The 100 - Kass Morgan

1ª ed.: 2013
ed. sp.: 
auth.: Kass Morgan[ author, leidos ]

The trilogy is set three centuries after a thermonuclear apocalypse, where the only known survivors of the human race live in a space colony consisting of spaceships joined together in orbit around the Earth, governed by Chancellor Jaha, who leads its legislative council. Resources are so scarce that all crimes, no matter how small, are punishable by death, unless the perpetrator is under 18 years of age.

The 100 begins with Clarke Griffin, a former medical student, being arrested for a crime committed by her parents: conducting illegal experiments on children under threat of the corrupt Vice Chancellor Rhodes. Clarke confides in her boyfriend Wells, who is the chancellor's son. Despite swearing secrecy to Clarke, Wells tells his father, hoping to save the Griffins from Rhodes. His plan backfires, the Griffins are arrested, and his relationship with Clarke disintegrates. Two years later, the Colony decides to send one hundred of its teenage prisoners to investigate whether Earth is habitable. Among the one hundred are Clarke, Wells, Octavia Blake, her older brother Bellamy Blake, and Clarke's friend, Thalia.


The group crashes somewhere on the East Coast in the former United States. Once there, the 100 struggle to survive in a world very different from the past Earth. Clarke tends to the wounded, and Bellamy gradually develops a romantic interest in her. It is revealed that Octavia had become a drug addict while in prison. A few days later, someone sets fire to the camp, killing Thalia. As the survivors investigate, they discover a farm not too far from the site, leading them to the realization that they are not alone.

The Colour of Magic

1ª ed.: 
ed. sp.: 
auth.: Terry Pratchett [ author, leidos ]

Lectura nacida de la muerte del autor Terry Pratchett (28abril2015). La comicidad no ha cubierto expectativas, aunque quizá haberlo leido en v.o. me hizo perder ese aspecto.

[wiki]
The Colour of Magic (also known as The Color of Magic) is a 1983 comic fantasy novel by Terry Pratchett, and is the first book of the Discworld series. The first printing of the British edition consisted of 506 copies. Pratchett has described it as "an attempt to do for the classical fantasy universe what Blazing Saddles did for Westerns."

SINOPSIS

The main character is an incompetent and cynical wizard namedRincewind. He involuntarily becomes a guide to the rich but naive tourist from the Agatean Empire, Twoflower. Forced to flee the city of Ankh-Morpork to escape a terrible fire caused by a bartender who misunderstood the concept of insurance, which Twoflower told him about, they begin on a journey across the Disc. Unknown to them, their journey is controlled by the Gods playing a board game. Rincewind and Twoflower are controlled by the Lady and are pitted against the champions of Zephyrus, the god of slight breezes, Fate, and Offler the Crocodile God in the game supervised by Blind Io, an obvious take on Thor/Zeus/Jupiter.

Twoflower and Rincewind face a mountain troll summoned by Offler and are separated. The ignorant Twoflower ends up being led to the Temple of Bel-Shamharoth, and after a near brush with Death, Rincewind ends up in a tree-nymph inhabited tree in the woods. Rincewind escapes when the tree-nymphs try to kill him and is reunited with the tourist. Together with Hrun the Barbarian they escape from the Temple of Bel-Shamharoth the Soul Eater, which collapses. In the Gods game, this is the Lady's winning the game by beating Fate, her last opponent. Later, Hrun agrees to travel with and protect Twoflower and Rincewind in exchange for Heroic pictures of him from Twoflower's magical picture box.

They visit Wyrmberg, an upside-down mountain which is home to dragons that only exist in the imagination. The names of the dragons' riders feature punctuation in the middle (parodying the Dragonriders of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey). The three are captured by the riders and separated; Twoflower, because of his fascination with dragons, is able to summon one greater than those of the Wyrmberg riders and meets Greicha, the Wyrmberg's ruler. Rincewind finds Kring, Hrun's sentient sword, and later fights Lio!rt, one of Greicha's sons. He is saved from death by Twoflower and his dragon. Hrun meanwhile meets Liessa, Greicha's daughter, who convinces him to go through three trials so that he may rule the Wyrmberg alongside her. Hrun passes the first two trials: an assassination attempt and combat with both of Liessa's brothers. Before he can start the third, implied to involve sex with Liessa, he is rescued by Twoflower, much to his annoyance. Hrun subsequently leaves the group to live with Liessa, while Rincewind and Twoflower end up far away from the Wyrmberg.

They nearly go over the waterfall on the edge of the Disc, but are rescued and taken to Krull, a city perched on the very edge of the Discworld and inhabited by hydrophobic wizards. The Krullians wish to discover the gender of Great A'Tuin, the giant turtle who carries the Discworld through space, so they have built a space capsule to launch over the Edge. They intend to sacrifice Rincewind and Twoflower to get Fate to smile on the voyage, Fate insisting on their sacrifice in revenge for their role in his loss of the game. Instead, Rincewind, Twoflower, and Tethis the sea troll hijack the capsule and are launched off the Disc themselves. The story segues immediately into the beginning of The Light Fantastic; the two books can therefore be seen as one two-volume novel.

Calibán y la bruja - Silvia Federici

1ª ed.: 
ed. sp.: 
auth.: Silvia Federici [ author, leidos ]

Calibán y la bruja. Mujeres Cuerpo y Acumulación Originaria.
De la emancipación de la servidumbre a las herejías subversivas, un hilo rojo recorre la historia de la transición del feudalismo al capitalismo. Todavía hoy expurgado de la gran mayoría de los manuales de historia, la imposición de los poderes del Estado y el nacimiento de esa formación social que acabaría por tomar el nombre de capitalimo no se produjeron sin el recurso a la violencia extrema. La acumulación originaria exigió la derrota de los movimientos urbanos y campesinos, que normalmente bajo la forma de herejía religiosa reivindicaron y pusieron en práctica diversos experimentos de vida comunal y reparto de riqueza. Su aniquilación abrió el camino a la formación del Estado moderno, la expropiación y cercado de las tierras comunes, la conquista y el expolio de América, la apertura del comercio de esclavos a gran escala y una guerra contra las formas de vida y las culturas populares que tomó a las mujeres como su principal objetivo. Al analizar la quema de brujas, Federici no sólo desentraña uno de los episodios más inefables de la historia moderna, sino el corazón de una poderosa dinámica de expropiación social dirigida sobre el cuerpo, los saberes y la reproducción de las mujeres. Esta obra es también el registro de unas voces imprevistas (las de los subalternos: Calibán y la bruja) que todavía hoy resuenan con fuerza en las luchas que resisten a la continua actualización de la violencia originaria. Silvia Federici es profesora en la Hofstra University de Nueva York. Militante feminista desde 1960, fue una de las principales animadoras de los debates internacionales sobre la condición y la remuneración del trabajo doméstico. Durante la década de 1980 trabajó varios años como profesora en Nigeria, donde fue testigo de la nueva oleada de ataques contra los bienes comunes. Ambas trayectorias confluyen en esta obra.

A Maze of Death

1ª ed.: 1970
ed. sp.: Laberinto de Muerte
auth.: Philip K Dick [ author, leidos ]

Una idea genial que se desvela en el último momento, pero que no justifica toda una novela por la que uno se arrastra sin demasiado interés.

[from wikipedia] 

The plot revolves around fourteen colonists of the world Delmak-O. They are: Betty Jo Berm, a linguist; elderly Bert Kostler, settlement custodian; Maggie Walsh, a theologian; Ignatz Thugg, who oversees thermoplastics; Milton Babble, a physician; Wade Frazer, apsychologist; Tony Dunkelwelt, a geologist; Glen Belsnor, who specialises in telecommunications; Susie Smart, a typist; Roberta Rockingham, a sociologist; Ben Tallchief, a naturalist; Seth and Mary Morley, a marine biologist couple; and Ned Russell, an economist. They inhabit a universe in which the deities of their religion can be contacted through a network of prayer amplifiers and transmitters. Tallchief is transferred to Delmak-O as a direct result of his prayer-petition for a change in his intolerable work situation.

Delmak-O is a mysterious and largely unexplored world. It seems to be inhabited by both real and artificial beings and enormous cube-shaped, gelatinous objects ("tenches") that duplicate items presented to them and give out advice, in anagrams reminiscent of the I Ching. In addition, various members of the group report sightings of a large "Building." As various calamities continue to befall each character, part of the group ventures out to find the mysterious structure. Each member of the group perceives the Building's entrance motto, and thus its purpose, differently.

One by one, the characters Tallchief, Smart, Berm, Dunkelwelt, Kostler and Walsh either kill themselves or are killed under mysterious circumstances. During a fight between the remaining colonists Seth Morley is shot through the shoulder causing an artery to be severed. While recovering from an attempt to repair the artery, Morley is abducted by armed men who kill Belsnor. They put Morley aboard a small flying craft but Morley overpowers them and takes control of the craft. With it he discovers that Delmak-O is in fact Earth, and he returns to the group to report this.

The group then comes to the conclusion that they are all criminally insane and part of a psychiatric experiment in rehabilitation. Once they admit to having killed the other members they conclude that the experiment has been a failure. It is at this point that they notice that each of them is tattooed with the phrase, "Persus 9." They decide to ask a tench what this means but doing so causes the tench to explode and the world around them to crumble to pieces.

All of them, including the colonists thought to be dead, awake to find that they are actually the crew of a spaceship that has become stranded in orbit around a dead star with no way of calling for help. Their experience had been a kind of virtual reality—a computer-generated religion that synthesized their beliefs—to help them pass the time. Seth Morley is depressed by this and wonders whether it would be better to let all the air out from the ship and thus kill them all rather than live out the rest of their lives engaging in virtual reality with no hope of rescue. Before he can act, however, an aspect of the deity known as the Intercessor, supposedly existing only in the virtual reality program and not a part of the "real" world, appears before Morley and removes him from the ship. The others, unconcerned with his disappearance, embark on another hallucination which begins in exactly the same way as the previous one, only this time without Seth Morley.

The Martian

1ª ed.: 2011
ed. sp.:
auth.: Andy Weir [ author, leidos ]

Casa de muñecas. Ibsen

1ª ed.: 1879
ed. sp.:
auth.: Henrik Ibsen [ author, leidos ]

Sra. Linde: Vengo a la ciudad en busca de colocación.
Rank: ¿Será ése un remedio eficaz contra la fatiga?
Sra. Linde: Hay que vivir, doctor.
Rank: Se trata de una opinión general ciertamente. La mayoría estima necesario vivir.



A resaltar todo el final del tercer acto.
Nora.

Una forma de vida - Amelie Nothomb

1ª ed.: 2010
ed. sp.:
auth.: Amelie Nothomb [ author, leidos ]


Correo diplomático es un pleonasmo. "Dipolomático" tiene por etimología el antiguo griego diploma, "papel doblado por la mitad", es decir pliegue. La diplomacia empezó con la correspondencia. En efecto, una carta puede ser una manera de decir las cosas con amabilidad. De ahí la contaminación histórica de ambas prácticas: un diplomático suele escribir misivas con frecuencia y el estilo epistolar suele adquirir modales diplomáticos. (pag.65)