Eros the Bittersweet by Anne Carson

This is full of ancient Greek poetry and other literary work explaining the love and pain.

This is an essay but it is a really long one but if you're interested in knowing some ideas around love in the ancient Greek literature then this is a good point to start.

Important question is, if the Eros is love or something closer to love which is more like a desire. A desire which wants to be fulfilled but it does get it fulfilled it opens the door for the next one.

Does getting the love is the eventual destination of a journey or the journey towards unattainable love is what makes it worth?

Love

Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon

Can we explain the racial prejudices and complexity through psychiatric analysis?

This book focuses around the racial identities and differences in the context of Francophone countries. It doesn't give a final answer if these differences are psychological or accumulated over a period of time when the skin colour was a major reason for treating people as a subordinate. The colonialism and slavery are said to be driven by differences but in reality it was a result of power imbalance and greed which was fed by this imbalance.

It comes with the hypothetical situations to explain an anomaly and there are good examples of how these differences were projected and internalised by the dominating and the dominated. It was not just the idea of superiority that was colouring the world but as a side effect, the idea of inferiority was also spreading in the larger population which lack the means of countering such ideology.

It happened over centuries, and it will take more to undo it.

Peace

Outlive by Peter Attia, MD

How long is long enough? Can living long be a conscious goal? Do we want to add more years to life or life to the years?

Death has been a long understood phenomenon. It is bound to happen when one is born. The death is one aspect of life which developed our consciousness to longevity and after life both.

A goal of staying active till the last day of their lives, and delay it as much as humanly possible by any means from healthy living (eating, exercise, and saying no to all the vices) to taking medical help (medicine, procedures, therapies and what not) is not the latest fed. The history is full of people who tried to find the panacea for long living.

This book covers a wide range of topics but largely focuses on the four major health hazards (cancer, cardiac, mental and diabetes) which cause a large number of deaths but are assumed to be avoidable with the right food, medicine, and lifestyle. It suggests not only the right lifestyle choices but what else do we need to maintain a healthy body composition. Additionally, it goes deeper into the latest research in the field of the four horsemen (health hazards) that one need to be aware of.

All the physical things apart, the one question that it doesn't pick or choose not to address is what we're going to do with long life. Living a long life to break a world record doesn't sound very convincing but the reason behind lusting after longevity is very personal choice, and in all probability one is less likely to know and be convinced about this notion of living long.

The idea of outliving yourself is paradoxical until you go answer the next question in line - why so long.

Peace

The Big Myth by Naomi Oreskes

Telling a lie ten times doesn't make it truth but it can definitely get you enough people who wish/believe it to be true even if they don't see the wider implications of such beliefs.

In a political and business nexus it is difficult to know who is getting what to say or do something. It takes time for the truth to come out from such arrangements but there is always space to deny the truth or add more narrative to make it irrelevant. Yes, making the truth irrelevant on the expanses of something which can never be paid.

We know that business and politics are not the same thing but no one knows where one ends and the other begins. How come politics became the business? Something which was meant to work for social good end up being an instrument for driving business agendas. Business says that everything has a price but it never tells you what anyone is paying beyond the monetary value of anything. Not because it can't see because it chooses to unsee it and make others believe it doesn't exist.

People have always been manipulated by labels and slogans, and it is not going to change. We hear the words equality, climate change, right to a hundred things but what was the last thing that changed by these discussions. We just end up chasing another loose end generated or thrust upon.

Peace

Lost & Found by Kathryn Schulz

Memoir about a lost father and found love.

This is well articulated but doesn't try to drive any point which was obvious. This tells the stories fairly simply and the narrative doesn't hold you as a reader.

Don't remember the reference for this one but missing this is not big for sure.

Love 

The Anglo-Saxons by Marc Morris

The history of England is as complex as history can be. But based on this book, it doesn't look very old for the current form it evolved to.

It has all those wars, religions, ego clashes, family, murders and all the possible combinations of the aforementioned which makes it not very interesting read. It is boring unless you are not even initiated in the history of any country.

The only interesting part is when you're done reading it, and contemplate how the current identity politics work in UK.

It is not that we don't learn from history, the case is that most of the people are ahistorical.

Peace

Butts: a Backstory by Heather Radke

This one started from the very physical aspect of the butt but moved towards a narrative about how the butt represents the persecution of a woman, and how it gets objectified in the pop culture.

It started at a good note but moved towards a lot of mismatched references towards how the standards and ideas of a woman's body is constantly changing. It is surprising to see how the shape and size of human body is constantly under scrutiny, and represented.

It is not worth the read if you're already aware of the latest discussions around feminism and journey of woman representation in pop culture.

A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis

Grief is difficult to read but it is more difficult to write it. The sense of a loss can't be really written irrespective of a writer's proficiency. What you write can't get closer to what you feel about the loss but this one is written beautifully.

A loss which brings the existential question, and make you question your own thoughts and beliefs. That is a kind of loss for the lifetime which goes with life.

Solace can't be found, it just has to be created.

Peace

Tastes Like War by Grace M Cho

What does a war do to anyone who has tolerated it and came out with the life, and nothing else?

This is a memoir of Korean war and the story of a woman told by her own daughter. The woman who survived, thrived, and grew old in US and lived a secluded life suffering with schizophrenia.

There are a lot of symbols of war in the whole narrative but the strongest of them all is food. Food is one of the most basic needs of survival, and most of the war accounts are full of hunger. This one doesn't have a lot of hunger but you can see the signs of war in the food. A woman who doesn't talk much about the war she has seen at a very young age didn't forget the food. There were phases of self hunger but eventually it was the food that brought her out.

Even if one has never faced war, hunger, poverty or any kind of deprivation, it is not difficult to connect with the people who did. War takes the human out of humanity but it can't survive forever but it does leave one with the signs of war.

Peace

Exercised by Daniel Lieberman

If the exercise is very crucial to stay healthy, why people need to be motivated to do physical activities? And if workout is the answer to a lot of problems why the healthy people end up getting all those bad knees, back, and even early death?

These questions always challenge the effect of exercise on the well being of humans. In this book the author tries to answer some of these questions from an evolutionary point of view, and also uses some of the latest studies of exercising.

It does try to answer a lot of questions, and succeeds with many of them with the logical sounding arguments, and statistics. However, the idea of explaining everything from an evolutionary point is a lot hypothesis led scenarios which try to explain things which doesn't have a lot of influence from evolution. But that point apart this is definitely worth reading if you're ever exercised with the idea of exercise.

In a nutshell, we need exercise to keep a lot of our bodily activities going and this book tries to educate you to see and understand what you want and where you're pushing too much. Plus there is a no one formula for how much exercise we need, we just need to go what our body feels like and enjoys. Stop buying workout from a marketed package and educate yourself about what you want to achieve.

Love

The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic by Leigh Bardugo

A collection of tales of magic, and it does have the charm of fables.

Some stories look a bit dark but they have their own light also. Which means that some climaxes will look bad if you don't look beyond the climax. Not all the stories come with a moral, and that's how they should be. The stories are not for morals or even entertainment. The best ones are the ones that leave you not with the narrative/plot but with the thought of what could have happened after the telling was over.

Loved them all.

Love

Beyond the Story BTS

This one is for the fans of BTS.

This doesn't provide much information on the band members but tries to weave a story based on their  interviews and draws a map of their creative journey. What was released when, how they worked on it, and stayed persistent. This made them what they are.

You can beg to differ with the point that they are the most famous boy bend/artists of all times if you're not a BTS fan or never heard any of their song. But this is more than creativity when you've not experienced the art but you know the artists from their marketing and publicity.

We're no wiser about BTS after this book, and don't read if you never heard/appreciated any of their songs.

Love

Crack-Up Capitalism by Quinn Slobodian

Is capitalism synonymous to greed?

The hunger for getting rich keeps looking for new pastures to keep feeding itself. Out of the devices it propose with the own vested interests is the idea of a free market which is expected to present itself for exploitation with nothing in return. Avoiding taxes, and not paying the right wages is part of the plan, and the greed attracts greed. There will be people out there who will respond to it out of desperation sometimes termed as mutual benefit to give the free run to anyone who wants to have an open field with no restriction, and willing to pay anyone who can be an accomplice.

This led to a lot of countries creating SEZs (Special Economic Zones) which are directly or indirectly catered with providing resources, no legal binding, tax havens/exemption or even no tax. These offers are called the lure for the business while this is the other way round.

Exploitation of natural resources, and people without any liability is the name of the game. The action doesn't matter as long as it serves the end goal for such strategies, and everything else is a collateral damage.

Peace

Fatherland by Burkhard Bilger

How difficult it is to talk about personal history when the history is difficult to talk about?

The author traces the footprints of his family during the WW2 and its role in Nazi Germany. This leads to a long trail of letters, documents, and people who have anything to say about those times.

We can't always be sure of how people behaved the way they did and that world still had people who fell into the grey zone where they can't be labelled as good or bad. They were just people who were motivated by different factors like love, hunger, poverty, power, greed, jealousy, survival, or even good heartedness. The people who put the humanity first or even second or third on a list when there were not many options were the best ones who brought the light at the end of the tunnel.

Evil is strong, and it feeds on madness but that is short in supply. It does end, and when it does we see the hope surviving.

Love

The Witches of Vardo by Anya Bergman

Another book which makes you sad and angry together. The central idea is based on witch trials and hunts in Vardo. It is a work of imagination but not completely. It puts the visualisation and builds a story around what was a common trial which is actually not very old.

The word witch-hunt comes from the history of such trials where the women were killed (why do they even call them trials while it was pure hunt supported by legal power to just go ahead with the execution in the worst way possible) for the sole reason that a life of woman was not worth a thing and can be taken away for the stupidest whims of power.

The neighbours, royals or representatives of power who reported on each other as a practitioner of dark magic. More powerful they were, more likely it was easier for them to pronounce someone as witch. And it was not just limited to a small village or a country, it was a full fledged program across.

Witch hunt was prohibited by laws in 17th and 18th centuries in different countries but no one was ever tried for killing a real person in the cruelest possible way. The most common argument which at least tries to mollify the whole spree is that it was the way of those days. Well, you never left anyone to tell the history otherwise.

Power is a corruptor. A lot of people desire it but nobody knows what to do with it.

Peace

Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong

The discrimination doesn't stop at AfroAmericans or marginal communities but also with the wider communities who have been around for ages but still not accepted the part of the society irrespective of them being here for generations. Or worse, it puts a particular label to them which stops them from being seen as any other person who is not part of the majority.

The South East Asians have been one of these who are demeaned by different names, and after being one of the most successful communities and labeled as model community still face discrimination. These labels push the behaviour and self sensor for the people who belong to this one.

Additionally, even after with all the model behaviour the discrimination stays when people are called yellow, slant eye and what not. The stereotypes which don't go away but manifest in different ways.

The sensitivity to these cues is still a far cry but you hope against the hope, right?

Love

Femina by Janina Ramirez

The whole idea of male superiority stands strong in a vacuum created by the suppression of thoughts, ideas, and works for female.

This suppression worked in many forms, from outrightly removing any reference/work from the records to brazen theft. Challenging the notion that history is made by man and woman just existed in the margins is an insult to all the brave and intelligent women who had the equal right to fame and history.

The author picks some of the most prominent women from history who excelled in war, intellect, innovation, religion, business and what not.

Its not a comprehensive list but you don't need a comprehensive list to understand the contribution of female, and how they were marginalised.

Peace

Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? by Beverly Daniel Tatum

How do young people respond to the environment of racial differences around them?

This book tries to answer this question, and suggests a framework how it is possible to build an environment of trust by educating people about racism.

Of course, no other person can live the experience of a black person irrespective of their education/empathy but this should not stop one from being educated and be a part of the better social understanding.

For the black kids in cafeteria sitting together, the reason is that they share a common experience which only the people in this close group can understand, and provide care and support.

Peace

The Anti-Cool Girl by Rosie Waterland

Everything we found funny is funny as long as it is not happening to us.

Reading this memoir of childhood, growing up in a difficult household, growing up with obesity, and other health complications (physical or emotional) sound funny until it hits you that it was all happening to a real person. A person who was going through all of it but came out with enough shine to tell it with a lighter mood.

The struggle to fit in a society which doesn't look like you because it has not seen what you have been through.

Worth reading even if you're not in contemporary first hand accounts of peoples lives.

Love

Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree

Some stories are meant to be told unfinished but that is not the case here.

This one is long, and speaking at so many imaginative levels that it can't fall into magical realism of Rushdie. It is a slow story of daughter and mother with everything else. Specially, lists of sweets, spices, flowers, and what not.

Half way through, the thought of abandoning it comes, and almost by the end of it, when the shadows come into the picture, the narrative asks if you're still around :)

Couldn't appreciate much because this is a translation in English from Hindi, and it is very much possible that it does read better in Hindi but not sure if everyone is going to see it.

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