What is Melissa reading?

Open, An Autobiography, by Andre Agassi » Perfect title for a tennis player’s biography! I’m in doubt if Agassi is a nice guy in fact, or if his ghost-writer made him seems very nice. 

Must admit I don’t know anything about tennis. Maybe that’s why parts about the psychological battles that Agassi had with himself were more appealing to me than a few games he described more detailed. Obviously I was expecting that (and certainly it would made any tennis fan more thrilled than I was), but I was more interested in the character. And I found him, lonely (I’ve never thought about the loneliness of a player), exposing all the weaknesses and fears anyone feel in real life - and sometimes we simply can’t admit. 

International Relations - A Very Short Introduction, by Paul Wilkinson » We always learn something - but the edition I have read (from the library) is from 2007, and I can’t avoid thinking this book would have some different parts, if it was a more recent edition. At that time, Bush, Condi, Tony Blair and all this team was there (obviously, the international relations foundations in the world don’t change completely according to who is in charge of the United States, but journalists prefer up-to-date things). So many things happened since them - Obama, Osama, crises… 

Anyway, nice to have the subjects we see everyday in the news classified in a short introduction to such a big field - states, non-states, intergovernmental organizations and problems and challenges - and how history is important to understand all these relations in a better way. The author is a highly experienced expert, and I have to said I feel like I must read it again, to make sure I learnt the “basis”. Maybe I will.

Nothing to Envy, by Barbara Demick » I had this book on my hands in 2010, when a South-Korean friend told me Nothing to Envy “opened her eyes” about the neighbours’ situation - if she liked it, the book must be really good, I thought. However, days after, very embarassed, she asked the book back - apparently, it belonged to her landlord, and they asked the book back. Ok. So it was on my wishlist since then.

The morning I woke up and found out about Kim Jong-Il’s dead, I clicked on the “reserve” button on the library’s website. I was the 3rd on the queue! 

* * *

I got the book quite quickly, before Christmas. And I was pleased to know that it stars with an intriguing point I read during the Kim Jong-Il’s dead coverage: how dark is North Korea!

Read more here

The eletricity supply collapsed in the country in the early 1990s, with the Soviet Union. For the author, North Korea is not an undeveloped country, but a a country that has fallen out of the developed world. 

The book was launched in 2010. It says the government has big plans for 2012, everything would change in 2012. Certainly they would not expect for the loss of the “Dear Leader” - so what about it now, Kim Jong-un? A remarkable part of the book is about the starvation the North Korean people faced after the death of Kim Jong-Il’s father. Nothing to Envy won the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize 2010. 

A Moveable Feast - The Restored Edition, by Ernest Hemingway »

“I’ve seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are waiting for and if I never see you again, I thought. You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil.

The I went back to writing and I entered far into the story and was lost in it. I was writing it now and it was not writing itself and I did not look up nor know anything about the time nor think where I was nor order any more rum St. James. I was tired of rum St. James without thinking about it. Then the story was finished and I was very tired. I read the last paragraph and then I looked up and looked for the girl and she had gone. I hope she’s gone with a good man, I thought. But I felt sad.”

(A Good Cafe on the Place St.-Michel, page 18)

The Bang Bang Club - Snapshots from a Hidden War, by Greg Marinovich and Joao Silva » “There was a low brick building, the ticket office, between me and where the Zulu lay in the street. Suddenly I heard a hollow whoof and women began to ululate in a celebration of victory. I ran towards the edge of the elevation. The man I had thought dead was running across the field below us, his body enveloped in flames. Red, blue and yellow tongues licked the clothing and skin off his body . It was a stumbling, urgent run as he tried to escape the pain. I lifted the long lens camera. The human torch slowed and dropped to a squat. As I focused, I noted that the early sun was right behind the burning man. The camera’s light meter did not work and so I twisted the aperture wide open: f5.6 should be right. I depressed the shutter, then pulled the camera away from my face for a second to advance the cranck and frame my next exposure. A bare-chested, barefoot man ran into view and swung a machete into the man’s blazing skull as a young boy fled from this vision of hell, from an enemy who would not die”. (Chapter 3, page 35)

Lunch in Paris, by Elizabeth Bard » 

Could be sweet:

“When le dessert finally arrives, it looks like an innocent upsidedown chocolate cupcake, accompanied by a small cloud of freshly whipped cream. But when my spoon breaks the surface, the chocolate center flows like dark lava onto the whiteness of the plate. The last ounce of stress drains from my body. I feel my spine soften in the chair. The menu says Moelleux au Chocolat ‘Kitu’.

‘Kitu is a pun,’ says Gwendal, with his best Humphrey Bogard squint. ‘It means which kills.’

I have discovered the French version of ‘Death by Chocolate’.”

* * *

Could be bitter:

“But the questions just kept coming, and I had only one exasperating answer. Because I’m not in New York, and things just don’t work like that here. It’s hard enough trying to build a new life in another culture without having to explain the process to everyone back home. The journalism was coming in at a very slow trickle - I seemed to spend eighty percent of my time pitching ideas to editors, twenty percent actually writing. I found that travel articles tended to be written by staffers on vacation rather than freelancers on the ground. I was getting a piece of art criticism here and there, but mostly in London or New York, so I spent my fees going back and forth to do interviews and see exhibitions. My mother decided that to pick up the slack, I should start a museum tour company. Start a company? How could I make her understand that just going to the post office in Paris was sometimes an all-day project? There were days when each step I took was like wading through a room full of cold mashed potatoes. The idea of diverting what little energy I had left into a business that was not my ultimate goal left me wanting to curl up into a little ball and cry.”

Life in the UK Test, Study Guide (2011 Edition) » That’s not a joke. In two years, if I’d like to keep living in the UK, I have to pass an exam about life in the country. Apparently, knowing how many members the Houses of Parliament has or in which days are the bank holidays in England show to the government that I am well-integrated to the British Society, indeed (funny to see that many Brits don’t know the answer for some questions). Detail: the official material was released in 2007, so who is going to take the exam must answer according to this material - with many old information, such as the national minimum wage rates, which have changed many times since then. 

I read this book now because, in fact, it’s a good introduction about the country (at least for me, as a journalist) - from how the educational systems are in the UK work to how to do in case of a problem with your neighbour (hope I don’t need to apply this one). But I’ll leave the practice tests to be done in two years. 

O Reino e o Poder - Uma História do New York Times, de Gay Talese » “Em poucos instantes, serão quatro horas da tarde em Nova York, nove horas da noite em Londres e onze horas no Cairo; cinco da manhã em Saigon, seis horas em Tóquio e oito horas nas ilhas Salomão - e os correspondentes do Times no mundo inteiro se encontram em estados variados de ansiedade, sobriedade, propriedade e sono; em Nova York, as secretárias, intocadas pelo aspecto exótico e erótico das terras distantes, estão esperando para uma pausa para o café; e os copidesques, escrevinhadores sedentários, estão calmamente redigindo manchetes: Atraso em manifestação revela racha sino-romeno… Polícia do Mississippi usa gás para expulsar manifestantes acampados. Os editores estão em via de levantar-se e atravessar a sala até o escritório do diretor de redação. Clifton Daniel está esperando por eles, sentado à sua mesa lendo algumas anotações que fez para lembrar-se de que não estava inteiramente feliz de manhã, enquanto vinha de trem de Bedford lendo o Times.”

(Abertura do Capítulo 6, página 143 - Amo o texto do Gay Talese. Esse nem é o melhor exemplo. Mas reparem como ele conduz o leitor das “terras distantes” até a “mosquinha” dentro da sala do diretor de redação, e com muita informação nova a cada linha, sem enrolação)

A Vida que Ninguém Vê, de Eliane Brum » “Essa é uma época de incontinência verbal. Não sei se as pessoas falavam tanto assim antes. Sempre me surpreendo com a capacidade que muitos têm de preencher todo o tempo e o espaço com as palavras, muitas vezes sem dizer nada. Sempre penso: o que aconteceria se por um momento elas silenciassem? Qual é a ameaça contida no silêncio? Ou qual é o som que não suportamos ouvir para precisar cobri-lo com o ruído ininterrupto de nossa voz? Vivemos com muito som e pouca fúria.”

(Trecho do texto final do livro, “Sobre a Melhor Profissão do Mundo”)

Abusado - O Dono do Morro Dona Marta, de Caco Barcellos »

Anotações de capítulos para releitura:

> Capítulo 22 - Palavra de Honra (repórteres de três jornais se infiltram na favela na época das gravações do clipe de Michael Jackson)

> Capítulo 23 - Eu Fumo o Mato Certo (três versões de uma mesma entrevista)

> Parte III - Adeus às Armas (a relação do autor com o traficante, as entrevistas para o livro etc)