Chetan Bhagat's books

I recently read Two States - The story of my marriage. It was good, I finished it really fast. When I am not reading mysteries, I like to look for style and structure. The style and structure of these books are really simple- perhaps the author derives his structure principles from Einstein : " A design should be as simple as possible, but no simpler"..

The trouble with his writing is that he can only write from his point of view. I think it is important that one is able to look inside other people's heads and make them think and act like them, rather than you. Thats where power comes in, as a writer. Chetan Bhagat's problem is that he takes his characters and breathes his own thoughts and reactions into them. His solutions become their solutions, his language becomes their language, his perspective becomes their perspective. This works only in one case - the case where the main character in the book is him.

Now we know why Fice Point Someone and Two States was successful. And we also know why the other books didnt work. Maybe he will figure this out before writing the next one.

Can anyone parse out the likes for me?

This is not a post on books. But it is a post on language and its usage. I am no expert, but even someone as bad as I cannot help but notice some things that happen in conversations today.

My problem is with the use of "like". When I was in college, I had this lecturer who used to say "so" whenever he had trouble finding an appropriate word. His sentences usually used to go "So The unix shell so  has so a set of variables so so called environment variables. So these variables so can be set  so ..."

Well... you get the idea. The classes were boring, and sometimes we spent our time counting how many so's he said in one class.

These days I spend my time counting how many "likes" someone says in a sentence. Someone in one of the classes I go to was saying : " So, like, why is that, like, value, like, 3R + 3S, and, not like, 4R + 4S"?

 God save me!

Life of Pi

It took me unusually long to get interested in this book. Usually when I start reading something, I know within about half an hour or so whether or not I will finish it. With this one, I couldnt see where things were going - the only thing that kept me going was Piscine Patel's love for religion. Some of his arguments were interesting, so I read on.

I am glad I did. It is a well written book (although it is something you sort of realise only midway through the book) that almost makes you believe an outrageous story that Piscine narrates. Piscine Patel apparently spends 227 days at sea on a life boat with a tiger on board. The success of his narration is in the details. Towards the end of the story, the narrator has somehow established so much credibility that one is even ready to believe in carnivorous islands.

The book has a nice ending. In fact, it surprises you, and you start wondering why you could not have figured it all out earlier... However, the "real" story is so gruesome that there is no way you are going to be able to read the whole thing a second time..

Definitely a must read. Also, definitely something that should be read only once.