After finishing this book, I directly added it to my “Classics” shelf. Even though this book is not (yet) a classic since it is a fairly new one, I feel completely comfortable adding it to the other classics. Indeed, I am quite confident that in due time this book will be considered by Humanity as one of its literary classics.

We usually start a book review by writing about the story, the core of the novel. However, I wish to write first about an aspect more striking, in my opinion, than the story itself, in the case of this oeuvre. And that is, Ishiguro’s beautiful prose. The author’s writing is on a completely higher level than most of his contemporaries and stands out in an ocean of weakly written contemporary books. His writing reminds me of the great English classic authors: the Brontë sisters, Austen, Dickens, Eliot, to name a few. And I am confident that I am not exaggerating. Paragraph after paragraph, Ishiguro’s prose mesmerizes through its clear complexity, and complex clarity. His words translate the essence of the novel, in a way that only few authors can indeed achieve.

The Remains of the Day follows Mr. Stevens, a devoted butler, through his first ever motoring trip, one of his rare outings from Darlington Hall, where he has served for the greatest part of his life. However, and perhaps most importantly, this novel follows Mr. Stevens’ trip in the fields of his memories, through the images of his past glorious days at Darlington Hall, that he cannot help but recall and reminisce over. This trip through the Western England, ends up being a journey of self-discovery for Mr. Stevens, and by extension, for any one who reads his story. Memories unfold slowly, one after the other, enlightening Mr. Stevens to all the things that he could not see back in the days, blinded as he was with his complete trust and devotion to his master, his ‘dignity’, and his duty.

A novel of incredible beauty, and a priceless lesson to be learned. Instead of drowning in the sea of “what could have happened” during the past, why not learn from this past, and rise up again, to enjoy and truly live the remains of the day?

5 / 5.

This review is at appears on my Goodreads account, and can be accessed here.

Book Review — “The Remains of the Day” by Kazuo Ishiguro was originally published in When Silence Speaks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

To be honest, I started this book without any prior idea about it. The only reason I got this book is because it was free on Kindle, and because I wanted to try a new classic author. And how delightful this unexpected experience was!

A Room with a View is a book that tells the story of young Lucy Honeychurch and a forbidden love in an Edwardian English society. Simple… well, not really. It is not only a delightful story, but a study of the depths of human feelings and emotions, a study of the ‘muddle’ (those who read it will know what I’m talking about) that could slowly eat up the loving hearts, dim the brightness of youth, and harden the inflamed souls. Though it might sound like many other ‘romantic’ classics, this book, in my opinion, has something different… a certain candour and depth of thoughts, and an underlying call for a revolution, that one might or might not agree with, but will appreciate nevertheless.

4 / 5.

As appearing on my Goodreads account here.

Book Review — ‘A Room with a View’ by E.M Forster was originally published in When Silence Speaks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Books. A small word. One syllable. Nothing impressive. For some people it holds no special meaning, just a thing with many pages and words, and hopefully some pictures. For others it is a cause of frustration and repulsion: they’re not “cool”, they’re “long and boring” and “they remind me of school and homework”, and “why would I read the book when I can watch the movie?”. For others, they are a source of fun, a pleasant and harmless pastime. If you belong to any of these groups, read on, my friend, and allow me to share with you why books are more than that. And, if you belong to that last, small group of people, to whom books are a vitality, an unseverable part of existence, please read on, my friend, for you will probably enjoy someone echoing your thoughts.

Books. Portals to foreign places, and different times. Have you ever wished to escape? change your surroundings? maybe change where you live, who you live with, the people around you? or are you just curious to discover the world, and what it holds and hides? Why don’t you grab a book? Travel to wherever you want, meet with whoever you wish, do whatever you like. Absorb new surroundings. And I would dare say, risking that you think I’m crazy, meet new people… Get new friends, new heroes to look up to, and enemies to loath. Thousands and thousands of people I have met in books: characters I’ve loved, characters I’ve hated, some I respect and others I curse… and maybe some that I have fallen in love with. But from all, I have learned much. Thousands and thousands of places I have visited through books: I’ve been to almost every country on Earth, I’ve been to distant galaxies, to realms beyond the canvas of time and space, to places where magic exists and time is twisted. But also to places that felt more real than the world we live in: where thoughts and emotions are honest, simple, and pure; places of justice, loyalty, courage and wisdom. Places that are above and beyond the triviality and mundanity of everyday life.

“Books change us. Books save us. I know this because it happened to me.” — Elif Shafak

Books. Mirrors of humanity. It is really easy to drown in a book and its ideas, theories, characters, places and events… and to forget that these words and phrases creating magic and speaking wisdom are written by another person, just like ourselves. We forget that these words on paper are the birth children of hours of contemplation, of years of research, and sometimes of sudden flashes of other-worldly inspiration. However, what we forget the most is that each book is the birth child of every single book that has come before it; each book springs from thousands of ideas and theories, beliefs and traditions, conversations and discussions that have come before it. Each book is based on Wisdom that was, and will contribute to Wisdom that will be. Every book is a living (yes, living, because ideas are living creatures) manifestation of Humanity’s only (though many times forgotten) goal: the search for the Truth. And so books mirror what Humanity really wants: what transcends the triviality and mundanity of everyday life.

“Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one own’s self.” — Franz Kafka

Books. Reflections of each one of us, and refiners of our true nature. In a world drowning in materialism, egotism and selfishness, a world that seems every day to be drifting further from the essentials of life: love, understanding, forgiveness and honesty; books come as a reminder that we are not alone, that everything can get better. That no matter how lonely or left out we might feel, no matter how tough life can get, no matter how empty, disoriented or hurt we might be, we are never alone. What we are going through, many have before. What hurts us has hurt others before us. Books deliver great comfort because they show us that others have survived, so why wouldn’t we? How many times has a person been reading the words of another and thought: “This is exactly how I feel!!” or “Thank you for that!!” Books deliver answers, how many times has a reader been lost and found the answer needed in something as small as a poem verse? Books grow our sense of empathy, a virtue becoming scarce in the world. For all the feelings that a reader feels while devouring a book: happiness, sadness, pity, anger, gloriousness, excitement… are contributing to the refinement of the reader’s feelings, and the ascendance of their virtues. Books remove us from our own ego-centered existence and connect us with all that is living, has lived and will ever live: Human, Nature, and God. Removing us from the triviality and mundanity of everyday life.

“ A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors” — Charles Baudelaire

Books. I could have written to you about how healthy reading is, or how it will help you become rich and successful, and how every successful person reads three hundred books a year. But I did not, and would never. Because it is anathema to simplify something as spiritual and transcendent as reading into just another mundane tool of material life. Instead, I have tried to share with you, as accurately as I could though words fail me, the passion I have for books, and the Life behind them. For indeed this is what reading is: a passion. It is a flame that consumes the reader, purifying the person’s whole being with its heat, enlightening the human and Humanity with the dazzling lights of Truth and Beauty. I could talk a lot more, but it would never be enough. So why don’t you try yourself? A hidden garden of endless universes is waiting for you, at the flip of a book cover. So open the door, and step out.

Books: A Look Beyond was originally published in When Silence Speaks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Under the light of the morning sun
And the humming roar of the city
Detached from the world,
I look and see.

A machine that never rests
A system that never stops
A complexity of connections, thoughts
Opinions, stories, lots and lots…
Humans.

A system of chaos
A system of disorder
A system on the border
Of collapse
A system of order
Predictable
Complex
Connected
Unstably stable.

Chaos seems unpredictable
Ununderstandable
Labyrinthine
Complex
Complex
Complex.

Look closer
Don’t just look
See
Nothing as ordered as chaos
Patterns and mirrors
Understanding and wisdom
Order is in chaos
Chaos is in order.

On Chaos was originally published in When Silence Speaks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This book rightfully sits among the books you have to read before you die!

Maya Angelou tells the story of her childhood: a childhood full of hardships and calamities, but also filled with the beauty and innocence of childhood. She tells the story of her rushed childhood, in a world that did not give her the chance nor the time to live a proper one. Still, she can appreciate it. And still, she can tell it to us in all of its beauty and ugliness.

This story is not only Maya’s story. It’s a story of every child that felt not wanted by her parents. It’s the story of every child to whom racism and segregation don’t make any sense, because they really don’t. It’s the story of every child struggling to find its place in a world that seems not to want her. A world where your parents, your society, and sometimes even your God seem not to want you. Yet, Maya was still able to find beauty in this world: in the smells of her grandma’s little grocery store, in the hugeness of her father’s physique, in the songs and prayers that her people raise faithfully to God in the church, in the love that her mother holds for her in her own special way, in the role model she saw in her older brother.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a great look into the American society at the start of the 20th Century through the eyes of an extremely intelligent little girl, who has lost the innocence of childhood early, in an unforgiving world.

4 / 5.

Book Review — “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou was originally published in When Silence Speaks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I would like to start my review by stating simply and clearly: this is a beautiful book.

I should say that I could be a bit biased, since I’m a big fan of WWII-related novels. However, this book is different from others I have read, because it focuses on the aftermath of the war, after the scars have been made, after the monstrosities have been inflicted. It focuses on the road to healing, to redemption, to atonement… a road made hard by the ghosts of the past, who would not leave you alone. This road was impossible for some to survive, but not to the main character, Otto, and that is due to the power of love.

This book is about the healing power of love. It shows how being cared for and loved, by a neighbor, a lover, a friend, a son, will help you survive the rising tide of deadly guilt. This book is a story of survival and the fight against one’s own monster.

As well as being a beautiful story of survival, it is also a great adventure through early days Australia, the gold land of dreams.

All in all, a great novel!

4.5 / 5

— This is my review as it appears on both of my Goodreads and NetGalley profiles—

Book Review - "Orphaned Leaves" by Christopher Holt was originally published in When Silence Speaks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Beartown is just beautiful. Simply put.

Beartown is one hell of an emotional roller coaster that will make you want to cry, scream, kill someone at some points, and at others will make you smile, laugh (I loved those stupid jokes!) and feel proud. It is a beautiful look at the human soul and how it is affected by its surroundings, how strong society’s imprint is on people’s hearts and minds and how it can mask each person’s true self. It is a story of how we might live our whole lives, without in reality being ourselves. It is a story about the decisions and positions humans need to take, decisions that could be the death of someone, or their way to healing. It is a story about human passion, human weakness, human love, human scars, human sadness. It is a story about humans. And it is beautiful.

The characters are so familiar, so easily imaginable, so real. They are us, and the people we know. The only difference is that they are THE BEARS FROM BEARTOWN (some are wolves!), and we are here.

However, in terms of narration and storyline, Beartown is not exactly an innovation. The setting and environment of the story really reminded me, at some points, of Riverdale with a pinch of 13 Reasons Why. These two do not even come close to Beartown’s level of human insight and experience, of mental and emotional maturity, though.

Beartown is one of those books that I would recommend to one of my friends who is just getting started with reading, because I know it is one of those books that have the ability to enflame a person’s passion for reading. But it is also a book I would recommend to the most experienced of readers, because it has something different, something I haven’t seen anywhere else before.

Final Rating: 4.75 / 5.

This review first appeared on my Goodreads account. Feel free to add me as a friend on Goodreads and follow my book reviews and commentaries!

Book Review - "Beartown" by Fredrik Backman was originally published in When Silence Speaks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Artificial Intelligence is a topic that has caught the interest of the masses since its earliest days and has spurred the imagination of thousands of authors and artists creating a sizable amount of books, movies, TV series and lately a couple of new religious cults revolving around this very interesting, but often misunderstood, topic. The first image that comes to one’s mind when he/she hears ‘AI’ is that of an extremely smart machine created by some human-geniuses who would eventually lose control over it, much like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. If you are familiar with Frankenstein you might find its comparison to AI a bit weird: after all, Frankenstein is rather a stupid and naïve creature but nonetheless dangerous. But, and here’s the twist, so is AI.

Contrarily to what most people believe, or rather, are made to believe, AI systems are not some super-genius machines capable of taking control of all computer systems around the world and destroying humanity. Humans, as we all know, are versatile creatures capable of learning and developing knowledge in different domains ranging from wood crafting to quantum mechanics and beyond. AI systems on the other hand, are mono-skilled systems that are, to put it simply, smart only in the task that they have been programmed to do. Self-developing AI systems, known as Machine Learning systems, are able to learn from the information they consume and develop new, smarter and more efficient ways to solving problems. In most cases, they become ‘smarter’ than their developers. Google’s AlphaGo has beaten Go’s world champion. IBM’s Watson has destroyed two Jeopardy! champions in their game. A new system currently in development by experts at Stanford University in collaboration with Google is able to diagnose skin cancer: in many cases, it has succeeded where revered dermatologists have failed. Examples are uncountable. AI systems might seem to be super intelligent and they are, but only in very narrow and specific domains. Although Siri might answer your weird questions in a rather logical way, it cannot take control of a self-driving car, for example.

AlphaGo might beat the world champion, but according to a research conducted by experts from the University of Nebraska and the Chinese Academy of Science, its IQ has not even reached that of a 6-year-old child, nor will it ever be able to surpass it. AI is dangerous, but its threat is not intrinsic to it: AI systems are innocent. Danger comes from developing and using them inappropriately.

AI systems are innocent. Danger comes from developing and using them inappropriately.

Humans are skilled in finding for every new invention an evil use. And just like any other human creation, AI is used in detrimental ways and here lies its true danger. Similar AI algorithms are used by search engines like Google, Bing or Baidu to help people in their enquiries and answering their questions on the one hand, and by intelligence agencies to acquire private information about people and firms thus breaching their privacy and exposing them to danger, on the other hand. The same geospatial AI system that is used by a non-profit called DataKind to find the best routes to connect poor remote villages in Africa to the closest clean water source is also being used by military forces to track and destroy ‘targets’, mostly killing innocent civilians. Another great threat that AI poses to humanity is replacing the human workforce in many domains ranging from car manufacturing to accounting and auditing and even (sadly) education, thus throwing millions of people into the unemployment pool. After all, most corporate leaders favor profit over the empowerment of people which makes a considerable part of the labor force in danger.

At the end of the day, it seems that the true threat to humans are humans themselves and the choices that we will make in the upcoming years will deeply affect our lives and many generations to come. Artificial Intelligence can empower humans, help them grow and solve many of the pressing problems that humanity still faces in society, the industry and the economy. It will surely spur new research into many domains eventually leading to unimaginable breakthroughs. Or, it can lead to our eventual destruction by magnifying the problems that we are already facing. Just like an experiment going wrong gave birth to Frankenstein, so will bad decisions in this domain give birth to potential threats as serious as nuclear weapons or global warming. The choice is ours to make, let’s hope we won’t make a mistake this time.

This is my first story on Medium and your support would mean a lot! If you like the story why not press the clap button on the left and share the story with your friends? I will be posting more of my work soon!

AI: The New Frankenstein? was originally published in When Silence Speaks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

So, yes, we are creating new mind-blowing technology. And yes, we are sending new space crafts to reach unprecedented distances in the void of outer space. And yes, we are accumulating knowledge and power like never before. But humans tend to look at the distant island in the sea and forget the land that they stand on. That is the situation of the world right now.

We create and innovate and change and research and spend money and spend money and spend money… on things that we do not need, on creations and technologies that will never be as important as our fellow humans.

A lot of people would disagree, arguing that progress cannot reach everyone. But I ask you: why do we need 120-million-dollar supersonic planes, when a great number of the population still has no access to decent roads or transportation? Why do we spend astronomical amounts of energy to collide protons and other microscopic particles (1.3 terawatt hours annually at CERN — enough to light over 300,000 homes for a year), when some still do not have electricity to light a light bulb at night?

Why do we spend money on research that might fail, when billions are still uneducated? Why do we still drill the ground to look for oil and gas, slowly killing our own beautiful planet instead of putting all our effort in renewable energy that will not silently murder everyone and everything on our planet? But most importantly, why does it seem like we are focusing on everything but our own blood and flesh, our own brothers and sisters, humans who are, when you look at them, half-humans because they do not have food to eat, or water to drink, or energy to stay warm, or clothes to wear?

Yes, scientific advancement is important, and innovation is necessary. But “Halt!”. Helping our fellow humans should be our one and only end. Those huge amounts of money spent on scientific research, building skyscrapers and walls between countries, and upgrading weapons, are being invested wrongly, in my opinion. Humanity should slow this technological race and look at itself for a bit. We are forgetting those who bear the brunt of all the misery in the world: hunger, poverty, injustice, illiteracy, war… those who, as one of them has put it, “wish to sleep but to not wake up because death is better than this life”. While we are too busy counting our millions and watching football and eating unhealthy food and “advancing”, we forget those who are barely able to survive.

Now I ask you: are we really advancing? As long as there are people being left behind, our advancement will be an evil, wicked process; but you and I and everyone who has been blessed with the privilege of an education can change that. We can change. We are the change. Realistically, we are still far from ending the world’s miseries, but let us also be optimistic because positivity is the fuel of change.

When we read the news and see how the weak are neglected, let us not feel discouraged; let this motivate us to initiate change. We are all future scientists, engineers, doctors, teachers, businessmen, entrepreneurs, social workers, authors… and hopefully, above all, change-makers. Let our work be directed to the weak, the poor, and the forgotten first, and everything else will come later.

So before every venture, there is one question we should always ask ourselves: What about the weak?

— This article I’ve written first appeared in my university’s students’ newspaper the UOB Highlights. —

What About the Weak? was originally published in When Silence Speaks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.