User Profile

Dimitri Mollo

dcm@bookwyrm.social

Joined 1 year, 1 month ago

Eclectic reader: philosophy and AI for work, pretty much any other genre for leisure. I mostly read on my Kobo, in a variety of European languages.

On Mastodon as @dcm@social.sunet.se

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Dimitri Mollo's books

To Read

Currently Reading

Daniel C. Dennett: From Bacteria to Bach and Back (Hardcover, 2017, W.W. Norton)

A thoughtful, accessible synthesis of the main themes in Dennett's work

Great book that covers many of the topics that Dan Dennett has worked on, such as cognition, mind, and consciousness, in an accessible and at the same time careful and engaging way. Provides a nice synthesis of his core ideas and contributions to research on those topics.

Fabrizio Luisi, Simone Laudiero, Pier Mauro Tamburini, Carlo Bassetti: Furioso. L'ultimo canto (Italian language, Mondadori)

Sono passati ormai sessant'anni dagli avvenimenti raccontati da Ludovico Ariosto nell'Orlando furioso: la guerra contro …

Un 'sequel' surreale e divertente al classico di Ariosto

La premessa è interessantissima, ossia scrivere il seguito all'Orlando Furioso di Ariosto, e il tutto viene fatto in modo magistrale, un racconto fantastico coinvolgente, con tanti temi interessanti, e molto spesso anche divertentissimo.

Pif: ... che Dio perdona a tutti (Italian language, 2018, Feltrinelli)

Con la sua inconfondibile voce, Pif esordisce nel romanzo con un’opera divertentissima che costringe il …

Leggero, ma un po' troppo ovvio

Libricino leggero, con una storia che vuole essere una critica frizzantina alle ipocrisie del cattolicesimo italiano, ma sebbene non sia male, non fa ridere più di tanto, e lo scopo critico prende il sopravvento a scapito della trama e del divertimento.

John Koenig: The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows (2021, Simon & Schuster, Limited)

Have you ever wondered about the lives of each person you pass on the street, …

An encyclopedia of relatable but nameless feelings

This is a very nice book that starts from the brilliant idea of describing and naming complex feelings and emotions for which there is no word in English (and I would guess, most other languages). The descriptions are somewhat hit-and-miss. Some are extremely poignant, others end up in the cheesy end of the spectrum. A book not to be read cover-to-cover, but to consult serendipitously every now and then.

John le Carré: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011, Penguin Books)

The man he knew as “Control” is dead, and the young Turks who forced him …

Gripping, difficult to put down

This is a great spy thriller, unconventional in many ways. The world-building is extremely convincing, so much so that some of the invented slang for spycraft seeped into the actual world. The writing is engaging and elegant, and, as befits a thriller, once started it's tricky to stop!

Ray Nayler: The Mountain in the Sea (Hardcover, 2023, W&N)

There are creatures in the water of Con Dao. To the locals, they're monsters. To …

Nice ideas, not so nice execution

There are some nice ideas in this sci-fi book. However, the narrative is quite clunky, characterisation of the protagonists tends to be uninteresting and/or cliché-filled, there is quite a lot of exposition of context that feels unnatural and clearly reader-directed rather than being organic to the plot.