Pepe El Toro

Penpal by Dathan Auerbach. This the most disturbing book that has come to my hands in a while. My jaw dropped to the end of the second tale “Balloons”. An elementary school teacher asks the kids to use balloons to send letters to start a penpal correspondence. A kid starts receiving letters and photos of […]

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert M. Pirsig. Written in 1974, it explores the concept of ‘quality.’ It examines why something is or isn’t considered good. This is not really about ethics; rather, it focuses on perception.

Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman. This is probably one of the best non-fiction books I’ve read. It is not only beautifully written and well-organized but it really teaches something. This book is about the evolutionary psychology of consciousness. The author explains with many examples how our physiology has evolved from

A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson. This was really good and hilarious reading. I enjoyed every page and every moment. Bryson has that uncanny power of bringing the reader into the stage of what he is writing. Reading this book made me feel like I was just

The Phantom Lover and Other Thrilling Tales of Thailand by Jim Algie. Most of the stories in this book are good. Probably the one I enjoyed the most is the story of See Ouey, who was a convicted multiple murderer in the past century. Ouey immigrated from China to Thailand after fighting in World War

Looking at the Sun: The Rise of the New East Asian Economic and Political System by James M. Fallows (1995). Twenty years ago, journalist James Fallows spent more than five years in Asia collecting information and building a compelling case for how and why this area of the planet was growing so fast, especially in

Class Matters by Bill Keller. This book from The New York Times is both depressing and distressing, but some parts are quite enlightening and deserve special attention. One of the key messages is that class is not just about money or power. It is more about intangible resources, mostly coming from within the family. This

Triple by Ken Follett. This book is a really nice description of the stealing of uranium to produce nuclear weapons in Israel in the late 60’s. They made a fake company to buy a freighter, which would transport a covert shipment of uranium to Italy. At some point during the trip, they would stage the

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins (2015). This is a pretty good psychological novel. I am quite delighted that I picked this one at the second hand book store. It is about Rachel, a woman that has found in alcohol a way to cope with her broken life and marriage. The history is

AIQ: How People and Machines Are Smarter Together by Nick Polson and James Scott. Imagine you could write a novel knowing for sure that it will be the biggest bestseller. Or that for a record company, there is no need to audition hundreds of bands, because they have devised a method to design a rock