Starting Point. 1979 ~ 1996 by Hayao Miyazaki.

A collection of essays, interviews, talks, sketches and a short manga story about the history of Inflight Meals. 

I learned a great deal from this book, about Miyazaki himself and the art of making anime. Through these pages you'll discover: 

. Miyazaki's motivations for making anime for children, 

. His views on ideas and values portrayed in anime characters, 

. His love for his country, 

. His views on wars, progress and Japanese traditions, 

. Why most of his protagonists are girls! 

. A glimpse into his personal life (only a glimpse), 

. His creative process, not that he had a formal method, quite the opposite. 

. A few stories about colleagues and staff. My favourite story is about A Woman Finish Inspector, someone in charge of checking for mistakes, dirt and scratches in anime cels (transparent sheets were images are drawn). That woman had a passion for her work, so much that she lived in her office, sacrificed her free time and sleep to finish her work. 

. Why he didn't like Osamu Tezuka's work! 

. A few months ago I watched a documentary titled 10 years with Hayao Miyazaki. A great complement to this book I think. Find it on NHK World on Demand. 👍

The Willows by Algernon Blackwood

A 40 page short story included in the Classic Tales of Horror, a Canterbury Classics anthology. 

Two men sail the Danube during a storm. They stop in a small island to rest and wait for the storm to go but then strange things happen. Loud noises and creepy willows. I'm pretty bad remembering short stories but I think this one will be stuck in my mind for a long while.

Galatea 2.2 by Richard Powers

 

I first learned about this novel when I read How we became Posthuman... by Katherine Hayles. There Hayles analyses the novel using concepts such as presence and absence, materiality and signification, embodiment and others.

The synopsis reads "After many years of living abroad, a young writer returns to the United States to take up a position at his former college. There he encounters Philip Lentz, an outspoken neurologist intent on using computers to model the human brain.

Lentz involves the writer in an outlandish and irresistible project - to train a computing system by reading a canonical list of Great Books. Through repeated tutorials, the machine grows gradually more worldly, until it demands to know its own age, sex, race and reason for existing." 

This is not a science fiction story but a study (examination, exploration?) of the main character's life. Through the novel the Writer questions the decisions he made particularly in relation with his career choice and love life, and how those decisions shaped his present situation. The second protagonist, Philip Lentz, is a peculiar character. A scientist, to me, with limited emotional intelligence, who is the mastermind behind the Learning Computer. At some point during the narration the Writer and us learn about his life and he becomes more human to the point that we can empathize with him. There is also a group of scientists whose interventions in the story are limited but meaningful. Each of them is there for a reason trying to show the Writer life lessons.

The Writer's task is to teach the computer how to read novels and how to be a literary critic. The Writer goes through a series of literary references, most of them unknown to me, trying to teach the computer the meanings behind words. At the same time he reflects about his life and tells us his story, especially since he met his ex girlfriend. At some point it is inevitable to draw comparisons between his relationship with the girlfriend, a human being, and his relationship with the computer system. 

A slow but interesting read.

The Book. A Cover to Cover exploration of the most powerful object of our time, by Keith Houston.

A beautiful book about books. A bit of history, including papyrus, parchment and paper, writing, movable type and rotary printing machines, illustrations, woodcut print, lithography and photography, rolls, codex and modern books. Interesting material, organised in a coherent, easy to read way. It was a fun and enlightening read.

I recommend this book to any book lover.