"Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman, a rope over an abyss."
Thursday, 31 October 2013
Wednesday, 30 October 2013
Youth Does Not Guarantee Your Hapiness
4.5 out of 5 stars. Youth does not guarantee your hapiness.
October 29, 2013
By Mónica Fernanda Guevara
Maldonado.
This review is from: The Picture
of Dorian Gray
I was looking for a reading with some
mystery, suspense, fiction and romance; on “The picture of Dorian Gray”,
definitely I got all of these.
There has been a lot of controversy
with classifying this novel into the correct genre, but generally it is placed
in the genre of Philosophical fiction and Gothic fiction.
This novel was written by the Irish
writer and poet Oscar Wilde, and first published as the lead story in Lippincott's
Monthly Magazine on 20 June 1890 in Philadelphia.
The story tells of a young,
captivating and extremely beautiful young man called Dorian Gray, grandson of
one Lord Kelso, who returns to London as the unique heir of the house of his
aunt, Lady Brandon. Here, he meets Basil Hallward, a well-known artist who
immediately becomes interested in Dorian.
Basil asks Dorian to sit for a
portrait, he accepted and when it is finished; it becomes the masterpiece of
Basil and also the key of the story.
On the other hand is Lord Henry
Wotton, a famous wit who enjoys scandalizing his friends by celebrating youth,
beauty, and the selfish pursuit of pleasure; when he meets Dorian he upsets him
with a speech about the transient nature of beauty and youth; this speech makes
Dorian to worry of his most impressive characteristics that are fading day by
day, so he eventually curses his portrait, which he believes will one day
remind him of the beauty he will have lost.
In a fit of distress, he pledges his
soul if only the painting could bear the burden of age and infamy, allowing him
to stay forever young; however, he has no idea of the price of this action…
Over the time, Lord Henry’s influence
over Dorian grows stronger. The youth becomes a disciple of the “new Hedonism”
and proposes to live a life dedicated to the pursuit of pleasure. He falls in
love with Sibyl Vane, a young actress who performs in a theater in London’s
slums, however, a series of unfortunately events incite Dorian to put the
matter behind him and started to live a life full of irregularities that slowly
transform to the charming Dorian Gray in a masked and sadistic monster.
In style and content, this story has
as much in common with science fiction as it does with other Romantic novels,
with the first, due to the hallucinations that Dorian experiment and the creepy
descriptions of the portrait when it begins to transform.
In contrast, its similarity with
Romantic style is because of the description in the dark Dorian's thoughts, his
changing mood and at the end, with his feeling of regret and loneliness.
In conclusion, personally I think
this is a complicated read because of some terms and allusions with the
Greco-Roman literature, but it goes quickly, that makes it exciting and
unpredictable keeping your attention in the whole book.
This story is a good utopia in which
eternal beauty and youth are possible, definitely an enviable opportunity for
those who are afraid of getting old or for narcissist people, but at the end,
the reading makes clear that: “youth does not guarantee your happiness”. This
could be the learning of this brilliant story.
Tuesday, 29 October 2013
The Importance of Being Earnest
The Importance of Being Earnest
By Fatima F. Dominguez Aburto Huesca.
Oscar Wilde was a British writer who incur in many types of writing, such as prose, poetry and theater plays. “The Importance of Being Earnest” is one of the last plays that he wrote.
This play tells the story of John (or Jack), his friend Algernon, his love for Gwendolen and how a name can change a lot of things and perceptions. Jack is a young man who in London always present himself as Earnest. ¿The reason? He has created this character for release himself of the stress of some situations. The problem comes because he is in love with the cousin of his friend Algernon, Gwendolen, and he decides to propose to her. Algernon, or Algy, found out that he is not Earnest but John and reveal that he also has a character like that, Bumbury, and for that reason he start wanting to bother a little to Jack. Jack is tired of Earnest and decides to “kill” him. But… Will that be all right? Or will Jack learn how big is the importance of being Earnest?
This play is definitely fun and easy to read, which is not that common in plays, because you can sympathise or not understand the characters but in any case they are interesting. Every character in this play had a very particular personality and idiosyncrasy to very unique things. This make that their interaction with each other flow in very singular ways, just like the odd friendship between Algy and Jack, and make the play, somehow, very dynamic.
Oscar Wilde always created characters that shown his own particularities and the way in which he perceived the society around him. This is the main reason why in all his works you can find many thing that has a vizar point of view of what is important and what is not. Of course that “The importance of Being Earnest” is not an exception for this and because of that some of the situations are hilarious.
In my opinion for being easy to read and imagine, interesting and very fun, I will give this book 5 of 5 stars.
The Joy Luck Club Review By Hugo Dinorin
4 out of 5 stars
The Joy
Luck Club Review
By Hugo
Dinorin, October 29th, 2013
This review
is from: The Joy Luck Club
In every family, there has been at least one
discussion or hassle between parents and children because of the different
ideas and experiences that each one have. However, there will be always a
strong bond in every parents-children relationship.
The Joy Luck Club concentrates in all that, narrating
the history of 4 Chinese women who, because of different reasons, migrate to America,
and their daughters who are born in America. These 4 women started a group
called “The Joy Luck Club “ for playing the traditional game of Mahjong,
chatting about her lives and spending some good time together. Though, they are
not only related because of the club, they also have problems in their relationship
with their daughters.
Throughout 4 chapters, Amy Tan, the author of
the book, develops the story of how was the women’s life before coming to America,
why the women come to America, how was the childhood and experiences of their daughters. Besides, each
chapter is divided in 4 episodes in which is narrated the story of each women
or daughter, telling in detail what is their “side of the story”. That is, I every
episode, each one narrates, explains and share how was their own experiences.
So, Amy Tan gives you a piece of the story
through each chapter, giving you the opportunity to compare and contrast the
life of each character, and with that, she gives you the parts of a puzzle in order to that helps you understand every
character of story and their ways of behave.
In my opinion, The Joy Luck Club is a book
written with emotion and passion, because Amy Tan based these four histories in
her own experiences as a Chinese-American and her relationship with her mother.
Thus, she transmitted her feelings and emotions through her words, creating an
incredible book.
The Secret Adversary.
4.0
out of 5 stars
Life
could give us an unexpected adventure.
By
Belmontes
Joshua (October
29th, 2013)
The
Secret Adversary, from Agatha Christie.
The
story happens in London, 1919, when World War I has finished. Two old
friends, Miss Prudence Cowley (Tuppence)
and Major Thomas Beresford (Tommy) are looking for a job; life is
expensive and they need money. But furthermore, they are looking for
something else in life: Adventure. Tuppence is a very clever girl and
she find a way of getting adventure and money, and Tommy joins to her
in it. But they didn’t imagine what sort of things they’re going
to pass through.
Tommy
and Tuppence are hired for a mysterious objective: To find a missed
American girl know as Jane Finn, who was traveling from US to France
in an ocean liner called Lusitania. Lusitania was torpedoed in 1915
by a German submarine, and the ship sank, but Jane was one of the
survivors. Someone saw Jane receiving a sensitive confidential
document from the American ambassador. This document had the purpose
of help Britain's Government through the War but for 1919, when the
War was over, that document would be very harmful.
Now
Jane is missed and nobody knows about her. But an evil secret group
is trying to find her to pick the document she had and use it to
manipulate Labour Party and British people to create a bolshevist
revolution and defeat British Government. This secret group is
leaded by a mysterious person known as “Mr. Brown”, but actually
nobody of the group knows him: The Secret Adversary.
Tommy
and Tuppence start following people of the secret group to get clues
about the whereabouts of Jane. They'll try to find Jane before the
group does it, because the group has been ordered to make a general
strike on the 29th of the current month. But trying to accomplish
their task, they will put their lives in danger, they will known
secrets of the Government, they will be in a suspicious environment
but also they’ll change their lives.
Agatha
Christie was an internationally recognized writer; her books have
been sold to many countries and the genre is mainly mystery. Her book
“The Secret Adversary”, written in 1922, is her second novel and
the first one with the young couple of detectives Tommy and Tuppence.
This couple and another famous character, Hercule Poirot, would catch
the hearts of millions of readers through a very big number of books.
The girl with the dragon tattoo
5 stars of 5 stars
By Sandra Alfaro, October 28th, 2013
This review is from: The girl with the dragon tattoo
(Stieg Larsson)
Genre: Novel
“Eighteen percent of the women in Sweden have at one
time been threatened by a man”
Henrik Vanger is an
old man who has been received every year in his birthday a mystical flower
which no one else knows who sends, and where it is from. Mr. Vanger and his rich Swedish family, who
have common business, lives in a little town named Hedertad.
Mr. Vanger
granddauther ,Harriet Vanger, has been
lost for several years, and since that, Mr. Vanger has been thinking she is not
died and contact Mikael Blomkvist who is an
important journalist in a renamed
newspaper, to searching she, and to
writing memories about Mr, Vanger’s
life.
Mikael
Blomkvist one of the principal characters is a conscious journalist who recently lost a trial related to embezzlement corruption investigation against to an influent rich businessman and Blomkavist in a way to obtain revenge decides to investigate the Harriet case.
The journalist and his assistant Lisbeth Slander, a
mysterious hacker, antisocial and intelligent girl, starts to investigate what happened with Harriet. In the
investigation Mikael and Lisbeth meeting the Vanger Family, and their relation
with Harriet, besides some family problems.
Stieg
Larsson a Swedish journalist, who died of a heart attack in 2004, wrote
this best seller novel which explain the importance of personal and natural emotions, particularly topics about corruption, sexual abuse and
missing people in the presently, related
with feelings and thinking’s with some appropriate level of fail. This book it’s the first part of the three
books saga. The novel was narrated in
third person, and when you start to read the sequence and the chapter’s
organization (dates), you can feel like a person who is in the story and glimpse
the places in the background.
I was
looking for some detective novel and I chose this book last august from my
pending book list, one friend recommended this book related with social
criticism, because I remember some months ago we were talking about “quality of
life” and I say: “I read the statistics and
Swedish is one of 5 countries with the most quality life” and she told me “Have
you ever listened about The Girl with the dragon tattoo?” and when I start to
read ,the female violence, against, disappointment, fail, appear in that pages.
Most of the time “the first world” it is viewed as a model to follow but in
this case the book shows many contradictions about that.
When I
was reading this book I remember the case of many missing women in the entire
world, and Mexico is not the exception, the case in Ciudad Juarez, represented
an example about this disappearances, in addition the social media have
similarities with Mexico like some of that are coopted from rich people with
corruption; moreover, exists congruent journalists like Blomkvist who is searching
the truth.
Philosophy of science reviewed by Ivan Osnaya
Osnaya Ramírez
Rodrigo Ivan
English writing
Book review of a non-fiction book
“Philosophy of science” by Samir Okasha
First published in the Oxford University
ISB 0-19-280283-6
Reviewed by Rodrigo Ivan Osnaya Ramirez
8 points in a scale of 10
October 27th 2013.
First of all it´s important to talk a little bit about
the author, Samir Okasha is a lecturer in philosophy at the University of New
York, he has published numerous articles in philosophy journals in the areas of
philosophy of science, philosophy of biology and epistemology. He studied in
the UAM in Mexico City and has held a Jacobsen
fellowship in philosophy at the University
of London
In the first chapter of the book Samir starts given us
a brief introduction about what is science obviously in this chapter we can
read a lot of names that sounds very familiar to us: Aristoteles, Galileo
Galilei, Descartes, Darwin and Newton
The second chapter was one of the most interesting to
me because Okasha talks about scientific reasoning and how this reasoning
should be deductive and non inductive, he gave a lot of good examples to
clarify his point and also gives a lot
of good reasons to make us think that a great amount of knowledge that we have
nowadays came from inductions and not necessary from inductions, this chapter
is very interesting and at the same time can cause you a little headache because
it makes you think a lot about science and its explanations of the world. This
is exactly the topic of the third chapter, the explanations in science.
Is something very common that the explanations in
science are made for questions that started with a “why” and normally the
answers to these questions are made in the next way: A causes B. The
explanations in science are made to explain a phenomenon and at the same time
to predict the phenomenon in the future. But a thing that has been very criticized
in this type of explanations is that they are unilateral and if A can explain
B, B not necessary can explain A so this can be a problem because may be other
false explanations to the same phenomenon that fit perfectly. Samir starts to
talk about science and how may be can’t explain everything and how in the past
science has explained thing that nowadays we know that doesn’t work as the
scientists said in the past.
The fourth chapter is very interesting because its
about what should science study, the observable or also the unobservable thing
and also makes me thing about one phrase that Samir uses in his book: If
physics study the atoms and everything is made of atoms; why physics can’t
explain everything. This question was brutal for me as a reader and as a
scientist and made me think for days
about it, so if you are involve in science it can cause the same reaction in
you.
The last three chapters of the book had something
similar that makes me join them they talk about some problems and critics in
science the 5th chapter is about the scientific revolution and how sometimes it’s
seems that the new knowledge is better that the old one, a mistake that most
scientist commit when they are looking for data, also Samir talks about how
scientists nowadays moves more horizontally than vertically.
In the chapter number six and seven he criticizes the
science and explain many points that are not necessarily true, I can imagine
that for him those points are true but at the same time I consider that Samir
needs to read more about some specific topics in science to understand them
sometimes I had the feeling that he was speaking without necessary had the
knowledge of the topic (e.g. genetics, phylogeny, ontogeny etc...).
In general the book is very well written and Okasha
uses a lot of examples that are very clear even he gave to the readers some drowns
and cartoons that make easier the reading. The author uses a language that is
very clear maybe is not very easy for all the people but I consider that for
high school students can be a good book to read and to be involve in the world
of science and philosophy.
Reading this book I Iearned that the scientists
community has to be more critic with themselves in order to achieve better
researches also I learned that I must be more objective even with my own
research because sometimes the personal
interests can be involve and this is never a good thing for your own work.
Since I haven’t read another book of philosophy of science I believe that this
was a good book to start and even I’m planning in read other books of the same author
and of other authors. I strongly recommend this book especially if you are
studying science because it can open your eyes to the vision that the
philosophers have about the scientists.
´´Nabokov: His psycho-funny masterpiece´´ By Andrés Rubio (review from ´´Lolita´´. Nabokov, Vladimir 1959.)
★★★★★´´Nabokov: His psycho-funny masterpiece´´
By Andrés Rubio on October 24, 2013
By Andrés Rubio on October 24, 2013
This
review is from ´´Lolita´´. Nabokov, Vladimir 1959.
Vladimir
Nabokov was a Russian-born novelist born on
April 23, 1899, in St. Petersburg, Russia. His real success came to him
when he started to write novels in English; being Lolita his most famous novel.
5 stars.
Definitely this classic of modern literature and pop culture is what it
deserve, not only because the controversial story that made the critics talk a
lot, it’s the modern and unique style used by Nabokov that make the reader to
not stop until reach the last page.
When I decided
to read this book, it was because I read an article about writers that made
wonders when they started to write in another language foreign to their born
countries. Nabokov was one of these examples of ´´wonder writers´´. So I was
guided for the curiosity and then I get an old version printed in 1970 with a
very peculiar prologue. I say it was peculiar because it was written on the
mid-seventies, and society didn´t conceive the idea of a novel about a forty
years old man falling in love with a twelve years old girl.
The story is
told by Humbert Humbert, the main character of the book. He was a normal
Parisian man who for some reason in his twisted mind develops an obsession for
the little girls starting with the death of his first teenage lover, who died
of sickness. For Annabelle’s dead, he
tried to found her on other young girls, but never found someone who really
could compare with her. He named the little girls of his obsession
´´nymphets´´ explaining that they have a part angelical, a part demoniac side
that is inside their girl’s body. During the book he manages his pedophilia
like something normal and spontaneous. Even though its obsession he got married
with a woman named Valeria that cheated on him with a Russian old-man. When he
got divorced he moved to the United States and for destiny tricks the first
house where he was supposedly going to live burned. So he finished living on a house of a widow woman
called Ms. Haze. When she was showing to him the house he was definitely
thinking to not live there, but, when she was showing to him the garden he met
´´Lo´´, Ms. Haze little daughter. Humbert was shocked when he saw that
´´nymphet´´ and started since that moment to memorize and to describe every
face and movement that little ´´Lo´´ made. Then he decided to live there.
Lolita like all the little girls was stubborn and always was disobeying her
mother, so that why her mother decided to send her to a camp. That day when Ms.
Haze was taking Lolita to the camp left a note to Humbert saying to him that
she was deeply in love with him and that when she returned when the camp she
wanted to marry him, if not, he must left the house after reading the note. He
stays, but just for Lolita. Humbert as a writer he enjoyed writing a lot about
Lolita and wrote about his new wife and a very evil woman who treated badly the
poor girl. One day she found the scripts and argued with him then she ran out
of the street and died hit by a car. The Humbert went to the camp to pick up
his now step-daughter Dolores. He didn’t say to her that her mother was dead
until a few days passed. The Humbert and Lolita started to travel between fights
and reconciliations. They started some kind of romance where Humbert didn´t
notice the pain that he was giving to the little girl.
So
here is where the story will get more intense at the point that Humbert Humbert
shows his dark-side human nature that showed us that he would make the
impossible to keep Lolita with him and never let her go.
I
fully recommend this book because the author manages his main character´s
psychology and thoughts at a level you can feel that Humber Humbert really
existed and you are reading his personal diary. That is a good thing that show
us that the most valuable and interesting thing in Nabokov´s masterpiece is its
main character ´´charisma´´ that in a moment of the reading you will find
yourself sympathizing with him and see it all by his twisted mind. You will
understand his rationalized behavior through his life that made you think that
his way of seeing the world is correct and right. So, go on and find by
yourself the mystery of Lolita´s story and mental background.
4
out of 5 stars
It is not easy to be the bad one
A review of Wicked: the life and times of the Wicked Witch of the West
By Beatriz Lara
We
all know the story of Dorothy, the sweet girl from Kansas who magically ends up
in the land of Oz and in order to get back home she has to kill the wicked
witch of the West. What we have forgotten is that every story has at least two versions. What about the witches view of the story? Was the witch really that wicked?
That
is the question that the American novelist Gregory Maguire answers in his book Wicked: The life and times of the wicked
witch of the West published in 1995. The
story is set in the Land of Oz in the years before Dorothy’s arrival. Through
the five chapters of the book, Maguire narrates the story of Elphaba, a
green-skinned girl born in Munchkinland and that grows up to be the antagonistof
the famous children tale The Wizard of Oz.
Wicked is
the first book of the saga The Wicked
Years. All the books in this collection are referenced in characters of The Wizard of Oz. Wicked is also the basis of the Broadway musical of the same name
presented almost ten years after of the publication of the novel.
The
five chapters are entitled by its location and narrate different episodes of
Elphaba’s life: her childhood, her college years where she gets involved in an
activist movement in defense of the Animal’s rights and against the dictatorial
policies of the Wizard of Oz; all her attempts to get rid of The Wizard and how
she meets Dorothy.
Maguire’s
biggest achievement in this novel is to give the classic characters a new view.
He worries about showing the reader the other versión of the story, making him/her
question the charachters moral and motives. He transforms the fantastic nature
of a children story and merges it with human complexity.
Wicked is
not a children story, even though it is based on one. Maguire uses the original
story and charaqcters created by Lyman Frank Baum and gives them a “grown up twist”
by adding some criticism about subjects like Politics, Religion and Philosphy.
Therefore, it is not as easy to digest as the original Wizard of Oz.
It
is a more complex lecture that is worth reading because of the debate it
creates of what or who is good or bad. In Wicked,
Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West is revindicated, shown as a compassive, justice lover sorceress willing to defend an ideal. After all, it must not be easy to be known as the bad one.
Small Gods
5.0
out of 5 stars
By
Susana L. Valadéz (Mexico), October 28, 2013
Sir Terence David John Pratchett (born 28 April 1948) is one of the most popular English authors of fantastic novels today. He was knighted for services to literature in 2009. “Terry” Pratchett is the author of the Discworld series of about 40 books. Small Gods, the 13th book of this sequence, was published in 1992. It was adapted as a serial for BBC Radio 4.
The
story starts whit the short tale of the relationship between tortoises and
eagles.
After that, we are taken to the Hub, the center of Discworld, where the history monks live and take care about all the History and they make sure that when something important is happening, there is someone who is watching that really happens. Lu Tze, one of the history monks, is sent to Omnia, because something was just going to happen, a couple of battles and an assassination.
Meanwhile in Omnia, in the year of the Notional Serpent we find novice Brutha. Even he is too old for being a novice, he lives under the supervision of Brother Nhumrod, and he isn’t considered very important, brilliant or smart, but Brutha’s memory is so good that he didn’t know the meaning of the word “forget” or disobedience.
After that, we are taken to the Hub, the center of Discworld, where the history monks live and take care about all the History and they make sure that when something important is happening, there is someone who is watching that really happens. Lu Tze, one of the history monks, is sent to Omnia, because something was just going to happen, a couple of battles and an assassination.
Meanwhile in Omnia, in the year of the Notional Serpent we find novice Brutha. Even he is too old for being a novice, he lives under the supervision of Brother Nhumrod, and he isn’t considered very important, brilliant or smart, but Brutha’s memory is so good that he didn’t know the meaning of the word “forget” or disobedience.
With
Great God Om appearing as a tortoise, problems start to appear into Brutha’s life,
one of the most important when the Exquisitor (not inquisitor, he’s more like a supervisor) Vorbis, who has really
black eyes, asks him to join a group that is going to travel to the city of Ephebe
to defeat the unbelievers, like the Great God Om wants. Because Vorbis think
that if the Great God doesn’t want him to attack the ephebians, he will stop
him. He is proudly in charge of the Quisition, and of everyone who let him be
their superior, including particularly novice Brutha with his eidetic-memory.
Poor
Brutha finds himself in the middle of a war between Omnia and Ephebe because
Vorbis said that Om is the only true God (and everyone who says otherwise is
wrong and should die!), and the inner conflict that knowing the Great God is a tortoise, so he is neither
omnipotent nor the only small god who lives and obtains his powers thanks of
his believers’ faith. And Om faces the true that Brutha is the only one who…
“Small
Gods” is a very interesting and funny novel that makes fun of some aspects of
the religions in general, so people can relax and take it not to serious but as
an important part of their lives. Terry Pratchett has the ability of write this
novel and put some jokes that can distract us from the rest of the text, but he
also know how to take us back to the story. I certainly enjoyed reading this
book, and I feel proud to write that I understood many of the jokes that are
included in the book (even one related to programming!)
I recommend this book to readers up to 15 years, because it is easy to read (even if you are a non-native English speaker), but there are some complicated issues that require more general culture knowledge and even the jokes are sometimes hard to understand. Despite the fact that it could be difficult to read, Terry Pratchett gives us a fictional new and interesting whole world in this book.
I recommend this book to readers up to 15 years, because it is easy to read (even if you are a non-native English speaker), but there are some complicated issues that require more general culture knowledge and even the jokes are sometimes hard to understand. Despite the fact that it could be difficult to read, Terry Pratchett gives us a fictional new and interesting whole world in this book.
The Big Sleep: the beginnings of Philip Marlowe
The Big Sleep: the beginnings of Philip Marlowe
Reviewed by Verónica Hernández Landa Valencia
October 17th, 2013
October 17th, 2013
Raymond
Chandler (1888-1959) is an icon between the fans of crime novels. He contributed
to the renovation of the genre born in the nineteenth century with a new and
unexpected focus. In Chandler’s novels, the rational process followed by the
main character to solve a mystery is not so developed than in nineteenth
century novels, as those of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Instead of that, the
mystery is created by the atmosphere: strange characters that belong to a dark
world inhabited by persons with mental disturbances, lawless men and woman —not
only those who came from the underworld, but also those who use checkbooks and
cover their shady business under the appearance of legality.
The
Big Sleep (1939), ranked by the Time’s, in 2005, in the list of the 100 best
novels of the twentieth century novels, is the first Chandler’s hardboiled
crime novel starred by Philip Marlowe, the character that made Chandler famous.
In this first work of Chandler, Marlowe is already represented with all the
attributes that have made him emblematic: a tough and self-sufficient
middle-age man, with a great intelligence and an acute sense of humor, who
lives in the borders if the dark world where he constantly have to get into to
solve mysteries, hired by the most enigmatic and exotic people.
In this novel the reader can also
recognize some characteristics of the second characters that will be exploded
in other novels, such as The High Window:
a rich, willful and mysterious person ―in this case a man, Mr. Sternwood―, who
cannot be easily interpreted, and is surrounded by the strangest people the
reader can imagine. Commonly, this character hires Marlowe to solve a case
without telling him the entire story. Therefore, the investigation takes
Marlowe to unexpected paths.
It is also possible to find the exotic Chandler’s female characters that
made him famous: women almost subnormal that only act in extreme situations,
and hers actions usually results in big troubles; powerful and arrogant women
that will be dominated by Marlowe. Here, it becomes necessary to recognize
that, for the reader who is accustomed to this kind of character representation
and understands the time when Chandler wrote his novels, these characters
wouldn’t represent a problem, even can be really attractive, but they can be
irritating for those who don’t like a misogynistic treatment of the
characters.
The story starts with general
Sternwood, an old man about to die, hiring Marlowe because he wanted to stop
being blackmailed, without paying anything to the blackmailer. The problem
started because Mr. Sternwood had two rebels and uninhibited daughters that
always got in troubles; somebody called Geiger founds out a dark secret
―gambling debts of Carmen, the youngest Sternwood’s daughter―, and tried to use
it to earn easy money. Nevertheless, the Sternwood family had more secrets to
hide, and this turned more complicated Marlowe’s work.
What it seemed to be a simple
arrangement ―once Marlowe’s knew about Geiger’s dark secrets and had
information to pay Geiger’s blackmail with the same coin―, become an
investigation about a chain of blackmails and murders that, apparently, started
with Geiger’s, but Marlowe will discover that the murders started some years
ago, by the hand of the most unexpected person.
From the start, the investigation
Mr. Sternwood commissioned Marlowe seemed to have a little fold that was
mysterious: the name of Rusty Reagan ―the husband of Vivian, Mr. Sternwood
oldest daughter, who disappeared suddenly years ago―, appeared since the first
conversation with Mr. Sternwood. The general never told Marlowe two investigate
the fate of Reagan; however Marlowe knew that the general expected to, not
because he wanted back Vivian’s husband, but because Regan was a friend of him.
In contrast, Vivian seemed more worried because she believed that Mr. Sternwood
asked Marlowe to find Regan. Meanwhile, Carmen was creating more problems.
Once the blackmail situation was solved, finding this mysterious
character, Reagan, becomes the center of Marlowe’s investigation. It leads him
not only to meet more blackmailers, but also bookmakers, an owner of a gambling
house, dangerous blonds, desirable women
―and others not so desirable―, a hired murderer that almost put in danger
Marlowe’s life, and let him a little beaten. That is the strange way that
guides Marlowe to the past of the Sternwood family.
For lovers and experts of twentieth century crime novel, to read
Chandler’s books is considered almost an obligation. In the case of The Big Sleep, to the well known
author’s technique to create singular characters and environments, is added the
freshness of the first Chandler's novel in this literary genre.
Thinking about Communication in the web
5.0 out of 5 stars.
October 29, 2013.
By Edwin León.
Language and the Internet by David Crystal.
Internet is a medium that has made deep changes in
human lives. Marketing processes, democratic decision making, education and
audiovisual diffusion are some examples of this transformation. The way in
which people interact with each other has also been transformed because of the
possibilities that Internet gives, breaking the time and space limits
worldwide. Language and the Internet
(2001) by David Crystal, the first edition in Oxford University Press, is a
book that explains extensively how World Wide Web and computers have changed
communication between people.
David Crystal, who is an honorary Professor of
Linguistics in Wales University, analyzes with scientific rigor the changes
that users have lived in their chatting since the public availability of the
Internet until the beginning of the twenty-first century. Crystal is a world
foremost authority on Linguistic studies. In addition to English as a Global Language and Language Death, Language and
the Internet completes the author’s perspectives about current changes in
English language; however, his arguments could be applied to languages all
around the world which are used in virtual platforms.
Crystal starts his book explaining how chatting has
made individuals to create new resources to communicate with their peers, so
that they can adapt and take advantage of the properties of the medium. He
notices the emergence of a novel way of talking between users, neither spoken
nor written, but a combination of both. This is what David Crystal names Netspeak. After describing it, he
presents how the users have adopted this linguistic register to build a
community and to identify themselves as part of it. The body of Crystal’s book
is shaped with the analysis of four Internet situations where Netspeak is used: E-mail, chatgroups,
virtual worlds and the web itself.
The author advocates for a non-prescriptive theory of
Language shaping. He thinks about Language as a medium which necessarily needs
to change throughout the time and space. This conversion is just part of
natural and cultural human evolution. Internet has revolutionized a lot of
routines and habits of human life and Language would not be the exception.
Crystal’s work is a pioneer
study on the topic. It has been referred in subsequent works such as Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile
World (2008) by Naomi Baron, who is also a linguist interested in the
technological influence in human communication. In fact, Baron and Crystal
constantly refer each other in their researches. Language and the Internet has transcended the United Kingdom
boundaries too. In Latin America, Guadalupe López and Clara Ciuffoli considered
this book to write their own purposal entitled Facebook es el mensaje: oralidad, escritura y después (2012).
Language
and the Internet is a book mainly addressed to scholars
and researchers of Linguistics, Communication Studies and ICT’s Development
Studies. Nevertheless, it could be useful for an everyday Internet user who
wants to know more about the communication practices in which he/she is
involved. Although Crystal uses a lot of technical terms related to
Linguistics, his written style is not so complex to become confused at reading
his reflections. He actually adds some humorous thoughts about his own findings
along the text.
Language is an important quality of human beings which
defines not only social interaction in a certain group, but also the symbolic
values of a culture. David Crystal gives a deep approach to this issue in
the digital age, explaining their causes, characteristics and consequences. There
may be a lot of concepts and arguments that can be rejected. Personally, to
talk about a Netspeak seems to be
risky because he is establishing the medium as the dominant element in Language
transformations above from users. Notwithstanding, Crystal's contribution is
definetely valuable no matter the controversies that it can incite.
Crystal doesn´t analyze the instant messaging
interaction although it was very popular in the 2000. He neither considers the
social networks and its influence on Internet users' conversations because they
become a boom until 2006. Notwithstanding, the author highlights that the four
studied Internet situations are certainly not the only ones which will impact
on human communication. In this sense, when David Crystal acknowledges Internet
as an integrating medium, he foresees the emergence of websites like Facebook
and Twitter.
Language and
the Internet is an obligatory reading to understand current
communication practices. Comprehending language and its uses is one way to know
more about society itself and oneself.
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