What they mean is that manufacturing jobs have gone overseas and middle-class jobs are harder to come by for people without college degrees. Fair enough - I worry about those things, too. But this book is about something else: what goes on in the lives of real people when the industrial economy goes south. It's …
Continue reading Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of Family and Culture in Crisis – J. D. Vance – Quotes
I read this book a few weeks ago, so to refresh my memory I went through my notes, but I also went on Goodreads, to take a look at some of the comments and reviews. I must admit I did not expect such a heated discussion. Being from Europe and only having been to the …
Continue reading Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of Family and Culture in Crisis – J. D. Vance
Do you remember when you were a child and there was no limit to your imagination? When you would come up with the craziest stories and nothing was really impossible. When you would question the status quo, not to fight it, but just because you didn't know what status quo means and you didn't really …
When I started reading this book I did not know it was based on a story from Japanese folklore. Which was probably for the better, because I did not know the ending either, though one starts to expect it quite early in the book, which surprisingly is not a bad thing. George is a middle-aged …
I'm slowly making a dent in my Kindle's stash of books I bought or downloaded 6-8 years ago. This is one of those, I cannot remember how I got it or what made me decide to buy it, but there it was. As I forget why I got certain books, I'm starting to treat my …
When Olga Tokarczuk won the Man Booker Prize last year my mum bought me some of her books that I haven't read. When I was in university I read a few of her books and liked them a lot, then I stopped and years later I was wondering if I'd still like them, given their …
Continue reading Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead – Olga Tokarczuk
Intuitively we all know what the term 'iconic architecture' means, we've seen enough of it to also know that it does not always mean good architecture. Actually, the more investors focus on the iconic aspect the worse the architecture usually becomes. Tom Dyckhoff tries to understand this phenomenon and its origins. It was fun to …
Continue reading The Age of Spectacle: The Rise and Fall of Iconic Architecture – Tom Dyckhoff
During my March visit in my family home I heroically finished reading Lord Jim and since I had no other book with me off I went to scan the shelves of our home library. We have plenty of books that have been sitting there for years, due to our unstoppable habit of buying new books. …
He made me think of a trained baby elephant walking on hind-legs. His three daughters were awfully nice, though they resembled him amazingly, and on the mornings he woke up with a gloomy view of their matrimonial prospects the office would read it in his eye and tremble, because, they said, he was sure to …
For some reason, in my high school, we never read Joseph Conrad. Which I came to think was a good thing, especially after I spoke back then to a few o my friends who hated Lord Jim with passion. For some reason Polish schools back then selected this novel, and not a much more compact Heart of …
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