Le Dernier Jour D'un Condamné - Victor Hugo

To describe Hugo's "last day of a condemned man" in few words, I would say that this is a historically important book. I would not recommend it for anyone but I insist that it is a must meaning that upon reading it one thinks about many things that otherwise would not necessarily cross the mind.

This is not a biography of someone in particular nor just a journey retracing the last day of a prisoner sentenced to death. This book rather highlights the nitty gritty details of the process of death sentence execution in the 19th century. The journey starts at the court and stops (Not ends) at the Guillotine. Nothing out of the ordinary here you would say? I beg to differ. This book is different because its aim was to change people's attitude regarding death sentence given that at the  time of its publication, death sentence was a commonly accepted event, even a popular one that attracted people who used to gather on these occasions to watch prisoners being beheaded as if attending a show! It is scary to think that nowadays, after all this time, such practices still occur in some parts of the world and that even some religious fanatics are demanding their governments to reconsider legalizing public executions!!! This is just atrocious in my opinion for I am a fervent opposant to death sentence because I cannot grasp the logic that justifies people's right to take out another's life. And I am not at all going to comment on the public execution nonsense!!!

The strength of this book comes from the way it was written i.e. in a diary-like form that actually takes you through the last thoughts, feelings and worries of the every day, hour and minute of the life of  a prisoner "heading" towards the Guillotine (heading! :D, I am sorry, I could not help it!).  Now what is more interesting in this book I believe is that what we learn about the prisoner does not make him different at all from any other average Joe in his society. He has a family and family issues, a job and business worries and most importantly a daughter that is everything to this dad. You do not feel that this man deserves such a sentence. You will also find it hard to imagine that this "nice" guy who is being locked in a cell that has witnessed before him the passage of the cruelest criminals deserves a similar sentence. But then again, this guy might have also been worst than all the criminals before him. Hugo intentionally does not let us know what was this guy's crime or wether he is innocent because for him it is not important the only thing that matters is that a human remains a human and no one deserves to suffer this way. You might agree or disagree on the proper crime punishment method it doesn't matter but at least upon reading this book you will forever remember that regardless of the crime all humans are alike and you realize that everyone (and I mean everyone including you and I) could end up like the prisoner of this book did meaning on the other side of the bars and be judged instead of judging.

Now to finish, what I enjoyed the most in this book was that Hugo made me aware of the notion of time day by day, hour by hour and minute by minute. We all know time is precious even though we don't always act upon it but for me this is the first book that made me aware and worried about my time and time quality. 


 

 

Blindness - José Saramago

I think I am probably the persone who hates this book the most in the whole world! But first things first, you should know that I could be considered as a negative reader since I read a lot of books but only like a few.

I had never read anything by the author before and my review is not intended towards him in anyway. I just need to say what I think about this book.

 

The first thought on my mind while reading the book was: What a disappointment! They give Nobel prizes for such THINGS now? Life is so unfair! The Curie(s) got themselves killed, Marshall went through terrible agony and many others wasted their lives and health for this award and this lame story is to be considered equally important? Over my dead body!!! And I do mean it!

If this were a movie I would have flipped the channel immediately. How many times so far have this idea been exploited? It is boring; it has been boring since forever. I have to admit though, the white blindness, so creative! (Wish you could hear the sarcasm). I mean seriously, what was he thinking? What was the purpose behind this color? To make the blindness original? Is this what these numerous pages were trying to convey? Why not choose a purple blindness? An orange one? Or pistachio? The color had no connection whatsoever to the story. I feel it was UFOed in the book somehow.

Some other things I found even more creative (NOT) were: the guy with the infection (Typical Hollywood turn of event), the slut (yeah let’s add some spice to this dull life) the fight for food, the domination of the bad guys over the good ones blablabla, it happens every day around us (JUST OPEN YOUR EYES). Maybe some people feel touched when they read about these things in novels but I don’t. I don’t like when we try to mix the real world in the world of novels. It becomes either boring or unethical or at least this is how I feel about it.

Now I would have been half as disappointed as I am now if the story ended with the 7 or so persons but NOOOOOOOOO, the story wasn’t boring enough with 7 or so characters, someone had to shove in 200 more! The more the merrier maybe but all I saw was a fight for food with a greater number of people! Or were the gang and gang leader and their terms that important to convey us the message that man is an animal? We got this message from the first few pages and honestly It is something I realized a long time ago and we can see it every day around us too if we only OPEN OUR EYES (see what I did there? :D). I hate when people try to lead us by the hand to see what they think they’re the only ones to see it. Or as they call it, give us a moral. The only moral in life is that there are no morals!

Finally about the style, to write a book with no punctuation is as absurd to me as eating fries without ketchup. But honestly this wasn’t much of a bother. Everyone’s got its tastes. On the opposite, I did like, I even loved the fact that he didn’t use character names not because it was original but because he explains it in the text in his passage about the dogs not needing names to communicate with each other and live together and that this was the most convenient thing to do for the characters of this book.
See you next book J