Il Treno dei bambini - Viola Ardone

 Libro eccellente che racconta la storia vera di un gruppo di bambini da Napoli mandato a Bologna durante l'inverno dopo la guerra per togliergli della povertà e della fame.  E la storia di chi vive senza un senso chiaro d'identità tra due mondi.  Il personnaggio principale scopre un mondo diverso quando vive colla famiglia a Bologna e non può piu tornare alla vita stretta e dura della sua madre a Napoli.  Lei anche lo respinge nel senso che non può accettare quel nuovo mondo che il suo bambino ha scoperto.  In quel senso è anche un libro su come la gente  può tenersi prigioniero nel sua propria vita e idee.  

Una storia emotiva ma non eccessivamente - va bene con il tema dei bambini.  

The Scarlet Gospels - Clive Barker

 A disappointing read.  His best work seems to have been the Abarat Trilogy.  Characters are stereotypical and lack convincing depth.  The action is repetitive in its graphic description of endless gory violence.  The storyline has potential, some creativity but the stylistic weaknesses undermine it too much.  

Steps - Jerzy Kosinski

 A collection of short texts with little or no connections.  Like fragments.  You can see the themes I saw in the film version of his book, Painted Birds - sadistic violence, violent sex, anger and resentment,  revenge.  He writes well but the whole things seems like voyeurism or thrill seeking by the comfortable and well-off.  Jean Genet, on the other hand, is the real thing (though his popularity is this same kind of voyeurism on the part of his readers).

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe

 A reread from long ago.  A portrait of a lost era that quickly disappeared into the maw of commercialization of everything.  Kesey was a strange character - a bit of a prophet with a vision of a society with a freer, more open mind.  It is interesting that his later message was to move beyond acid and the other drugs, to find that open mind state without the drugs.  Of course, this message fell flat.  For most the attraction was the thrill.  

Also, always the same old things:  leader worship, in crowd and out crowd, conformity pressure.  The alternative vision that mirrors the same old same old....

Sadly, ultimately, the whole thing ended rather seedily - hiding from the law, seamy Mexico, in-fighting, even a bit of megalomania and paranoia.  A failed prophecy and a failed prophet.  

Wind/Pinball - Haruki Murakami

 Two of Murakami's first works, both novellas.  Interesting from a development perspective.  One of them (I forget which) is basically an autobiographical piece about his life right around when he decided to write novels, and also an explanation of the completely random way in which he decided to become a writer, and his first steps in finding his own particular style (turns out he first started to try writing in English and liked the simplified, pared down result, which he then translated into a writing technique in Japanese)

The WEIRDEST People in the World - Joseph Henrich

 A potentially fascinating book exploring the psychological and conceptual differences between the Western European psyche and culture and that of the rest of the world, and how this helps explain the rise and dominance of the West.  He looks at all kinds of things - individualism vs. social and familial integration,  social cohesion vs. individual perception and judgement, the locus of causality and guilt, and many others.

One interesting point that he makes is how the Catholic Church revolutionized social relations in the West by forbidding cousin marriage, thereby forcing people to reach out beyond their immediate familial circles to develop a wider web of relations.

Unfortunately, the book delves into the background, research and experiments a bit too deeply and it begins to drag.  I would like to read a version with the main themes and conclusions and a simple summary of the background related to each.  Because of this quality, I couldn't finish the book.

Try again, reading only the beginning and end of each section for the main points and themes.

Even the Dead - Benjamin Black

 As per usual