Friday, December 9, 2016

The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It Every Time by Maria Konnikova

What is the oldest profession in the world? Some say religion, others go with prostitution. This book says it was the confidence game.

I'm not sure which one is the oldest because I'm not really an archaeologist, and I'm not getting to delve on this point.

But what this book makes me think that en-cashing others' hopes, beliefs, fallacies etc is something a con man does. And falling for a con is a human tendency. Humans are naturally programmed to trust others, and have hopes. We all want to have better future and anybody/anything that promises it can win us.

The book has lots of cases to quote from small time cons to large business scams, and overall it's a good read.

It doesn't equip you to identify a scam but next time you'll know what it was that made you fall for it.

Monday, November 7, 2016

The Sellout by Paul Beatty

I'll accept the fact that the reason for choosing this novel was because of it's winning the Man Booker.

It was a quick read, but it left a lasting impression for sure.

This is a story of an African-American kid grown up in a ghetto near LA.

I had heard about the racial crime, and people's attitude towards the people of colour but this was a real eye opener. Acceptance is a problem but the bigger problem is that we don't want to let the people be. People who can do great in their lives, end up fighting the biases against themselves.

This is definitely a great read, not because it won Booker but it helps us understand that there are people who are not treated equally, and the reason can be anything from colour, religious beliefs, societal status etc.

Thursday, October 27, 2016

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

So this was a quick read.

The book is about a young boy Charlie who doesn't have any idea of what is happening around. But he also portrayed like a super genius who reads a lot, listen to lot of bands, and understanding a lot of things which even the more mature guys don't.

Did I mention that he is a crying baby too?

I know there are some takers for this kind of narratives, and there are good chances for a adolescent person to identify with Charlie. We may have those lows in our life but that is just a phase. Charlie seems to be stuck in it like forever.

I think this is not a great book but if you think that you can't be influenced by pseudo emotional content which tries too hard to make you cry than this book is for you.

For others even if you read it you'll get over it by the Epilogue.

Monday, October 24, 2016

The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice by Christopher Hitchens

I'll not call it a book in the first place. It is about 100 page long essay, and not really a book.

The author of this book is already famous for criticising famous personalities around the world. He seems to be always going against anything which looks large than life.

This book is on Saint Teresa, and how she was a friend of rich people (rich by wrong ways), and poverty (not the poor). This book shows her in bad light, and there were some instances which are so logical that you can't either answer them or doge them.

There are multiple such instances where she put the wrong foot forward. She had her beliefs against  birth control, convert to Christianity, and poverty etc but that doesn't undermine her efforts.

I'm sure the donations received could have been put to a better use, but unfortunately there was no such account maintained so nobody knew how much money they had.

But one thing I'm totally against it that nobody can decide how others should behave/expect when they are on wrong side of luck. A sick person needs medication. Provide it if you can or just stay away.

Finally, it's a quick read, and definitely gives you a different perspective about the "Saint". Read it for that irrespective of your leanings.

Thursday, October 20, 2016

The Thirteenth Tribe by Arthur Koestler

Again a book picked just out of curiosity. When I started with this book I was not really award about the content. I was expecting it to be a book about the history of some lost civilisation.

However, that is not the case. The book is about a theory which says that the Ashkenazi Jews were not a part of historical Jewish lineage but a different civilisation (or state/nation) altogether which eventually accepted Judaism.

The book is full of quotation and references for reaching to a particular conclusion. But somehow the writer was already under the influence of the conclusion, and the whole book was reverse engineered to fit the things.

I'm not an expert in such matters so I'll not talk about how correct the references are or even the conclusion is correct or not.

But from a reader point of view I can say that the whole narrative is not very much structured. A lot of things popped up in between without any previous reference.

Overall, the book was not really that great, and you can give it a pass until you're very much interested in exploring various theories around different religions, and civilisations. 

Thursday, October 13, 2016

Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing by Melissa Mohr

I picked this book out of curiosity about the content it could have, and I must say that I was not disappointed.

The book talks about the journey of swearing (abuses and otherwise). It draws a picture that how the obscenities have developed in the society over a period of time.

It gives a lot of example of living conditions and social acceptance (or taboo) of a particular time and how the obscenities grew in those conditions.

One thing which I took from this book was that all the things which were taboo ended up being a swear world, which involved from God to body excrete or various body parts. Over a period of time even the sexual preference became a taboo and being considered as an obscenity.

Cast, colour, creed, class etc also became the swearing words give the social condition over a period of time.

I also noted that the author quotes that swearing give way to the frustration of a person and the magnitude is defined as which condition that person is going through.

I understand that swearing doesn't go well with the society, and considered a bad thing but this is an imperative part of the social fabric. It does change over different times, and the single source is what is taboo (or considered abnormal) for the society at that point of time.

Small and quick read.

Wednesday, August 3, 2016

Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer

I've no idea how I ended up with this book but after completing it I realised it was not really a bad choice. I've seen worse.

So the book is about the experiences of a curious journalist who went to cover an event of memory championship, and being fascinated by it participated in it next year. He actually ended up winning the event too.

The whole book looks like notes on how he prepared and his experiences during that time.

Joshua emphasises a lot on how we've forgotten the art of memorising, and more prone to rote learning. There are historical references of how memory was an integral part of the whole learning process.

He is of the thought that with some basic practices and exercises anybody can boost their memory. A lot of times author sounds a lot rational but many at times he over did it in pushing the point.

I totally agree with him that given the technological advances we've stopped memorising a lot of things but I never thought that this is the main skill of learning. I'm actually of the thought that after forgetting what you read, whatever remains is a learning. It is not really memorising something word by word with some recommended techniques.

I don't have a very good memory but I think that from all the books that I read I don't remember all the characters and plots. It makes me feel bad sometimes but I also go back to my favourite books and not because I forgot it but I wanted to go through it again for the pleasure of reading it.

Anyways you take a call on what you want a great memory or you are fine with all that you remember. But the books is a light read and you can even finish it fast.

Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

This was again a big one and the author was the reason I wanted to read it after completing The Penelopiad by her.

This is a historical fiction which revolves around a real person named Grace who was convicted of a murder. The author has added a lot of fictional characters and details to make it look like a story.

Grace was sentenced to life imprisonment, and the narration goes in detail about her madness and asylum days.

The novel is written in a very engaging style however, I lost a lot of things due to force fitting the narration of weather, and the scene. I strongly believe that a lot could have been omitted in editing as it was unnecessarily adding to the pages without delivering any affect.

As far as characters are concerned there was a confusion over the whole narration as it was told differently by different characters. It never tried to claim her crime or innocence which was very vague. But ultimately it was not expected to be crime novel.

Finally, it is not highly recommended because if you are unable to read it you're not missing much, until and unless you're very much prone to fall for anything which has Booker nomination tagged with it.

Friday, June 17, 2016

The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins

So here is another one with logical reasoning to it by Dawkins. The last one I read was The God Delusion. Anyways, this was the book which motivated me to read other books by Dawkins.

I'm not very sure about the book. First thing was that I was not aware of a lot of biological/botanical terms mentioned even when the explanation was very easy. So this was a bit tough read in that sense but there were definitely some light moments :)

My second thought is that the whole idea of gene supremacy was so over served that it actually sounded fiction. As I mentioned earlier that I am not a subject matter expert here but still the whole narration was so gene centric that it was not convincing enough.

I understood that gene is responsible for how species evolve but the examples are so selective and put forward in such a way that it forcefully tries to drive the point which should have come naturally. So as far as logic and reasoning is concerned this one stands nowhere when compared with God Delusion. A reader is more than willing to receive new thoughts but you can't push a point beyond a limit.

Another thing which I'll like to add here is that all the examples and phenomena mentioned in the book added a lot to my understanding about life of different species e.g. bees.

This is a good read but most of the people who don't have patience for the going through the initial thought set up will find it boring.

Saturday, May 28, 2016

The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood

So, I stumbled upon this book while searching for the Booker prize winners. I found the name of Margaret Atwood who is very popular as a poet and novelist. I was planning to read the other novel by her first which is "The Handmaid's Tale" but I'm going to keep it for later.

I'll also like to add that this is not a full fledged novel but a short novel or a long story as you can call it. Technically, they call it novella. I realized this in the middle of my reading because I was through with half of the book in like an hour. This is a problem with reading ebooks that sometimes you don't know how long this is going to be because I don't count the number of pages. Though, I thought I could have when I was reading my previous book "The Hindus".

Any ways, the book is not really a story but it is a narrative from Penelope's point of view who was the wife of Odysseus. I hope you are able to connect it with Odyssey. The narrative revolves around the twelve maids of Penelope and how they were hanged in the end without any proper reason. There is a whole reasoning of disloyalty etc in Odyssey but here it is given from Penelope's point of view.

There was no sequel of Odyssey which glorifies the female characters so this one is from a woman for a woman.

The whole story is around what all Penelope had gone through during the absence of Odysseus. It's rendered beautifully and it raises the question of freedom that a woman has versus a freedom that a man enjoys. Odysseus was gone for long years for Trojan war and he has a long list of adventures after that with witches, ogres and gods. Odyssey has details of his sleeping in the arms of beautiful maidens and goddesses but when he comes back after all these years first thing he was worried about was the chastity of his wife.

Why the whole epic glorifies his relations with other woman but very conservative about the conduct of Penelope? She doesn't have the freedom to do what she wants to do. If she does she will be labelled as a whore. May be she would have been hanged or brutally killed for that. Why chastity is a woman's virtue and she is judged on this scale so rigidly with zero tolerance?

There were no times when a woman was really glorified. We may find some deviations but they will be very rare. They are so rare that you can count them on fingers.

The saddest part is that there is no change in this perception of a woman, she is either objectified (like the maidens of Odyssey whom the Odysseus enjoys) or scrutinized for her loyalty/chastity/whatever-makes-a-man-feel-better.

I hope that one day we all have the freedom to live with dignity and make the choices that we want to make and do not follow what others have decided for us.

This is a pretty good read and it questions the very mindset of a society.

Friday, May 20, 2016

The Hindus: An Alternative History by Wendy Doniger

This is the book which took me about four months to finish and the credit goes to my latest muse a 30 inch long bamboo flute. I never gave up reading for anything but this was just out of this world.

Anyway, I finally finished this book and I have mixed feelings about it.

I'll start with reason why I started reading it in the first place, and the one word for it is "controversy". When I heard of it being taken back by publisher I was curious to know what objectionable content does this book has.

Now, the question is what I think about it. Most important point is that it doesn't have anything objectionable. It is a plain factual (there are some facts and some mythology) book which dwells upon a lot of points but doesn't establish a single one of them. I believe this is by choice of author and not because she lost the plot in between. Second thing is that the questions raised in the book have been raised many times earlier from different people, and we all can discuss over it all our lifetime without reaching a conclusion as why a particular thing was said or done.

The most important factor is that we move on. We move on with a new knowledge from our past. Something which makes us proud and humble together. We acknowledge what others have said and done with a freedom of agree to disagree.

We may not agree to everything but that doesn't mean that everything which is against our conventional wisdom is untrue,

I believe there was always a trend to raise the non reason-ability in various religions, conventions and institutions. All we need is just a rationality to understand the thoughts without any bias.

Finally, this book is a good read but don't read it just for the controversy it created (like I started reading it) but to see a different face of religion and culture in India, Specially, there are a lot of anecdotes which you may find funny or bizarre. This girl (she is 75 year young) spent five decades of her life to learn Indian culture, and she is worth listening.

Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire by Alex von Tunzelmann

This is a big book with around 450 pages. It took 12 hours to finish it.

The only reason this book got my curiosity was that it was on the theme of partition but I realized that there was a lot around Nehru and Edwina. When writing a book around such theme it depends on writer how much space she wants to give to something which may not be tasteful for a lot of people. And I'm glad that all the instances mentioned here between Nehru and Edwina never sounded scandalous.

The book is well searched as there is a reference for almost any quotation or figure mentioned. In fact, it gives a subjective review of what was happening during the final stage of India's freedom struggle.

On thing which I goes against it that a lot of times the book was filled with a lot of details which could have been avoided by giving shorter description to the point. But this depends on the style of author, and since I haven't read any other book by her I can't really comment on it.

This book definitely sound balanced because during the whole narration it never felt like it is biased in favour of anybody be it India or the British. I'm glad that it actually added a lot to my understanding of India's freedom fight, and circumstances in which a few decisions were taken or not taken.

For the readers I'll say that you need patience to finish this book. But it is definitely a good read.