Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

It is difficult to say that Olive is a central character here. The whole book is more like different stories but somehow connected. And Olive gets a mention or appearance (central character many times) in all the stories but the whole construct is so, that it doesn't really bring her into the limelight. And, it still brings her whole image, and personality out even when she is not present.

A story of a whole town, and the families with their own tragedies. The things that they deal with on daily basis. The hopes, desires, disappointments and horrors they have been witness to.

It was a light one to read.

Love

Six Impossible Things by John Gribbin

The difficulty level was quantum :) 

It is a real nice (and quick) read on some of the key principles of quantum mechanics which is supposed to be the most difficult field of study out there. But what makes is difficult is not the principles but the explanation of those ideas in a common language. A lot of these principle work out of the purview of a regular observation capacity which makes it more difficult to find a similar example to explain the phenomenon. When they say that the particle was spinning up or down and the wave was travelling partially in the future and in the past, it is incomprehensible for human faculties.

But just because it is not easy to understand doesn't mean it is not happening. The universe exists even if we don't have a direct observation into it as a whole or in parts. And, the best part is that this field is expanding rapidly with the higher sophistications of instruments that can help run the tests at the quantum level. So, we can expect that in the future we'll have better explanation in what we call as "worldly terms".

You don't need a doctorate to read but it will be a bit difficult to understand specially as a standalone book if you are not privy to some other fields of science and maths which support quantum mechanics.

And, yeah, don't be bothered by multiverse :) 

Peace

Atoms and Ashes by Serhii Plokhy

This one is about the nuclear accidents, and is a record of all the key events during those accidents. It covers the six major disasters in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. This is something which was something more relevant to read with the war going around a nuclear power plant, and thinking about one miscalculation which can lead to another disaster, which will be unfortunate given that both the sides had been witness to one of the worst of the six.

Doesn't make sense to go through a summary of all six here but the main reason which one can gather is that the designs were not perfect. They were/are the best of their times but sometimes even the best is not enough. Some of these designs flaws got aggravated by human error in handling the setup which eventually come to a shape of a disaster followed by evacuation, casualties, and long term after effects.

The science of Nuclear is quite old since we started understanding how we can harness the energy at an atomic and sub-atomic levels. But putting this into action was always a challenge. There were multiple designs which tried to operationalise the whole process but none of them is meltdown proof. In fact, the latest one at Fukushima was caused by a rare (not unforeseen) external cause, tsunami.

There is always a balancing act to find out what factors of safety we can play with. Choosing between a less efficient and more polluting fossil fuel energy against a more efficient and less polluting but with catastrophic long term consequences is not an easy.

But there is optimism in expecting a future technology which will be better controlled (not meltdown proof) which comes with discipline of operations, and prepared for the possible natural or other events.

Peace

By the Sea by Abdulrazak Gurnah

Of course for the Nobel prize winner :)

Story told by a broken man (Saleh Omar) who moves from Zanjibar to Gatwick in the old age. With no purpose left in life apart from just live the life. But the arrival in a different country brought back the memories of a life time not only for Saleh but also the forgotten son of his namesake.

Both of them cleanse themselves from the burden of the life when they found a lost relation in each other.

We rarely get to know the consequences of our actions, specially the ones driven by stupidity but when it does it brings back the futility of all the things which were given undue importance. But those mistakes are the important part of our human side which is more prone to make mistakes based on the reasons which even we don't understand. But the salvation lies in accepting them and moving on to be a different person, hopefully better.

Peace

The Molecule of More by Daniel Z. Lieberman

Dopamine is an old story now. The science is still researching all its affects but there is already some good content available all over the net.

When I picked this one, I was not aware that this is around dopamine otherwise may have not. And after finishing it I didn't get to know anything new that is out there. Most of the things mentioned in this book can actually be summarised in a well written article.

The only plus point was to have the stories with some use cases of dopamine going up/down or how it interacts with other neurotransmitters in the brain. But that was more decorative, and not really a value add.

For a real read on dopamine, maybe a good article but not this one.

Peace