I Beat the Odds

I picked this one up on impulse because I saw it inside the library van I visit for picking up books for my son. This is the story as told from Michael Oher's perspective (Michael Oher is the NFL player whose life is portrayed in the book and movie The Blind Side).

When I first moved to the US I used to wonder why the black population simply could not get a grip on their lives. There were so many programs to help them, social workers were almost running after them to clean up their lives, but there they were, generation after generation, repeating the same patterns.

I think I found a large part of my understanding in the book "Homegoing" by Yaa Gyasi. The rest of the picture was filled in by this book. Homegoing is work of fiction, but I think it sums up the history of black people in America in a vivid portrayal that shakes you up. While I understood how the community got where it was through that book, what was not clear was why they could not get out of it.

Michael Oher's book sheds some light on that for me. My takeaway from the book was that it is not lack of government programs of access to resources that constitutes their problem. It is the absence of a loving family and supportive community. They grow up in broken homes, usually with a single parent who struggles to get their own act straightened out. Very often the single parent themselves are addicts, as was the case in Oher's case. His mother would disappear for days, sometimes weeks, leaving the children (in some cases when some of them were as young as 14 months) alone in their house in the projects in order to get high. While she was gone they would not even have food at home, so they would sleep and eat wherever they could - usually from neighbors homes and from the free lunches provided at school. None of the children ever saw what a "normal" person was like - nearly all the adults in their community was similar to this, or were involved in gangs. The ones who wanted to "get out" got their role models out of television where their idea of success was to become NFL players or Rappers. Gun fights were common where they lived. The children learnt to dodge bullets as they learned how to play soccer.

Despite all of this, the surprising thing for me was, he wanted to stay with his family. In his case, family was the brood of a dozen or more half siblings his mother had had with a variety of men. He loved them all, and enjoyed being with them, even though they were hungry and not really going to school while they were staying in his home. They looked at social workers who were trying to transplant them into more sane places as enemies who were trying to pry them away from their families.

At first it did not quite make sense to me that the children would not want to leave. But then I understood - doing what the social workers wanted them to do would mean they would have to split up, and they were placed in homes where the caregivers did not really love them like their own children. True, they had food and a decent place to live, and they went to school regularly and got help with school etc, but love wasnt one of the things the caregivers often found in their capability to give. Some lucky children who were adopted by some families found it, but most were often less fortunate. I guess it is the absence of love that really withers children.

In that sense, probably India's poor are not really poor at all. They have family ties that are quite strong, and all someone has to do is give them some resources. One of the realizations I had while reading this book was that solving the problems amongst America's poor is a lot more complicated than solving problems among India's poor.

I wouldnt classify this book as a "great read". Its more meant to be a source of hope for children stuck in the situation that Oher was in, and it also provides some pointers to others regarding how they can help. It is however, an "important read", if you wonder about inner city children who never seem to be able to get out of their situations. 

Elon Musk

Interesting read. Elon Musk's story reads similar to that of Steve Jobs; its surprising how similar their lives look if you overlook the fact that they made entirely different products. Steve Jobs set out to make a dent in the universe and really excelled at it, and Elon Musk, although I did not read anywhere in the book that he wanted to make a "dent in the universe" does pretty much the same thing. Their personalities seem slightly different, with Jobs appearing to be the more emotionally unstable one.

However there is one part about Elon Musk that I find kind of funny - that he is really that serious about colonizing Mars. Dont get me wrong - its great that he wants to do that and he is forward looking etc... and it is opening up new frontiers in space technology that the government agencies simply could not have accomplished. However, the goal itself seems a bit - I dont know the best way to put it - childish, maybe?

And the fact that he talks about Asimov's stories as an influence - again, I think some part of him never grew up. I love Asimov's stories, but I would never make it my life's mission to make some of that come true. In my mind there is a line between Asimov's world, which I label as "fiction" and my world, which I label as "real". Somehow I never think of mixing the two up. I dont even think I would like to mix the two up.

I suppose people who invent something new mix their imaginary world with the real one. Perhaps the world moves forward  because of people who mix their imaginary world with the real one?

Proof of Heaven

Every now and then I seem to pick up one of these types of books - something that refreshes in my memory who we are and where we are going. It is great to read one of these; it helps me put a lot of things in perspective, and I sweat the small things a lot less afterwards.

Proof of Heaven was written by a neuro surgeon who had a Near Death Experience (NDE). NDEs and Out of Body experiences have fascinated me for a long time... perhaps the first I heard about it was in school - there was a book in our school library on the subject. The subject is fascinating, particularly if you have wondered for any length of time about life after death.

In any case, the neuro surgeon in question, named Eben Alexander, had no belief in life after death prior to his experience. He had listened to his patients talk about it sometimes, but he always dismissed it as a case of the brain playing tricks on them. Although he was a member of the Episcopal Church, he was not a very firm believer, so he mostly just nodded his agreement out of politeness when patients talked about having had contact with their dead relatives when they were in difficult situations.

I will not outline the whole story here - but it is a fascinating and (to me) believable account of what happened to the doctor and how it changed him into a complete believer in life after death. His account matches what most others before him have given, the only difference is that he tries to go into a lot of medical detail to prove that it really happened to him and was not a figment of his imagination. Not being a doctor, I couldnt really tell whether his medical details all fitted well with each other or not - I have no idea if the numbers he is quoting is really that impressive or not. I think his intention was to convert at least a few medical professionals into believers so that they are more sympathetic with their patients.

I think it was a good read, although perhaps a short one. There seemed to be a few loose ends to the story, but I think it can be excused, given that it was a very personal one. I dont expect the poor guy to fill the pages of a book with every detail of his life. 

Ladies Coupe

This is the first time that I tried Anita Nair. I had read such glowing praise for her writing that when I actually read one of her books I was quite disappointed. The subject matter was mildly relevant, but I am not sure if a whole novel was required to answer the question that the author poses at the outset: "Can a woman live without a man to support her?".

The storyline is pretty straightforward: the protagonist,  an orthodox Tam girl, omits getting married because she was too busy supporting her family. The family soon becomes busy living their own lives, and she is left feeling lonely and miserable. One fine morning, she amasses the courage to defy tradition and venture out, looking for an answer to the million dollar question. She takes a train journey to Kanyakumari from Bangalore Cantt., and travels in the Ladies Coupe. She meets four other women in the coupe, and elicits their perspectives on the matter based on their own experiences. Her journey that night apparently provides her with the answer - and while I might be wrong, from her actions, what I understood was that her conclusion was that women cannot live without men to support them.

I think the writer intended the opposite effect, though - I cannot imagine a woman writer of fame doling out anything else. What got me however was that the protagonist decides to call an old flame whom she had almost gotten married to right at the end of the book. Why do that, if the conclusion was that women can do just fine without men?

What I liked best about the book was perhaps the familiarity of the settings. It is set in South India, mostly centered around places I am familiar enough with, narrating stories that I can relate to.

What I did not find was mastery - I found myself getting bored every now and then while reading through some parts of the book. Perhaps the subject was not really worthy of a novel and should have been limited to just a short story to have more punch. I also think that the subject matter is somewhat outdated, given where women are in society at the moment. I think such appearances only mattered among the middle and upper classes of society to begin with, and they have mostly moved beyond such concepts by now. Perhaps this is why I found the book boring. If the fundamental premise is something that doesnt hold your attention, it is unsurprising that the details put one to sleep.

I wont be reading much of Anita Nair for a while. 

Steve Jobs

A few weeks ago, I was searching for a book I could read on a six hour flight. I have an irrational fear of flying, and find it nearly impossible to sleep on flights. The only way to keep myself calm is to watch some dud movie or read a book. Originally, my plan was to read Anita Nair's Ladies Coupe. However, when the time finally came, I realized that I did not have the patience for a novel. Thats how I chose this book.

It was the perfect antidote for my flying-phobia. In fact I was so engrossed with the story that I hardly noticed the flight. Walter Isaacson clearly knows how to pace a biography. Or maybe Steve Jobs is a really interesting human being whose life story has its own force field. Whatever the case, I found myself reading it up throughout the length of the flight. And I was still reading it on my return flight with the same enthusiasm. It was a really interesting narrative set in chronological order, starting with Jobs' birth, schooling, college, and the story of how he built Apple along with Wozniak.

I already knew the main features of the story - or at least I thought I knew most of it, but found out a lot of the details when I read this book. It changed my perspective on a number of topics - on closed vs open systems, on copying original ideas, on the importance of design, on lying, even.

Originally, I had thought that Microsoft was the "copying company", and that Apple was the "real creator". This book however indicates that things were a little more nuanced than that. The original creators of GUIs was Xerox. They had developed it, but had failed to see how it could be used on a personal computer. They demoed it to Steve Jobs, who used the idea and packaged it much better and brought out the Macintosh with the first mass marketed GUIs. Windows came out a little later, doing pretty much the same thing. So the argument that Apple "created it anew" isnt really true. The idea happened prior to Apple, but them implemented it well.

This is a theme that would follow throughout Apple's history - they would identify products with new ideas that were implemented poorly, and imagine it anew with much better design and implementation and capture everyone's fascination. Thats what happened with the iPod. Sony had a walkman out years earlier, but Jobs came along and took a crack at it and produced the iPod. The same thing happened with the iPhone and the iPad - those were both devices that existed already. However, Jobs approached it from a user's perspective and designed it from the ground up to be a product that he would want to use, and the results clearly were much better than anything that existed in the market at the point.

Jobs' passion for design is something that the book deals with, a lot. It talks about how he would force design and redesign of the products until it looked just right. Apparently he forced the engineers to make sure that the innards of a Mac looked beautifully arranged, just because he liked good design everywhere, despite the fact that the innards would never be seen by the customer. He also forced them to not ship until the product was just right - which says a lot about his commitment to quality. What I found most strange however was how his sense of good design affected his personal life - apparently he could never furnish his apartment because he was unable to find furniture that he thought was well designed. Even when he was fighting cancer, he apparently insisted on changing his oxygen mask to a different one 5 times until he got one that he thought was designed well. It shows a passion for beauty and design that he does not because he wants to make a living, but because thats the only way he knows how to be.

One of the surprises to me about Jobs was what the book refers to as his "reality distortion field". In the earlier parts of the book, I thought it was just a fancy name for lying. Apparently Jobs indulged in it quite a bit especially when he was negotiating with people. However, by the time I finished the book, I realized why the author called it a "reality distortion field" : Jobs possibly really believed whatever lies he was saying. When the liar does not realize he is lying, can that really be called lying?

But perhaps the biggest revelation to me was the relationship that Gates and Jobs shared. I did not realize that they respected each other. My impression was that each thought the other was a bozo. Maybe they did think that for a while. However, as time passed by and they seem to both have realized that the other had done some things right. Gates had chosen open systems that made Windows really popular. He had to give up control on his systems though, and that resulted in much of the flak that Microsoft has taken over the years. Jobs had chosen total control of his system, and this resulted in a much better user experience. However, the number of users for Macnitoshes were never very high. It is the iPod, iPhone and iPad revolution that made apple what it is today.

Whats fascinating about Jobs is that he made such significant contributions to so many different industries. It included personal computers, music industry, animated movies, mobile phones and even publishing. Most people are lucky to make a dent in just one area. He apparently managed to make a dent in the universe, like how he wanted.

The book made me appreciate Apple's products a lot more. I used to think of them as high priced stuff that white people liked. Now that I see some of the philosophy behind it, and because I have used some of those products myself and seen non tech savvy folks use them, I realize that they are designed better and are more intuitive to use.

Nice read. Although I havent read Ladies Coupe so far, I think this was a far better choice for a flight :)

An Ordinary Man's Guide to Empire

One day, I happened to watch a talk / book reading that Arundhati Roy gave at MIT along with Noam Chomsky. I dont remember how I came across it, but I listened to the whole thing, and it left quite an impression. I think I first came to know of Noam Chomsky through the Hindu, which used to publish some of his political views. Later during my undergrad years, when I took a course on Finite Automata and Formal languages, I learnt that the same person had done a lot of work on grammars. I enjoyed that course, and I later decided to take that up as the subject of my research - but that is another story and it has nothing to do with Chomsky or Roy.

Chomsky is no ordinary professor. He is a thinker - someone with an ability to provide a fresh perspective on reality, someone who is capable of leading a society's thoughts forward. Perhaps philosopher is a more appropriate term. And it is in this capacity that I think he has contributed the most - I am not belittling his contributions to theoretical CS in any way; that has been enormous, but his political contributions are perhaps even more important, since theoretical CS continues to be of interest only to a few. And it is in the same capacity that Arundhati Roy has a role to play in Indian politics. Voices of reason like these are necessary in a country whose political climate seems to get worse by the day. It helps us get our bearings right and keeps us moving forward instead of becoming a regressive country with a retarded religious sensibility that appears to have come straight out of the middle ages.

But this is a review of the book, and its not about what I think of philosophy. After watching that talk, I bought this book. Its a small book, doesnt take too long to read from cover to cover. It is a collection of essays / talks that she gave at various points in the run up to the Iraq war. She criticizes the US govt mercilessly, in a way only she can. That was well deserved though. She also talks about unrest in various parts of India - such as the naxal movement, the confrontations that adivasis have with the governments every now and  then and of displaced people from the Narmada valley. She sees a common root cause in all these strifes and advocates their rights, which is something the mainstream often forgets, just because they happen to be mainstream.

In the past I have wondered how writers justified their jobs. I always found it useful to write - nothing clears up your thinking the way writing can. However, writing as a profession seemed frivolous to me - I never looked at the art of story telling as important to culture. Reading books written by someone like Arundhati Roy changes one's outlook.

Typical Arundhati Roy style writing. I like her writing, so I am going to say it was a great read.

The Filter Bubble

I picked this book up at my office.

If you dont know what the book is about: it talks about the evils of personalization of services like Facebook and Google and how that can create feedback loops that feeds you more and more results that look similar to your own beliefs, conveniently pulling out results that the search engine does not think fits your "interests". The book maintains (correctly) that a search on Google does guarantee the same set of results for any two people anymore; it varies based on your search history, you location, your +1s of things over the internet and a number of other factors. The book also states that engineers working on search can no longer understand the whole system. While that it itself is not alarming (that is the case with most large pieces of software. My first brush with this idea came about while working at MS, where my dev manager told us that Word eventually turned so complex that no one person understood it in its entirety anymore). On that count, I think the author is simply being paranoid; that is just how complex systems work. Which individual can say that they know exactly how every single part of a laptop works? One can find people with specialized knowledge of small parts of it, but it is unlikely that any one person is going to be able to explain the mechanics involved in any random part of a laptop.

The other point I have a problem with is lack of empirical data showing evidence of the filter bubble. There are a few anecdotal evidence given in various places in the book, but there is no conclusive proof that a feedback loop is created or that it influences its users. I know that it exists, from my own first hand experience, but it would be great if it was done as a study with some numbers instead of just being anecdotes.

And here is a funny observation about Google search, from last night. We were having dinner with some friends at a restaurant when "gooseberries" came up in the conversation. My husband's friend referred to it as delicious and yummy, and I was pretty confused, because I always thought they were bitter. He then proceeded to search for gooseberries on his phone and showed me pictures of a yellow fruit that came encased like a Tomatillo. I then used my husband's phone to search for the same thing, and I got the green gooseberries that I was talking about. We compared each other's results, and were confused for a while about why they brought up different things. It got better afterwards, when they searched for sex ratios in Chandigarh being higher than that of Kerala. Apparently one lady we were with, who was from Punjab, found an article mentioning that the sex ratio for Chandigarh was higher than that of Kerala. No about to be outdone, my husband searched for the both ratios and proved that Kerala was better. The poor lady was clearly baffled and kept insisting that she too had searched on Google but had found different results :)

I have no clue whether the different results was caused by personalization. Whatever it was, it is pretty obvious that people will soon not be able to tell each other to "Go to Google, search for X and click on the nth result". When people realize that this is happening, I wonder what will happen.

To come back to the book - I found it slightly paranoid (in fact, annoyingly so), but it is a good book to read if you arent aware of the possible problems associated with personalization.

The Art of Choosing

I had been thinking of reading this book ever since I listened to a TED talk by the author - the talk was fascinating, and I felt the book would be just the same. In addition, I thought I would be better equipped while making decisions if I read the book.

The book was really interesting - it looks a lot into how the same action or result can have different effects on people based on whether they think they chose the outcome or not. For example, couples who had made a choice to take their children off of life support were significantly unhappier than couples whose doctors had made the decision to take their children off of life support. There were also many examples on how one's cultural background can have an effect on one's outlook on choice itself.

The part that I was disappointed about was that the book did not really present me with a method by which I could make foolproof decisions for myself. I dont think I really think differently about making choices or decisions as a result of reading the book.

Other than that, definitely a good read. Not a very practical advicey type of book though.

Outliers

The book talks about why some people become successful and why some do not. One thing that has stuck with me since reading the book was the number of hours one has to put into something before one becomes an expert at it - apparently it is  10,000 hours before anyone can become good at what they do.

So is it only about effort? No... you also need to have the right opportunities to strike it good - you need to know the right people, have the right type of childhood (which enables you to put in the 10,000 hours), must have certail types of social skills and finally, might even have to be born in the right year.

Thats a lot of variables - it makes me think success is something that is very random. Maybe successful people always have some traits - such as working very hard, but having those traits will not ensure success. Makes me think that being outrageously successful is just about being lucky. I am not saying hard work wont produce success - it does. But being outrageously successful - thats usually a series of lucky breaks working for you. Going to the right college, having the right friends who put you in touch with the right people, serendipitously starting to work for some new startup after giving up other good jobs offers, deciding on moving to a new location - these are all decisions that we make without being able to fully foresee what the effects of it all may be. Thats why its just plain lucky - or maybe its just how their life was meant to be.

Good read.

Moonwalking with Einstein

This is a book on memory and memorization techniques. Well... the book was interesting initially. I thought I would find the secret to memorizing everything I ever wanted to remember. The book does actually live up to that promise, but I found that my desire to memorize everything was... well... not that practical. Memorizing stuff involved spending a lot of effort building up memory muscle and palaces into which one could store stuff. What I really wanted to memorize was code. I work with apps that have thousands of lines of code, and I thought it would be really useful if I could simply glance through it once and remember everything.. Thats part of the reason I started to read the book.

Reading the book however made me realize that I would have to spend a lot of effort trying to associate each line or class with something that was already known. And, I am not sure what to map all that code to, so I would remember it. It looked easier to simply come up with a bunch of class diagrams and refer to that every once in a while instead. And I found that the class diagrams were pretty similar to each other anyway, so I didnt really even have to memorize too many of those.

And so, I stopped reading the book :). After the motivation was gone, the book got boring. I didnt really care about all the different things various people could or could not remember. Or about the techniques that ancient people used. Or the rituals involved in getting elected into some elite memory club. I just stopped, and moved on to other stuff. But who knows, maybe you will find it interesting enough to finish.

The Omnivore's Dilemma

Ever tried to explain to your totally non vegetarian mother why you dont want to eat meat after spending the first twenty years of your life eating it pretty much everyday? At first she thought it was a fad. Then she thought it was joke. And then when she realized I was sticking to it much longer than she thought I would or could, she started to think I was rebelling. Then she started forcing me to eat it, only making me more disgusted with meat in general. It went on like that for a while, and finally when I left home, I was left on my own to make choices about what I was eating. After all these years, she seems to have gotten somewhat used to it, finally. However, she is still lost about what to cook for me when I go home, and so ends up making all the non veg stuff, all over again, because thats what everyone looks forward to eating, right? :)

Well... I am glad I found this book. It finally put into words everything I ever wanted to say about why I dont want to eat meat. I am not talking about the environmental effects or health effects that is described in detail in the book. I am talking about the final part where the author tries to hunt and eat food that he killed, himself. He describes his revulsion at seeing meat and the dead animal and not wanting to go anywhere near it. Thats really just what I feel like, each time I see non vegetarian food. Its like the author was giving shape to all the hazy fears and revlusion I feel each time I see dead animals.

Well.. thats enough digression. The book goes a lot into detail about farming and the effects of it on our planet. It goes into alternate farming practices as done by Joel Salatin, the difference between big organic and local organic, and a lot about the philosophy behind organic farming. Reading the book made me sign up for CSA boxes actually :). 

Good read, if you put as much thought into what you eat as I do.

The Body Toxic

I bought this book after watching a Ted talk about the harmful effects of atrazine on frogs. It kept me engaged for the first four or maybe five chapters. Then everything became a blur, I could not remember what arguments the author had put forth for which toxins and what the reasons were for those toxins not being regulated out. In the end, I cannot really say that I have retained a lot of stuff from this book, mostly because there were too many facts involved, and I was reading at a pace that was too fast for me to memorize all of it. What I did internalize however is the fact that we all are exposed to a lot of toxic substances and they all come from the conveniences we have surrounded us with. The book gives some advice into how to reduce your exposure.

A number of facts in the book were shocking to me. One was that asbestos is a carcinogen. Maybe everyone in the US know this for a fact. In India however, a lot of houses have this as their roof. It gets really hot to stay inside a house with such kind of roofs, but people still do it instead of the traditional tiling that were used earlier because it is durable and cheap. The tiles that were in use until maybe around 50 years ago were perfectly suited for our climate - they keep the house cool in the heat. The problem that traditional tiles have is that they need to be completely replaced from time to time, and it is an expensive and time consuming affair that one has to make sure is done before the monsoons hit. Thats why, even though it gets hot, and even though during the monsoons the noise of rain falling on these roofs make the water sound more like rocks, people continue to replace the tiles with this stuff. Pieces of the stuff soon start falling around your house, and then pretty soon kids start using these pieces to play games with. And for the very same reasons, a lot of people use it for covering their water tanks too. Oh, btw, in India, you have to have a water tank for each house, because one cannot be sure that the public water supply will always have water. Our water tank used to be covered with asbestos. I have played with it so many times. I still remember the powdery feeling your hands had if you handled some of the old pieces long enough. I had no idea I was dealing with a carcinogen, all that time. I wonder what my future is...

The other thing was PVC. I had no idea that was a harmful material. I remember seeing a lot of ads when I was younger about why it was good to use PVC pipes in your house. I guess the thinking then was that PVC was a lot better than the old metal pipes that would get rusted and broken, and worse, will need to be replaced. Wish we had only known..

I guess I have written way too much than is required for a book review. Read it.
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Women and the weight loss Tamasha

My brother in law recommended this book, thats why I decided to read it - I think it was a good read, not because of the dietary suggestions she makes - I know I will never be able to eat every 2 hours or in as small portions that she recommends. What I did like was the fact that she stresses that women should take care of their health. That, I agree with. I have watched my mother neglect herself while she took a lot of care of my father. It is only in the later years when she realized that her health had deteriorated that she started exercising and watching what she ate. So in that sense, I think the book is great - it even suggests that it is acceptable for women to cook and eat the food that they feel like eating even if no one else wants to eat it. That is another thing I have never seen my mother do. She always makes something that one of us wants to eat, I have rarely seen her make something because she liked it. I think it is important for women to consider themselves as being as important as everyone else in a family and take care of the kind of things they like to do too - so if this is a popular book, that is an achievement in itself - it means women in India are getting more conscious of their health, which is a always a good thing. She also talks about various diseases that women in India have because they neglect themselves so much. That was quite an eye opener for me. Would I recommend reading it? Yep. Read it so you at least realize it is important to take care of yourself, if you are a woman. 

Northanger Abbey

With this, I have read all of Jane Austen :). The only sad part is that I perhaps read some of them too early to appreciate them. I read Emma when I was 14, and I think that was too early an age. There is an age and a time to read certain books. I possibly had access to too many books that were beyond my level of maturity at a very early age. I remember reading the Grapes of Wrath while still in school. I remember feeling depressed by it. With Jane Austen, I think the trouble is that I have missed the characterization. While still in school one cannot appreciate the thought process of a twenty something woman. Things that seemed like trivia back then now looks serious enough. Funny, isnt it ? When you are young, you can just say things, or imagine saying things, just like that. As one gets older, there are more and more restrictions on what can be said. There are so many things to consider. So many people to consider. One really has to grow quieter as one grows old :).. I digress..

Good book, as Jane Austen is, always. Enough has perhaps been said and written about it anyway that I possibly wouldnt add even $0.02 with anything I say. So I am going to leave it unsaid :P

The Handmaid's Tale

I so liked The Blind Assassin that I decided to buy another book from the same author - and this one was just as engrossing. I decided to buy after reading that it was a sci - fi novel. I had imagined this would be like Asimov - turned out it was anything but that. Either way, I liked the book - very imaginative, with implied references to historical events all over. It gives a good third person perspective into events ordinarily seen in a different light.

The story is very imaginative, perhaps that is the reason why it got classified as science fiction. I would perhaps classify it more as fantasy. More on the lines of Midnight's Children. Well.. not really, but somewhat.

Good Read.

The Blind Assassin

Normally, I dont  bother buying books with glamorous looking women on the front page. To me that somehow symbolizes cheap trash, and I steer clear of it pretty much all the time. This book however had won the Booker price, and that is how I decided to give it a try..

I wasnt disappointed,  the Man Booker price committee definitely knows how to select books :) - the book had all the things I look for - style, story and structure. I wonder where the author learnt to write like that - it is almost like watching a painting come to life - a little bit of each character and each event at a time. The story itself was something any trashy writer could have made up - but the difference is in the narration. Great read. 

White Fang

I wonder why I chose this book, given that I hate dogs. Usually, even the cutest looking members of the canine family leave me unmoved, so it was surprising that I liked the book enough to finish reading it. Perhaps that shows how good Jack London is as an author.

White Fang is not a cute dog - it is a cross between a dog and a wolf, and is a feared and ferocious creature. Yet when you see things from his side with the help of a powerful writer like Jack London, you start to feel for the dog-wolf, to the point where at the end you are sickened by the thought of it being shot to death. Strange that I would have such feelings for a mere dog. 

Totally recommended, for people who like classics :) Oh, and for people who like dogs, of course.

Cutting For Stone

This was the first book I read on a Kindle. I chose the book because the author seemed interesting - he belongs to my community, and is a professor of medicine. My only prior experience with doctors who write books has been A J Cronin, and since I like A J Cronin, I thought this would be just as good. 

Well, the book was not bad - it was just not great. I have read better books, surely. The themes were new though - and it gave some insight into Ethiopia and the political background there. And ofc, there is a great deal of medical detail. As I have mentioned before, I look for style, structure and story in a book. Style and structure were ordinary, the story was ok. So it wasnt a great read, it was just an ok one. I did however notice some very Mallu thought processes in the book, and I felt it was interesting that Mallus retained their thinking even after having emigrated to Ethiopia nearly a generation earlier. 

Perhaps his later books which are not really stories may be better. For now, I dont feel like spending $10 on this author so soon again, so I am not going to read the rest of his books. 

How We Decide

Nice book about the workings of the prefrontal cortex. Apparently the prefrontal cortex and our emotions help us make the bulk of our decisions. It discusses what happens when the prefrontal cortex does not work well and how it becomes adept at making certain types of decisions.

One complaint I have about the book is that it seems to be a compilation of various research done by other people rather than original content from the author. It is of course nice to have all the material assembled in one place, but I thought when you write a book one should have something new to say? Or have the rules changed?

Interesting read though.

My Guantanamo Diary

I would say this is a must read, not because it is a literary achievement, but because of the importance of the subject matter. In a climate where tolerance is an exception, such books bring to light the culture and thinking of a people who have been misunderstood and considered warlords for centuries. It is perhaps true that there are warlords among the Afghans, but most of them are simple people who manage their daily lives as best as they can, without any animosity towards westerners.

My biggest shock was in finding out how a large number of Gitmo prisoners ended up there - the Americans had declared a $25,000 reward for anyone who gave them information regarding members of the Taliban. In a war torn and famine ridden country, that amount tempted the not so morally upright into pointing at anyone they had even slight greivances against, resulting in mass arrests of ordinary people who had no connections to the Taliban. Americans will possibly never understand that such a thing could happen, because they dont live in the level of poverty that Afghans do.

The sad part is that once reported against, the poor suspects were immediately arrested and brought to Gauntanamo. There, they were not even allowed lawyers, were tortured continuously, and denied connection with their family for years. It is sad how an innocent person's life is affected by an event that was beyond their control. Who can compensate them for the lost years and hardship caused? Who can compensate for what their loved ones missed?

The Girl Who Played With Fire

I cant believe I actually spent $16 on this book. I picked it up impulsively, after seeing the words "# 1 National Best Seller" on it. Those words should actually have been a good indication that the book would be a bummer. Apparently the average reader's taste in US of A is bad, and being a best seller means it is going to read something like Sidney Sheldon, whose books unfortunately I cannot bring myself to be interested in.

I slept a number of times while reading it, not because of lack of action, but because all of it seemed so contrived and stupid. The first two pages were a clear indication that this was a book that was intended for people who had not studied enough algebra. The first page had the title "Irregular Equations" and explained what linear equations were, complete with an example : 3x - 9 = 0 has the root x = 3. Apparently this was part of a very advanced book that Ms. Lisbeth Salander (the main character of the book) was reading. Lisbeth Salander apparently likes very very advanced math (such as linear equations and slightly more advanced algebra such as (a+b)^2 = a^2 + 2ab + b^2), is a chess grandmaster, a boxing champion, a star hacker, and of course, although she looks pathetic, manages to attract every male she comes in contact with.

I might have bought the character if the advanced math was not made so pathetic. At least the author could have chosen second order differential equations or some such thing... that might have made it appear a little less stupid. Worse, the author goes on to hint at the later half of the book that she comes up with a solution to Fermat's last theorem - without of course, giving any kind of hints on what exactly the her sketch of the problem might have been. And of course, she had only worked on it for about a month or so, and she arrived independently at the solution that had taken poor Mr. Andrew Wiles 25 years to get to. Monster brain.

Next time, I will make sure I stay resolutely away from #1 National Best Sellers.

Btw... I noticed today that most movies portray math in a similar fashion. They use things that appear complicated to them, and it ends up looking stupid to somebody who has  been through grad school.

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.

The Shopaholic Books.

One word for these books - Time pass.

If you have got absolutely nothing better to do, go ahead. One or two of these can actually be funny. But once you have gotten into the third book, everything gets so thoroughly predictable that makes the book almost unreadable. Almost nothing seems new in there, except a few characters, and the main character's shopping sprees and credit card problems make you sick.

Another thing I noticed about some of the paperbacks that I read recently... it looks like it is fashionable to use very conversational language in a book, and also to not spend too much time writing or thinking about a book. Many books infact, seem less well thought out than some blogs! But then I guess if the book is selling, I better not complain :(

Summary? Definitely read one book, just so you will know why certain people are so obsessed with Prada and Gucci. And why they dont refer to a green scarf as just green scarf, but a "Denny and George" green scarf.

And, since the book can be read in approximately the same time it takes to watch the movie, I would say give the book a try and the movie a pass.

The God of Small Things

Un put down able.. And also, very well written, and very well structured.

Back in 97, when every other Indian novel to hit the stands was not winning the Booker prize, I didnt think it was surprising that this book won the prize. A book written the way this one was written, definitely deserved the prize.

Perhaps my enthusiasm for the book stemmed from the fact that I am one of those 'Caste Christians' and have seen Meenichilaaru almost every summer, while visiting my fathers house in Palai. I can very easily visualise a fat-basking in oil- lungi clad uncle asking about your die-vorce. And having watched enough Mallu movies, it is just as easy to imagine a Policeman who taps at someones breasts. However, having been brought up outside Kerala, I possibly missed the political context completely, and therefore did not find anything controversial in the book..(The fact of the matter is, I hardly know who EMS was... ) As for the alleged sexual content that the Mallu media was raising such a cry about.. I didnt find it to be any worse than an average Sidney Sheldon novel.

It was only later, when I started reading other winning novels set in other parts of our country, that I realised how difficult it is to comprehend the culture and subtleties of another state. I could not appreciate Kiran Desai's Inheritance of Loss. Nor did I like The White Tiger as much as I liked The God of Small Things. It is only then, that I realised how difficult a job "appreciation" is. And how difficult it must be for a booker prize committe to judge each book, coming in with the ethos and culture of authors from so many different countries. So far, I think they have done a wonderful job, picking out the right books..

Years after I finished reading The God of Small Things, I came upon another Booker prize winning novel called "The Bone People" by Kerewin Holmes. I was surprised by how similar the two books seemed in structure. Was it just a coincidence, or was Ms. Roy influenced by it? Now that I mention it, The Bone people is a great read too.

And for those of you who like Arundhati Roy, I would suggest that you try her essays. Her essays are at times even more impressive than the book.

Shantaram

If I had known prior to reading this book that it was written by a convicted criminal, I would possibly have given it a pass. Someone in my hostel passed on the book to me, and I read it, oblivious to the background of its author. But I digress... the author is not the topic of discussion here, the book is.

When I am not reading a crime novel, the foremost thing I look for in a book is structure. Second to that, I look for style of writing. Both aspects are adequately taken care of in Shantaram, and the pace of the story makes one read it up without putting it down too many times. Whether it was the setting of the story or the sinister background of the author that made it interesting - I dont know... the story starts with the narrator arriving in Bombay, after having escaped prison in Australia. It takes a while for the foreigner to get used to living in an Indian slum, but as time passes by, he starts to appreciate the people around him, as well as their enterprise despite the squalid conditions in which they live. The rest of the story is about how Shantaram thrives in Mumbai, getting involved with the underworld, falling in love, going to prison and ofcourse, smuggling.

A different perspective on our culture and people, and a good read, for a nice lazy weekend :)

Btw, it figures along with The God of Small Things and Midnight's Children as a fav. on a blog by someone who describes herself as a pop culture junkie... Check out http://www.madnessandbeauty.com/2009/06/40-things-i-wish-i-had-known-before-i.html

The Fountainhead.

I am going to condemn the book, and before you dismiss that as proof of Ayn Rand's theories, hear me out!

I rather liked the book when I first read it. But back then, I was young, and naive. Over the years, I have come to think of objectivism as somewhat akin to teenage philosophy. If you have lived for a while, it becomes clear that The World According to Rand is quite nonexistent. Rather than proving her theories wrong, I would like to point out here the literary failings of all her novels. The trouble with her stories (to me at least) is that all of them follow the same theme. They all have the same point to make, and it gets predictable after a book or two. Add to this, the fact that most of the stories seem contrived around the philosophy instead of the philosophy being discussed in the natural course of the story makes the storyline a lot less appealing. The characters in most of her novels are again repetitive as well as predictable to the point that any one of them might have said any of the dialogues in any of the book. I find no real distinguishing character traits in any of the characters.

Would I recommend it? I would say, if you have never tried even one book of Ayn Rand's, then go ahead, try it. A lot of people who read it for the first time like it. However, if you have read this author already, dont waste your time unless you thoroughly enjoyed the first few versions that you read.

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

The hardest part for me while reading this book was understanding why the book was so popular. I possibly found it so tiresome because I tried to read all the books at one stretch. I found the first few interesting enough to complete. Somewhere in between though, I completely lost interest, and gave up. This book however did help me once; A treasure hunt that I participated in had a clue that said : " The answer to life, the universe and everything". Having been totally confused with the answer while reading the book, I had no trouble at all recalling it. The only purpose the book serves, as far as I am concered, is to provide people who profess to enjoy science fiction with yet another set of series to do their analysis on... It is amusing how sometimes people find meanings in certain books that the author never intended.

Case in point : I once went to a book reading session by Upamanyu Chatterjee (the author of English, August .I shall give a review on that one soon... ). I managed to fish out a detailed description of what happened there in one of my notebooks :

"
I listened to a short story reading by Upamanyu Chatterjee.
The story was good, but poor chatterjee proved to be interesting only in parts. He seems to understand that fact himself, and apparently that is why he spared us the agony of having to sit through a discourse on his life. But the story reading only got animated in those parts where he thought his listeners were going into a thoroughly bored sleep.

The most interesting part of the whole exercise was the Q&A session. Various questions on his life, writing, and experiences were asked, and he thankfully seemed not to have ready made answers for them. The best however was this one:

There was a lady in the audience who caught my attention about as soon as I had walked into that hall, she was wearing my fav. color, but everything else about her was too loud. Too much make up, the sari revealed too much of her contours, and her hair was dyed to a shade that looked particularly ridiculous on her plump figure and oldish figure. That she had spent at least an hour dressing up was obvious, but her manner seemed to suggest that she wasnt in the least bothered about the way she looked. Perhaps that is why, I got this "phony" feeling from her...

Anyway, during the question and answer session she asked " I remember a murder scence from the book ----- . you must have chosen the setting carefully, in the temple..."

Poor Mr. chatterjee couldnt remember which part of the book she was talking about! He rubbed his temples helplessly, and then waved his hands in apparent despair and said " I am sorry, I dont think I remember this part"...

And the lady says " It was a very brave thing to do"..

And pat comes the reply : "Oh, really??"

I laughed hard because the comment from the author seemed to suggest that he was bewildered. Then he went on to explain that most of the time people seemed to interpret different meanings from the books he had writtern. First, Agastya sen was all about depicting the two worlds in India. But ppl thought is was damn funny and inspiring and so on.

Some ppl seem to enjoy complicating matters. Instead of just enjoying the story by reading it, they look into hidden meanings, hidden metaphors and so on which the author possibly never intended. And they then call the author a mastero, much to his astonishment....."

In any case, coming back to the Hitchhikers guide, the one thing I must say in its favor is that it is very imaginative. It is amusing at times, and tiresome and downright boring at other times. And my biggest complaint about the whole set of books was that the story was not compelling enough for me to sit and read it at a stretch. I actually had to take a lot of breaks while reading it, because I tended to fall asleep in between.. and that is not something I usually do.

The Foundation Series.

Very recently, I completed all of them. Right from Forward the Foundation to Robots and Empire (the merged Foundation series and the robot series). I loved each one. My only regret is that I could not find and read them in order. I might read them again, just so that I can read them in order, once more :)

This is pure unadulterated science fiction, and it got me hooked for the first time when I was in class 8. Since then, I have been searching for and finding each of the books in the series. I am still hooked, I still cannot put one of these books down. Here is a test to decide whether or not to waste time on it : If you like the first book you read out of these, you will like all of them. If you dont, you probably wont like any of them.

Bloomberg by Bloomberg.

This is a biography by the man who made the company. I found it to be greatly interesting, despite knowing zilch about the financial industry. I actually went and read up some of the terms so that I would understand what Bloomberg was taking about.

So what did I like most? The fact that Mr. Bloomberg comes to office before everyone else and stays until everyone has left. I like that kind of dedication. And I like that he found a job that made him do it whole heartedly. I like working like that, and I tried to do it at the only job that I have had so far. I didnt enjoy the job much, but since I have only had that experience once, I keep hoping that I would come across something that would make me work like this and enjoy it too. I guess Mr. Bloomberg made me look forward to having another job and working like that again!

The Tipping Point

Short summary :

A book on how epidemics spread, and how something that turns into an overnight phenomena is also a kind of epidemic. They are usually the spread because these ideas reach the right kind of people, and the ideas have something special about them. The three types of people who must be involved to spread the ideas are mavens (people who know a lot of things about a specialised thing) , connectors ( people who can spread an idea to other people) and Salesmen ( people who sort of make others imitate them. These guys have charisma) The connectors help to spread the idea, mavens assure you that you are doing the right thing, and the salesmen ensure that the masses start following whatever the mavens have discovered and the connectors have spread word about.

There are also certain laws to be considered in the spread of an epidemic ;

The law of the few : everyone can be connected to another with a few people ( 6 hops thing). Also, we cannot logically invest time in more than about 150 people altogether. If we try to invest time in more numbers than these, we start feeling stretched, and we wont be able to hold up. So the number of best friends / family etc that you are really connected to is limited.

The stickiness factor : The kind of idea that you are trying to spread is very important. IT must have a certain amount of stickiness to it, or it wont spread. Read, not too many ppl will be interested in it.

The power of context : Even if the idea is right, unless the surrounding conditions are right, the idea will not spread. Plus, the kind of context that you are put in, as a human matters a lot. If you are in a rat hole, you will behave like a rat.

Humans are influenced a lot more by what others do than we think we are. We get influenced by what others tell, think, do and so on. Each of the actions that they do eventually determine the kind of decisions we make with regard to epidemics. (And even otherwise, wrt any kind of situation)

Review :

This book is a great read, with respect to the presentation. Keeps you gripped throughout. However, I am not sure how true the facts and theories presented in the book are. Except for the realness factor, a great read.

The Catcher in the Rye.

Reading this book makes one wonder why in the world it was prescribed as a text book for some schools in the United States. Does the education board want all the students to imbibe the values that seem to characterise the main fella, Holden Caulfield? He comes across as a completely confused and slightly unstable teenager who cannot seem to come to grips with the world around him. He finds all the people around him "phony" and wanders from school to school (actually, he gets kicked out of each of them for poor academic performance), and is unable to accept what is happening to him. There are references in the book to an accident that was to have taken the life of Holden's brother, and it seems reasonable to expect that the untimely death of a sibling had a disturbing effect on the poor boy's psyche. By the end of the book it becomes clear that the boy has been institutionalised.
So what did I not like about the book? It is depressing. The whole world seems to plot against you when you are reading it. If an ordinary writer took up such a theme, we could bear it without too much complain, but if one who has honed his skill to such perfection chooses to make his main character as miserable as in "the catcher in the rye", the effects of the book on an ordinary reader would surely be devastating.
The character is complex, and though he goes and soaks himself in liquor in a bar and flirts with some women there, and though he hires a prostitute for the night, he tires to protect his little sister from the obscenities written on the walls in her school. She is the only person he seems to care about. The book shows him at the height of his innocence an also of perversion.
The name of the book is still a mystery to me. Apparently it has been called that since the boy hears some one sing the song "...in the rye" and mistakenly starts singing " catcher in the rye". It is still unclear why the book was named that.

In short... not recommended, unless you are tough enough not to soak up the mood of a book.

My Name is Red.

The most striking feature of this book is its structure. The story is narrated from the perspective of the different characters that make it up, without any judgement or comment from the part of the author. The dexterity with which details are laid out, without appearing to take sides with any of the characters is amazing. And the result of such a scheme is that the novel is left without a "hero" or a "heroine". They are all treated just as they are, without magnifying or diminishing their importance in any manner. The plot has all the ingredients of a normal paperback, with two murders, a love story, a missing husband, a clandestine wedding as well as an elopement, all of which revolves around the notoriously beautiful Shekure. There is also the villian element added, in the form of Shekure's brother in law. However, the events are related in such a matter of fact manner that they dont seem contrived at all; indeed, they seem plausible.
The book has several "layers", the most basic of them being the miniaturists and the Islamic culture. It explores the relationship between art and religion as espoused by Islam, where art is created not for our enjoyment, but for the sole purpose of exalting allah. Each painting must be given perfection in the way allah perceives it, instead of the way a human being would perceive it. Thus a dog, being a lowly animal, must always be shown smaller than the sultan, who is God's representative on earth. The main plot of the story winds around the deep seated desire of Enishte Effendi to have a western style painting done by his master painters. He thus persuades them to work for them by the night, in secret, at their homes, or with him. But before the completion of the book he is planning, one of his miniaturists start to harbour suspicions about what he is drawing for the Enishte. He goes to one of the other three, and confides his fears in him, only to find that the very man he went to for comfort was planning his murder so that the paintings could be completed, without a murmer from anyone.
Even the Enishte is not able to find out which one his three miniaturists commited the murder, and it falls to Black and Master Osman to find out who committed the crime, given that the motive was to preserve his "style". The answer to this lies in the style of the miniaturists, each of whom consider themselves to be the best since Bihzad. Thus Black and Master Osman together pore over all the depictions they can find and finally find out who made that painting. Meanwhile, poor Enishte is murdered, presumably by the same person, and possibly because the murderer perceived him as the next threat to his style.
At another level, the story explores the realtionship between God and man as perceived by Islam. God, as the supreme creater, is perfect in all his works, and man, being merely one his creations, must never try to achieve the level of perfection that God shows in his creation. Thus each painting must glorify Allah, and it must only bring forth the awe and beauty one feels on looking upon his creations, instead of aspiring to look like the creation itself. Thus paintings are drawn as seen by the eyes of Allah, and not as they really appear, with the Sultan given the maximum importance in any painting, and dogs given the least importance.
The book also gives one an insight into the plights of the miniaturists, as they try to come to terms with the fact that the period of their dominance is now ending, as must all things, and that the paintings for which they dedicated their lives, their sight, their very being, would vanish completely and would be forgotten, never to be remembered again in the time to come. However, their fear of being turned into outcastes who depicted Allah's creations in a sacriligious manner is about as great as their desire to be remembered for their own style, so each of them reconciles to the fate that awaits them and satisfies himself with other pursuits. (One, in gold, another, in his wife, the third in and the fourth one who gives in to neither of these pleasures goes on to commit the murdrers.)
The sense of mystery prevails till the end, and the identity of the murderer is made known only at the end of the book. So we wait through the endless deptictions of masterly paintings created by Bihzad and through the scholarly and erudite arguments of the miniaturists about their style and a hundred other details before finding out who committed the murder.
Some of the passages in the book are particularly moving, like the one where Master Osman blinds himself with the same needle that the great Bihzad used, and also the one where Enishte describes his experience of being murdered. This is the only book I have read in which a narrator describes himself being murdered. (It gives new insight into the act of murder itself!).

Highly recommended .. a great read, though it is tiresome in parts.