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‘Perhaps all humans are lonely. At least potentially.’
My Thoughts
It’s been a long time since I last read a book by Ishiguro – 17 years ago to be exact and the book was ‘Never Let Me Go’ and is still one of the best dystopian novels I have ever read.
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“To free yourself, to be more authentic, to be less addicted, to be less manipulated, to be less paranoid … for all these marvellous reasons, delete your accounts.”
My Thoughts
The irony is not lost on me that this book makes a very good case about deleting the social media apps that I am regularly posting on. Has it made me consider deleting them all? Yes, it has and I’ll try to convey the thought process that led me to answer in the affirmative.
´We’re being hypnotized little by little by technicians we can’t see, for purposes we don’t know. We are all lab animals now.’ Lanier backs up this premise and his subsequent views eloquently throughout this book and I have no doubt that when I browse the internet, clever algorithms follow my path and afterwards cause a display of items that are meant to entice me to purchase them. Social media platforms exploit this further by recognizing a person’s interests and pushing content during their next visit.
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“Once, men and women were able to turn themselves into eagles and fly immense distances. They communed with rivers and mountains and received wisdom from them. They felt the turning of the stars inside their own minds. My contemporaries did not understand this. They were all enamoured with the idea of progress and believed that whatever was new must be superior to what was old. As if merit was a function of chronology! But it seemed to me that the wisdom of the ancients could not have simply vanished. Nothing simply vanishes. It’s not actually possible.”
My Thoughts
From the outset the premise of the book appealed to me – a person who wanders empty halls and courtyards, who notes down journal entries and sustains himself with catches of fish and uses dried seaweed to mend things. Who is he and why is he roaming a house filled with statues and human remains? It’s intriguing and I was hooked from the very first page.
Piranesi lives in the House made of a labyrinth of halls filled with statues and tides that sweep through at regular intervals. He doesn’t remember anything other than this place. Piranesi is a man whose circumstances of a solitary life are interrupted by just one mysterious visitor, a man who meets him on a set day and bears occasional gifts. They try and work out and learn The Great and Secret Knowledge.
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´Consistency of effort over the long run is everything´
My Thoughts
An inspiring and very well written book!
Human beings love magic, the idea of a gift such as a natural talent. They love to be swept off their feet by a stunning piece of music or witnessing a person doing something no one has ever managed to do before such as break a sports record or master many languages.
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‘Dandelions remind me of the way I close myself off from so much of the world, either because it’s too painful to see of feel, or because when I am open to people the ridicule comes. The bullying. The foul-mouthed insults directed at the intense joy I feel, directed at my excitement, at my passion. For years I kept it to myself, but now these words are leaking into the world.’
My Thoughts
Four of the five of the McAnulty’s family members are neuro-divergent and the fact that autism is a big part of this memoir is important. The author was diagnosed with Asperger’s as a young child and feels truly happy and at peace when he is in nature. His heightened sensitivity shines through in every sentence and his descriptions of wildlife brought me deeply into his world, not only as a fabulous naturalist but also what it is like to be autistic for him. Northern Ireland and its plants, birds and insects made for a surprisingly gripping read and detailed lesson in biology. I often had the impression that I was there watching, sitting and listening to the sounds because McAnulty’s writing is alive and each page paints a detailed image in the reader’s mind.
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‘A person’s life isn’t orderly… it runs about all over the place, in and out through time. The present’s hardly there; the future doesn’t exist. Only love matters in the bits and pieces of a person’s life.’
My Thoughts
How to review a collection of short stories when most readers will inevitably prefer one over another because the idea of an anthology generally implies diversity of topics and characters, and therefore some narratives will appeal more than others? Generally, that it the case for me and even in A Bit On The Side, there are some stories that linger more than others. However, overall, this is a fabulous collection of stories, perfect for compelling and satisfying reads and has made me want to reach out for many of the author’s other short story collections and novels.
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