レビュー要約

• 断章形式の自由さと、移動をめぐる哲学的な思考が評価されている。物語の輪郭は固定されないが、人体や歴史の具体的な細部が作品に強い手触りを与えている。

レビュー

• Brilliant.

  A brilliant work, sublime in its unique sensibility and and rendering of the world in rich, magnificent story telling, wise, philosophical, whimsical, that effortlessly merges layers of time, the past, present and future. I swoon at the sheer beauty of where such exquisite literature can transport one.

• A beautiful and clever book about everything

  Flights is a book to read while traveling, or while thinking of travel, or while pondering the nature of things, or while ageing or preparing to, or in fact any time. The 100+ vignettes, stories and collected thoughts are like a 17th century anatomist’s collection, a topic much explored in the book. A book to read and to share.

• A book that changes how you look at the ordinary

  This is one of the rare books that change how you look at the ordinary and helps you recognize the extraordinary around you. It consists of short essays, interspersed with stories, that spill over to one another and interconnect in unexpected ways. Some of the essays make me think of The Art of Travel by Alain de Boton, and some of the fiction reminds me of Borges. Here's a sampling of passages that caught my eye: "I dreamed of working on a boat like that when I grew up -- or even better, of becoming one of those boats. It wasn't a big river ... a minor one ... a kind of country vicountess at the court of the Amazon queen. But it was more than enough for me." p 3 "... I realized that .... a thing in motion will always be better than a thing at rest, that change will always be a nobler thing and permanence; that that which is static will degenerate and decay, turn to ask, while that which is in motion is able to last for all eternity." p. 4 "I believe, unswervingly, agonizingly that it is in freaks that Being breaks through to the surface and reveals its true nature." p. 17 "I think there are a lot of people like me. Who aren't around, who've disappeared. They show up all of a sudden in the arrivals terminal and start to exist when the immigration officers stamp their passports, or when the polite receptionist at whatever hotel hands over their keys." p. 52 "Every moment is unique; no moment can ever be repeated. This idea favors risk-taking, living life to the fullest, seizing the day. p. 53 "Description is akin to overuse -- it destroys; the colors wear off, the corners lose their definition, and in the end what's been described begins to fade, to disappear. ... Guidebooks have conclusively ruined the greater part of the planet; published in editions numbering in the millions, in many languages, they have debilitated place, pinning them down and naming them, blurring their contours." p. 69 "... you have to step in between the words, into the unfathomable abysses between ideas. With every step we'll slip and fall." p. 73 "What will you see here? The very edge of the world, where time, reflected off the empty waterfront, turns around disappointed and heads toward land and pitilessly leaves this place to its perpetual enduring." p. 83 "Each year more people are killed by kicks from donkeys than by plane crashes. If you wind up at the bottom of a well, you'll be able to see the stars even during the day." pp. 102-103 [about deserts and beaches] "What if they're entirely made up of the posthumous essences of the bodies of enlightened beings? p. 167 "... we experience time and space in a manner that is primarily unconscious. These are not categories we could call objective, or external. Our sense of space results from our ability to move. Our sense of time, meanwhile, is due to being biological individuals undergoing distinct and changing states. Time is thus nothing other than the flow of changes." p. 171 "... one becomes what one participates in. In other words, I am what I look at." p. 173 "... the suspect nature of what we naively take to be reality." p. 190 "The nocturnal brain is a Penelope unraveling the cloth of meaning diligently woven during the day." p. 227 "... with age, memory starts to slowly open its holographic chams..." p. 289 "Children become people when they wriggle out of your arms and say 'no.'" p. 349 "That smile of theirs holds -- or so it strikes me -- a kind of promise that perhaps we will b born anew now, this time in the right time and the right place." p. 403

• Incredible book

  Fantastic book! Incredible translation

• Excelente servicio!

  Fuuw un regalo que hice y le ha encantado a la persona que se lo regalé, muchísimas Gracias! Emilio Río

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