Another book that I read at my school reading hours and couldn’t grasp every bit of it because of my very talkative students whom I need to warn every two paragraphs.
However, London achieves to mesmerize me with his writing again. He never fails to hook me in his stories with his use of nature versus human theme. He writes his stories usually in a harsher tone, I guess to represent the cold and unforgiving side of nature yet he chose different voices in this compilation. He wrote a bit more in an amusing tone in That Spot or a more romantic one in Flush of Gold. I like all of the stories but the title story is outweighing in my opinion. I think I like his harsh and unforgiving nature stories better.
This was a great short breath for me, I loved it.
Ayy bizimkilerin yine başına işler açıldıı. Bu kitabı da baya sevdim. Tam böyle Cadılar Bayramı zamanı okunacak bir seri. Serinin diğer 2 kitabınıda çok merak ediyorum bakalım bizimkilerin başına neler gelecek? İlk kitapta Ollie’nin zekiliği ön plandaysa burada da Coco’nun zekası ön plandaydı cidden sevdim. Brain’ı bu kitapta çok okuyamadım ona üzüldüm. Diğer kitapta da umarım Brain bizimkileri kurtarır. Güzel bir evren işleyişini sevdim sürekli bizimkilerin başına bir şeyler geliyor asla sakin bir hayatları yok. Altın üçlünün maceralarını okumayı sevdim. Ollie’nin annesinin saati onları cidden sürekli kurtardı. Bir ara dedim kesin Coco’nun canına okuyacaklar başına bir şeyler gelecek ama asla beklediğim şeyler olmadı. Ürkünç bir kitap aynı zamanda çocuk karakterler olması hoşuma gitti.
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
An exceptional man with an extraordinary memory capacityNörobilim
This relatively short book is about an exceptional man with an extraordinary memory capacity. The author introduced him as "a Jewish boy who, having failed as a musician and as a journalist, had become a mnemonist". Whilst the focus of the book is the subject’s "vast memory", what the author eventually depicts is a man whose total personality is truly unique and complex. What emerges is a picture of a strange man with very great expectations but unfulfilled ambitions, whose inexhaustible memory capacity is matched only by his enigmatic nature. Quite fascinating is the author’s forensic and painstaking unraveling of the underlying mechanism behind this man’s phenomenal memory and unusual character (page 4). The book’s comprehensive approach was guided by the author’s precept that ‘the thoughtful physician is never interested merely in the course of a disease he happens to be studying at the moment, but tries to determine what effect a disturbance has on other organic processes…thus giving rise to the total picture of disease (pages 4-5). He exemplified this precept throughout the book, urging others to follow his example and study other psychological syndromes such as this (page 5).
The author, a psychologist and neurologist, studied the protagonist, now known as Solomon Shereshevsky, for almost thirty years, starting in the 1920’s. His approach was methodical, typified by a keen attention to detail, and carried out over a long period of time. What he unearthed was a rare and exceptional man whose memory he described as ‘one of the keenest the literature on the subject has ever described’ (page 3). It didn’t take much testing for the author to realise that "it was impossible to establish a point of limit to the capacity or the duration of his memory" because he had the
18/08/2023 Although i’m obsessed with dragons, I’m not much of a fantasy reader. I mean, i used to be, but i haven’t been for about 10 years. Halfway through, i thought to myself, “this may be the best fantasy book i’ve ever read” but then it slowly became less interesting and more generic and wattpad-ish. It has plotholes and it’s a bit overlong too. I usually leave fantasy books halfway through when this happens, but FW is gripping and easy to read since the writing is quite simple. That was exactly what i needed though… a beginner friendly fantasy book. I also don’t enjoy YA stuff so it was nice reading about adults this time. I enjoyed the overall ride. She has too many (male) voices inside her head, it must be crazy to be her.
Reread: 16/04/24: SOOOOOO easy to digest Got me out of the reading slump.
Sokaktan Gelen Sesler (Voices from the Street), Philip K. Dick’in 1950’lerde yazdığı ilk kitaplardan biriydi ama onu hiç bastırma fırsatı olmamıştı. İlk romanları hep ana akım içindeydi, henüz 1960’lar ve 70’lere damga vuracak Bilim-Kurgu kitaplarını yazmaya başlamamıştı. Ama, ilk romanları da ileride edineceği takıntının izlerini taşıyorlar: sürekli çevresindeki dünyayı sorgular, ya o dünyanın insanları bir bilinçsizlik halinde tutmak için kullanılan yapay bir imge olduğunu düşünür (Matrix’teki insanlar gibi) ya da nedenini bulmaya çalıştığı varoluşsal bir tedirginliği vardır. Çoğunlukla bu düşünceleri kendini delilik düzeyine getirir, delirmiş olma olasılığını diğer yayınlarının yanısıra Exegesis’inde de sık sık dile getirir.
Sokaktan Gelen Sesler 1950’lerde Kaliforniya’da bir televizyon satış ve tamir mağazasında çalışa Stuart Hadley'nin öyküsünü anlatır. Sürekli yaptığı iş konusunda kaygılanır, hayatına pek de anlam veremez. Evli olmasına ve karısı ilk çocuklarına hamile olmasına karşın bu olayı hayatı ve geleceği konusunda daha olumlu düşüncelere erişmek için kullanamaz. Roman Stuart’ın kendi kişisel cehennemine inmesini ve yavaş yavaş kendini yok etmesini izler. Kitaptaki bazı bölümler Dick’in Bilim-Kurgu eserlerindeki kahramanlar gibi varoluşsal bir kriz yaşayan kahramanları anlatır, ama burada krizin ya da kaygının kaynağı doğaüstü ya da dünyadışı nedenler değildir, bu savaş sonrası dönemdeki problemli varoluşu ve zevk alabileceği herhangi bir değeri olmamasıdır.
Kaliforniya’da 1950’lerdeki yaşamı, dini mezhepleri, McCarthy’ciliği ve dönemin diğer kötülüklerini anlattığı öyküsünde Dick acımasız bir ortam yaratmış ve anlaşılıyor ki daha sonraki 30 yıl boyunca bir çok romanında işleyeceği tek temaya hazırlık yapıyor: içinde yaşadığımız evren bir yanılsama.
