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.

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.

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. 

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.