In this week's Tuesdays Try, I'm back on this great community to tell a story about two books. I have only read one of these but it isn't actually about me.
My grandfather was an avid reader. I think I can tell without a doubt that he read all the books in his library. Yeah, he had a library at home. It is still there. Gathering dust since the books are really old and need to find a new home. Among them, there are some jewels like the books of Alexander von Humboldt. The ones written about these lands on this expeditions. And taking the crown are the Archives of Great Marshall Sucre and his letters to General Bolivar. I think those are really hard to get. And grandpa had all 15 of those hard cover books. Not only that. He read them too.
Along the least relevant books were a lot of propaganda. The stuff published by the regime. Something he liked to read a lot because among his flaws, he was a socialist. We can't be perfect, neither are our heroes.
Here you have a translated copy of Animal Farm by George Orwell. The book is an allegory to the rise of communism. The idea behind this depiction of the commies is to illustrate that the things weren't as good as some people would like to think. Orwell was one of the few socialist smart enough to see through the lies of that political doctrine and the barbaric results a turn to something like that could do.
He portrays his work inside a farm where animals take over and start running the show. But everything goes wrong as the pigs get to the top of the society and become too human to see their fellow animals as equals. We can guess what happens after it. And if you haven't read it, you should give it a try.
My idea with this book was giving it to my grandpa at some point. He liked to read but the disliked anyone talking about how bad the government is. So, I brought this book to him once and he started reading. Of course, he didn't live long enough to finish. In the picture about you can see he made it somewhere near the half of it. He liked the story, but I think he didn't caught onto the socialist critique embedded in the novel.
Too bad I didn't have the chance to discuss more about it with him. But I'd to think some works like this would have opened his eyes to the reality of politics. It couldn't be. But I'll live with the fact that I made a socialist read a piece of antisocialist propaganda. And that's more than a lot can say about that.
The second book on my story is something I found in a pile of books. I was at a musical activity in the house of the poet Jose Antonio Ramos Sucre in my hometown, Cumaná. After this ended I want to check a huge pile of books that belong to UDO, my alma mater. And among some very curious things I found a copy of this.
This is a translation of Hitler's book, Mein Kampf. I have an interesting story about this kind of book. Back when I was in highschool, I knew a girl who admired this psycho. I never said anything because it was too weird. And it also didn't make any sense. You can't be Latino and admire someone who wanted to exterminate mixed races. I mean you can but it makes, well, crazy, to say the least.
I took a picture of the book because I couldn't believe this was among books from the University. But it isn't the worst thing one could find in it. There was a copy of the Communist Manifiesto. And I remember a teacher telling me once there was about how teach black people. I don't remember the exact name, but that was the idea. Really weird stuff one can find in a pile of books.
Do you have any story with a book you lend to someone? Have you found a really bad book laying around where it shouldn't be?
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