The Collected Toppi. Volume Seven: Sharaz-de.

So far favourite Volume (I've read volumes 5, 6 and 7). 11 stories adapted from The Thousand and One Nights. Love the page layouts. I thought I was going to stop here and be happy with the 3 volumes I have, but I might get more.

Consciousness. Understanding the Ghost in the Machine. New Scientist. Essential Guide N°12. Edited by Richard Webb.

This book doesn't have a definite answer about the nature of consciousness. The reason is that no one has one final answer. The first article starts with "Consciousness is a slippery concept." And the last article starts with "The subjective nature of consciousness makes it difficult even to define." This book explores so many aspects related to consciousness, from subjectivity, experiences, to where consciousness resides in our brains and why we have it. Jump to sleep, anaesthesia and hallucinations. So many different areas of study, so many angles. Hopefully, someday we'll be able to understand. Worth a read.

The Case Against Death by Ingemar Patrick Linden

The main message of this book is: Death is Evil. The author spends 12 chapters to prove his point refuting the main pro-Death/Death is natural/Death is good arguments he finds out there. Linden disects every argument into its atomic parts, and debunks each bit with sometimes relentlessly tedious, dense logic, philosophy and common sense. A bit hard to read but I'm happy I persevered. While the book provides very strong arguments against the belief that death is good, I am still hesitant to 100% favour the Death is Evil argument. I guess my intellectual side kind of favours it, but my emotional side is harder to convince. I do not see any attempt to significantly prolong our lives and/or to reach immortality, becoming real any time soon. So better to accept my, everyone's fate and have the best life I, we can... I guess..

Los Renglones Torcidos de Dios (God's Crooked Lines) by Torcuato Luca de Tena.

 A female private detective who goes into a mental institution to solve a murder case. For that she has to pretend to be paranoid. But, is she really pretending or was she sectioned because she is ill? This novel really surprised me. It is well written, intriguing, addictive. The main character is superb. She makes reading the whole novel worth it. She is intelligent, charming and paranoid? Her situation/condition plays a much bigger role than the murder case and it is what makes you want to keep reading. But it doesn't end there. The setup, among psychiatrists and the mentally ill, is really good. To write this book the author visited several mental hospitals and then got himself admitted in one for 18 days. It is from these experiences that he got inspiration for the many mentally ill patients and psychiatrists in the novel. It's a pity that there isn't an English translation, but there is a Netflix adaptation which might be worth watching.

The Collected Toppi. Volume 6. Japan

 A collection of stories about Japanese folklore, culture and myths. A couple of stories involve samurai/ronin, but the rest are about normal, common people, in some cases peasants, living their lives, with their loses and hardships. I admire Toppi's skill to combine amazing storytelling with outstanding art. The stories are compelling and powerful but touching at the same time. Everyone of them will leave at least some tiny residue of emotion in your brain or heart, wherever you think emotions live.

Blindsight by Peter Watts.

A deep exploration into philosophical issues related to consciousness & intelligence. I’ve been interested in this topic for quite a few years. The novel was suggested reading in Science and Philosophy, a compilation of essays. The ideas in Blindsight are compelling but I did not enjoy the story much. The configuration of the actual mission, which is at the centre of the plot, did not make sense to me.

The little I’d heard about this novel before was that it had vampires in space! And, yes, there is a vampire, but it isn’t a  protagonist. It mostly exists in the background, and when it comes to the front by the end of the story there were other much more interesting themes which overlapped with it which left the poor vampire as a meh character. The main protagonist and the other members of a spaceship crew are trans-humans, highly modified, physically and psychologically, and much more interesting. The aliens of the story are interesting too. The way Watts describes them, the aliens and the main protagonist (who lost half of his brain early in life), helped me reflect on the nature of consciousness, awareness of our own existence, awareness of other people’s lives and feelings and most importantly the concept of consciousness as a precondition for intelligence.

M.C. Escher. The Graphic Work.

A beautiful book by Taschen. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

Not much in terms of text. An interesting introduction by the artist and short descriptions of the illustrations. The art though is amazing. Escher's most used techniques were lithography, relief printing and intaglio printing. I can imagine how hard it can be to draw these pieces with pencil but engraving them must by incredibly difficult.