Robert Merle: The Day of the Dolphin

Looking at the list of my favourites, it seems incredible that I haven't yet written about the Day of the Dolphin (On the left the drawing of János Kass from the Hungarian edition).

Professor Henry Sevilla succeeds in teaching two dolphins to communicate in English. His research is funded by the national security, so one day he finds his dolphins disappeared and that they were meant for military purposes. The fate of humanity lies in the hands of two dolphins, Fa and Bi, and two disillusioned researchers, Sevilla and Arlette... All this in a compelling, fast rhythm. Man is truly a dangerous animal...

Here's a quote from the first interview of Fa and Bi:

J: Now that you can speak, do you think you're a human or a dolphin?
FA: I'm a dolphin.
J: They say that dolphins are very friendly to humans: is that true, Fa? Do you love humans?
FA: Yes, very. (He repeats with emphasis) Very.
U: Why?
FA: Because they are good, they are smooth, they have hands and can make a lot of things.
U: Would you like to have hands?
FA: Very much.
U: What would you do with them?
FA: I would stroke the humans. (Laughter)

Stephen Clarke and the Merde Series

While reading One year in the Merde, I was laughing out loud. Paul West, so very English, arrives into the so much French France to work on the opening of a tea salon. And to make fun of everything, including himself, and to gradually fall in love of the France he makes so hilarious fun of (for some quotes, visit Wikipedia)

The proof that he makes fun of everything is that in the last (at least for the moment) of the series, Merde Happens focuses on a disastruous trip in America...

Books read a 100 times

Based on a post of the Hungarian Bookblog I also started thinking on which are the books I'd read a hundred times, and still take up with pleasure... The maximum 10 (+2) means that the list is not complete, and of course, the order is not important:

1. Klára Fehér: Oxygénia (HU)


2. Jenő Rejtő: One fool causes hundred troubles (and others...) - you can be sorry it's only available in Hungarian


3. Géza Gárdonyi: Ida's novel (HU)


4. Mór Jókai: The man with the golden touch


5. Douglas Adams: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 1


6. Paulo Coelho: The Zahir (and others)


7. Robert Merle: The day of the dolphin


8. Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon


9. Felix Salten: Bambi and Bambi's children


10. Szabó Magda: Mural (HU, but all her books are very good)


11. Jack London: White Fang


12. Isaac Asimov: I, Robot

Paulo Coelho: The Zahir

I think this is an important book. Through the path of the writer who seemingly lost his wife, Coelho inspires us to live as if each day was the first and the last at the same time. In order to be able to do this, he suggests that we need to free ourselves of our limits, of those experiences that stop us on the road towards our dreams. He teaches us that love is powerful and limitless.

The Zahir: The two firemen

"Marie, let’s suppose that two firemen go into a forest to put out a small fire. Afterwards, when they emerge and go over to a stream, the face of one is all smeared with black, while the other man’s face is completely clean. My question is this: which of the two will wash his face?"

"That’s a silly question. The one with the dirty face of course."

"No, the one with the dirty face will look at the other man and assume that he looks like him. And, vice versa, the man with the clean face will see his colleague covered in grime and say to himself: I must be dirty too.
I’d better have a wash."

"What are you trying to say?"

"I’m saying that, during the tiime I spent in hospital, I came to realise that I was always looking for myself in the women I loved. I looked at their lovely, clean faces and saw myself reflected in them. They, on the other hand, looked at me and saw the dirt on my face and, however intelligent or self-confident they were, they ended up seeing themselves reflected in me and thinking that they were worse than they were. Please, don’t let that happen to you."

George Sand: Consuelo

Consuelo, a singer of particular talent and nobility of heart lives enough for a lifetime during her youth: her rise as an artist, her love for a misterious count, her meetings with illustrious people, such as the Trencks, Joseph Haydn, and her own master of music, Porpora, the dangers she goes through during her wanderings give enough food for all those many pages.
Only thing I was wondering about was how was it possible that all the characters were expressing themselves with the same elegant, polite and refined language...
I recommend it for times when you would wish to drown in extreme, extatic romanticism.

Giorgio Faletti: I kill

This is not simply a crime story: fundamentally, Faletti is a poet who transforms even the clichés of the story into something original and beautiful. There's no possibility to feel bored, not for a moment: the story is fast-paced, the killer difficult to guess. One of the interesting features of the book is that it makes you the acquintances of some of the victims, making you to feel simpathy or antiphaty, and feeling more interested in their fate as would be usual. I recommend...