Novembre Readings
Two books this month and about 60 manga chapters, not bad.
Dodici Racconti – Dino Buzzati
This book is a bilingual book; the left page is written in italian, and the right is translated into french. There are also annotations at the bottom of the page, explaining vocabulary and specific grammar used. The text however is just some regular italian novels written in the mid-1900s. I started this book last month, right before going to italy, to refresh a bit of my italian as I was gonna be the only traveller of my group speaking the language. Mr.Buzzati did not pull any punches and those novels took me so long to read through, I must admit I gave up on reading the italian part 80% of the way through and just read the french one. Even the french part would be complicated if you weren't familiar with less accessible vocabulary and grammatical constructions. The novels did a decent job of being an italian crash course, and I generally had no issue being the translator for my wife and brother-in-law. The stories vary from clever, to a bit nonsensical and not necessarily in the good way. Some of them are obviously set up as jokes, but the punchline just doesn't make sense (maybe I just don't get it — it's italian humour after all). They are however all pretty original, and entertaining. My favourite would probably be “Delicatezza” and “La farfaletta”. The first one is about a prisoner sentenced to death that is given the best treatment right after sentencing, and isn't even sent to prison. He then meets the prison warden, who talks to him about the philosophy of killing him. I can't talk about the second without spoiling it as it is very short. Another one I also liked was “Denuncia del redito” where a rich CEO has to do his taxes, but his usual CRA-equivalent agent, who he is friends with, is ill and one of his colleagues takes his spot. The CEO's friend never looked too closely at his revenues, so it always went great and he didn't have to declare a lot, basically evading taxes. We follow their conversation as they talk about the CEO's affairs.
Les maîtres du jeu vidéo (Masters of Doom) – David Kushner
I am not one to enjoy, let alone read biographies, but this one is an exception. It was approved and given to me by my father. My father reads dozens upon dozens of books a year, and usually only recommends his top 10%. To hype up the book even more, it has been credited as the reason why Oculus and Reddit were created — yes, it is partially responsible for the horrors brought by the metaverse and well reddit as a whole. We follow the adventures of John Romero and John Carmack. If you're a real nerd, you will know who those people are, if you don't it, must probably have felt nice to be popular in high school. Anyways, they are the creators of ID Software, the company that made Wolfenstein and then Doom which completely revolutionised the PC game market, but also PC game technology and design in general. Crediting them as the main reason why PC gaming is popular today would not be an overstatement. We follow them from all the way when they learned how to code, until a bit after the release of Quake 3 and Daikatana. The pacing was decent, the prose was good, and most importantly, the subject was interesting. Reading along I kept thinking “Hey I know that thing, no way they had their hands in that too” or “wow this is how [now big company] started, cool”. Seeing the evolution of the relationship between the two Johns, and the people caught in the middle was also engaging. In a word, I really enjoyed reading this book. The french translation is not as clumsy as it could have been, even if some things sound really cheesy in french. My only other complaint is that the french title is fucking stupid Les maîtres du jeu vidéo or “The Master of Video Games”, the original title Masters of Doom is much better imo. There's also a typo in the first word (name) of the front cover, it's supposed to be Carmack not Cormack lmao.
One Piece
Arabasta Arc
This long ass arc concludes the Arabasta Saga. I did appreciate the length of this, there was more time to establish characters, have plot setups and payoffs. I still didn't care a ton about the evil organisation, but the main antagonist was badass. It was also nice to see the crew be in a lot of trouble against opponents, I was getting tired of them kinda steamrolling through adversaries. Luffy getting murked so easily by the main antagonist, at first, made their victory more satisfying. The Usopp stick is bullshit though.
The holiday season is almost upon us, and with it comes the time where there is literally nothing for me to do at work, i.e. I will be paid to read. I am also planning on getting a library card, which will allow me to increase my book procurement rate. Expect more books for next month's December Readings.