Currently being the only reader and the first reviewer of this book is thrilling! Alright, let's start.
So, this book is literally a conspiracy theory itself.
Silas Orven is a man, a supposed time-traveller, who appeared in a private Facebook group in about 2024-2025 if I remember correctly. In that group he claimed that he came from the future to try and edit the timeline because humanity in his era of the future is having massive problems. If you can "edit" the timeline, it creates a new variable. Our current actions, if they are different, can create a new result and new future timeline. At first, people mocked him, trolled him, dismissed him completely. But when he began accurately predicting specific events, people were stunned and began taking him far more seriously. Some even started idolizing him and treating him like some kind of divine figure, even though he repeatedly said he wasn’t a prophet or anything divine and that no one should worship him. The guy became a sensation, basically.
So in 2025 he published this book and then completely disappeared. No one knows where he is. No one can identify him. His name doesn’t even show up in any global database. Some of his most devoted followers genuinely believe he went back to the future, where he came from.
I read the book, and it’s incredibly well-written. Some parts are genuinely disturbing; his descriptions of the future and the era he comes from are pretty terrifying. It's pretty dystopian. It’s impressive how he explains how time travel supposedly works, and he even touches on several taboo topics like Hitler, aliens and their origins, why they abduct humans, as well as God, the Bible, the Qur’an, who built the pyramids and why, whether humans will achieve eternal life, what happens after death, and so
The Memory Police give me a dystopian vibe. If George Orwell were Japanese, he might have written 1984 like this book. Having a memory disease is different than living with the memory police. When you have a memory disease you could write notes/letters. (which the Professor chose this way) But the memory police make you forget and stuffs vanished, if you remember them, you will vanish too. That's such a terrible thing.
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You ain’t never the same when the air hits your brain
Frank T. Vertosick Jr. describes his personal voyage from eager medical student to board certified neurosurgeon. By turns comic and tragic, this memoir is a must read for neurosurgeons but also of interest to most readers. Dr Vertosick provides, from an American perspective, a keen insight into a specialty which is often regarded with suspicion by other doctors. He did not initially intend to become a neurosurgeon, but “strayed too close to a dangerously seductive profession and became stuck for good like a fly in a spider’s web.”
On his first day as a neurosurgical resident, a cynical and weary chief resident takes him aside and outlines the “Rules of Neurosurgery.” The first of these provides the title of the book: “You ain’t never the same when the air hits your brain.” A worrying proposition to those with no background knowledge, nevertheless this maxim pithily sums up the subtle, intangible change that often occurs after cranial surgery, but which cannot be neatly recorded on a chart. The other rules include such useful aphorisms as “the only minor operation is one that someone else is doing” and “if the patient isn’t dead you can always make them worse,” a contemporary variation on the Hippocratic motto: "primum non nocere."
Though lighthearted in tone, the book addresses serious points that are relevant to the practice of neurosurgery in particular and medicine in general. Medical careers tend to be dominated by anecdotes. Clinicians all remember their first times, the medical curiosities they have encountered, and, perhaps most importantly, their mistakes. Dr Vertosick’s trial by fire comes during a craniotomy and clipping of aneurysm. At first the case progresses well, but suddenly he is faced with a “crimson flood” as the aneurysm ruptures, with catastrophic results forNörobilim
Frank T. Vertosick Jr. describes his personal voyage from eager medical student to board certified neurosurgeon. By turns comic and tragic, this memoir is a must read for neurosurgeons but also of interest to most readers. Dr Vertosick provides, from an American perspective, a keen insight into a specialty which is often regarded with suspicion by other doctors. He did not initially intend to become a neurosurgeon, but “strayed too close to a dangerously seductive profession and became stuck for good like a fly in a spider’s web.”
On his first day as a neurosurgical resident, a cynical and weary chief resident takes him aside and outlines the “Rules of Neurosurgery.” The first of these provides the title of the book: “You ain’t never the same when the air hits your brain.” A worrying proposition to those with no background knowledge, nevertheless this maxim pithily sums up the subtle, intangible change that often occurs after cranial surgery, but which cannot be neatly recorded on a chart. The other rules include such useful aphorisms as “the only minor operation is one that someone else is doing” and “if the patient isn’t dead you can always make them worse,” a contemporary variation on the Hippocratic motto: "primum non nocere."
Though lighthearted in tone, the book addresses serious points that are relevant to the practice of neurosurgery in particular and medicine in general. Medical careers tend to be dominated by anecdotes. Clinicians all remember their first times, the medical curiosities they have encountered, and, perhaps most importantly, their mistakes. Dr Vertosick’s trial by fire comes during a craniotomy and clipping of aneurysm. At first the case progresses well, but suddenly he is faced with a “crimson flood” as the aneurysm ruptures, with catastrophic results for
SPOILER ALERT
Huózhe (To Live) — Yu Hua
Summary
Yu Hua’s Huózhe (活着, To Live) follows the tragic life of Xu Fugui, once a wealthy young man who squanders his fortune gambling and is reduced to poverty. After losing his land and wealth, Fugui is conscripted into the Nationalist army, later captured by the Communists, and finally returns home years later only to find his father dead and his family destitute.
From then on, Fugui’s life becomes a series of losses: his mother dies, his son Youqing is accidentally killed during a blood transfusion intended for a local official’s wife, his daughter Fengxia (mute from childhood illness) dies giving birth, and his wife Jiazhen passes away quietly not long after. Fugui’s son-in-law also dies in a construction accident, leaving Fugui to raise his grandson Kugen, who later dies from overeating sweet potatoes.
By the novel’s end, Fugui lives alone with an old ox named after himself, recounting his story to a wandering narrator. Despite unbearable grief, he endures.
> “人是为了活着本身而活着的，不是为了活着之外的任何事物而活着。”
“People live for the sake of living itself, not for anything beyond that.”
This quote captures the moral essence of the novel, existence as resistance.
Character Focus
Xu Fugui: Once selfish and hedonistic, he becomes a symbol of endurance and humility.
Jiazhen: Embodies patience, forgiveness, and the quiet strength of women during turbulent times.
Youqing & Fengxia: Represent innocence crushed by forces beyond control: politics, fate, or chance.
The Narrator: A detached listener who records Fugui’s oral story, giving it a folkloric and historical weight.
The story of a terrible brain injuryNörobilim
Zazetsky is severely wounded by shell fragments in 1942, with massive damage to the left occipito-parietal region of his brain (interweaving with the narrative voices of Zazetsky and Luria are a number of “digressions” on neuroanatomy and cerebral function, so lucid and simple they cannot be bettered). This fragmentation affects all aspects of his life: He suffers an intolerable, constantly shifting visual chaos – objects in his visual fields (what remains of his visual fields) are unstable, glimmer fitfully, get displaced, so that everything appears in a state of flux. It is impossible for him to see, or even imagine, the right side of his body – the sense of “a right side” has disappeared both from the outer world and his own self. He is subject to continual, almost unimaginable, uncertainties about his body: sometimes he thinks parts of it have changed, that his head has become inordinately large, his torso extremely small, his legs displaced... Sometimes he thinks his right leg is somewhere above his shoulder, possibly above his head. He also forgets how parts of his body function – thus, when he needs to defecate, he cannot remember his own anus.
But above all, and infinitely more serious than all these, are the devastations of memory, language, and thought: “My memory’s a blank. I can’t think of a single word... Whatever I do remember is scattered, broken down into disconnected bits and pieces.” With this he feels like “some terrible baby,” or like someone bewitched or lost in a hideous dream, although “A dream can’t last this long or be so monotonous. That means I’ve actually been experiencing this all these years... How horrible this illness is!” At times he even believes he has been killed, because the old Zazetsky, his former self and his world, has been
The Man With a Shattered World: The History of a Brain WoundA. R. Luria · Harvard University Press · 19871 okunma
Animal Farm
I already read the Turkish version of Animal Farm three or four years ago. Animal Farm is a captivating novel that draws you in. The language is clear, well-written and is easy to understand for the reader. I think everybody should read this book at least once in their lifetime. The central conflict starts with the desire of the animals for freedom and equality against the farm owner, and they took their freedom through a rebellion. Afterwards, the pigs take over of the farm. However, things do not go as the animals desire. Day by day, their living conditions worsen, and they can't even remember how life was before the rebellion. They simply assume it must have been worse when humans were in charge. And they kept their hope that everything would get better with time or that the pigs were doing their best for them. It’s a stunning book that enlightens readers to the truths of our lives and the systems by which countries are governed. I highly recommend this novel to everyone. You definitely won't be regret it.
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