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Other fun questions are raised - how would voting in a democracy work if you can copy yourself, and your voice? Is copying someone else 'theft'? Is progress a myth? Beautifully layered and illuminated underwater scenes, that appear to be watercolor and ink, create a mesmerizing world where the little Axolotl comes to vivid life.” Length of the book is well tuned to the actual content. Obviously, I'd like to read more, but sometimes form exceeds the content by too far (vide "Lod" <"Ice">, also by Dukaj). This is my first reading of his writing and it's not enough of a sample for me to form an opinion. I will search out a bit more of his work before deciding if he is a good fit for me. Duellman, William E.; Trueb, Linda, " Biology of Amphibians", 1994, Johns Hopkins University Press.
Before I begin: I'm not a fan of Dukaj's newspeak - I find it hard and exhausting to follow. 1/3rd of this edition consist of footnotes explaining the wording used throughout the book. On positive side at least I'm understanding what I'm reading (which I couldn't say about "Król Bólu" - another book of this author). On negative one, it's a very lazy way of introducing a reader to a presented universe at best. Animals around the world are headed to bed in this beautifully illustrated book, which adds an odd twist of quirkiness to make it an intriguing read…. The animals are depicted in a wonderful artistic manner, which adds a dash of sophistication. In other words, these are simply well done and beautiful in their style and flair.”
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The horror began—I learned in the same moment —of believing myself prisoner in the body of an axolotl, metamorphosed into him with my human mind intact, buried alive in an axolotl, condemned to move lucidly among unconscious creatures. We hear the cry of soul of the narrator trapped inside the body of an axolotl, the narrator cries from the depth of his being as if he is being thrown in to this hell of nothingness wherein he can’t express himself as if his entire existence is shred to nothingness, just like the vermin Gregor Samsa of Franz Kafka turns into, in The Metamorphosis. The readers find the consciousness of the narrator being confined to the body of an axolotl, severed from the entire world as if the world turns deaf to him, he watches with soul stirring horror that he is reflecting upon his own being through glass of aquarium, it marks the intense loneliness of human life which he can’t escape even after the transformation. However, the treatment here is more optimistic and humane since the narrator soon realizes that axolotls are human like consciousness beings who are trapped in their bodies so as to say condemned to exist, contemplating upon their doomed reality without realizing their true existence. The writing is very basic, in large print and in really simple sentences, which would encourage me to suggest this book is for beginning readers. But being that it is an informative book and that there is no place that gives pronunciation for either Xolotl or the axolotl I would be a bit leery to recommend it for starting readers unless there is a willing adult who doesn't mind reading along. At the same time the book is presented with colored photographs for its illustrative purposes although I find that a lot of these look to be captive animals instead of actual wild axolotls. At the same time each picture used has a caption that although it stands apart from the actual writing is either repetitive or just ends up getting in the way for readers thus it would have been better use to have left the captions out altogether. Drowning in nostalgia for the lost world, the survivors create civilization after civilization, life after life, humanity after humanity. They form alliances and fight wars. They develop their own politics, ideologies and crazy hardware religions. And they face dilemmas no one has ever confronted before. A profound question often probes our consciousness to instigate our inquisitiveness that why do we read, and before that why do we even write? Books, what are they for? Why do we read them or write them? For Goerge Orwell it might be the inner demons which forced him to write, to keep himself away from insanity; for Kafka, books were “the axe for the frozen sea within us”; for Polish Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska, books stood as our ultimate frontier of freedom; but the question still stands greatly holding its ground. Perhaps we need to understand it from the perspective of our innate need to express ourselves, which makes us human. At times another question rises up from ignorance of humanity that why do we need to read and create fiction in the first place; though fiction per se may be about the things which may not exist in real world but it is very much about the truth of humanity, the truth to understand what we are and how do behave.
El libro nos cuenta que un hombre va a visitar al Jardín Des Plantes ubicado en Paris en donde se encuentra con un animal llamado muy peculiar llamado Axolote. Tanto fue su encanto por estas peculiares criaturas que se termina convenciendo en que es uno de ellos. Era tanta su curiosidad por estos animalitos que comenzó a visitarlos hasta tres veces al día, se fijaba en su contextura con mucho detalle, le llamaba mucho la atención sus cuerpos translúcidos y lechosos, sus espectaculares colas de lagarto, sus rostros en forma de triangulo, planas y de color rosa, sus manos con dedos muy similares a los de un humano, los ramilletes que salen desde sus branquias, el gran brillo que proyectan sus ojos, su forma de desplazarse por los acuarios en forma muy lenta que hace pensar que no se mueven y el movimiento de sus branquias y cuando nadan lo hacen solo con un movimiento ondulatorio de sus cuerpos. Esto los hace fascinantes para él, creyendo tener una relación muy cercana con ellos, de alguna manera siente que estos les piden ayuda con sus grandes ojos, un día estaba observándolos en el acuario hasta que llegó a un punto en el que se sintió que estaba dentro del acuario siendo un miembro más de ellos. El cuento finaliza en que estás criaturas tienen la idea que el hombre entendió lo que ellos le querían comunicar y este se encuentra haciendo una redacción respecto a ellos motivó por el cual no volvió más a visitarlos. Wells, Kentwood D. " The Ecology and Behavior of Amphibians", 2007, The University of Chicago Press. A kötet szokatlan szerkesztésmódjával nem egészen vagyok kibékülve. Eleinte nagyon tetszett a fura kéthasábos megoldás, később már erőltetettnek éreztem, ráadásul egy ilyen formabontásnak mindig nagy az ára is: fókuszvesztést, töredezett olvasási élményt okoz. Nem biztos, hogy megérte. Inkább érzem úgy utólag, hogy valamiféle naplózási fájlokat olvastam, mintsem hogy egy regényt. Persze lehet, hogy pont ez volt a cél. This was a book about the axolotl salamander that can be found down in Mexican canals although they are definitely rare now. As such I was actually amazed to see the amount of information included while at the same time noticing that the book was directed for a very much younger audience than I would think would be ready for this type of read.Another issue is that book gets confusing - the more the closer it gets to the end - as jumps between different points in time are often separated just by different paragraphs. This can be made on purpose - as you can understand a growing indifference of main character as ages merge into one - but I'm not sure if that was actually the intent. This book doesn't tend to let the reader to infer motives based on described actions, instead it communicates them directly. In this sweet and beautifully designed small book, a little alien peers through a telescope at all the bedtime rituals on Earth. Using mixed media, Bondestam creates rich, layered illustrations featuring animals all across the globe…. Delicate pen-and-ink applied over the colors give the animals very expressive faces…. [I]t neatly resembles Margaret Wise Brown’s classic Good Night Moon, and fans of that book will appreciate the contrast.” In a forest of seaweed there was ME, a rare and beautiful little axolotl, going for my first-ever swim. Told from the perspective of a green alien family on a faraway planet, Bondestam’s endearing solo debut offers a peek into the fictional bedtime routines of animals from around the world…. Offbeat humor permeates the text… and accompanies Bondestam’s quirky, multipatterned collage-style illustrations. The penultimate bedtime routine will resonate with parental readers, while the final spreads offer a last laugh for young ones.”
With a big heart, she paints a world that has changed forever, but which still has hope for a brighter future.” A stílusról Rajaniemi ugrott be, csakúgy mint az Extensa olvasásakor. De a finn ecset valahogy vastagabban, színesebben fogott, nekem ez a Dukaj-verzió túlságosan be volt zárva egy fémtojásba, egyetlen robot fejébe - aki hát valljuk be nem a legvagányabb indián a poszthumanista klubban. There are numerous references in the story to Aztecs and various phases of the Argentine history, the intentional usage of foreign words by the author perhaps underlines the invasion by foreigners who silence the local voices. The golden eyes of axolotls, their peculiar heads allude to the history of the country of the author. The author portrays the secluded, shifting and puzzling behavior of the axolotl to underline humanity’s loneliness and solitude of existence as we often struggle to fit into the world we live in, feeling as if we are trapped here and condemned to live. The quiet nature of axolotl may also be interpreted as humanity being an unintentional accomplice to the unfair things in life by mutely spectating them. The author ends the story the way he starts it by subverting the narrative through the infusion of metafictional element to its epilogue for giving a final but decisive twist to the story so as to create an art which might voice to those trapped in the hell of nothingness; but even then, as expected from Cortazar, the end of the story is left to multiple interpretations- the possible realities which may lie in a possibility. A postapocalyptic novel where a mysterious death ray destroys all organic life on Earth, but a handful of nerds and gamers manage to upload their minds into machines using a weird consumer electronics gizmo - or do they? Now they can spend the following aeons wondering if they are really themselves or just superficial, error-prone duplicates.I think that at the beginning I was capable of returning to him in a certain way—ah, only in a certain way—and of keeping awake his desire to know us better. I am an axolotl for good now, and if I think like a man it's only because every axolotl thinks like a man inside his rosy stone semblance. Various contributors, edited by John B. Armstrong and George M. Malacinski, " Developmental Biology of the Axolotl", 1989, Oxford University Press. The book shows Linda Bondestam’s mastery by the use and enrichment of the picture book’s entire range.”
It's not an easy read. I can be confusing as the main character is a program never really in 'one' body, which is why the story often jumps (think of Ancillary Justice). It can be even more confusing once the main character obtains a dream module, after that the novel is constantly hallucinating. There's no real motivation or character development or even anything close to a 'character' here, but that is part of the message:Petranka, James W. " Salamanders of the United States and Canada", 1998, Smithsonian Institute Press.
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