Benji Davies -"Ursuletul merge in vizita la ferma"

Este o carte foarte potrivitã pentru copiii mici. Nu are cine ştie ce text, dar este interactivã, copiii putând face diverse acţiuni cu animalele de la fermã şi le exerseazã motricitatea finã (de exemplu, pot scoate porcii din cocinã, cocoşul din cuibar etc.).

Bohumil Hrabal -"L-am servit pe regele Angliei"

O savuroasă satiră socială (şi, implicit, politică) sub forma memoriilor fictive ale unui chelner care trece cu ingenuitate (există, oare, nevinovați atunci când restul lumii trece prin situații oribile?) prin prima jumătate a secolului al XX-lea.
Cel mai bine îi reuşeşte lui Bohumil Hrabal inversarea perspectivei (de ex. Ditie este un chelner pitic căruia îi place enorm să mănânce... sau să mănânce enorm).

La început Ditie lucrează în mai multe hoteluri şi restaurante unde prinde repede şmecheriile chelnerilor, iar apoi, profitând de contextul istoric, speculează diverse evenimente (fără răutate, dar, oare, e o scuză suficientă pentru a-l absolvi de vină?) pentru a se îmbogăți, ca totul să se prăbuşească odată cu venirea comunismului. In micimea lui (de diferite feluri), Ditie e prins în marea Istorie, încercând să se adapteze la ea cât de bine poate, pierzând de multe ori din vedere perspectiva de ansamblu. Deşi unele situații l-ar putea pune într-o lumină proastă, el scapă de judecățile negative ale cititorilor. Pe de o parte, ne dăm seama că din poziția lui minusculă nu are cum, de multe ori, să-şi înțeleagă greşelile şi cruzimea, iar pe de altă parte e cum a zis Iisus -să arunce primul cu piatra cel care se ştie fără de păcat. Oare noi suntem mereu lucizi în contextul istoric în care ne plasăm? Oare nu suntem şi noi la fel de mici ca Ditie? Oare nu suntem şi noi de multe ori incapabili de a ne evalua corect propriile acțiuni tocmai pentru că suntem prea mici pentru nişte înțelesuri mult prea mari?

Ce rămâne din carte este plăcerea lui Ditie de a trăi. Pentru că de multe ori s-a aflat atât de jos că nu mai avea unde cădea, nu se putea uita decât în sus. Si s-a obişnuit cu acest uitat în sus care, până la urmă, are şi un potențial de salvare şi de vindecare spirituală, adesea exersat prin hohote de râs.

Inceputul:
"Fiţi atenți la ce vă spun acum:
Când m-am prezentat la Hotelul PRAGA DE AUR, patronul m-a apucat de urechea stângă şi, trăgându-mă după el, îmi spuse: "Aici, la noi, eşti picolo, ține minte acest lucru! N-ai văzut nimic, n-ai auzit nimic! Repetă!" Si eu i-am răspuns că în acest local n-am văzut şi n-am auzit nimic. După care patronul m-a apucat de urechea dreaptă şi, trăgându-mă după el, mi-a spus: "Si mai ține minte că va trebui să vezi totul şi să auzi totul! Repetă!" Si, cu uimire, am repetat că de acum încolo voi vedea totul şi voi auzi totul. Si, uite, aşa am început[...]".

Katja Rider si Tim Warnes -"Ursuletul Benny si Ratusca Mac"

Nouã nu ne-a plãcut cartea asta. Textul este foarte plictisitor, cu multe multe fraze care nu spun nimic. Desenele sunt repetitive, astfel încât copilului îi este greu sã spunã povestea plecând de la ele, iar povestea mi se pare cã nu are nici un haz, tâlc, clenci etc.

Michael Wolff -"Fire and Fury. Inside the Trump White House"

O carte cu un fantastic potențial de umor dacă nu ar fi non-ficțiune. Toți oamenii zdraveni la cap se aşteaptă la multe din lucrurile descrise în carte despre administrația Trump, totuşi aşa o aglomerare de habarnişti, impostori, aberații, decizii luate după ureche şj "oficializate" pe twitter este neaşteptată pentru oricine.

"In politics somebody has to lose, but invariably everybody thinks they can win. And you probably can't win unless you believe that you will win -except in the Trump campaign. The leitmotif for Trump about his own campaign was how crappy it was and how everybody involved in it was a loser. He was equally convinced that the Clinton people were brilliant winners -"They've got the best and we've got the worst," he frequently said. Time spent with Trump on the campaign plane was often an epic dissing experience: everybody around him was an idiot."

Perspectiva cărții este şi ea una exagerată, dar chiar şi gândind la rece situația arată sumbru, făcând abstracție ee hohotele involuntare de râs pe care ni le stârnesc multe din anecdote.

"Previous presidents, and not just Clinton, have of course lacked scruples. What was, to many of the people who knew Trump well, much more confounding was that he had managed to win this election, and arrive at this ultimate accomplishment wholly lacking what in some obvious sense must be the main requirement of the job, what neuroscientists would call executive function. He had somehow won the race for president, but his brain seemed incapable of performing what would be essential tasks in his new job. He had no ability to plan and organize and pay attention and switch focus; he had never been able to tailor his behavior to what the goals at hand reasonably required. On the most basic level, he simply could not link cause and effect."

Nu este o carte care să exceleze la acuratețea istorică, pe alocuri lasă puternic impresia de răzbunare şi răutate poate gratuită, dar e justă atmosfera generală de surpriză politică în promovarea la putere a unei familii inepte de a face față unei asemenea responsabilități ("Donald Trump and his tiny band of campaign warriors were ready to lose with fire and fury. They were not ready to win").

"You could hardly find an entity more at odds with military discipline than a Trump organization. There was no real up-and-down structure, but merely a figure at the too and then everyone else scrambling for his attention. It wasn't task-based so much as response oriented -whatever captured the boss's attention focused everybody's attention. That was the way in Trump Tower, just as it was now the way in the Trump White House."

Michael Wolff ne dezvăluie ce s-a întâmplat timp de 9 luni în culisele administrației Trump, cu toată doza ei de neprevăzut, impulsivitate şi amatorism.

"Ivanka had long ago figured out how to make succesful pitches to her father. You had to push his enthusiasm buttons. He may be a businessman, but numbers didn't do it for him. He was now a spreadsheet jockey -his numbers guys dealt with spreadsheeta. He liked big names. He liked the big picture -he liked literal big pictures. He liked to see it. He liked "impact".
But in one sense, the military, the intelligence community, and the White House's national security team remained behind the times. Theirs was a data world rather than a picture world. As it happened, the attack on Khan Sheikhoun had produced a wealth of visual evieence. Bannon might be right that this attack was no more mortal than countless others, but by focusing on this one and curating the visual proof, this atrocity became singular.
Late that afternoon, Ivanka and Dina created a presentatiom that Bannon, in disgust, characterized as pictures of kids foaming at the mouth. When the two women showed the presentation to the president, he went through it several times. He seemed mesmerized."

Si cam aşa s-a decis intrarea în război a uneia dintre cele mai puternice forțe militare din lume...

De asemenea, avem şi părerile pe care membrii echipei şi familiei lui Trump le au despre acesta, motivele adevărate din spatele unor momente importante din preşedinția Trump (cum ar fi concedierea şefului FBI James Comey), cine sunt cei care îl influențează pe Trump, cum reuşesc să o facă şi cât de competenți sunt.

"Almost all the professionals who were now set to join him were coming face to face with the fact that it appeared he knew nothing. There was simply no subject, other than perhaps building construction, that he had substantially mastered. Everything with him was off the cuff. Whatever he knew he seemed to have learned an hour before -and that was mostly half baked.
But each member of the new Trump team was convincing him -or herself otherwise -because what did they know, the man had been elected president. He offered something, obviously. Indeed, while everybody in his rich-guy social circle knew about his wide-ranging ignorance -Trump, the businessman, could not even read a balance sheet, and Trump, who had campaigned on his deal-making skills, was, with his inattention to details, a terrible negotiator -they yet found him somehow instinctive. That was the word. He was a force of personality. He could make you believe."

"Trump didn't read. He didn't really even skim. If it was print, it might as well not exist. [...] He was postliterate -total television.
But not only didn't he read, he didn't listen. He preferred to be the person talking. And he trusted his own expertise -no matter how paltry or irrelevant- more than anyone else's. What's more, he had an extremely short attention span, even when he thought you were worthy of attention.
The organization therefore needee a set of internal rationalizations that would allow it to trust a man who, while he knew little, was entirely confident of his own gut instincts and reflexive opinions, however frequently they might change.
Here was a kew Trump White House rationale: expertise, that liberal virtue, was overrated. After all, so often people who had worked hard to know what they knew made the wrong decisions. So maybe the gut was good, or maybe better, at getting to the heart of the matter than the wonkish and data-driven inability to see the forest for the trees that often seemed to plague U.S. policy making. Maybe. Hopefully."