PatternExon

The Know-It-All – A. J. Jacobs

// June 23rd, 2009 // No Comments » // books, reading, review

The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World was picked by me at the Border store in Plaza Las Americas, San Juan, Puerto Rico.

San Juan was where I went honeymooning, but I have an unhealthy fetish for books, bookstores and libraries. Since it is early in our marriage D lets me indulge. Yeah, we gonna see how long that lasts.

Back to the book, this is A.J. Jacobs’ journey on how he read the entire Britannica Encyclopedia to become smarter. Its witty, casual and personal. The quest of becoming the smartest person in the world is pretty common I guess and the encyclopedia is a good place to start. But unfortunately almost everyone that Jacobs’ wants to impress by proving the he is getting smarter by reading the encyclopedia thinks he is obnoxious and weird. The ones that Jacobs looks up to as smart think that the britannica project is useless and whimsical. Unfettered he reads on, from A to Z and thats how he stacks up chapters in this book.

If you think reading useless trivia is boring this is not for you. But if, like me, you have read parts of encyclopedias, dictionaries and thesauruses for  fun and now know what the keyboard shortcut for getting a random article on wikipedia then you will enjoy it.

The Forever War – Dexter Filkins

// June 15th, 2009 // No Comments » // books, reading, review

This is the kind of book I have been dying to read. Its unbiased and yet ambiguous.

The New York Times reporter for Iraq has shared the time he spent in Iraq. His writing has no agenda, it has his opnions, but this is not muddled by the washington rhetoric, its beyond the fake righteousness of the right and past the loopiness of the left.

His writings are one man’s struggle to understand the obsfucating greyness that is Iraq today. The book is a collection of essays, mostly in chronological order, tiny tidbits compared to the articles that are printed everyday in newpapers. They are stark portrayals of a troubled people in a troubled land. But the style of writing has a jaded resignation, like the author expects to get up any moment from this hellish nightmare. I think this is the ultimate journalistic benchmark. To pretend to be unaffected such that the reader has to ask:  ” Is this happening somewhere in the world right now and all I can do about it is read?”

There are strikingly honest descriptions of soldiers and terrorists. How the policy and fanaticism has faded in the background and these people are trying to survive a war, all sides trying to outlive the other. Kids, american and iraqi, lost to the madness of a civil war; forever.

I have little respect for conventional journalists, especially the american journalists seem too complacent with their own 20 second sound-bite or the 200 word op-ed, but this is radically different. This is bold, genuine and unapologetically thought-provoking.

Pattern Recognition – William Gibson

// March 22nd, 2009 // No Comments » // books, reading, review

Pattern Recognition

This is the first Gibson that I have read. And I like it.

Pattern Recognition is not exactly traditional sci-fi. Its does not have space travel and it does not have nano bots. There are obscure internet boards and movie fanatics. The interleaved life of a video nut and an a logo-agnostic aesthete who is ironically allergic to her day job. There is a certain charm and credibility in her psychosomatic character. Its a curious mystery this media junkie picks up at a high-end brand consulting job. The quest is to go around the world hoping to find an artist who no one knows. The American and west European corporate elite, Japanese nerds and Russian mafia – its got it all with lucid descriptions that you can picture the Grey streets of London evening, the neon night of red light Tokyo and crisp morning of Moscow. There seems to be a shadowy big brother always lurking. One keeps guessing if any of the events are coincidental or orchestrated. Its a light, engaging read.

The Plague – Albert Camus

// February 4th, 2009 // No Comments » // books, reading, review

A plague strikes a small town in Northern Africa. The trials and tribulations of different characters and how they respond to adversity. The ability of a community to persevere in the face of destruction. The disease  tests the mettle of men and how some give up and others rise up.

I like the build up to the epidemic. It starts with the vermin dying away. The townspeople realize this is an evil omen. The first case is considered an oddity and authorities don’t pay any attention. But gradually the enormity of their troubles dawns upon them – the lucky and the resourceful are rushed away, while the determined, the poor and the expendable stay to endure.

The epidemic is the protagonist. The disease follows the known pattern. There is the first wave that chokes the town in grief and then slowly the people learn to live with the disease chewing them away. There is a lull in the disease and the spirits are up but the disease fights, the more virulent strain hits back. There is always that ambiguous hope of a vaccine. The disease finally fades away, the scars from the town are cleaned away, the ones etched into the minds of survivors remains.

Its a short intense novel.

My Name is Red – Orhan Pahmuk

// January 2nd, 2009 // No Comments » // books, reading, review

My name is red

I like the way Orhan Pahmuk thinks. Alas, some play in the way he writes may have been lost in translation. But this an interesting read. The style of writing is different from Istanbul. And if it wasn’t set in the same city I would not have guessed that its by the same author.

Its like a Sherlock Holmes mystery written as an intertwined James Clavell tale set in a medieval Ottoman Cluedo game.

Took me 10 odd pages to get an handle of the tone. But once used to it, the multiple point of view buildup makes it an impatient read. Theres much more to it than the mystery, with which the book opens. There are tales within tales that sometimes hint and sometimes misguide. I like the formality in speech coupled with chicanery of thought of the players. The wordplay, the deliberate obfuscations, the oriental ‘go-between’ . There aren’t many that can capture of all of that in a first person narrative.

Vespa – Valerio Boni

// March 23rd, 2007 // No Comments » // books, reading, review

This is an odd entry, i admit. I think its got to do with my sudden respect found for design. Vespa, its an ICON of style. Its the most known automobile on the planet. So its a coffee-table book. This is a series of photographs about the rise & fame of Vespa. There are a few interesting anecdotes. Theres something so simple yet compelling in the design of a Vespa that its original design & shape has hardly gone through any change. Vespa has been sonorous with reliability, style & ease. There also a few pics that this machine to another plane – a cultural phenomenon. There are also bits of the car that spun out of this design. Yeah, I didnt know that either. Theres a sense of peace when looking at people riding a small two wheeler with a tiny engine in gray scale. A simpler time. A provincial life.

The Last Mughal – William Dalrymple

// March 18th, 2007 // No Comments » // books, reading, review

I have now read every book written by William Dalrymple and this is the best. Its not that I havent read something written by him for a while, since I just read In the Shadow. But this one is awesome. I admit that Dalrymple knows how to research but this exquisite. Whatever I have read earlier about the 1857 Uprising (including some fascinatingly massaged history texts in high school) every single write up cites the same excuse – want of sources. But not this one, the sources here are impeccable both in veracity & detail. The mutiny papers in the national archive in India ( generally written in Persian, the court’s official language, or Urdu, the language of the inhabitants of Delhi) & its counterpart in the archive in Britain – Mutiny Papers. As titled, this a description of the last days of Abu Zafar Siraj ud Din Bahadur Shah - the last Mughal Emperor of India. Its the story of Delhi & its fate in the 1857 mutiny. I have to admit that William Dalrymple is an acclaimed Indophile but this one is totally impartial. The sketch is comparable to ‘Is Paris Burning ?’ in both coincidences & the way the characters of the key players is gradually divulged. I have also found a part of the secret – why Dalrymple’s works have this comfortable but still exotic aroma – its the way he uses the persian & urdu words instead of transliterating them to their, now conformed, english equivalents. This leaves a little EM Forrester-like feel, plurality without loss of identity( well almost!). So, a Vazir is not a minister & a tehkhana is not a cellar. I love it. Though, it did take more than a few days reading 500 pages, I am now a bigger fan than ever before.

Visual Explanations – Edward Tufte

// March 9th, 2007 // No Comments » // books, reading, review

This is a continuum of my new found obsession with Graphs and Visual representation in general. The irony is that the more books I read the more important I think it is for one to able to visualize data as knowledge. Of late,there have been many instances where the way I studied a table of data for twenty minutes was pathetic to what others could see in the same data, same table just by a glance. So, in a general sense of reverse engineering the art of visualization this my second read. Tufte is a master of design – of exploiting dimensions. creating dimensions. The front cover is a great example where Tufte takes the pictorial representation of a Cyclone drawn by the National Weather Service & transforms it into  a better – simpler, easier & fuller representation. Awesome. What I have realized though, is that this isnt something that could be delivered as a Five Point Mantra of Fabulous Map Making, one has to look at a lot of graphs to know how to make good graphs. Also one has to idiot-proof their graphs & this takes a lot of time. Theres another example where he takes graphs drawn by NASA & its partners and demystifies them such that the trend is impossible to dismiss. Am still planning to lay my hands on the latest of Tufte delights.

Misreadings – Umberto Eco

// March 6th, 2007 // No Comments » // books, reading, review

I like Umberto Eco. Though I havent read everything he has written, I have read Name of the Rose, Foucault’s Pendulum, Baudolino, and the Island of the Day Before. This is small collection of short stories written in newspapers and magazines, collected over the years. It almost looked as if it was churned out – out of spite. Anyway, the fact that I could get my hands on something penned by Eco which isnt convoluted & deceptively intertwined but still is great was amazing. It has the zing, I have to admit there are a couple of short stories that seemed below standard were written for a different set of audience. Or it may very possibly be a classical case of Lost in Translation. Since Umberto Eco writes, generally in Italian, and whatever I have sampled so far has always been a William Weaver translation, may be another’s translation style just didnt sink in. It is Eco, was thrilled. Read it with great delight.

Le Corbusier: Architect of the Twentieth Century – Kenneth Frampton

// March 3rd, 2007 // No Comments » // books, reading, review

This is an artist that I admire for a very subtle fact. To have the power to be bold without being obtrusive – its creativity within constraints – true value creation. Well generally architect-visionaries miss it. I think theres a greater  chance that an architect’s creation could be more of an eyesore than a painter’s, because the painter owns that canvas, but the architect has to blend his creation in a generally pleasant & inherently harmonious background. Its like trying to fit in a new piece of the jigsaw that wasnt there when you started. I know its only true for the newer architects, but it is. To imagine something new to an existing skyline is bold, maybe obtrusive. And to add to that, the human tendency to be associated with grandeur, its an achievement for an architect to be such a powerful force in making living in apartments – fashionable. But theres a Indian connection too. & of course theres this church – on the cover – its fresh, its not imposing & its not challenging but its still holds its ground. Somehow, closer to what one wishes religion to be. Its ironical that the structure invokes the true sense rather than it being a precipitation of belief. This is a work of genius.