Book Review

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It is hard to find accurate words to describe such a deep and outstanding book. A dystopian story that allows the reader to question our present world: people are distracted with shallow commercials and television programs, there is a lack of real connections between individuals, plus everyone seems to be damned to live as a zombie, brainwashed by what they (owners of power) want you to be: think, buy, hate, love…

In **“Fahrenheit 451” books are forbidden and hated, no one could tell why or how it all started, no questions about what was going on under the surface but Clarisse, the young neighbor who Guy Montag meets one day changes his life. She breaks the zombie spell on Montag, a fireman who lived as a robot with the only purpose to burn books. Clarisse showed him another unique lifestyle where she enjoyed chat time with her family, walking around the city by herself, reading books, and made questions about everything; all the things that no one else was doing anymore, but her family as well. Due to this, Clarisse was stigmatized as crazy and was sent to the psychiatrist when she was one of the few caring, deep people, someone connected with humanity, with a soul within. But she was dangerous to the system and so needed to be eliminated.

As the book continues, Montag itself starts to question his reality and its existence to become somehow revolutionary as Clarisse, sharing the same ideas against the imposed reality; Montag´s changes lead the story to an unpredictable turn upon his awakening.

I give it 5 stars out of 5 because the story is original and well developed as the characters, and it becomes a questioner about life; it is impressive to notice how nowadays there are several similarities with the book, which serve as a reflection of how trivial and soulless are becoming our societies.

**Named “Fahrenheit 451” because the required temperature to burn a book is precisely Fahrenheit 451.

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Book Review

Introducing Jung: Graphic Guide by Maggie Hyde

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Even though the book is supposed to be an introduction for beginners, a kind of guide for dummies, it gives a lot of complex information. The book tries to explain all the main ideas of Carl Jung, who was a Swiss psychologist, and psychiatrist who founded analytic psychology; such as the collective unconscious, archetypes, the conscious, and the unconscious. Moreover, the text is indeed a bit difficult to digest; the whole concept that the Jungian world and its Analytical Psychology brings to knowledge.

As a new reader of Jung, it is hard to not want to learn more, going deeper into subjects about how the Ego and the Shadow work among other concepts. For example, the book explains how Ego represents the light of consciousness and the Shadow as its own “dark side,” which the ego wishes to hide from others, meaning the unconscious. Furthermore, it names the alchemical studies, how the alchemist named Unus Mundus, “One World,” the union of psyche and matter (spirit, soul, and body); an experience of oneness that Jung attempted to elucidate through his concept of synchronicity.

Synchronicity is a concept of meaningful coincidences, a-causal connection between psychic states and objective events; an inconstant connection through ‘meaning,’ while causality is seen as a constant connection through effect.

Introducing Jung: Graphic Guide explains the trinity of classical physics: time, space, and causality, plus how Jung wanted to add synchronicity as a 4th term. Other main topics are developed and underlying main ideas might continue until the end of the book.

Nevertheless, despite the difficulty to understand this guide, eventually, a curious mind may want to become a Jung pupil by finally trying to understand it all and keep on digging into his books.

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