A Lazy Review

Everybody should know that wine tasting notes are subjective. There are some technicalities there, but the part that really matters is personal: you like the wine or you don't, doesn't matter how balanced or powerful might be.

Book reviews are the same. People might expect some technical comments about style, genre, etc, but people want to know in advance what to expect from a book in the critic review. And critics, as wine tasters, have their own opinions, and depends from who you read a review, you might not buy a book you'd love, or either be disapointed by one you just bought - and read!

Unpretentiously walking the city centre yesterday, just to watch how the world was going, I stopped in front of a bookshop. In the window, Carnival, by Rawi Hage. In the critic's note, the phrase:

"Imagine Camus rewriting Taxi Driver".

I walked away...

not many brazilians like that...

Chico Mendes

Today is the day Chico Mendes was killed, in 1988. A trade union leader and environmentalist, Chico Mendes fought to preserve the Amazon rainforest, and advocated for the human rights of Brazilian peasants and indigenous peoples. He was assassinated by Darly Alves da Silva, a rancher, who shoot Mendes in his Xapuri home, as week after Mendes' 44th birthday, when he had predicted he would "not live until Christmas".

Mendes' murder made international headlines, and led to an outpouring of support for the rubber tappers' and environmental movements. Thanks in part to the international media attention surrounding the murder, the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve was created in the area where he lived. More than 20 such reserves, along the same lines as Mendes had proposed, now cover more than 8 million acres (32,000 km²).

Mendes was portrayed by Raul Julia in the 1994 telemovie The Burning Season.