When I first decided to make the 50 book list for this year the idea of making progress with the very extensive bibliography of nobel prize winning author José Saramago was priority number one.

The list contains five books, from which this two books are number three and number four.

That leaves only one left to read. Claraboya

As always Saramago explores the hidden magical essence of even the simplest things.

In “Manual de Pintura y Caligrafía” the stories follows the inner-thoughts of a mediocre painter. A rebel in heart living of making portrait for the social elite. Tired of painting worthless art, he focus on capturing his views on a journal with some beautiful calligraphy.

In ” Todos los nombres” our story focus on a clerk of the Central Registry of  Births, Marriages and Deaths who only things beside work is collecting clips from papers and magazines of famous people. One day going thru some files of this famous persons, by accident, takes a file of a regular person, a women . He becomes infatuated with this enigmatic  woman and starts a journey to find out more about her.

Two very different books exploring the same thematic of human obsession of finding something worth sacrificing yourself over.

So that’s 5,479 pages down, 44,263 pages to go

Total pages 117,059 pages

A  collection of short stories by the nobel prize winning author José Saramago.

With is particular  humour and  beautiful narrative the author  makes  us witness to the demise of a chair, a car worried by his next gasoline fix, a king tired of funeral processions, a rebellion of objects and even a centaur hidden in the woods of  modernity.

This book is perfect to read during a coffee break or lunch.  It gives you the opportunity to escape reality for a little while as you dwell in the always enticing worlds and words of  José Saramago.

So that’s 5,071 pages down, 44,671 pages to go.

Total Pages 116,651 pages

The second book of the series “The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flame: The Magician” continues to follow the steps of the twins as they keep dodging the attempts of the english magician John Dee to capture them.

This fantastic chase take us to enigmatic city of Paris. Where the twins make extraordinary allies and even deathlier enemies. Facing new villains like Niccolo Machiavelli, a group of valkyries, dagon, nidhogg the devourer of corpses and even a god who lays dormant deep in the catacombs of Paris.

As a parallel story line, Perenelle the wife of the alchemyst is being held prisoner in Alcatraz under the watchful eye of a sphinx. 

The story keeps getting more exciting and twisted. I just can wait to read the third book

So that’s 4,967 pages down, 44,775  pages to go

Total Pages 116, 547 pages

To tell you the true reading this book was a long thing coming. The first edition I bought consisted of a hardcover edition that contain this book and three more, well it vanish without a trace and mind you it was not a small book . The second edition I bought was the trade-paperback, well one day it was raining really hard and the roof started to leak, exactly over the book. So they say that third time’s the charm, so I decided to read it as an e-book.

 I was afraid that maybe my nook will caught fire , but I had to risk it. 

This is the first novel of the long running series of  Discworld which now has more that 39 books. Written by Terry Pratchett, gentleman and knight of the british empire, it mixes humour and satire with epic fantasy.

It follows the adventure of the incompetent wizard named Rincewind and how involuntarily becomes a turist guide, a new term for the inhabitats of the city Ankh-Morpork, of Twoflower a rich visitor from the Agatean Empire. 

Without know it they become part of a board game played by the gods themselves, this journey takes them across the Discworld. Facing soul-eating demigods, dragons that live in an upside-down mountain, hydrophobic wizards and almost being cast-out of this flat world in order to know the sex of the turtle that’s carrying it.

In all is an amazingly written and funny book. It was worth the time it took to actually read it.

So that’s 4,334 pages down, 45,408 pages to go

Total Pages 115,914 pages