you're getting a little cuckoo, viskovitz

I have recently read a book called "You are an animal, Viskovitz", which i loved for a number of reasons.

It may sound funny, but the first thing that attracted me was the writer's biography, which i'll try to translate from the book's cover. Cause his story is really interesting in quite a literary character sense. Alessandro Boffa was born in Moscow and worked for two years as a biologist in an animal genetics lab. He further dedicated himself to the study of the human brain. During the financial crisis in 1986, he won a considerable amount of money on the stock and left to California and Eastern Asia, where he remained for eleven years. Then, he got a degree in gemology in Bangkok, and started doing business with gems, after which he spent five years on a small island in Thailand. He wrote "You are an animal, Viskovitz" in 1998, and had great success with it.

Then, the second reason i liked it is the fact that i think it's a great book for planners - cause the reader is offered so many different perspectives on the world, each subjected to different rules, different "cultures", different social constraints. This happens cause the reader is invited to step into Viskovitz's shoes, who "reincarnates" into 20 different creatures, each of them featured in a different short story. And of course, the hilarious fables are actually insights into the human nature.

Switching to the third reason, i must say i totally love the books that don't really end with the last page, but inspire you to look for something else as well. And that's what happened with this one - its language is very biology-playful, combining scientifical terms with very common terms in quite a funny way (Boffa is a biologist among others, and that's kinda obvious in the book). Which made me go straight away to a book shop and buy some biology scientific book. It's really nice when some joke helps you start learning something a bit more serious.

And, last thing which comes in my mind right now - it reminded me about a book i read and adored when i was in the second grade. The book's called "Instantanee din viata animalelor" (i guess it would be something like "Snapshots from animal life") and it was written by Ionel Pop in 1963.