Bus Reader

How many times did you thought about travel to the past to change something that you did? I did a lot. However, every time I did it, travel paradoxes comes to my mind. The end of eternity is a about a group of people that study different ways to make a society lives longer. Well, I shortly described the scientists. Notwithstanding, this time-changing organization is called " Eternity ", an organization that was founded "outside time" which aimed to improve human happiness by observing and changing little details in human history. The members are known as " Eternals " and they're responsible for reducing human suffering, at the lowest cost of technology, art and other endeavors. For  Eternity to exists, they've to be sure that the creation of travel time do not be deleted by some changes in the past. The circle of Eternity's creation must persist through the time. The plot of this book , by Isaac Asimov (yeah, I love this guy), is around...

When I was younger I used to eat a lot of candy in my friends' birthday parties. Sometimes I got sick for eating too much sugar, but for me it was worth. Nowadays I enjoy a piece of pie or a chocolate bar as my "candy of the week". However, there's a lot of people who still eat a lot of candy or sweet food. You probably know a few of them, right? Do you know why we eat sweet food like it was our last meal? This unhealthy habit of eating too much candy is already socially accept among us; obesity cases has also been increasing rapidly throughout the world. You probably already have watched those cake videos with a lot of chocolate and calories, and people praising it like it was an eatable food. Well, if we look to the past, the far past when our ancestors were hunter-gatherers, we can understand a bit of this situation. Sorry, I'm too hyped with this game. A long fucking time ago , about 30 thousand years, our ancestors, that lived in the savannas an...

I'm not writing about the movie. Yes, there's a book and this is another post of Asimov's book recommendation. This was one of the books that I bought randomly in a book sale. I saw the title and thought, why not? I've never watched the movie but I know that the book is different and the movie just uses the concepts of Asimov's Robot Laws . I, Robot is a book with a collection of short stories (that are connected) about robots and human relationship. What makes the book different of another sci-fi robot genre, is the defined concept of machine behavior. The Robot Laws or the Three Laws of Robotics or Asimov's Laws is a set of laws that define how a robot must behave. The three laws are: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such pro...

If you're following me, you know that this blog is a way that I'm using to improve my English writing skills. This was the fun way that I found to study a language and not get boring doing it. But, I need to improve the other skills, listening and speaking. Today, I'll write about a method to improve your listening skills. Mostly of the people say that read a book and listen to a podcast are a great way to improve your listening skills. They are right. However, generally podcasts are a casual conversation, the people that record it doesn't think about pronunciation, they've a limited vocabulary (as I do) and sometimes the accent isn't easy to understand. I know that are proper podcasts for English students, but IMO they aren't funny or even interesting. It was for those reasons that I tried to find something that I could combine read and listen in a fun way. This year I discovered the Audio books, I already know that they existed but it never interest...

Do you know how important a cooked meal is? Biology classes was never my favorite class in high school. I've never been interested in memorizing names of bacteria or plants, perhaps my professors weren't interested in teaching either. However, I was captivated into species evolution, I've tried once to study by myself about this using school books. Did not work. Generally, Brazilian high school books are boring and that time I gave up studying about this. My interest grew up last years, and this book caught my attention. Why not? Turns out, the book is really great and easy to read. One thing that ensnared my attention was about cooked meal! Eat cooked meal is such a common thing that I've never thought about the meaning of this. When we began to cook our food? And why? The advent of cooking habit made possible to us eat different types of food, transformed the aliment into something more easy to eat, killed germs and bacteria. Our ancestors could ate healthy...

The next book that I'll read will be Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. In fact, I already began to read it. The thing is that I don't know if I will write about this book, every impression, every thought about the chapters.. is a little bit hard to write about this, because this book is not a novel or an adventure. I bought Sapiens to understand more about us, the homo sapiens and how mankind has come to where it is. From now on, I'll post about some chapters of the book that made me think a lot and probably some posts about fighting games, coffee, programming, etc.. my life :) R3D7 - 100

This little book is strange, but his figure of speech is interesting. My interpretation of Greg's metamorphosis is that was a metaphor for a illness. Illness? Yes. After finish the book and understand how his family was grateful that Greg die, I thought about it. In the beginning of his transformation, Greg's family try to be complacent and understand the situation. Time passes and they start to resign Greg situation. Nevertheless, Greg is always thinking of his family, the good times, his beloved sister, his father... so there's a love feeling from him about his family. Even if they don't care about Greg, or don't wanna to see him properly, he still thinks or imagines how the situation would be if he wasn't a huge insect (sick). This last chapter give the sensation that the Sams (Greg's family) was disgusting him and always trying to avoid his room or talk about him with other people. In the last pages they explicitly hate him and when he dies, the ...

Are you afraid of darkness? Can you imagine what could happen if you never saw the darkness before and make the first contact? Imagine if you live in a planet that have sunlight all the time, it is always bright and illuminated. A religion and even the scientists affirm that the darkness will come in a determined day. What will you do?  Kalgash is the planet that have six suns and all the people that live there didn't experiences Darkness in the past 2500 years. A group of scientists discover that one full eclipse will occurs in a short period of time and a religion found out in old scripts that the Darkness is coming by the will of Gods. There's people that don't believe in the darkness and those that are building security places to avoid the darkness. The author brings all this drama with a great story accompanied by sci-fi elements that makes Asimov write style unique. Nightfall is a sci-fi novel written by Isaac Asimov in 1941. It was voted as the best sci...

I thought that the Greg's metamorphosis was just a dream or something like that. How can a family do nothing about his transformation? Sorry, this time I forgot to take a picture inside the bus :( I really don't know in which year the book happens, but the family was afraid of his transformation and they didn't nothing about. Where's the scientists? Where's the doctors? Police? There's a human-size insect inside their house and they just pretend that Greg will be back. I suspect that this isn't the point of this book, I know there's more. I think that the point of this book is the family bound around the main character. The way Greg thinks and speaks with himself about how much he wants to work and make his family stable again, how his sister is helping him in someway, how lucid he is, even being a giant insect, is probably the message that Franz Kafka wants to leave.  I already read 66% of the book and the final of the last chapter, Greg...

New week, new book. I already read the first chapter of the book "Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka. The book is apparently a short read, the first chapter is about 34% of the entire book. So, I will probably finish this book by the weekend. This time, I'll write about the book with a different point of view. The last posts I described more about what happened in the book than give my opinion about what I was reading. Turns out, this way of reporting was boring to write. Perhaps, what I write will be more interesting for those who already read the book before. I found the first chapter really interesting, it was the first time that I read a character that speaks so much, in a very good way, about his job that he apparently hates. The Greg's (main character) transformation or metamorphosis didn't surprise me at all. It was a bit disgusting to imagine what was going on, I don't like insects at all. However, his thoughts about to lose his job, because he was l...

First book of 2018 is done! Disgrace was a book easy to read, and I will write what had happened. David spent about 3 months in Lucy's farm. After what did happened, he goes back to his house. On the way to his home, David goes pay a visit to the student's family. I will not prolong myself here, but David had a dinner with the student's family and he had apologized, it was the first time that David shows guilt for what he did. After that, David goes back home and begin to write his opera about Byron's life. Time goes on and David begin to suspect that Lucy is pregnant, he goes back to the farm and his suspicious are confirmed. He try one more time to convince Lucy and he fails. She accept the pregnancy and she will give her farm to Petrus in exchange for security. She want to restart her life from the zero. Shortly, David begins to live in the town near to Lucy's farm and begins to work with Bev again. The book ends with David giving up in everything and star...

I didn't described the characters except David. That's because the book is write using David's point of view, and all the characters are described with David's point of view. Until there's a dialogue with the character, it's difficult to describe them without being influenced by David. Let's begin the part 4 of Disgrace, by J. M. Coetzee . The day after the Petrus's party, David is called by Petrus to help with some work in the farm. Petrus pretends that nothing happened, and David don't know how to approach the subject without being rude. Time passes and David decide to directly talk about the guy in the party that was in the Lucy's farm robbery. However, Petrus avoid the subject and makes clear that David will not get any information about that guy. I didn't describe Petrus before, he's African and barely speak english. Has two wifes (one is pregnant), and lives in a section of Lucy's farm. David gave up of talk with Petrus a...

I really don't know why they've translated the title "Disgrace" to "Dishonor". There's a lot of phrases joking with the word Disgrace. Well, who knows! Keep reading if you want to know about the book "Disgrace" by J.M.Coetze. The last post I thought that the book will describes more about David's voluntary work. I was wrong, again. What did happened astonished me. I will try to resume all the important events that happened. Remember that this book is write describing the David's point of view. David and Lucy (his daughter) are baited by three man in the farm. They pretend to use a telephone to call a doctor. Lucy and one man enter in the house and the confusion begin. The men lock the front the door and David realizes the bait. Run away and call one of the dogs to attack the robbers. David enter in the house through the kitchen and he's knocked down by someone. David woke up tied and locked in the bathroom. Cries fo...

What does a divorced man at his 50' with sex desire? If you got at this post and is a bit confused, please check the previous post and my book list as well. I read another 20% of the book and in this post I'll continue where the previous post stopped. Get ready! The last post I wrote saying that probably David's story was something similar to the Hero's Journey : I was a little bit wrong. The main character was accused of student abuse and in his audiency I was expecting that David would rise as a phoenix from the ashes. However, David didn't defend himself, he assumed the guilty in a way that surprised me ( and the others characters as well ) . Quote from the book (translated from pt-br): "(...) I declare myself guilty (...). They can decide what the sentence will be and we will resume our lives." He even didn't read the student complaint. He was already prepared to accept anything. This character have some guts, but I will continue with ...

The week begin and my book list as well. The first book that I'll read is called "Disgrace" by John Maxwell Coetzee . And you will probably read some spoilers, because this blog gonna be something like a walkthrough off all the books in my book list. So, stick together if you wanna read the first impressions of a sci-fi and fantasy book fan. At this time, I read around 20% (Kindle statistic) of the book and I'm already feeling the taste of "Disgrace". I'm not used to read this kind of book; stories that deal with everyday life isn't my favorite genre. However, J.M. Coetzee triggered me enough to continue to read the story to know when's the main character gonna do something to change his life. David is a professor at a University, 50 years old or more, divorced and he enjoys his life through sex and social situations that aren't visibly accept in society (my opinion) . The first five chapters in the book gave me this impression, of...

I'm not the kind of person that like to sit and have a study session. I know that sometimes you cannot avoid this, but I always try to avoid. During university I had develop something like a method to learn a new code language, framework, lib, anything that you can find on Youtube. And after entering the world of fighting games, I improved this method. The beginning of the path to learn and understand fighting games is: Learn and master the basics/fundamentals. Someday I'll write about the complexity and what makes fighting games great, but today we'll continue only with this statement. How do I use this method? If you're learning a new language and don't know NOTHING about, you should start your study session watching videos with basic phrases. A " How to introduce yourself in X " it's a great video to start. Pick some basic grammar videos/texts to understand,  at least, how a phrase is formed. After this, you should go b...

Earth is partially destroyed by the nuclear war. Human's hardwork is now carried out by robots. Animal care are a really expensive hobby, but is the dream of every citizen in the society. Most of the humans, the healthy ones, already got out of the planet. However, you're still in the planet. Why? Why? You have a job. You aren't smart. Only smart people can get out of the Earth. You are truly yourself. Aren't? Your feelings can be simulated by a machine. You can feel pain, happiness, fear, optimism, love or even hate. Every day you wake up, set up the feeling machine to your day start great, get a cup of coffee and go to work. Every day. Every day. Work for what? Money. Money for retiring androids. The ones that are illegal in your planet. Little by little you start to sense more humanity in the robots than in the humans. Are the robots more realistic? Or the society itself became less humanity? The year is 2019. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep ? ...

I've never had an english class in my life. My knowledge of english language was built by watching vlogs, reading a lot of papers, watching series, playing video games, etc. In other words, my listening and reading skills are great. This year, I wanna improve my writing and speaking skill. This blog will help me with the write side, and the follow things will help me improve the listening and speaking side. Eight days a week I: Study a text with an audio along the week: I always try to understand and recognize all the english patterns inside the text.  Write something here.  Read Game of Thrones in English with the audio book: I've tried some podcasts, but audio books are more interesting and easily to understand the pronunciation.  Watch vlogs: I always watch vlogs with something that I like. Read something on Reddit: Probably the funniest part of my routine.  R2D1/100

Kaiju. You probably know them as giant japanese monsters and you are not wrong about that. I will write about Kaiju because I'm reading the book Monstros Gigantes - Kaiju  (Giant Monsters - Kaiju). It's a brazilian sci-fi book built on stories written by different authors with different styles. Unfortunately, the stories are individual and don't belong to the same universe. All the stories have some Kaiju involved, but isn't the same universe, same characters or even the same place. One story in the book caught me up and made me lend it (Amazon Kindle Unlimited) and try to read it all. The story is called " O som do metrô " (The Subway Sound), written by Leandro Fonseca. The tale The Subway Sound is set in a japanese subway station and involve 6 characters: 2 children, 1 teen, 2 adult women and 1 adult man. All the characters have distinct concepts of what a Kaiju is and what should a Kaiju looks like. But, they know that where the monster is, ther...

In December of 2016 I bought an Amazon Kindle. It was great because I could read a bunch of books (some heavy ones) without have to carry them. However, in 2017 I read some books by random choice. I didn't have any goal on mind, I was just picking some books by friends recommendations and read them. This year I choose some books with a goal in mind! My 2018 Book List A book from each continent : North America: Boston:  A Gentleman in Moscow - Amor Towles South America: Brazil: Água Viva - Clarice Lispector Asia: Israel: Sapiens - Yuval Noah Harari Europe: Germany: The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka Africa: South Africa: Disgrace - John Maxwell Coetzee Oceania: New Zealand:  The Luminaries - Eleanor Catton Books to pimp my mind (finan, math, biology, phisics, etc) : Investimentos Inteligentes - Gustavo Cerbasi The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives - Leonard Mlodinow The Universe in a Nutshell - Stephen Hawki...

Welcome 2018! Bus reader is a blog about a young adult that loves read inside a bus. Along this year, you gonna see my english writing skills get better and some shared experiences of all the books that I will read. The goal is to write something here for 100 days without a pause. After that, the posting will be weekly (probably). So, let's begin the grind!