Two Books

Well, since my search for an apartment (unfruitfully) continues, and I haven't been able to go to the movies lately, I'll take a few moments to write a little about a couple of books I read recently... The first one is The Act You've Known for All These Years: A Year in the Life of Sgt. Pepper and Friends, (em português) whose title is pretty self-explanatory... it's a great book about one of the most creative and weird periods of pop music. Beatles, Bob Dylan, (Syd Barrett's) Pink Floyd, Beach Boys (well, Brian Wilson really), Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young... those were amazing times... basically Clinton Heylin writes about that year when the world's greatest bands were fighting to see who would come up with the next big breakthrough (you know, after Rubber Soul, Revolver, Blonde on Blonde, Pet Sounds...) in pop music, and would set the pace for everything that was to come. Acid is, alongside the aforementioned artists, the main character of the story of the rise (and fall, sort of) of psychodelia. For me it was really cool to get to know much more about one of my favorite musical periods ever. One of the best parts of the book is that, even though Heylin pays the deserved respect to everybody involved he does look at everything with a critical eye... this is no ode to Sgt. Pepper's... it is a serious, fairly unbiased analysis of the environment in which it came to be... oh, and he suggests soundtracks for each chapter, which is pretty cool too!!! :-)

When I came to Belo Horizonte, one of the first places I went to was (of course) the nearby mall. There I went into a bookstore and two books caught my eyes: a fairly short book by José Saramago that I'd never seen before, 1993, and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (em potuguês)... I don't really know why I got interested in the latter... I didn't know the author, had never heard about the book, and didn't contain any clues as to what the hell it was about. But it wasn't an expensive book, so I trusted my guts and bought it anyways (I bought 1993 too). I actually do that quite often and I usually end up enjoying the book. This was no exception. It's not an amazing book, that's true. But it's pretty enjoyable. The fact that it's from the perspective of a 9-year-old, and the lengths the author goes to to make sure you don't forget that, is sometimes annoying: like "mispronunciation" of some words, repetition of certain sentences, stuff like that. It's not meant for children, though, no way! There's not much I could write about the story that wouldn't ruin it for you because if you don't have at least a little suspense in the beginning it will be hard to read it all... but if you like little fables that try and tell really heavy stories with a light mood you'll definitely enjoy this... I guess that was the whole point, because the theme in itself has been touched on by so many people before (and yes, with so much more talented) that were it not for the whole fable thing, it would be hard to justify why the hell do we need another little sad story on the matter...