David Bodanis - Passionate Minds - The Great Enlightenment Love Affair (Little, Brown, 2006)

One more biography on the life that Voltaire and Emilie du Châtelet had together at the castle of Cirey. Bodanis is more interested in the story of the two figureheads of the French enlightenment than he is in their thoughts and new insights.

Nevertheless, it's insightful, interesting and funny at times, and for a biography, also easy to read. With two characters such as Voltaire and Emilie, not much can go wrong in the description of their lives. They did so much and meant so much for later generations that is almost seems like a feat to describe their lives in 230 pages.

Judith P. Zinsser - Emilie du Châtelet, Daring Genius Of The Enlightenment (Penguin, 2006)

In my Voltaire year, I also read this fascinating biography of an even more fascinating woman, Emilie du Châtelet, an 18th Century mathematician and scientist who was the mistress of Voltaire for many years. She was of very high nobility, yet never really fit in. She was more interested in science and mathematics than in the shallow life at the salons of the King and Queen. After her third child was born, she moved to the castle of Cirey in the Champagne region where she lived with Voltaire, and with the blessing of her husband. Together, they translated Newton into French, wrote books about physics, the nature of fire.

They organise evenings at the castle for other influential thinkers. Du Châtelet fought her entire life against the prejudices of the male world against women, and showed both by her knowledge, her insights and her character that the actual opposite was true.

Maybe a little less known, is her influence of the scientific approach, and the strong importance she gave to the role of hypotheses as the foundation of building up evidence and counter-evidence. Despite her great interest and admiration for people like Newton and Leibniz, she still challenged some of their thoughts and argued against some of their conclusions.

For her and for Voltaire the entire world was opening up. Stories about new territories, other cultures, about the forces of the universe, about the orbits of planets, about the possibilities of the microscope and even the invention of inoculation of children to prevent diseases created a new world of vast opportunities that suddenly broke the narrow and oppressive confines of religion and state.

Both she and Voltaire did everything they could to open this new found crack in this narrow world as wide as possible. Du Chatelet also published a book on happiness, including some for that time shocking disclosures on the importance of pleasure, and a book enumerating all the completely irrational things in the Bible, demonstrating that scripture is made by men, and then men with limited possibilities of coherence and logic.

Zinsser's book gives a wonderful description of the complexities of this budding of rationality in a still very obscure society.

Maarten Boudry - Waarom De Wereld Niet Naar De Knoppen Gaat (Polis, 2019) ****

Wie Stephen Pinker's 'The Better Angels Of Our Nature' en het meer recente 'Englightenment Now' heeft gelezen, of nog Hans Rosslings "Factfulness" of Bob Duffy's "The Perils Of Perception" zal één en ander herkennen in dit boek van filosoof Maarten Boudry. De thesis is dezelfde: het gaat beter met onze wereld dan in het verleden, en alle feiten ondersteunen deze vaststelling. Alleen staat onze gebrekkige perceptie in de weg om dat te zien.

Mijn vakterrein is de gezondheidszorg, en wat we op dat gebied in de voorbije decennia hebben gezien als vooruitgang, zouden mensen zelfs dertig jaar geleden niet hebben kunnen geloven, en niet alleen bij ons, maar ook in ontwikkelingslanden.

Boudry vertrekt vanuit eenzelfde bezorgdheid voor het kennen van de juiste feiten en die ook correct te interpreteren. Hij richt zich tegen de intellectuelen (en anderen) die een positieve houding tegenover de vooruitgang als te snel wegwuiven als een naïef gebrek aan kritische zin. Boudry verdeelt deze vooruitgangscritici in vier groepen: de nostalgische pessimisten, de doemdenkers van de 'wacht maar'-school, de cyclische pessimisten en tenslotte de tredmolendenkers.

Hij behandelt de grote thema's van vandaag: ongelijkheid, racisme, islam, de globalisering van de media, ons milieu, en de grote boeman: het neoliberalisme. Zijn ontwarring van deze thema's is verfrissend (waarschijnlijk omdat ze ook sterk aanleunen bij mijn standpunt hierover).

Mijn opinie hierover: mensen hebben vaak een verkeerd beeld over de grote onderwerpen als ze die moeten evalueren op een abstract niveau. Maar als je aan mensen vraagt hoe hun leven er vandaag uitziet, wat ze doen, of ze doen wat ze willen, of ze zien wie ze willen, enz, dan merk je al snel dat het heel goed gaat met de mensen. We kunnen vandaag waar onze grootouders nog niet aan dachten te kunnen doen. Ze leefden in een uiterst bekrompen wereld van kleine dorpen met versmachtende sociale controle, pestgedrag en machtsmisbruik, een verstikkende godsdienst en als je het slecht had ook geen enkel perspectief om het ooit beter te hebben.

Boudry geeft een brede en diepe analyse van onze wereld, zowel internationaal als in Vlaanderen en Nederland.

Een aanrader!

Brian Cox - Forces Of Nature (William Collins, 2017) ***

Physicist Brian Cox produced and presented one of the most beautiful and educational documentaries on the nature of our nature, answering questions about things that are so everyday that we rarely ask questions about them, such as: why do snow crystals have the form they have or why is the sky blue?

He takes the reader on a fascinating journey from the most obvious and easy to understand things in a step-by-step approach to more complex matter, such as the nature of space and time, or the deepest essence of light, or the origin of life and free will. Cox is a wonderful guide in all this, keeping a big picture view, and once in a while digging deeper in the complexity of our nature.

In passing, he also advocates for more investments in basic research, to help us understand the deepest questions about our universe, even if they do not immediately result in economic or social benefits. I can only support that vision.

I can recommend both the documentary (the quality filming by the BBC is as usual astonishing) and the book. Both really are complementary.

Books Of The Year 2018

Of the 37 books I read this year, only a few come out on top. I have possibly read more non-fiction than fiction, and possibly because the times demand it. In the 'novel' section I was wonderfully pleased to read one masterly novel, that is surely among my top-10 of the decade: Polish author Olga Tokarczuk's "Flights". I also read Cormac McCarthy's "All The Pretty Horses", not so recent anymore, but highly recommended. The other winners are George Saunders with the brilliantly original and haunting (literally and figuratively) "Lincoln In The Bardo" (thanks, Luc!), and the amazing proze - as usual - by Colm Tóibín's re-writing of the ancient Greek tragedy of Iphigenia's sacrifice, and not to forget Leïla Slimani's modern tragedy in "Chanson Douce". These are the real highly recommended novels. The others are good, but without being exceptional.

In the non-fiction list, Robert Sapolksy's majestic "Behave" comes in the number one spot: it gives us a perspective on how one single act (firing a shot), is the result of events in our brain and body being conditioned from biochemical interactions in the last fraction of a second up to biological and cultural   triggers that can be traced back to pre-history. Second in the row is David Reich's genetic analysis of our ancient past, with clear explanations of why our view of ancient migrations and cultural relationships should be revisited. The third group are equally relevant to our world today: Pinker, Rosling and Duffy present us with a strong plea to look at facts, and to understand the limitations of beliefs, assumptions and perceptions. They also show us how wrong we actually often are. In today's world, all three books should be mandatory literature for everyone in the world. Voltaire's biography has its part on this list, as well as other books about biology and religion.

I also read a lot of books of more limited quality. I will not expand on those.


Best novels of the year 

For me, there is no doubt or discussion about this year's top of the list : the brilliant and genre-bending book "Flights" by Olga Tokarczuk.

1. Olga Tokarczuk - Flights *****
2. Colm Toibin - House Of Names ****
3. George Saunders - Lincoln In The Bardo ****
4. Leïla Slimani - Chanson Douce ****
5. Ian McEwan - Nutshell ***½
6. Roy Jacobsen - The Unseen ***½
7. Colson Whitehead - Underground Railroad ***
8. Richard Flannagan - First Person ***
9. Benedict Wells - The End Of Loneliness ***
10. Paolo Cognetti - The Eight Mountains ***

Not so recent novels

1. Cormac McCarthy - All The Pretty Horses ****

Best non-fiction books of the year

1. Robert Sapolsky - Behave *****
2. David Reich - Who We Are And How We Got Here ****½
3. Stephen Pinker - Enlightenment Now ****
4. Hans Rosling - Factfulness ****
5. Bobby Duffy - The Perils Of Perception ****
6. Bill Messler & H. James Cleaves II - A Brief History Of Creation ****
7. Ian Davidson - Voltaire, A Life ****
8. David Quammen - The Tangled Tree ****
9. Bart Ehrman - The Triumph Of Christianity  ***
10. Alice Roberts - The Incredible Unlikeliness Of Being ***

Bobby Duffy - The Perils Of Perception (Atlantic Books, 2018) ****

In a world of post-truth and alternative facts and fake news, this book is a welcoming read for everybody to understand how wrong they are. It is in fact the perfect companion book to Hans Rosling's "Factfulness".

Bobby Duffy is head of one of the world's leading opinion-polling agencies, which one lucky day started - for promotional reasons - to conduct studies on political thinking and reality. Now, decades later, the agency has conducted their surveys around the world, allowing them to compare countries, trends over time, and of course of perceptions by common people completely differ from the actual reality of the country.

Whether the topic is health, money, immigration, religion ... or even less emotional topics such as internet access, public perceptions are almost always completely off the mark, and not by a short distance, but a very large margin in most countries.

This book is an essential read for anybody in politics, public affairs and journalism. It demonstrates the extreme dangers of referendums, because the average population does not have a clue about reality. They don't. It explains why populism has such an easy task of exploiting these misperceptions and use them to advance their evil cause. It explains a lot of the anger and the fear among populations, two emotions that are often misdirected, but they relate more about people's perceptions than about reality. To put it differently, people seem to be afraid of their perceptions rather than from reality.

And the book is very well written: simple coherent, non-judgmental, objective.

Bill Mesler & H. James Cleaves II - A Brief History Of Creation (Norton & Company, 2016) ****

The title of this book has to be taken literally: it's a history of all the theories about the origin of life, a fascinating subject that has boggled the minds of the smartest scientists in the world since time immemorial, with the exception of course of religions.

They start with the ancient Greeks - where else? - and then guide us through the centuries. It's a wonderful overview of scientific questioning, research and discovery, but at the same time the book offers a good insight in some primitive and wrong theories, including the very longstanding error that animals could arise out of nothing. Aristotle already concluded that eels just came to existence out of water, because he couldn't figure out how they migrated to the Mediterranean (unaware of their travels to the Sargasso sea), but even in the 19th century, people believed that mice could come to life just out of hay.

Luckily, cleverer minds made interesting discoveries. Belgian alchemist Jan Van Helmont came to the conclusion that all life came from eggs. Dutch weaver Anthony van Leeuwenhoek discovered microbes in the placque from his teeth that he put under his newly developed microscope.

The more interesting and in-depth analysis is the one from Darwin to Crick and Watson, followed by the initially controversial theories by Carl Woese into the real origins of life by studying DNA. He shook the foundations of scientific thinking by adding new, and more archaeic life forms into our general notion of how nature is organised, and how evolution works.

Today, we know that life must have come to existence out of the most basic amino acids, small chemical entities that create proteins. In lab tests, self-replicating RNA has been developed, yet never without the presence of a copying protein. Bacteria were discovered in the most uninhabitable places on earth, such as the hot water vents at the bottom of the ocean. Expectations are that in such extreme conditions chemical reactions have come into play to start the replicating process. But how, that still remains a mystery.

"A Brief History Of Creation" is an easy to read, and fascinating overview of the theories of creation throughout the ages. It demonstrates again how important science is to come to an understanding of our world. The biggest challenges remains to make sure that everybody in the world because aware that life was not created in the garden of eden.

Ian Davidson - Voltaire - A Life (Profile Books, 2012) ****

Voltaire is one of those amazing figures in literature and enlightenment. Even if he started as an author of theater, he soon became a leading political voice in France in the eighteenth century, advocating for more democracy, justice, science and less church. He wrote around 20,000 letters in his life, and many of those were the source material for Davidson to write this magnificent biography. We not only get insights in the author's opinions, but also about his ongoing battles with the establishment, his incarceration and exile, his turbulent love life with Emilie de Chatelet, his scam to win the Paris lottery which made him extremely rich. A man with opinions on everything and everyone, but at the same time willing to suffer the consequences of his opinions.

The book is quite heavy, with close to 500 pages of relatively small print, and many letter excerpts, yet Voltaire's thinking and life seem to come back to life in Davidson's extremely well-documented text. That is of course largely due to Voltaire's own unusual life, but also to Davidson's skills.

Moshin Hamid - Exit West (Penguin, 2017) **½

In "Exit West", two young people, Saeed and Nadia, try to find the hidden door to flee to the West in order to escape the oppressive religious regime in which they live. The first part of the book is about their love in their home country, their shy efforts at physical and intimate contact, and all this in the context of political tension. The second, shorter part is about their lives once they've succeeded in escaping: the problems of becoming accepted in their new place, carving out their own new lives, and finding each other again.

Even if the novel is not entirely predictable - I won't say how - most of the time it is. It is about the plight of people living in countries such as Iran, unable to live their life to the full, and the disappointment and opportunities in their new home country as refugees. But Hamid's narrative falls short of the real predicament of people in this situation. It is neither brutal nor really gripping. He describes the characters more than making them come to life, his story unfolds as written by an omniscient narrator who looks upon his subject matter from a distance, in a very clinical way.

The plight of migrants deserves literary attention, but the fact that it happens, does not make it necessarily great literature.

Olga Tokarczuk - Flights (Fitzcarraldo, 2017) *****

Brilliant!

Winner of the Man Booker International Prize 2018, and fully deserved, I would say. Tokarczuk's writing is exceptional: it is part 'reverie', part history, part travel diary, part short story-telling, part philosophic musings, part poetic prose, and all that that written with a beautiful pen full of lyrical joy and an attitude to life and people that remains positive throughout.

There is almost no page where you don't stop and pause because of a new insight, an interesting perspective to look at things, the beauty of a phrase, the originality of a thought.

The narrator is travelling around the world: in planes, trains, airports and hotels. She meets people, she observes, reflects, interacts, fantasises. At the same time, "Flights" is also a history of the preservation of the human body, literally, with a special attention to plastination. She tells some true and longer stories about the Filip Verheyen, the Flemish 18th century anatomist, who wrote "letters to his amputated leg", about the letters by Josephine Soliman to the Austrian Emperor Francis II to let her bury her father, an African loyal and personal servant of the emperor, whose body was stuffed after his death and put on display in the emperor's curiousity cabinet, a story about the heart of Chopin that was secretly smuggled back into Poland after his death in Paris.

In essence, the book is about life and death, and flights are just the transition moment, when you are traveling from A to B, with body preservation as a futile attempt to avoid arrival, to prolong the flight artificially.

Some of her stories are cut into chapters that form the backbone of the book, but they are sprinkled with little memories and minute stories and thoughts, often not longer than a paragraph.

One example:

"RUTH

After his wife died, he made a list of all the places that had the same name as her: Ruth. He found quite a few of them, not only towns, but also streams, little settlements, hills - even an island. He said he was doing it for her sake, and besides, it gave him strength to see that in some indefinable way she still existed in the world, even if only in name. And that furthermore, whenever he would stand at the foot of a hill called Ruth, he would get the sense that she hadn't died at all, that she was right there, just differently. Her life insurance was able to cover the costs of his travels". 

... and one more:

"IRKUTSK- MOSCOW

Flight from Irkutsk to Moscow. It takes off at 8 am and lands in Moscow at the same time - at eight o'clock in the morning on that same day. It turns out to be right at sunrise, which means the whole flight takes place during dawn. Passengers remain in this one moment, a great, peaceful Now, vast as Siberia itself. So there should be time enough for confessions of whole lifetimes. Time elapses inside the plane but doesn't trickle out of it". 

Who wouldn't like to read this again, and again?

Tocarczuk's writing defies all conventions of structure, plot, narrative. Her style is as precious as it is meticulous, carefully crafted, concise, sharp and impactful. And her tone of voice is so full of wonder, optimism and positive thinking, without even a trace of sarcasm. And it is masterly composed, like a symphony of musings.

"Flights" is deep, insightful, gripping, funny, horryfying, philosophical, poetic.

A real treat. A real delight.

Mandatory reading.

David Quammen - The Tangled Tree - A Radical New History Of Life (Simon & Schuster, 2018) ****

In "The Tangled Tree", science author David Quammen gives a historical overview of how the visual image of the 'tree of life' evolved from a mythical concept into Darwin's biological concept of evolution, with one cause of life out of which all the different species branched out.

The discoveries and theories developed after the discovery of DNA, and this combined with the sequencing of the human genome at the beginning of this century, has given a totally new perspective. To put it simply, at the basis of the original "tree trunk", there may have been more species than anticipated, and secondly, DNA and other genetic material does not only replicate from one generation to the next, but evidence shows that genetic material also becomes incorporated through lateral 'infection', possibly through retroviruses. But even in earlier days, in their earliest life forms, the simplest bacteria probably became more complex not through evolution, but by absorbing other bacteria who transformed into useful ingredients with a new function and became part of the host's DNA.

Quammen did some very thorough research to write this book of recent finding in evolutionary biology, not only by making the published science also accessible to lay audiences - even if some basics are needed to grasp everything - but he also spoke to many of the actual scientists about their discoveries. And whether you like it or not, Quammen also spends a lot of time to present the fights between those scientists, their rejection of each other's ideas, their personal feuds and rivalries. It's probably the price you have to pay to receive a narrative such as this one, very readable and fascinating to follow, and I guess the personal and personality aspects of the stories play a good part of that.

Yuko Tsushima - Territory Of Light (Penguin, 1979) **½

"Territory of Light" is about a mother and her two-year old daughter, trying to build a life in Tokyo. The short chapters are all different stories from the same life, about the appartment itself, about meeting people in the park, about the neighbours ...

Her narrative is very descriptive, explaining what is happening and how things are happening, even if what is happening is very average and totally uninteresting. The struggle of a normal person in a modern city. It is not spectacular, it is not even memorable. I often wondered why I was reading this, and why I kept on reading. There is nothing special about this little book, except for Tsushima's elegant and economical writing. And it's only 119 pages long. So I finished it anyway.

Ian McEwan - Nutshell (Penguin, 2016) ***½

How wonderful when Ian McEwen describes human life in all its vulnerabilities, perversities, evil and goodness. How great when the characters are all too human, yet a little exaggerated to make the story compelling. How great when he makes these characters' desire for freedom and self-determination clash with conventions of marriage. How great to show the tragedy of humanity among people who are very close to each other: husband and wife and the husband's brother who is also the wife's lover. How great to put all the ingredients of a tragedy in place and one day: lust, betrayal, murder, greed.

... and how amazing when all this human toil is told from the perspective of the unborn child in the womb of one of the story's protagonists?

... and how attractive when the foetus narrator has this all-knowing, all savouring cynical streak about him, complaining as much about the dick entering his mother's vagina as he can savour the excellent wine she is drinking, and even able to tell from which château.

... but the whole human tragedy, however insignificant and small, has a serious impact on the little boy who's ready to strangle himself with the umbilical cord, the only thing he might be able to do in his little womb-world of powerlessness.

"Outside these warm, living walls an icy tale slides towards its hideous conclusion. (...) The cork is drawn from one more bottle, then, too soon, another. I'm washed far downstream of drunkenness, my senses blur their words but I hear in them the form of my ruin. Shadow figures on a bloody screen are arguing in hopeless struggle with their fate. Their voices rise and fall. When they don't accuse or wrangle, they conspire. What's said hangs in the air, like a Beijing smog".

McEwan at his best.

Martin Dougherty - Celts - The History And Legacy Of The Oldest Cultures In Europe (Amber Books, 2015) ***

Geographically, I could be a descendent of the Nervii, the Celts that lived in Belgium prior to the German and Roman invasion. But who were those Celts, and what more can I know than what I remember from the superficial things we learned in school? In this nicely illustrated book, Martin Dougherty gives many of the answers I needed, discerning myth from reality, leaving the question marks open when information is lacking.

Informative.

George Saunders - Lincoln In The Bardo (Random House, 2017) ****

Winner of last year's Man Booker Prize, and rightfully so. The book tells the story of the death of Abraham Lincoln's son Willy, who died of a fever at the age of twelve, during a banquet with two hundred guests the president and his wife were organising. Did they neglect their child? Should they have canceled the party? Why did he have to die alone in his room when his family was having fun?

The story is probably well known to Americans, less so to non-Americans, I assume, but it's nevertheless tragic. Saunders uses the story for a fantasy novel that is partly a collection of quotes from existing publications about the tragic event, and partly narrated by the ghosts that live in the cemetery where little Willy is buried in the family tomb. You get dozens and dozens of narrators, who never actually tell anything of any length, excepts small quotes, sometimes offered as parts of dialogues, sometimes as somewhat longer monologues. All ghosts have their own character, their own story, their own time where they came from. They are waiting to be allowed to enter the next realm or not. They are as ignorant of their fate as people who are alive, and as fearful of the next stage they will move to.

The reading experience is totally unique, and by itself that makes it worth to read the novel. At the same time, Saunders is stylistically sufficiently masterful to make all these voices come to life with their own tone and vocabulary, their own character, full of flaws and unintended wisdom and stupidity. It's like a Greek tragedy without actual actors, but in which the choir is the only one speaking.

They weep and are in turmoil as they witness how the president returns to his son's grave at night, only to take him out of his coffin again, and to hold the corpse in his arms, lamenting his predicament, and he does this not only once, but several nights in succession, as if he cannot depart from his son, as if he cannot depart from his guilt.

Saunders manages to turn this tragedy into a long lament on life and death, in a very moving way, using the fantasy aspect to great effect: it is as horrifying as it is captivating and inviting to reflect about our own human existence.

A majestic performance.

David Reich - Who We Are and How We Got Here (Oxford University Press, 2018) ****½

Up until a few decades ago, knowledge of pre-historic humanity could only be collected from archeologic finds. Bones and artifacts only partly revealed their mysteries, but now genetics becomes a new method to allow us to get a better understanding.

David Reich and his teams specialise in paleogenetics, the science of genetics in ancient humans, which created a true revolution in our understanding of our past, overturning many standard theories about migrations and mixing of peoples around the globe.

Some of these findings include: the fact that most Europeans and Asians have a few percent of Neanderthal genes in their genome, demonstrating that interspecies sex occurred some 50,000 years ago or earlier. He also demonstrates how the early humans migrated out of Africa in different waves, with different outcomes in Asia and Europe, or how native Americans moved into the continent in three waves, some of which can be timed, others not. The insight generated by human population genetics also sheds some light on the interaction between peoples within the same continent. In Europe, it is clear that some peoples completely disappeared as the result of viral contamination by tribes that migrated into their geographic area (as in current Germany), or were exterminated, rather than the merging of cultures which was always assumed. In Iberia, for instance, it is clear that in some incumbent human tribes all men were killed, because the existing genetic traits could only be traced back through mitochondrial DNA - through the feminine lineage - meaning that women were kept alive. It also shows the importance of dominant men in history, including Genghis Kan, who through and power and wealth managed to have a substantially more than average offspring.

Reich's discoveries also led to quite some reaction from anthropology and archeology academia, which is not surprising considering the fact that many acquired ideas were undermined, but questions were also raised about the ethical aspect of conducting genetic research on ancient burial sites, with or without the consent of the tribes still living there. The issue became especially sensitive in the context of Native American tribes: genetic insights could confirm or disprove a genetic lineage between current tribes and the bones found in burial grounds.

The genetic findings also allow to measure the effect of the caste system in India, demonstrating that despite the thousands of years of cohabitation, genetic distinctiveness of brahmins and untouchables has remained.

On the positive side, this new technology allows for a much more precise understanding of how we as humans are all the same species, with lots of common ancestors, who often intermingled and migrated in ways that were never even considered a decade ago.

It is fascinating, illuminating and highly promising for even more research findings in the coming decades.

David Szalay - All That Man Is (Penguin, 2016) ***

I was halfway through the first story when I realised that it was familiar, and by mistake, I was reading it again. Is this possible? Described as "a triumph" (The Guardian), and "sad masterpiece" (Daily Mail), it was somewhat less than memorable to this guy. "All That Man Is" is a collection of nine short stories with men in the leading role.

Because it was the only book I took with me on a trip abroad, when I realised I had already read it, that I read it twice. Now, trying to review it again, all within the same year, I still seem not to remember it too much. Yes, I recognise some of the characters, some of the settings. I remember being irritated by it, not only by the stupidity of the characters, their painful ignorance and my lack of spontaneous interest in them, but also by the way non-Brits are described, and especially eastern Europeans, the kind of ignorant buffoons that barely surpass the conservative British cliché about foreigners.

So, no, not really memorable.

Which book?

John Banville - Mrs Osmond (Viking, 2017)

I really liked Banville's "Frame" trilogy, "The Sea", and "Ancient Light", but less so this one. How many pages do you read before you realise you're wasting your time on a book that you're not interested in, that's not captivating enough, or not resonating with you. You can admire Banville's stylistic mastership of writing a sequel to Henry James's "Portrait Of A Lady", or even his courage to attempt it, but then it just does not manage to get my attention, concentration and emotional engagement. You read the sentences, the old-fashioned style, the petty concerns of the characters. I read till page 50, which is the minimum of pages when I decide it's worth putting the effort in it or not.

Stanley Redgrove - Johannes Baptista Van Helmont (William Rider & Son, 1922)

Jan Van Helmont was a Flemish alchemist, physicist and philosopher, as the subtitle of this biography explains. He lived in the 17th Century, not far from where I live.

He termed the word 'gas', as he discovered that there were more gaseous substance apart from air. He was a true experimentalist, which was very new at that time. He not only observed things that were happening, but he set up experiments to check and double-check whether his intuitions were right or what would happen if he mixed certain things. The fact that he was also an alchemist and believed in the existence of the Elixir of Life, may have helped him in his endeavours.

He also understood the importance of other agents to help digestion, such as enzymes, even if he did not know about how this actually worked.

Interesting how science and ignorance and superstition look from a distance. In some centuries people will look back at us in the same way, and wonder why we could not see what is so obvious.

David Grossman - A Horse Walks Into A Bar (Penguin, 2016) ***

This one of those books which gives very mixed feelings. It is painful, irritating, ridiculous ... but that's how it's meant to be. The story's main character, Dovaleh G, is an older stand-up comedian whose humour goes beyond sarcasm and cynicism even, it goes beyond the acceptable, exposing his own's life story on stage in a way that both intellectually, emotionally, and even physically results in rejecting by his own audience. There is no fun anymore, no humour, no smiles are generated, not even sympathy. How do you react when the story's main character only creates antipathy? You put the book aside, and go on with your life, or you keep reading, regardless, taking the unpleasantness with you. I did, even if I hesitated more than once. And that's exactly the effect Grossman intended: as a reader, you are part of the audience. Do you stay on to be insulted and morally aggressed by the unrelentless political incorrectness? Do you keep listening to someone whose obsessions are immoral and rejectable?

The main character has summoned the narrator to join one conference, as an older friend who once also participated in summer camp. The little history that binds them will become clear as the 'novel' develops, as is the actual reason why the narrator has been invited to attend. It's the kind of mystery that kept me going: you want to understand ...

It's a book about life, about the limits of divulging your own personal obsessions and fears with the outside world, about the cruelty of emotions that keep dominating people's lives for decades, about what is attractive and repulsive about it, about moral limits of emotions, thoughts and even physical integrity.

It's not fun too read.