Homo Deus

Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Homo Deus - means Man God.
I found it quite interesting - the author of the book declares himself an atheist and many times mentions that God does not exist.
So what about Man God - does he/she exist only in half?
The book reflects quite well this incompatibility of ideas used in the title.
Firstly the author tries to summarize all dimensions of human being in few hormones and DNA connections. They all can be easily controlled and ensure eternal biological life in total happiness.
Basically it exhausts the subject of the book so it could have been finished after the first chapter.
For some reason author continues the story for another 10 chapters and comes to a conclusion - there is no reason for further existence of humans.
Quite logical - if the is no God then there is no space for Homo Deus.


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The Mother

The Mother by Jane Caro
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I admired Jane's Caro books about Queen Elisabeth I, so this book was bit of a shock.
From the very beginning I did not feel comfortable in the company of characters presented in the book. 

Firstly - childhood of Miriam, then her constant concern with her own feelings and behaviour. Even her marriage to Pete looked a bit unclear to me.
Then marriage of Ally and Nick. Firstly I could not visualize how they met each other, he was a vet working all days in a small town far away from Sydney. Then - duality of Nick's character.
I got impression that the author was building artificial characters just to satisfy the scenario she prepared for them.
I stopped reading when I found the story going into cruelty, horror and too many legal details.

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Cafe Scheherezada

Cafe Scheherazade by Arnold Zable
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Actually my rating is 3.5.

Stories of people from Poland and Ukraine who tried to escape the German war machine. Many of them expected  a rescue in the Soviet Union, but it appeared to be not a better option.

Eventually they travelled around the world and ended in Australia.

There are 2 dimensions of my reflection about this book.
Firstly I have great respect for people whose stories are told in this book and I acknowledge skills of the author.
Secondly however, as a reader, I had trouble of sorting out all the facts of few parallel, extremely complicated, life stories.
I found a couple of links with facts about The Scheherazade in Acland St in Melbourne:

Link 1 
Link2


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Recitatif

Recitatif: A Story by Toni Morrison
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I noticed this book in a Large Print section of my local library and picked it up because it was short.
I skipped the Introduction, read it and my first impression was: where is the story?
Luckily it was pretty short, 51 pages in Large Print, so I could not complain about wasted time.
To fill the saved time I looked into the Introduction - lxiii pages of it, which translates to 63.
Now I understood that there are 2 crucial aspects of this book:
- firstly, it is the only short story of this author.
So what???
- secondly, one of the girls admitted to the orphanage - Twyla - makes a comment that the other girl was of different race and that she smelled funny.
So what???
Zadie Smith, the author of the Introduction, explained - one of them was BLACK!.
On Goodreads page I noticed that on the front pages of some editions there are images of white and black faces.
Probably it is right because otherwise I would not remember the initial mention that girls were of different races because in the book, the girls meet each other 4 times, in different circumstances and there is no hint that anybody noticed their race nor that it affected in any way their life, their family or career.
And that is as it should be.
So - what is all that fuss about?

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Bila Yarrudhanggalanghuray

Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray by Anita Heiss
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

A very sad book about disoriented and misplaced people.
It managed also to confuse me a lot.

It starts with father and daughter watching white people building homes.
Daughter observes: "...they are making their own homes like ours but they will not be moved on, not like us..."

Homes like ours - unfortunately the book does not say a word about living conditions of Aborigines, about their homes. They mostly sleep under a clear sky, there is one or two mentions about collecting tree bark to build some shelter.

The book also does not say much about homes of white people, but they look messy.
When the flood comes and the family has to escape to the attic, it appears that the entrance is over a dining table and there is no ladder at home.

Warning - the following text is a spoiler!

The main character - Wagadhaany - is a young Aboriginal girl working as a servant for family of Bradleys. They are Catholics which maybe suggests an Irish origin.
How come she became a servant?
It looks like most of her tribe, her whole family, are living freely on the outskirts of Gundagai. She misses them awfully. She is allowed to visit them quite often, but still, most of the time she is longing for them and for their lifestyle.

1852 floods destroy the town.
Half of Bradleys family drowned, two brothers James and David and Wagadhaany survived.
We learn that Bradley's home is one of only three which were not destroyed.

New character appears - Louise Spencer - young lady, who lost all her family, including young husband, in the flood.
Fortunately she comes from quite affluent family so without much trouble she got her home rebuilt and arrives in a carriage on the horseracing track.
Most important thing we learn about her is, that she is a devoted Quacker, a person with very strong conviction about equality of all people and the duty of love and care for your neighbour.

At the racecourse Luise meets James Bradley and from the first moment she feel a very strong attraction to him.

Few months passed and they are married.
Many questions.
There is no mentions about any connection of Louise to any relatives, family friends, Quacker community. She is totally independent, totally alone - was it possible?
Questions:
- James Bradley presents himself as a very primitive and rather brutal person.
For Louise, physical attraction obscures these faults, but is there nobody around her to open her eyes?
- financial settlement?
She is probably better situated than James Bradley and what? she gives all her resources to him?

Next many pages describe how much Wagadhaany is missing her tribe and how important for her is time spent with her people.
Unfortunately the reader will not learn anything about any events, ceremonies, practical issues of daily life of her tribe. They just live happily.

In first chapters of the book, David Bradley seems to play significant role. He is attracted physically to Wagadhaany and this attractions got some dangerous shades.
Luckily, very quickly he just disappears from the story. Why was he there at all?

Bradley family moves to Wagga Wagga.
Wagadhaany moved with with them, agaists her will, mostly because David Bradley insists.
Why?

As we do not know anything about life of Wagadhaany tribe, similarly we do not learn anything about Bradley family.
We learn that they employ a number of stockmen, Whites and Aborigines, so sometimes Louisa and Wagadhaany are more busy with preparing meals. The reader does not know what is the rhythm of life of this household
We know that James Bradley is preoccupied with ambition to become a mayor of Wagga Wagga so he has to spend lots of time drinking with influential neighbours. There is no mention of any social life, any mention about developent of the town.

Luckily Wagadhaany got in touch with the local Aboriginal tribe which in many ways make her life bearable.
She manages to create her own family and eventually to reunite with her original tribe.
Happy ending?
I am too much confused to confirm.

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Empuzjon

Empuzjon by Olga Tokarczuk
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Young student of engineering comes to a tuberculosis sanatorium in Gorbersdorf.
Year 1913.
Similarity with The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann is obvious.
For me it was a disadvantage for the book.
Hans Castorp comes to Davos for 3 weeks, to visit his cousin. After few days he gets so enchanted with the athmosphere on the mountain, that he stays there 7 years.
It justifies the title - The Magic Mountain.
Mieczysław Wojnicz comes to Gorbersdorf for a short, 3 months, stay and everything goes according to the plan.
So, where is the story?
It requires some magic, nasty female demons - empusa - to add some nerve and tension.
Otherwise there would be no story.
The story as it is told left me with distaste.


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Machines behaving badly

Machines Behaving Badly: The Morality of AI by Toby Walsh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was quite suspicious about the title of this book.
Are machines really behaving? Can they be judged by human standards?
In my opinion, the author very early gives a negative answers to these questions.
Machines behave as they were programmed by the people.
Here is the heart of the matter.
What people stand behind the machines?
Author introduces them as geeks from the Crazy Valley.
Here most phantastic ideas are conceived, some of them are noticed.
Noticed by whom?
The answer is even more disturbing than for the first question - biggest and most influential companies in the world - Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook.
Each of them has a long record of tax avoidance and abuse of privacy.
Do we have any other option, any choice?
Answer is No.
One important point - author mentions some basic human behaviours and reactions , the most obvious is pain.
The point is that pain is biology and chemistry while the machines react only to physics. Therefor the logical conclusion is that AI should be translated as ALIEN Intelligence - fully agree.

From this point the book contains a long list of problems we can encounter when using SI and many attempts of National and International organisations to set up some uniform rules and standards. Looks like all of them are destinied for failure.

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