3. All the Light We Cannot See
All the light we cannot see is a historical novel by the American writer Anthony Doerr, published in 2014. It was translated into many languages and published worldwide in 2015.
It tells the stories of two children, one French and one German, are the stories will cross Saint-Malo during the Second World War. Bestseller in the US upon its release, the novel was a finalist in the National Book Award. In 2015, it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.
The title refers to a passage in the novel where the French teacher asks “how our brain, which passes eternity without a spark of light, ‘he built a world so luminous? ”
The Plot
Paris, 1934. Marie-Laure LeBlanc became blind to 6 years following a cataract. Her father, a locksmith from the Natural History Museum, found ingenious ways to make it independent, notably by building a scale model of their neighborhood so she spots it. Passionate about adventure novels, she learned to read Braille and begins Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. One day, while she was participating in a tour of the museum, she discovers the legend of a diamond called “Sea of Flame” because of its blue color and its fire-red center.
Meanwhile, in Germany, the young Werner Pfennig, 8, discovers the functioning of a radio, found behind the orphanage Zollverein, in Essen, in which he lives. Werner repairs it and they spend with his little sister Jutta their nights listening to the science program for children of a French teacher.
When the Germans invaded Paris in June 1940, Mary and her father leave the city to take refuge with his great uncle Étienne Saint-Malo. But the war will catch up and eventually separated. So, Stephen, with his social phobia, and Marie-Laure with his disability will be embedded in the Resistance.
Werner continues his dream of becoming an engineer in a Nazi elite school, but quickly, and despite his great technical skills, it is sent on the Eastern Front. Responsible for identifying Russian and Ukrainian rebels disseminating information through radio, it uses its scientific and technical expertise to triangulate their positions. In 1944, he was seconded to France with his unit found to eliminate a resistant who transmits from Brittany German positions to the Allies.
Critical Reception
Both eventually intersect in the ruins of Saint-Malo, after the terrible Allied bombing that destroyed 80% of the city. The novel has received very positive critical reception. The Guardian wrote that “Doerr has built an unusual building, made of fables and prodigious inventions resulting from mechanical worlds, technical and natural. Snails, mollusks, creatures of heaven and earth, gemstones and coal, as well as all the technological marvels adopted by the Nazis, are here transformed into sources of wonder, like entanglement and radio waves the data that they transmit in the air. They offer a unique way to combine science with humaine goodness of Nature. “The critical regrets, however, the style of the writer,” sharp, lyrical and implacable “with” short sentences and cutting, reverberating noise of radio waves. ”
In The New York Times, a reporter wrote here that ” when he takes the trouble, Doerr can write beautifully, line after line. Except for paragraphs about von Rumpel, each symbolizing the German adjective verdorben: spoiled, rancid, depraved. Admire this instead, “he listened to the notes and rests that separated them, and suddenly found himself leading the horses through a forest at dawn, trudging in the snow in the footsteps of his grandfather, whose Saw enveloped wide épaules “.
On July 19, 2015, All the Light We Cannot See also listed on the New York Times Best Seller list, or more than 60 weeks after its release in May 2014. The sales have tripled after the defeat of the novel at the National Book Award, won by Redeployment (in) Phil Klay.
He finished second of the best novels of 2014 Amazon and among the ten best books of the year in New York Times and on several lists of the best books published by trade associations or magazines. The novel finally won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in April 15 then Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction (in) in June 2015.
2. StrengthsFinder 2.0
Before attacking the systemic analysis of “StrengthsFinder 2.0” I would like to make two small brackets. Browsing English … Possible?
The first quick reading. It turns out that browsing if it works very well for the native language, it is quite different for a foreign language. I am well aware by reading books in English … I train, I train …! Ideally I would face an update of my system analysis because I forgot a process upstream system. In the first process, it is impossible to embrace more words when you do mastery not perfectly the “graphics” words that are read.
In French (a not easy to learn language) only the first and last letter Suffice to my brain to find out which word it is. So in English my brain needs to analyze one letter to reconstitute the word … For this, it is nothing to do but read, read and read again in the language of Shakespeare.
A One-Time Book!
Strengths Finder: A one-time book! The second bracket on the concept of the book by Tom Rath. This is the first time I read a disposable book. I knew disposable handkerchiefs, disposable razors, cd-r disposable … But the books I had ever seen. The book gives access to an online test. To access this test you must scratch a book page to get a password and it is valid only once.
I agree that the democratization of piracy encourages this kind of lock … But one use? I would have liked to do a few friends, but it’s not a one-time book. The worst is this system has its limitations because when I logged to pass the test, it was denied because the password had been used. A week after and brought evidence that I had bought the book … I obtained the Sezame!
The results of my test: Strengths Finder is primarily a test. It turns out that I made a psychological test a few weeks ago for a job. The results were really scared me and it was necessary that I spend almost an hour to explain how each statement point of my personality did not correspond to what I am (at least I hope, otherwise it falls within the skyzophrénie !!! ;-). In short this little episode was really scalded me. I found it very well. And results fairly in relation to the perception I made of myself.
Yet before he realized the test, it was quite difficult for me to identify talents that were present in me. Hence the value of the test. Incidentally reviewing 34 different talents, I had targeted three that seemed to fit me: Learner, Analytical and Adaptability. And finally in the test results is only Learner emerged. I still retains “Analytical”, which makes me six talents exploited and work: Input, Learner, Strategic, intellection, Analytical Ideation and then! 😉
The test that can reveal the talents. We must then work them. For each skill, a little description helps identify what is the talent in question us. This is illustrated by concrete exmples of everyday life. Then actions are proposed and even trade or guidance function. A small part also plans to discuss with our peers to further benefit our talent and ensure that they become strengths.
Everything I have just spoken regarding the purpose of the book, discover their talents and work them into strengths. But upstream, the first part shows why it is useful to work his talents rather than its gap. Systems analysis below therefore illustrates the philosophy of the book and the party commencing the test.
The main spring that feeds the system time (blue cloud top). The time we spend working our talents or our shortcomings. Upstream of the individual system operates a choice, namely, that of spending more time working his talents or shortcomings. This time is spent between learning, practice and experience sharing. After which time it falls into the “well” of the system and becomes spent.
Spend Your Time
As you can see on systemic analysis: the time spent “working” his talents develop into force so much greater than the time spent working its shortcomings (less talent). Tom Rath explains it this way: a person who would have only a very thin talent for soccer (say 1 on a scale of 1 to 5) and would spend all his time to work, strive to kill the task to learn football (say 5 on a scale of 1 to 5). This person would become “good” at a level of 5 (1 × 5). Here the author considers this practice (work weaknesses) reports to the waste of time.
Imagine the same person who would have the skills to play a musical instrument (say 3 on a scale of 1 to 5), it would only take a modest effort (say 3 on a scale of 1 to 5) to become relatively cheap at a level 9 (3 × 3). Thus the author believes that talent is not added to the time invested but it tenfold.
That is the main reason why Tom Rath favors time spent working his talents to make forces rather than attempting in vain to fill gaps where we would deploy infinite amounts of efforts to erase them. So to illustrate this phenomenon I played in the size of the flow (red arrows thinner than the blue arrows).
To turn his talents into strengths author recommends spending time. This time should be spread out in practice and exchanges. The exchange with people who have the same skills allows émultion. The advantage is that this allows émultion to go beyond its own frame of reference.
Thus, rub his “talents brothers” can “boost” to open up to other knowledge and experiences the same interest. Regarding weaknesses, even if the author recommends the work, provided it does not allow the impasse in his work. Thus he advocates to seek employees whose talent matches his own weaknesses. For example an engineer who had bright ideas and wishing to engage in business creation should not seek to form on the business techniques but it should get down to look for a person who excels in the commercial.
This technique is much more efficient than the loss of time spent on a training gap. In systemic analysis, the effectiveness of this technique is illustrated by the thick red arrow following the collaborative process.
1. Go Set a Watchman
Over half a century of silence, and suddenly, what a racket! Announced five months before the release, the second novel by Harper Lee went on sale July 14 in its original version, Fifty-five years after the events in To Kill a Mockingbird, whose admirers were resolved to admit that it is the only book of the author, now 89 years old.
In February, Harper Collins had reported that a novel had been found and would be published with the agreement of Harper Lee. Go Set a Watchman was presented as the matrix and as a result of Do not shoot … Having been written before this, in 1957, she told of subsequent events; the editor had convinced the writer to rewrite the centering it on childhood heroin.
Reading Marathons
The publication of Go Set a Watchman was orchestrated as a global event, with its 2 million copies printed, available in 70 countries, its presales record on Amazon, which did not prevent scenes of frenzy and communion in the US, UK and Ireland. Bookstores opening at midnight, July 14, overrun with customers wanting to acquire their first copy; reading marathons beginner the book on sale soon …
These type of moments are rare, the authors surrounded by a legend for measuring that of Harper Lee. To Kill a Mockingbird, the Pulitzer Prize in 1961, has sold some 30 million copies and been translated into 40 languages (and adapted for the screen by Robert Mulligan, with Gregory Peck). In the US, it is the most studied novel in high schools, and most city with the Bible, among the works that could change a life …
Every year, 30,000 people visit Monroeville (Alabama), where Harper Lee was born and lives, to see the place that inspired him the village of Maycomb, made memorable by the story of the young Scout Finch. His father, Atticus, humanistic lawyer in the racist South of the 1930s, defends a black man accused of raping a white woman; he is the central character … Do not shoot, that explores the question of the relationship of classes and races, the courage, the transmission of awakening to injustice.
Mixed Reviews
By the weekend, newspapers have spilled the beans: Go in …, we discover a very different Atticus Finch the hero once revered by his daughter and by so many readers. Aged 26, the young woman, now living in New York, visits him in Maycomb. This trip is an opportunity for dessillement: Atticus septuagenarian, holds racist and says he attended a meeting of the Klu Klux Klan.
A revelation in which the Daily Mail sees “what can be worse for literary scandal” and which all underscore how critical it is “disturbing”. But if the Guardian, who dedicated the book an extra 16 pages, considers this play brings a welcome complexity, the New York Times believes that “the characters dump hate speech” over a “painful narrative” – “curvy,” the Los Angeles Times that the text shows “the promise” of the author, but “collapses”.
Behind these questions point mixed reviews about the conditions of publication. In February, the lawyer of Harper Lee, Tonja B. Carter, claimed to have discovered the typescript clinging to that of To Kill a Mockingbird in the summer of 2014. On July 11, she delivered another version in a forum with the Wall Street Journal, where she describes seeing these pages for the first time in 2011, when an expert came estimate the price of the manuscript Do not shoot … and he found in the trunk an unknown text, which he was more question before the memory does come back to Mrs. Carter in 2014.
The New York Times highlights the turnovers of counsel and contradictions made by other witnesses. As for his reference to a possible other yet unpublished in the safe, she is greeted with suspicion by all the press, which noted the coincidence between the choice to publish GB … and death, in November 2014, Alice Lee, sister and lawyer the writer ensuring its interests have always …
But if Harper Lee is old, deaf and lives recluse, relatives are against the idea that she was abused. To get an idea of the quality of the French text, it was not until October 7, and it was published by Grasset, entitled Go and post a sentry, in a translation by Pierre Demarty.