-white one winter afternoon for no good reason at all." .. I was like "what xD ?". It hits you when you least see it coming, and you can't help enjoying it.
The use of language is probably The Great Gatsby's sweet spot. Mr. Fitzgerald has a gift of manipulating many words and meanings into one delicious chicken soup. The description were at times just jaw-dropping (Daisy's singing, the Valley of Ashes, and then, Gatsby's smile. I reread it like 14 times), with a unique ability to use words out of their universes and pull off a magnificent rendition of meanings, images and metaphors. When blocks of building become slices of a big white cake, the lights get the ability to whisper, the moonlight becomes wet and colors are used to describe things that colors usually don't describe, you know you're in for something special, something unique (more of his tasteful sense of description in the "favorite passages" section, in which I would have gladly copied half of the book, honestly).
To create an amazing atmosphere, the author didn't have to keep on writing elongated, overly-polished paragraphs. From time to time he'd use very short sentences that would just step up and out and give a very fresh, welcomed feeling of liveliness. "She looked at me and laughed pointlessly.". Such a short, perfect sentence.
The novel isn't event-charged and thus the author had to make the jumps between an event and the following (ellipses), sometimes even in the same chapter, yet they were so comfortable that you'll hardly notice. This is also a proof of the author's high mastery of storytelling : the narration never gets boring, and that's a hard thing to say in general. More points to Mr. Fitzgerald !
A final note regarding the narrator who sat himself apart since the get-go, reciting the rule his father taught him of reserving judgement. This gives us a quite objective, camera-man kind of character to start with. With a laid-back air, Nick didn't get personal and therefore made what he said reliable, only to fall in the end short of his promise to keep from criticizing as his sage father told him. It was a good change to have a narrator who doesn't get directly implied in the plot and thus creating the illusion of a third person perspective from the eyes of the first person's. 
Then there is the lasting charm of the characters. I liked every individual main character, even the ones made vile because they were brilliantly made so. From the appallingly shallow, beautiful Daisy to quiet, watchful Nick, the novel did best at showing what kind of people lived in that time : "the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired."
Finally, the ending. I kind of wished the ending was more fair and freaking Daisy gets to Jail or get stabbed by her husband or something, but no, Gatsby the self-made man got killed, Wilson the worker became a murderer, Daisy ran away unscrupulously with her stupid, racist, egocentric husband.. It wasn't the ending I wanted, but it was the ending the novel deserved. It's a novel that is supposed to reflect upon an era of the American history and a comment on the now-celebrated american dream : the eternal pursuit of complete happiness can blindside all the other things that equally matter.

All in all, this book is just beautiful.The story, even though not ocean deep, is a very well conceived excuse to set life to those characters, all designed to drive the flow to the ultimate message of the novel that is yet to be decisive. The use of language is only bad because it makes one conscious about the existence of such literal superiority. The witty dialogues, the exquisite descriptions, the ebb and the flow of the story, the death of Gatsby and the cowardliness of everyone whom he tried to get acknowledgment from, is just a sad, perfect mixture.
I didn't give it a 10 or at least a 9.5 for two reasons : The ending that is so bittersweet and as I stated before, felt unbalanced (just because I viewed the story morally), and the relative shortness, I wish there were more digging in his past, maybe some subplots, just anything to extend the greatness. 
I also see a lot of hidden potential in the book, things that I would have not fully captured (essentially when I was reading it when I'm half-asleep :v), so there're that too.
Other than that I couldn't find a single flaw to point out. Chapeau bas.

Favorite character : 
Jay Gatsby.
Oddly enough, I was intending to entitle Nick Carraway as such. But only at the end, almost the very end, that it becomes impossible not to feel an urge to be a friend of Gatsby's, or more likely Jimmy. Although a lot of mad american students who have to study The Great Gatsby at school find his "great"-ness highly debatable for amassing money from elicit activities, general shallowness and unidimensionality,  pursuing blindly his dream of recreating the past through gaining possession of the only object that's missing of his collection -Daisy-, it's hard not to like the man's dedication to this sole dream of his. The last chapter was heart-wrenching to say the least, beautifully melancholic and just sad. For a man who was of so much importance and so high manners that were so unlike the inborn snobbishness of the rich-blooded, Gatsby was a rose that only unfolded to prettier shades until it's a bare, motionless core, laying on a coffin, friendless and ill-respected and betrayed by his sole love. The notes on the old book hit me hard on the feels, and so I name Gatsby, the unlikely hero, a Great man.
And I can't put it better than Nick : "‘They’re a rotten crowd,’ I shouted across the lawn. ‘You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.’".

Favorite passages : 
Man, it's hard to select !
The book is really wonderful and all quotable-material. Some of them gain extra relevance when read on the context of the book (actually all of them, but some more than others), and some just stick out, too brilliant to be overlooked.
I went a little liberal about the quantity .. It's just a gorgeous, gorgeous text.

"In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.‘Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,’ he told me, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had he advantages that you’ve had.’"

"‘I’ll tell you a family secret,’ she whispered enthusiastically. ‘It’s about the butler’s nose. Do you want to hear about the butler’s nose?’

‘That’s why I came over tonight.’"

‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.’

"This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air."

‘Doesn't her husband object?’ ‘Wilson? He thinks she goes to see her sister in New York.  

He’s so dumb he doesn't know he’s alive.’. Ironic.

"At 158th Street the cab stopped at one slice in a long white cake of apartment houses."

"Her eyebrows had been plucked and then drawn on again at a more rakish angle but the efforts of nature toward the restoration of the old alignment gave a blurred air to her face."

"His wife was shrill, languid, handsome and horrible."

"Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life."

"People disappeared, reappeared, made plans to go somewhere, and then lost each other, searched for each other, found each other a few feet away."

"The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music and the opera of voices pitches a key higher.". Beautiful structure.

"Sometimes they came and went without having met Gatsby at all, came for the party with a simplicity of heart that was its own ticket of admission."

He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it,  that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced—or seemed to face—the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on YOU with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself and assured you that it had  precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey. Precisely at  that point it vanished—and I was looking at an elegant young rough-neck, a year or two  over thirty, whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd." 

.. This is definitely one of the best descriptions I've ever read.

"and for a moment I thought I loved her. But I am slow-thinking and full of interior rules that act as brakes on my desires."

" ‘You sit here and discuss your sports and your young ladies and your——’ He supplied an imaginary noun with another wave of his hand."

"For a while these reveries provided an outlet for his imagination; they were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world  was founded securely on a fairy’s wing."

"Through all he said, even through his appalling sentimentality, I was reminded of something—an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, that I had heard somewhere a long time ago. For a moment a phrase tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man’s, as though there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled air."

"There was dancing now on the canvas in the garden, old men pursuing young girls backward in eternal graceless circles.". Graceless circles, enough said.

"‘What are you doing?’ I inquired.

‘Just standing here, old sport.’

Somehow, that seemed a despicable occupation."

"No wasting time at Shafters or [a name, indecipherable]

No more smokeing or chewing

Bath every other day

Read one improving book or magazine per week

Save $5.00 [crossed out] $3.00 per week

Be better to parents"

Hard not to love Gatz after this.

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…. And one fine morning—

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."