Variety is the spice of life

One thing that I’ve been consciously following is to watch out for the timeline when the book that I read had been first written. I began this as a practice, after reading a foreword from Sujatha on one of his short stories book, requesting the readers to give consideration that some of the stories from the collection where works of a young man in his initial years as an author, decades ago. It was a very powerful point and made me realize that, even though the themes may sound done and dusted and very redundant/repetitive, easily guessable, probably for the time when they were first launched, those themes and stories would’ve been trendsetters and pioneers. Same goes for this book as well. It is not one but a collection of stories, but considering that the first and biggest of the lot being the best of the pick, the book is probably named after that story itself – Three blind mice. The story is set in England, doesn’t involve Poirot or Marple and the weather (winter) plays a role in ...

Ever since I read the “8 perfect murders” was eagerly looking forward to reading the recommendation list from that book on best murder mysteries ever, according to one of the characters in that book. And from that list, this name caught my fancy immediately. Agatha Christie is not my favorite author, despite my liking for thrillers for the simple reason that, the English in her stories were often beyond my vocab level and quite a few foreign language sentences would be there with no translations on subsequent dialogues, especially French. It was a major put off for me when I started reading the hard bounds. Now that I have majorly shifted to e-versions, it is slightly easier to check for the translations or meanings. But even then it quite disturbs the flow, at the cost of learning a new word, messing the essence of the thrill. And another peeve being that, my inability to understand the naivety or the fragile health of the characters from that era. When the character cries out aloud s...

With every passing day, I keep refreshing websites and checking social media, for THAT moment, when someone somewhere in some corner of the world have found a cure to this deadly disease. It is becoming more and more depressing with new of deaths across the world grow into alarming statistics. Having completed reading “Sapiens” recently, no wonder the author had called this period, prior to the outbreak of course, as the golden era for humans. For I don’t recall any other time where the entire world was tottering on the brink with no answer. That is the most disturbing part for every time, nature threw some attack on humanity, some bright mind out of the several billions abound, would crack the code and life went on as usual. But this time, it is already more than couple of months and the situation is far from normal and is becoming only worse. When at times of despair, humanity looks up to god and funnily even those very places of worship are under lockdown!! Literally as if the gods ...

What else but corona!!! Looking at how the ROW is scampering measures against the disease and the relative calmness in immediate neighborhood, can’t quite believe we are in the same situation. May be as a Chennai guy, I trust the cauldron city to take care of her citizens by living up to her name. It is already nearing 40 and pretty sure coming days are going to get even hotter. But apparently the virus seems to have weathered the weather!! How is it killing people? With symptoms 90% overlapping with flu, how they figure out who is infected timely? How much of the info in circulation are real and which are fake? With governments traditionally trying to put lid on such catastrophic situations by choosing to give confidence building lies, there is literally no place to go for real news. Social media has become a sewer of information and with the amount of panic churned there, people would be better of doing social media distancing along with social distancing. To be honest, it would ...

I actually started off with a stinker line and then realized it is not fair. The author has written 3 amazing thrillers which happen to be his first three books and seems like he has ran out of any option to encash on that fame any longer. If his previous book was utter crap, this one looks more of an confused attempt, not sure of what he wants to convey. Going by the innumerous references to famous best seller thrillers by world famous authors, looks more like he tried to achieve something similar by quoting and requoting the situations from those books but eventually it all comes up unbaked. But one good thing about the book is there are so many famous novels that he has quoted, majority of which I’ven’t read yet. So in way it was an enriching experience and I got more than what I had bargained for. Another positive aspect that I missed to mention is the blog post approach of the author in telling his stories. Very easy on the eye and the pages simply fly through. I finished the enti...

Useless. Not a term we generally use with seriousness but more often as a term for expressing frustration over the futility of trying to get the best out of someone and them not realizing the same. But off late have begun to notice an increasing trend where the term is used as a specific categorization in itself, branding people as “useless”. Whenever there are layoff’s or “restructuring” that happens across major companies, it would be the sugar coated statement, more of an open secret but the word as such was always taboo. But the casualness with which it is being bandied about, raises several questions least of which being ethical and decent. Whenever people decry the caste system, they would always criticize that at its core, it never allows people to come out of the slot designated for them by birth, restricting them from exploring their true potential. With British mode of education system, for several centuries, we’ve been training and preparing our students for clerical work....

With almost the last couple of chapters left, I can safely say that, whatever it has to impress, Sapiens has already done its due. As much I gush about it and talk my head off like a salesman trying to meet his target of selling that book to anyone who may care to listen, I do have couple of peeves about it though. May be it is the over expectation of everything being in one place and covered in one book. May be with those missing bits, it would’ve been the perfect dish that no one could eat beyond one mouthful as it would be too filling to consume even that. May be it is drishti parigaram. May be it was willingly let out or may be they were unwillingly missed. But Women as they are hardly find any mention in an otherwise a masterpiece of a book, tracing humans from evolution till date. Other than India hardly finding a mention for right reason or not, the contribution of women in the book was something that was a surprising miss. Never in our history books or in biology as well, evolu...

Into the last lap of reading Sapiens. The book continues to amaze me with the level of detailing and the editor deserves every award possible for ensuring coherence and continuity in this mega book. But one peeve that I’ve against the book is its representation of India or the lack of it. To the author other than caste system (only in couple of instances that too) and Buddhism, there is hardly any reference about India at all. Europe finds major mention for all the renaissance and industrial revolution related information. May be the reason for India finding a miss could well be the answer for the same? That we didn’t had anything significant going on for last 3 centuries? Even if I accept that with a pinch of salt, how about our architecture or culture or civilization? For that matter, neither does any of the river valley civilizations find a mention in the book, barring some passing references to Ming’s of China and couple of Mesopotamians kings. So, in that way the author has been u...