books

Very solid children's literature that goes much further into a series of interesting and subversive topics than any of its adaptations.

Some of the most gorgeous prose I've ever read. Such a simple story but told in the most beautiful way possible. The end is not the tragedy that I was expecting it to be, yet it made me cry like a child; the tragedy is intrinsic to our human nature, and it touched me much more than any death or classic "tragic event" could.

Very nihilistic and very French. Occasionally touches on some very interesting ideas about the human condition and family relations, but spends a lot of the time rambling about uninteresting and/or irrelevant details, as should be expected from a self-proclaimed purely documental, distant, and unemotional text.

This is a classic for a reason. It's so, so much more than a kids book. Its story is pretty straightforward, but with such beautiful moments. It's so filled with hope and tragedy and curiosity, all working for the most incredibly touching condensation of the human experience that I have ever seen. This is one I want to come back to over and over again.

The art of Watchmen is gorgeous. The book's highlights are the parts when it is able to shine, when it is not drowning in the deluge of superfluous, semi-deep and faux-meditative text populating most of the pages. I couldn't warm up to its world even after spending seemingly years of my life reading about these characters.

The main issue is that reading Watchmen feels like reading a story penned by Shadow the Hedgehog himself; someone who sees himself and the entire world as being so dark and serious, and someone who has built their entire personality on nihilism and misanthropy.

By the end of the first chapter, I had already fully understood that every single character in these groups of "heroes" is an unredeemable sociopath with a tragic backstory. That's a cool idea: maybe we should not have heroes in real life. But then the author goes on for hundreds of pages expanding on the details of each of the character's "flaws" (if you want to call them that, although I'd in some cases prefer to call them "crimes") and traumas – one is a pedophile who was literally disintegrated in an accident, one is a serial killer who grew up with an abusive mom and being bullied for being the son of a sex worker, and so on and so forth. Every woman exists only so far as she can be sexualized for the plot. Almost every time a woman shows up, sex comes up not long after. Almost every time a man shows up, there's a murder, or at least an attempt. No one is safe and no one is worth saving.

I'm not against darker stories, not at all. I love, for example, Maus, another very dark graphic novel, or The Death of Ivan Ilych, another story focused on death. The difference is that these stories have something to say; their darkness is not the end-goal on itself. Watchmen, on the other hand, feels more similar to Disgrace, to me. Both are books that feel like they were written by people who were deeply frustrated – justifiably or not, it doesn't matter –, but who could not muster any thought beyond "the world itself, humanity, must be irredeemably flawed." There is no self-reflection, no goodness in anyone, nothing. There is no humanity.

Watchmen feels like it's saying "comic books can be dark too." But that doesn't shock me. It's 2025, I know that already. And unfortunately there is not much left.

There is some potential here, and for a while I thought the story was going in an interesting direction. But when it's all said and done, this is mostly a bitter and occasionally creepy endeavor.

In the preface to my edition, António Lobo Antunes asks: “Is this a work about death, or a work that denies death?” Having read it, neither description seems quite right to me. It strikes me, in fact, as a reinterpretation of death: the rejection of death as a single, definitive event, and its affirmation, instead, as a process running parallel to life. A painful process, but one that belongs only to the living – when there is no longer any life, there is no longer any death either. Classical ‘death’, that is, the end of life, would also be a relief from this process of dying.

This story, however sad and morbid it may seem, has two very optimistic reflections at its heart: the first, as already mentioned, is that, however painful the path to death may be, the end of life is a relief, a joy, the end of a painful process; the second is that, whilst we are alive – and I imagine all readers are – we have the capacity to make the most of the life we still have. Not by living as we ‘ought to’, as others expect us to, but through honesty with others and, above all, with ourselves. However clichéd the message may seem, it is conveyed in the most beautiful and powerful way possible. Ivan Ilyich realises, with his life almost spent, that his only moments of real joy had been in childhood and that, after that, all his apparent success had come at the expense of himself, of his true desires. And, at that moment, the realisation comes too late. But Ivan Ilyich is dead. We, who are not yet dead, can use this character’s example as a reminder that we owe happiness to ourselves.

Really interesting and important story, especially when you consider that it is a true one. Unfortunately, the prose is quite wishy-washy and it all ends up feeling a bit like a textbook.

Beautiful adaptation of a classic into a graphic novel. The graphical aspect really manages to keep the mood of the original wonderfully, and since it transposes the entire story, nothing concrete is missing. Some of the tension is lost, however, now that the reader uses less of their imagination and the plot is more fast-paced due to the nature of the medium.

Aw, man, it's really cool to see what children's literature was like almost two centuries ago. While I dislike the Disney movie based on it, the erratic and almost hallucinatory structure of the story (if you can even call it that) works wonders in written text. The drawings that accompany the adventures also add a lot of charm to them. There isn't really a strong message to the book, at least not one that would be apparent without much deeper analysis, but it's a very fun read nonetheless.

For what's considered one of the great horror classics, there's a stark lack of substance or interesting themes here. It's a fun read, but it's pretty short and predictable. It's hard to argue that it holds up as well as many of the other classic 19th century horror novels.

Shockingly awful. This is not even a novel, it's a self-help book masquerading as an adventure story. And, as a self-help book, it's the most neoliberal, individualistic, delusionally capitalistic, clichéd, stereotypical, and ultimately pointless piece of slop possible. The message adds up to what you'd find in a fortune cookie or on a motivational poster in the waiting room of a doctor's office. "You can do anything you put your mind to" and "the real treasure are the friends we made along the way", but played completely straight. You'd get more thought-provoking reflections reading the classifieds section of your local newspaper.

A devastating story, not only about the Holocaust but also about the cyclical nature of history and the need to constantly reevaluate ourselves, our actions, and what we stand for. Maus seems more and more important with each passing day.

Surprisingly delicate, made me rethink my idea of what love was like in the 19th century. Perhaps we're all human, in the end. Perhaps we've been getting butterflies in our stomachs for tens of thousands of years. There is a possible problematic interpretation of the ending of the story, so I wouldn't say it should be read by absolutely everyone, but I think it's much more of a stretch than it's made out to be. Being nonchalant is out, letting yourself feel is in.

Brandon Taylor has a lot of interesting and important things to say about race, privilege, homophobia, religious guilt, and a bunch of other topics; it's too bad that he says it all during the first 100 or so pages. The book then spends 200 pages narrating, over a seemingly endless weekend, the same scene over and over again, just with a different backdrop: some people meet; they have a friendly chat; someone is way too touchy or petty or attacks someone else out of the blue, escalating it to an argument; someone ends up apologising profusely. It's boring, unrealistic, predictable, and ultimately drags down what could be a really good novel.

It feels like a very apocalyptic story. Not because of its grandeur – it's not bombastic at all –, but because the message it conveys is fundamentally misanthropic. In this world, there is no kindness for kindness' sake. Everyone is paranoid, suspicious that other people, even friends, have ulterior motives. Every relationship is irredeemably toxic, be it a friendship or a romantic relationship, and one can only be ever so slightly happy by accepting the toxicity. There is no point in denouncing it or fighting back. There is no point in looking for other people; after all, everyone is like that, in this world.

By the end, no one has changed and almost nothing has happened. We don't know what will be of Wallace's academic career, of Brigit, of the friend group. It feels like the author just got tired of writing and decided to stop, but having stopped 150 pages before or a thousand pages later would have been equally arbitrary. Wallace and Miller's relationship is written, in the second-to-last chapter, as if we were supposed to root for them, to feel like everything has been resolved between them and that everything is now good, but by that point Miller has physically and sexually abused Wallace, so excuse me if I don't feel like I'm capable of doing so.

The last chapter is cute in isolation, but by that point I'd grown to hate every single person in that friend group throughout the book, including even the main character. It is, or at least it feels like, a tacked-on scene to bookend a story that was not going anywhere and would not go anywhere.

A collection of short stories that have nothing to say, with premises ranging from mildly interesting to utterly preposterous, and a writing style more concerned with appearing cultured and eccentric than with its actual content. I hope Florbela’s poetry is better than this.

Set in a Mozambique in transition, where the structures of colonial authority are beginning to crumble, the novel tells a story that is compact in scope yet expansive in terms of time, emotion and theme. The elderly Sá Caetana and Sá Amélia find themselves, in a parallel to Things Fall Apart, in a "crumbling world". But whilst in Achebe’s book the world was crumbling for Okonkwo and, by extension, for the indigenous Nigerian cultures, here the world is crumbling for the colonists, on the eve of a moment of rupture and liberation for the Mozambican people. Vicente, on the other hand, comes from a world which, though physically identical to that of Caetana and Amélia, was already in ruins, collapsed, and seeks an emancipatory future.

The book offers a complex narrative on the persistent marks of colonisation in Mozambique, depicting characters who, even after the collapse of the imperial order in practice, continue to live in the shadow of its symbolic and emotional structures. Through figures such as Cosme Paulino and Vicente, Borges Coelho presents servitude not merely as a social condition, but as a deeply rooted and internalised performance, passed down through generations as a legacy. This performance, portrayed in the novel as both resistance and submission, makes clear the profoundly theatrical and fragile nature of colonial domination.

Beyond the political consequences of colonialism, there is a personal trauma that seeps into the bodies and affections of individuals. The characters are, besides being victims of an oppressive system, also its unwitting replicators, trapped in logics of submission that persist even in the absence of the oppressors. As Visitas do Dr. Valdez explores the possibilities of identity-building in a Mozambique still haunted by the ruins of its past. Liberation – both individual and collective – involves, indeed, the rejection of power structures, but also the symbolic reinvention of the roles that were imposed.

As the title suggests, Vidas Secas is a very dry read. Not in a bad way, however; much to the contrary, the dry prose accentuates the apocalyptically bad situation of the characters, which is something thousands of people had and have to live through in real life as well. The author also manages to be deeply emotional when it's needed, in a couple of chapters throughout the story. It's a shocking book, one which stuns you to the point where you feel like crying, but it seems the tears have dryed up.

There is some interesting poetry here, some lines which have rightfully become classics, but as a whole the book didn't inspire me much. It's mostly nationalistic propaganda with a rose-tinted-glasses approach to the past and a promotion of the ever-lasting Portuguese melancholy. Pessoa seems much more interesting to me when he concerns himself with the human condition, rather than when he's trying to build a nation.

What a horrifyingly poignant depiction of what an individualistic society does to a person. I cried for the tragedy of the story, but also for the horror of our reality, realised in the text. A forever classic.

An amazing story that naturally works better on stage or on film. A lot is lost with just the script as is, which made me appreciate even more the choices made by Mike Nichols in his 2003 big screen adaptation.

In The Bell, Iris Murdoch draws on a range of topics that were unusual for the time – homosexuality, feminism, religion – to explore the most universal of themes: love. Not specifically romantic love, since the distinctions between it and platonic or religious love are intentionally blurred in the book, but love as a fundamental emotion to the human experience, as the foundation and fuel of life.

With a narrative perspective that shifts between the protagonists Dora, Michael and Toby, the book is of an unbelievable sensitivity and candour. In Dora’s journey, the author explores the idea of an imperfect emancipation, a breaking of expectations for a woman of the 1950s that not only allows, but requires, her to shatter the status quo. Michael, a closeted gay man, and Toby, a young man somewhat forced to define and assert his own sexuality, were the characters who appealed most personally to me, as a queer man. The way Murdoch describes these characters’ feelings and actions is surprisingly realistic and progressive even by today’s standards, and even more so for 1958, when homosexuality was still illegal in England and much of the world.

Aside from the book’s captivating story and fascinating philosophy, the prose is consistently a highlight that kept me glued to the pages, particularly during the second half of the story. I’m eager to read more books by Iris Murdoch, who, for now, strikes me as having been one of the most interesting authors of the last century.

Disgrace is an easy read, but the main problem is that it doesn’t take a stand. The line between the author’s thoughts and the character’s thoughts is unclear, and, given that the main character is a bona fide villain, I wonder to what extent his actions were deliberately written to be malicious or not.

It takes a great deal of effort and goodwill to read Disgrace as an anti-racist book, or even as a neutral and simply expository one. On the other hand, someone who is already racist will easily find their apocalyptic views validated here. It is perhaps the worst possible book to give to a class of 40 white, European students with little understanding of history and society.

I fully agree with something Nadine Gordimer wrote about the book: “In the novel Disgrace there is not one black person who is a real human being. I find it difficult to believe, indeed more than difficult, having lived here all my life and being part of everything that has happened here, that the black family protects the rapist because he’s one of them. If that’s the only truth he could find in the post-apartheid South Africa, I regretted this very much for him.”

Much is left open to interpretation in the book, but in a deeply racist society such as post-apartheid South Africa – and, to a lesser extent, in today’s Western society – it is not enough not to be openly racist; one must be openly anti-racist. Because when a white South African writer who grew up under apartheid writes a book in which he goes to great lengths not to take a stand on anything, the result is exactly like the status quo: racist.

It’s a surprisingly fast-paced read for what it is, and the story really managed to grip me during the most tense and anxious moments. Some chapters, especially towards the end, feel a bit repetitive, but nothing that bothered me too much.

Politically speaking, what the book says is nothing new by today’s standards, but much of it can be applied to other civil rights struggles. It is at this point that it becomes clear the book was written by someone who, however much empathy they may have for the oppressed, was part of the oppressing group. Especially when compared with books written by oppressed people (such as Things Fall Apart), much of the book – though fortunately not all of it – echoes the argument that oppression is more individual than systemic, that oppression is resolved through love, or worse, that only the oppressor should emancipate the oppressed.

Even so, some parts impressed me and seem to have come from a different book, such as the argument that everything the Afrikaners give to the Zulu and the Xhosa is nothing more than payment for everything that was stolen from them, and that South Africa and the wealth of white men would be nothing without the labour of black men.

Fortunately, like Things Fall Apart, the book does a good job of humanising a group of people who were deeply dehumanised at the time of its original publication. Unfortunately, Alan Paton seems reluctant to discuss in any detail the origins of this dehumanisation.

Things Fall Apart indeed.

It’s been a long time since I’ve loved a book this much; Chinua Achebe has written a short, to-the-point and powerful novel, steering clear of many of the European literary flourishes that put so many people off literature. I think it should be required reading for everyone, and even more so for those studying cultures or similar subjects. It’s hard not to come away with a different view of the world.

The way Okonkwo is built up throughout the book, only for him to be killed so abruptly at the end and relegated to a single paragraph in a colonialist’s book, hits even harder once you consider all the people we know his death would affect, and the inevitable change in the Igbo world that Okonkwo had observed. We are forced to imagine how many stories, how many cultures, how many peoples, how many lives were forgotten or erased throughout the entire period of colonisation; not only in Africa but also on every other continent.