Thursday, April 6, 2017

Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman

I came across the book when an interview of this author was published in a newspaper.

This was a short excerpt and author mentioned what all he liked about Norse mythology, and story telling culture from the olden days.

Of course, I knew Thor, Loki, Odin and other gods from those Hollywood movies but it didn't really occurred to me that there can be whole series of stories having all these characters.

So here I was with this book. This is a quick read about 300 pages. There is no plot as such because this is not really a novel. It is more like a collection of stories which are told, and retold since time immemorial.

I loved all the stories, and it is great to see how detailed is the base of setting the premise of all stories. It all starts from nothing, and than many worlds, than god, giants, humans etc come into the picture. Surprisingly, the whole story have an end as well. Which is the not the end but a beginning of a new era.

Of course there are some parts related to giants, and impossible feats of gods or otherwise, but these are included to create that aura around the characters, and make them more than human.

I can say this is a must read, and I'll be exploring few more books on similar topic.

Love

Monday, April 3, 2017

The Last Lecture co-authored by Randy Pausch

So here is another motivational book which I finished recently. I picked up this book after seeing his lecture on Youtube.

However, I believe this is more in line with how we should be like a person rather than motivational.

I kind of liked the book for the emotional, and inspiring narrative. This is the account of a man who knows that he is going to die shortly. He is not going to be around, and this book/lecture is mainly his effort to stay connected with his children (who were very young at that time) even when he is dead.

Death is not really a thing that anybody would like to discuss but there has always been people around us who have incurable diseases, and they already know that they are going to die very soon. This is a miserable condition to be in but Randy has definitely given a message of positivism even in the face of adversity which can be as huge as death itself.

Nobody is going to live forever but anybody can choose what they want to leave behind when they are gone.

I felt that the whole narrative was great but a lot of places it was going very close to boasting but I never knew Randy in person so I'll take the words on it's face value, and will not contradict to it. But I'll also add that not all of us can be as brilliant as Randy (as mentioned in the book), and we may not be able to touch so many lives in our lives but even if we made a difference to the life of one person than it was worth it.

Peace