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 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

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.

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

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.