I read this a while ago, but remember being intrigued with the premise of it. What if our happiness turns out to have a genetic basis? What would the drug companies do who live off other's depression? Is someone who is perpetually happy and kind better than the rest of us or merely maladaptive an...
Teacher and writer Russell Stone meets a young woman who is taking his class and basically decides she is too happy, and from that one judgment comes a whole world of trouble for the young woman. There are people who will decide they must have whatever she has, and others who decide that she must...
EnsembleE quando leggendo l'ultima parola e chiudendo il libro, ti accorgerai che le lacrime scendono da sole e che starai piangendo, quasi a dirotto, non solo per la storia, o per la conclusione della storia (perché leggendola capirai anche che questa storia non ha una fine perché il tempo in cu...
I liked this book for its study of the human brain at different zoom levels; from the evolutionary scale of millions of years, our reptilian brain and deep-rooted animal instincts connecting us to the cranes, the intriguing species Powers has chosen to present his case. The narratives intertwini...
The third Richard Powers novel I've read this year. Not as great as Galatea 2.2 or Orfeo. I liked it despite some obvious faults. The two separate story strands don't quite gel, though each was good alone. And his metaphors are still remarkable and leftfield, but to someone a little less enamour...
She’s seated in the library of Magdalen College, Oxford. Her face is lined by a lifetime spent gate-guarding science’s worst excesses. An Over the Limit caption identifies her: Anne Harter, Author, Designs on Humanity. She says: More expensive, high-tech antiaging breakthroughs will just prod...
A sect of property-sharing polygamists has proclaimed an autonomous city of God somewhere in central Texas. At first he thinks it’s a demented marketing campaign that Bonner has dreamed up for Fowler’s opening: the ecstatic believers, camped out in the desert, singing, praying, and waiting for ti...