Length of the book is well tuned to the actual content. Obviously, I'd like to read more, but sometimes form exceeds the content by too far (vide "Lod" <"Ice">, also by Dukaj). At the same time the book is presented with colored photographs for its illustrative purposes although I find that a lot of these look to be captive animals instead of actual wild axolotls. At the same time each picture used has a caption that although it stands apart from the actual writing is either repetitive or just ends up getting in the way for readers thus it would have been better use to have left the captions out altogether. Si bien el cuento relata la fascinante vida de los Axolotl, su particular manera de vivir y que una persona llegara a entenderlos de tal manera que se sintiera como uno de ellos, a través del relato del libro se puede llegar a conocer a este extraño animal no se salva de tener sus partes inconclusas llegando a dejar una sensación de vacío en el lector al saber que el cuento tiene final abierto. This book is, without a doubt, situated in a well-established and extremely vibrant current of works like Peter Watt's "Blindsight", Hannu Rajaniemi's Jean Le Flambeur series, and I highly recommend it to anyone who might be interested in humanism, trans-humanism, a critical view of humanity, that can make you laugh, and stutter, and be silent in contemplation.

Wells, Kentwood D. " The Ecology and Behavior of Amphibians", 2007, The University of Chicago Press.In this sweet and beautifully designed small book, a little alien peers through a telescope at all the bedtime rituals on Earth. Using mixed media, Bondestam creates rich, layered illustrations featuring animals all across the globe…. Delicate pen-and-ink applied over the colors give the animals very expressive faces…. [I]t neatly resembles Margaret Wise Brown’s classic Good Night Moon, and fans of that book will appreciate the contrast.”

Smith, Hobart Muir; Smith, Rozella B. " Synopsis of the Herpetofauna of Mexico", 1971, University Press of Colorado. A kötet szokatlan szerkesztésmódjával nem egészen vagyok kibékülve. Eleinte nagyon tetszett a fura kéthasábos megoldás, később már erőltetettnek éreztem, ráadásul egy ilyen formabontásnak mindig nagy az ára is: fókuszvesztést, töredezett olvasási élményt okoz. Nem biztos, hogy megérte. Inkább érzem úgy utólag, hogy valamiféle naplózási fájlokat olvastam, mintsem hogy egy regényt. Persze lehet, hogy pont ez volt a cél. Beautifully layered and illuminated underwater scenes, that appear to be watercolor and ink, create a mesmerizing world where the little Axolotl comes to vivid life.”Before I begin: I'm not a fan of Dukaj's newspeak - I find it hard and exhausting to follow. 1/3rd of this edition consist of footnotes explaining the wording used throughout the book. On positive side at least I'm understanding what I'm reading (which I couldn't say about "Król Bólu" - another book of this author). On negative one, it's a very lazy way of introducing a reader to a presented universe at best. Julio Cortazar created a whole new world altogether wherein the ordinality was plunged to the great depth of nothingness to subvert the realism with surreal and fantastical elements, and what rises up from the annihilation of mundanity is an enigmatic and eerie reality of humanity which forces us to look upon ourselves from a whole new perspective. The author completely eschews the mundane rules of literature so as to write in a non-linear fashion and shifting perspectives which dance across various characters as human consciousness keeps on jumping from one to another, as if to emulate it. The fiction of Cortazar infuses fantastic and bizarre elements to our everyday reality to transform it to a haunting depiction of humanity so as to force us to see our own absurdity which is perhaps more close to the reality as we perceive. Over the years, we have seen that the prose has been progressively seen from the underlying meanings which one might explore by opening up its layers, Cortazar’s world gives us access to such a reality wherein we may have to actively participate to understand or rather assume the various possible realities which may lie in a possibility.

A to je bila realna opasnost jer je Stari aksolotl naučna fantastika u klasičnom lemovskom ključu, dakle bavi se manje pojedincima a više jednom konkretnom premisom koju prilično rigorozno istražuje: šta bi se desilo kad bi iznenadno zračenje iz kosmosa za 24 h spržilo sav, ali sav, bez ostatka, organski život na Zemlji (prvih desetak strana knjige), ali bi desetak-dvadesetak hiljada gejmera i programera stiglo da se (kljakavo, delimično) aplouduje na net? Inventive book design and shifting perspectives add cozy surprises to this bedtime snoozer…. In Hasan-Rokem’s translation from the Swedish, the text is poetic, sly, and funny…. Along with adding sly anthropomorphic touches to the rest of the cast, [Bondestam] caps the nighttime scenes with one final one of a comically frazzled family of owls barely getting through a sunrise supper of croissants and hot chocolate before collapsing. Parents of younger children will definitely relate. A droll and imaginative addition to the crepuscular corpus.” The horror began—I learned in the same moment —of believing myself prisoner in the body of an axolotl, metamorphosed into him with my human mind intact, buried alive in an axolotl, condemned to move lucidly among unconscious creatures. We hear the cry of soul of the narrator trapped inside the body of an axolotl, the narrator cries from the depth of his being as if he is being thrown in to this hell of nothingness wherein he can’t express himself as if his entire existence is shred to nothingness, just like the vermin Gregor Samsa of Franz Kafka turns into, in The Metamorphosis. The readers find the consciousness of the narrator being confined to the body of an axolotl, severed from the entire world as if the world turns deaf to him, he watches with soul stirring horror that he is reflecting upon his own being through glass of aquarium, it marks the intense loneliness of human life which he can’t escape even after the transformation. However, the treatment here is more optimistic and humane since the narrator soon realizes that axolotls are human like consciousness beings who are trapped in their bodies so as to say condemned to exist, contemplating upon their doomed reality without realizing their true existence. El libro nos cuenta que un hombre va a visitar al Jardín Des Plantes ubicado en Paris en donde se encuentra con un animal llamado muy peculiar llamado Axolote. Tanto fue su encanto por estas peculiares criaturas que se termina convenciendo en que es uno de ellos. Era tanta su curiosidad por estos animalitos que comenzó a visitarlos hasta tres veces al día, se fijaba en su contextura con mucho detalle, le llamaba mucho la atención sus cuerpos translúcidos y lechosos, sus espectaculares colas de lagarto, sus rostros en forma de triangulo, planas y de color rosa, sus manos con dedos muy similares a los de un humano, los ramilletes que salen desde sus branquias, el gran brillo que proyectan sus ojos, su forma de desplazarse por los acuarios en forma muy lenta que hace pensar que no se mueven y el movimiento de sus branquias y cuando nadan lo hacen solo con un movimiento ondulatorio de sus cuerpos. Esto los hace fascinantes para él, creyendo tener una relación muy cercana con ellos, de alguna manera siente que estos les piden ayuda con sus grandes ojos, un día estaba observándolos en el acuario hasta que llegó a un punto en el que se sintió que estaba dentro del acuario siendo un miembro más de ellos. El cuento finaliza en que estás criaturas tienen la idea que el hombre entendió lo que ellos le querían comunicar y este se encuentra haciendo una redacción respecto a ellos motivó por el cual no volvió más a visitarlos.A profound question often probes our consciousness to instigate our inquisitiveness that why do we read, and before that why do we even write? Books, what are they for? Why do we read them or write them? For Goerge Orwell it might be the inner demons which forced him to write, to keep himself away from insanity; for Kafka, books were “the axe for the frozen sea within us”; for Polish Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska, books stood as our ultimate frontier of freedom; but the question still stands greatly holding its ground. Perhaps we need to understand it from the perspective of our innate need to express ourselves, which makes us human. At times another question rises up from ignorance of humanity that why do we need to read and create fiction in the first place; though fiction per se may be about the things which may not exist in real world but it is very much about the truth of humanity, the truth to understand what we are and how do behave. Lumea lui Cortazar, cel puțin în aceste povestiri, este o lume în care ce trebuie făcut este să răstorni valorile comune/general_acceptate (exprimările pudice ale familiei, cutumele de la poștă). E un exemplu de gîndire „out-of-the-box”, un foc de artificii.

Various contributors, edited by John B. Armstrong and George M. Malacinski, " Developmental Biology of the Axolotl", 1989, Oxford University Press. In this review I put aside all the hype around the book in Poland, additional media content (3D printing, PI videos, etc.). These are additional elements I find supplementary at most. * Told from the perspective of a green alien family on a faraway planet, Bondestam’s endearing solo debut offers a peek into the fictional bedtime routines of animals from around the world…. Offbeat humor permeates the text… and accompanies Bondestam’s quirky, multipatterned collage-style illustrations. The penultimate bedtime routine will resonate with parental readers, while the final spreads offer a last laugh for young ones.”

Books

Indiviglio, Frank, " Newts and Salamanders: a Complete Pet Owner's Manual", 1997, Barron's Educational Series. El cuento nos muestra a un narrador que se queda horas mirando a los axolotls en el jardín de plantas solamente observando su inmovilidad, hasta que se transforma en uno. Como empieza a ir todos los días al acuario se obsesiona con estos anfibios, por sus miradas y sus facciones. Él cree que ellos les piden ayuda y siente algo de humanidad en estos ajolotes. De igual manera él sentía temor, no dejaba de pensar en estas criaturas, era algo agobiante pero lindo a la vez, puesto que nunca había sentido una conexión tan grande con otro animal, quería saber absolutamente todo de cómo vivían y pensaban. Hasta que se transforma en uno y por fin puede sentir esa perspectiva. Estaba inmóvil, incapaz de expresarse, él solo con sus pensamientos. Condenado a moverse entre criaturas insensibles. At the bottom of a lake in a busy city, our axolotl narrator goes to underwater school, collects treasures tossed away by the big lugs on land, and has dance parties with tiger salamander friends. Life is good!