Maurício Gardini - Books

Journey to the Center of the Earth

2020-07-05T00:00:00-03:00

Jules Verne is a classic author which, before this book,I hadn’t read any of his books.

Looks like I’ve been missing quite a great author.

It’s writing is really elegant, being detailed, but without being tiresome.

The story was entertaining, and I had a really good feeling every time I picked up this book.

I’ll surely check out other books from this author. High chances that he becomes one of my favorite authors in some time.

“Science, my boy, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.”

Ready Player One

2020-06-29T00:00:00-03:00

Ready Player One is a book that follows Wade Watts in a dystopic future on which the world turned out to be a very disturbing place, dominated by poverty and famine.

On this world, people spend their waking hours on the OASIS, a virtual world where you can do pretty much everything that you want, creating a reality much better than on the real world.

The founder of this alternate reality, James Halliday, promised the control of this world to the person which can solve the riddles that he left.

The book follows the journey of Wade - and everyone else on the OASIS - to solve the puzzles (heavily based on the 20th century culture) left by Halliday on the world that he created.

I know that this book won’t appeal to everybody (and the younger the reader, I think it may appeal less and less), but for me it was a fun and effortless read.

“For a bunch of hairless apes, we’ve actually managed to invent some pretty incredible things.”

Cat’s Cradle

2020-05-30T00:00:00-03:00

Cat’s Cradle is a book that is chaotic, but at the same time makes sense.

The book follows Jonah, a writer, on its journey to document about August 6, 1945, the day that the first atomic bomb fell in Hiroshima.

To do that, he goes after people that knew Felix Hoenikker, the (fictional) inventor of the bomb.

The events that happen after that are worth experiencing for yourself, because I think that I wouldn’t be able to describe them without spoiling.

“Science is magic that works.”

The Art of Racing in the Rain

2020-03-31T00:00:00-03:00

Reading this book was a grateful surprise.

At first, I kinda avoided this book for the fact that its narrator is a dog. Yes, a dog.

For this reason, I thought that the book would be childish (in a bad way) and “cartoonish”. But, gladly, I was wrong.

While reading this book, I got kinda emotionally invested on it, being near tears in some times, laughing in others and mad about the characters’ actions in others.

Also, it’s worth noting that there are lots of automobilistic references, being this the fact that initially made me interested on this book.

Please, do yourself a favor and read this book.

“So much of language is unspoken. So much of language is compromised of looks and gestures and sounds that are not words. People are ignorant of the vast complexity of their own communication.”

Fahrenheit 451

2020-01-14T00:00:00-03:00

This book follows Guy Montag, who is a fireman in a world where firemen start fires instead of putting them out, because houses are made of materials that aren’t flammable.

Also, in this world, books are banned. Oh, and do you know what firemen burn? Yeah, exactly: books (and the houses on which these books were hidden).

Instead of reading, the members of this society get all the information that it’s selected for them to know through TVs - in plural, because houses usually have several displays.

Sounds familiar?

Then, the protagonist of this story, moved by a specific fact, goes into a journey to find out if books are that bad of a thing, and that’s how the story develops.

Really interesting dystopic fiction story, despite the fact that this fiction feels more like a non-fiction nowadays.

Oh, by the way: Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature necessary for paper to burn.

“If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you’ll never learn.”

1984

2020-01-06T00:00:00-03:00

One of the best dystopias ever written.

This book presents a reality that is really disturbing, but at the same time flirts with the reality.

Despite being a book that was written in the 50s, it manages to be incredibly modern, even more considering the political scenario of certain countries in the world.

A really recommended read to everybody.

“War is peace.

Freedom is slavery.

Ignorance is strength.”

Building Progressive Web Apps

2019-06-07T00:00:00-03:00

Really good book on a subject that’s getting more relevant as the time passes: PWA.

The author presents lots of interesting information about the subject in an easy to grasp language. Also, the book has lots of code examples, and the subjects are introduced in an order that makes sense.

For me, that wasn’t that aware about all the possibilities that this technology offered, it was an excellent book. Surely the knowledge acquired from reading it will be used to create some things on this site.

The Dispatcher

2019-05-15T00:00:00-03:00

This book was in fact a short story, being the first audio book that I ever listened.

On this book, Tony Valdez is a “dispatcher”, a person that works by bringing people that were killed by other people back to live with 99% chance of success. There are more details on how this happens, but I’ll leave them to be discovered by whom decides to read/listen to the book.

Overall, a really interesting premise, which was explored on a short story that focuses on the solving of a mistery. This leaved me wanting for more, both by the author and the world created for the story.

“I know what side of the street I like better. But you don’t always get to choose the side of the street you walk on.”

The Old Man And The Sea

2019-02-15T00:00:00-02:00

This isn’t a preposterous book. It’s theme is simple: it tells a story of a man that goes fishing when a marlin bites his bait and he ends up on the battle of his life.

The book is beautifully written. Yeah, maybe not everybody will be hooked by the simplicity of this story. And there is no symbolism, as the own Ernest Hemingway said once: “There isn’t any symbolism. The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. (…) The sharks are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is shit. What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know.”

Despite the lack of symbolism, the story teaches you a lesson or two about perseverance (or even stubbornness) and by doing the things that really matter to you, not mattering what the other people will think about it.

“Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.”

Memories Of My Melancholy Whores

2019-02-12T00:00:00-02:00

This review may contain spoilers.

A book that could potentially have been a great book, but that was doomed from the start because of one information.

This story talks about an old journalist, who, after completing his 90th birthday, seeks to have sex with a virgin girl. After having a conversation with a bawd that he knew from earlier times, she arranges a date for him with a young prostitute, who is selling her virginity to help her family. But, instead of having sex, he ends up falling in love with her.

The book is very well written, despite the fact that Gabriel García Márquez has a peculiar way of writing dialogues (by mixing them with the rest of the text with no clear separation). The writing is poetic, despite the simple vocabulary.

But there’s one information that threw me off, that kinda spoiled the whole thing for me: the girl is 14 years old. Ok, he never had sex with her, but that doesn’t make the fact less reprehensible. Despite not having sexual relations with her, she becomes an obsession of him, as he spends hours admiring her, kissing her and even writes columns about her. The fact that there wasn’t a sexual relation doesn’t make it less wrong.

Maybe if this fact had a purpose on the story, I’d have tried to accept it better. But, for me, there isn’t. If the girl was 18 years old, in my opinion the book wouldn’t lose any of his beauty and the story wouldn’t be spoiled. It seems that his deliberate choice was made just to be polemic.

This fact bothered me so much that it wasn’t possible to put myself at the perspective of the protagonist. I didn’t want it. I didn’t want to be part of that.

“No matter what, nobody can take away the dances you’ve already had.”

Don’t Make Me Think

2019-02-07T00:00:00-02:00

This book was laying around at my work for quite some time, so, despite being an outdated edition (Second Edition, 2005), I thought that it was worth a try. I didn’t get disappointed.

In a simple, concise and humorous way, Steve Krug points out the most common mistakes that are made during web development, with simple to follow instructions. I’d dare to say that it’s a good book to introduce somebody to Usability, something that anybody who wishes to design a good product should know about (at least the basics).

I’ll try to look for the earlier edition, as I read somewhere that there are examples and extra information involving mobile devices on this newer book.

Recommended for anyone involved with web development. Just try to get the new, revisited edition, published in 2014.

Learn Ruby The Hard Way

2019-02-01T00:00:00-02:00

I read this book as someone who has years of programming experience (Python, mostly) and wanted to have a grasp on the Ruby language.

Well, if you already have experience in programming, you probably already are aware of most of the concepts that are in this book and you won’t get much of new knowledge on it.

What looked like for me is that the title is a little misleading. I expected a more thorough explanation of Ruby features and caveats, and what I got was what looks like a good book for a beginner in programming, but a really slow book for somebody who already is into programming.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: A Graphic Novel

2019-01-14T00:00:00-02:00

This book was an interesting, quick read.

For those who don’t know the story, it’s about a man who is born 70 years old and that ages in reverse, becoming younger and younger.

According to the authors, the idea for the book was inspired on this Mark Twain quote:

If I had been helping the Almighty when he created man, I would have had him begin at the other end, and start human beings with old age. How much better to start old and have all the bitterness and blindness of age in the beginning! One would not mind then if he were looking forward to a joyful youth. Think of the joyous prospect of growing young instead of old! Think of looking forward to eighteen instead of eighty! Yes, the Almighty made a poor job of it. I wish He had invited my assistance.

The book presents a very interesting drawing style, which fits quite well with the story.

My main complaints about this graphic novel are aspects related to its history, like “Why is Benjamin Button like that?” and “Why don’t we hear about Benjamin Button’s mom after his birth?”.

The Road

2019-01-14T00:00:00-02:00

The Road is a really immersive book that describes the journey of a father and its son on a post-apocalyptic world.

What happened in this world isn’t explained at any moment, but suffice to say that it’s really gray, full of ash and liveless.

Corman McCarthy does a really good job on creating detailed (but not that much) descriptions, which helps to transport the reader to the world he’s writing about.

One peculiarity of his writing is that he doesn’t add quotation marks when the characters are speaking. The edition of the book that I read added indentation on the characters’ dialogues, but I don’t know if it’s something that’s present in all editions. But anyway, the absence of quotation marks didn’t bother me that much. Maybe because the book that I read before this one was The Old Man And The Sea, which presents dialogues along with the rest of the text with no distinction at all.

About the story itself, it intercalates peaceful moments of father and son relationship with lots of tense survival incidents that they have to endure to thrive in the destroyed world that they live.

However, even on the peaceful moments, the dialogues between the father and the son are short, without many flourishes. I dare to say that they are really too succinct, for a father and son relationship. But, in a very tense world, where the end of your life may be on the next corner, the conversations are reduced to the bare necessary and all the energies are focused on trying to survive.

Despite all that, what really matters in the end is that the father and the son are “carrying the fire”, as the characters say many times, what I interpret as an analogy to keep believing, keep thriving. And that’s what matters, after all.

“Keep a little fire burning; however small, however hidden.”