Review: The bestselling Brazilian author of The Alchemist delicately etches this morose but ultimately uplifting story of the suicidal Veronika, who creeps along the boundary between life and death, sanity and madness, happiness and despair. Veronika, 24, works in a library in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and rents a room in a convent; she is an attractive woman with friends and family, but feelings of powerlessness and apathy tempt her to find “freedom” in an overdose of sleeping pills. When Veronika awakens in the purgatory of Villete, the country’s famous lunatic asylum, she is told her suicide attempt weakened her heart and she has only days to live. At this point, Coelho takes a role in the novel; he describes the circumstances under which he discovered Veronika’s story and then recounts his own youthful incarceration in a Brazilian sanatorium, consigned there by parents who couldn’t understand his “unusual behavior.” As quickly as he drops in, however, he drops out again, relying on interior monologues to set scenes. In a sedative-induced haze, Veronika finds companionship in white-haired Mari, who suffers from panic attacks, and Eduard, an ambassador’s son who has been diagnosed as schizophrenic, and she begins to question the definition of insanity. It is her supposed death sentence from the devious Dr. Igor, who is trying to shock her back into reality, that allows Veronika to reacquire the will to live and love. Employing his trademark blend of religious and philosophical overtones, Coelho focuses on his central question: why do people go on when life seems unfair and fate indifferent? The simple, often banal prose contrasts Veronika’s bleak inner landscape with the beautiful contours of Slovenia, gradually culminating in an upbeat ending with the message that each day of life is a miracle. Coelho’s latest will appeal to readers who enjoy animated homilies about the worth of human existence.
Review: In this latest effort to popularize the sciences, City University of New York professor and media star Kaku (Hyperspace) ponders topics that many people regard as impossible, ranging from psychokinesis and telepathy to time travel and teleportation. His Class I impossibilities include force fields, telepathy and anti-universes, which don’t violate the known laws of science and may become realities in the next century. Those in Class II await realization farther in the future and include faster-than-light travel and discovery of parallel universes. Kaku discusses only perpetual motion machines and precognition in Class III, things that aren’t possible according to our current understanding of science. He explains how what many consider to be flights of fancy are being made tangible by recent scientific discoveries ranging from rudimentary advances in teleportation to the creation of small quantities of antimatter and transmissions faster than the speed of light. Science and science fiction buffs can easily follow Kaku’s explanations as he shows that in the wonderful worlds of science, impossible things are happening every day.
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Welcome to the page where I tell you what book/s I am reading presently.
Why do I do this? Simply because I know there are like-minded people out there who would like to read similar books or who just might be thankful they came across this book here.
Looking at the larger picture, it is for you, if you have not already read this book, so you can pick it up on your next visit to the bookstore and keep yourself busy with it till I stumble upon something else worth recommending.
Speaking of recommending, I do not list books here that I personally did not like–even if I am still in the process of reading them. If I do like them, I will provide a trusty review I find somewhere along with a link (just click on the book itself) to Amazon where you can buy the book if you like to.
Lastly, once I have read the book/s, I take them off this page and replace them with my current, latest read/s; this means you will have to keep checking back often to keep pace with me, or you can connect with me and I’ll let you know.
