Astonishing. The last book I read was Dark Places by Gillian Flynn. And she does it again. Some part of the plot was given away to me because of the AAstonishing. The last book I read was Dark Places by Gillian Flynn. And she does it again. Some part of the plot was given away to me because of the Acknowledgement at the end of Dark Places. SO, if you are reading that before reading Sharp Objects, don't read anything other than the chapters.
The book is a stellar thriller. The protagonist (as always in Flynn books) is a deeply disturbed woman, who tries to convince herself that she's not as bad as some of the people she knows now and compares everything that happens now with things that happened when she was a child and how she handled them.
This is a GOOOOOD book! Read right away. At 300 pages, and 1.5 spaced paperback, burning through the book is made extremely simple....more
An amazing treatise. Weaver touches on several topics that I have been wondering about over the past few years, and he views each topic through a shreAn amazing treatise. Weaver touches on several topics that I have been wondering about over the past few years, and he views each topic through a shrewd lens of traditional values and intellectual corruption. The overarching theme is that modernism has pushed us away from first principles, abstract ideas, acceptance of the existence of a metaphysical world that is not our own and a "complete" education which would allow us to think about the general, rather than focus on the specifics. The victory of the modernists (the "nominalists") has been complete, to a degree that a thing when owned by us is "good", while the same thing owned by another is "bad".
This book is well known as a kind of manifesto for the return to traditional values and is used by conservative politicians, but the book is *NOT* a political manifesto. It talks about liberal politicians and "rabid egalitarians", always accompanying these lines with the thinking and the justification behind these classifications. (Weaver argues that our current fear of classifying and grouping people, groups, and nations is another sign of modernism's victory in spreading the dogma of "equality") He summarizes the image of a modern man, from a press agency's point of view, when deciding how to advertise to him, in one amazing paragraph:
It means in the world picture of press agency, a job, domesticity, interest in some harmless diversion such as baseball and fishing, and a strong antipathy toward abstract ideas. This is the Philistine version of man in pursuit of happiness. Even Carlyle's doctrine of blessedness through work has overtones of strenuousness which are repugnant to the man of today. (p. 94)
Weaver's plan for restoration includes a return to first principles, humility, an acceptance of the things that nature and the past can teach us. It includes the abolition of the sensationalist media, and any kind of media that is bound to produce "comedy-variety shows", that are aimed at keeping the vacuous minded ignorant and in good will. It includes the studying of the past, and a complete education that educates us in both rhetoric and dialectic, teaching us how to think and how to live with the abstract.
This was an aspirational book written in 1948. 73 years later, most of what Weaver argued for didn't happen. That serves to make the picture clearer: The decision to not act was the current generation's. On a personal level, it can serve as a guidebook, as we continue to slip further into the wasteland dominated by the media, the popular media, and the broadening of the noise through platforms like Instagram.
In 1918, just as World War I was ending, (2 months before the armistice was signed), a pandemic started. The disease was influenza, only influenza. ThIn 1918, just as World War I was ending, (2 months before the armistice was signed), a pandemic started. The disease was influenza, only influenza. That's what everyone thought. All the conditions at that particular point in time led to a pandemic that killed nearly 60 million people (according to all estimates) This book gives you all the information you need to understand how the human race sat around while something of this magnitude swept through the world. Remember: It was only influenza. Not deadly AIDS or SARS.
There are several things to unpack in this book. One book review will never cover everything and I don't intend to do that anyway. I am going to enlist three things that I learned from this book that were absolutely important revelations.
1. The truth is important. Especially, during war.
A lot of the book is about how newspapers across the US wouldn't print anything that would "affect the war effort" or "affect morale adversely". It also shows how people in public administration weren't willing to take the most basic precautions because it would spread panic and affect morale. It also shows how the army was turning a deaf ear to all the doctors in the administration who were telling them to stop moving soldiers across the country and across the Atlantic. Anything but the truth (half truths, lies) will only adversely affect the collective ability of people to fight a crisis.
2. Good science needs the right combination of people, time, money, luck and state of mind.
Paul Lewis and Avery were very similar. They were well respected and old. They each had a particular problem on their mind and they spent much of the time after the pandemic solving it. Avery came out of it with the discovery that DNA contains genetic material. Lewis came out of it with an obsession to win back the respect of the two people whom he respected the most. Eventually, this obsession killed him / he killed himself in a foreign land. He succumbed to the very virus he was investigating. (yellow fever)
3. Documentation is important. Especially, during a crisis.
This last point really resonated with me. What one must understand is that the crisis will blow over. During a crisis, it's often to become frustrated with the apparently unnecessary paperwork when one is facing problems that question the very existence of the human race. Having the perspective to look past a crisis into the future and understanding what can be learned from this horrible thing that so many people suffered through and died in, is the most important quality in every bureaucrat and politician out there. It's often very easy to be short sighted and deal only with the problem right in front of your face and not care about anything else until it is solved. (Or worse, say "Let's take care of everything else after this particular problem is solved")
Apart from these, there are a lot of things I have learned from this book (I have nearly 20 pages of notes). I plan to condense those into more bullet points and publish them on my blog soon.
That community is already in the process of dissolution where each man begins to eye his neighbor as a possible enemy, where non conformity with the accepted creed, political as well as religious, becomes a mask of disaffection; where denunciation, without specification or backing, takes the place of evidence; where unorthodoxy chokes freedom of dissent. -- Learned Hand
This is a huge book, and what's most interesting to me about this book is the CHANGE that he goes through. From a hick to a teen living with his sisteThis is a huge book, and what's most interesting to me about this book is the CHANGE that he goes through. From a hick to a teen living with his sister in Boston, to a Harlem hustler, Red, Prison, Elijah Muhammed, N.O.I, and his legacy.
His views on integration and the "blue-eyed devil" are scathing, right from the transformation that he underwent in prison. This book was written 52 years ago, and I don't know how relevant this is right now because everything I know about the difference between the races, in current-day America, is second-hand information from left leaning media.
That said, I think this is a great read as JUST a book. The effect that he had on such a huge movement starting from nothing, and getting to where he was, is moving to read about, and there is not one dull moment throughout the book.
The last few paragraphs of the book are him talking almost fearlessly about his death, and how he feels almost certain that he will be assassinated. He was, that same year, and the world sure lost a great leader and a man with an open mind like no other....more
I knew vaguely about Seneca as being a philosopher of some kind, but I had not considered reading any of his work before seeing this note. Now,
I knew vaguely about Seneca as being a philosopher of some kind, but I had not considered reading any of his work before seeing this note. Now, I have read the book and it is at the top of the list of books that I strongly recommend to everyone. In this post, I have put together some of the most insightful things that I think Seneca talks about in this book. This book is a perennial guide to living the life of a "wise person": happy, contented, and prepared for whatever fortune might throw their way.
This book was written in the first century, some 2000 years ago. Going into the book, I expected to find some references to things that were simply outdated and ancient. But this was not the case at all: The maladies that Seneca says affect society have remained unchanged through a variety of events that we believe have changed the world, but which have only changed the presentation of those maladies, without getting rid of them or even altering the underlying anxieties that people tend to feel in society (envy, fear, contempt, etc).
This is a book of letters that Seneca rights to his friend and student Lucilius. In these letters, Seneca gives Lucilius direct advice about how to behave and how to lead a life that is contented and free of the anxieties that Lucilius or the people around him have probably been facing. There is a tinge of mystery as we get to see only one side of the communication between these two men, leading to the reader having to fill in the blank about what it was that Lucilius asked Seneca for counsel on. This mystery did not hamper my ability to learn from this book, and identify the "rules" that I can apply to my own life.
Seneca's writing (and Campbell's translation) is fresh and lucid. It is not the stuffy, intellectual writing of a philosopher who is trying to find arguments and connect dots that don't deserve or need to be connected to gain something new. This is addressed in one of the letters where Seneca says how philosophy has been reduced to philology, the study of words and how modern philosophers (modern when the letters were written, i.e. 1-100 AD) were splitting hairs about what a word means or how a syllogism is inaccurate etc. This meta-theme, "what should philosophy do for the reader", can be found in several letters throughout the book and it was one of the important things that I learned from this book.
Bonus: He has a really good sense of humor.
'Mouse is a syllable, and a mouse nibbles cheese; therefore, a syllable nibbles cheese.' Suppose for the moment I can't detect the fallacy in that. What danger am I placed in by such lack of insight? What serious consequences are there in it for me? What I have to fear, no doubt, is the possibility, one of these days, of my catching a syllable in a mousetrap or even having my cheese eaten up by a book if I'm not careful. Unless perhaps the following train of logic is a more acute one: 'Mouse is a syllable, and a syllable does not nibble cheese; therefore, a mouse does not nibble cheese.' What childish fatuities these are! Is this what we philosophers acquire wrinkles in our brows for? Is this what we let our beards grow long for? Is this what we teach with faces grave and pale?
This is the kind of joke I would not be surprised to find in a Jerry Seinfeld stand-up comedy act.
There are 3 themes that recur through the book and are approached from various angles and when dealing with problems faced by various people.
0.1 Steel yourselves against misfortune
For what is there that fortune does not when she pleases fell at the height of its powers? What is there that is not the more assailed and buffeted by her the more lustrous its attraction? What is there that is troublesome or difficult for her?
This is why we need to envisage every possibility and to strengthen the spirit to deal with the things that may conceivably come about. Rehearse them in your mind: exile, torture, war, shipwreck. Misfortune may snatch you away from your country, or your country away from you, may banish you into some wilderness - these very surroundings in which the masses suffocate may become a wilderness. All the terms of our human lot should be before our eyes; we should be anticipating not merely all that commonly happens but all the that is conceivably capable of happening, if we do not want to be overwhelmed and struck numb by rare events as if they were unprecedented ones; fortune needs envisaging in a thoroughly comprehensive way.
– Letter XCI
This might sound pessimistic to some readers. It felt like the pragmatic course of action to me.
0.2 Study philosophy to build a better character, not a better intellect
This is a meta thread of reasoning that runs through the book. (As this is a book with philosophical arguments, the philosophical argument for what the purpose of philosophical arguments are can be considered to be "meta"). Seneca is convinced that the purpose of philosophy is to reform people's characters and make them better people and that it is not to improve the reader's intellect or make them look well-read or intelligent to their friends through syllogisms, clever turns of phrase or "the other toys of sterile intellectual cleverness" (Letter CVIII).
The purpose of the philosopher's audience is to "rid oneself of his faults and acquire a rule of life by which to test his character" (paraphrase from Letter CVIII).
0.3 Don't expect a change in surroundings to fix you
What good does it do you to go overseas, to move from city to city? If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you’re needing is not to be in a different place but to be a different person.
– Letter CIV
There is a lot to be said about the merits of travel and going to a new place. It makes you worldly; it puts you in a surrounding that you haven't been before, reducing you to a child, lost and alone; it lets you see new mountains, landscapes and rivers.
But don't expect the change in surroundings to change you, even if you don't put in any effort yourself. I don't know if a lot of people travel to get rid of anxiety in the present day. I have thought about doing this before, so this piece of advice resonated with me.
1 Not completely convinced
I am not completely convince about one point that he brings up in one of his letters. He says that the recounting of past sufferings and one's victory over them is a pointless exercise and serves only to be detrimental to one's conception of the past, that suffering and one's spirit.
What's the good of dragging up sufferings which are over, of being unhappy now just because you were then? What is more, doesn't everyone add a good deal to his tale of hardships and deceive himself as well in the matter? Besides, there is a pleasure in having succeeded in enduring, something the actual enduring of which was very far from pleasant; when some trouble or other comes to an end the natural thing is to be glad. There are two things, then, the recollecting of trouble in the past as well as the fear of troubles to come, that I have to root out: the first is no longer of any concern to me and the second has yet to be so.
Dystopia. Disturbing. I was hardly able to read through the middle chapters of Part 3. It was all so grotesque, the imagery, the man himself, the chanDystopia. Disturbing. I was hardly able to read through the middle chapters of Part 3. It was all so grotesque, the imagery, the man himself, the change his mind was going through, the things a collectivist group is capable of. Ew. If that's the right emotion.
Parts 1 and 2 are shocking, hard to believe, fascinating and frightening all at the same time. It's hard to believe that people would exist in a society as the one depicted, but at the same time, it is easy to understand why there is no revolution. When you have no one to compare yourself to, you tend to resign yourself to what you have, take pleasure in the few privileges accorded on you by the power above, the Party, Big Brother.
The book by Emmanuel Goldstein is perhaps my favorite part of the book. OR rather, the most logical? I don't know, but it made sense. The explanations, "War is Peace" and "Ignorance is Strength", these slogans are enraging when in the Part 1 of the book but they make sense in Part 3.
The world makes sense once you know why it is the way it is. I had actually planned to read another Dystopian novel, The Man in the High Castle, I am not sure if I would now.
Stay away from Dystopia because it is disturbing? Nah, this is probably one of the few books that people read books for....more
This book is everything that it claims to be on the book jacket. It "uncovers the inner workings of the institutions behind these economic manipulatio
This book is everything that it claims to be on the book jacket. It "uncovers the inner workings of the institutions behind these economic manipulations". In particular, it looks at some of the incredibly global institutions that are name dropped in a lot of contexts: World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization. There are several stories here about loans that were given to countries which were supposed to build schools or upgrade the city hall building of a bustling city or one of a myriad of other reasons but never did that or help the people the money was supposed to help in any way.
I must admit that it was a pretty shocking revelation at several points. In particular, we get stories from the people in the field, the rank and file of organizations like the World Bank who are going abroad to assess if a given loan should be sanctioned or a banker who used to work in an island that was being used for offshore banking.
They tell stories about how their job affected the places that they were working in or the places they went to in Africa (this book focuses a lot on some countries in Sub-Saharan Africa) or about the ways in which the management and people above them were basically apathetic to the consequences of the things that their jobs were enabling. These stories are all backed up with actual data from reports or news articles which show the outcomes of the things that are discussed.
I particularly liked that the book doesn't work as a list of testimonials where the reader is simply supposed to believe the people who are telling the story and the editor and not really question where they got their data. This was a refreshing non-fiction book about global economics, in that sense.
I learnt a lot of things about the global economy. The chapter on offshore banking in Jersey, Englang, the chapter on exploitation of the Iraqi people and government in the name of "Production Sharing Agreements", the chapter about the strange policies that were implemented in Philippines despite continued realizations at different levels of the heirarchy that whatever they were doing was simply not working.
The most important insights for me came in the 11th Chapter by James S. Henry, The Mirage of Debt Relief. This chapter really shook me and my assumptions about national debt. I didn't know much about national debt before I started reading the book, but my belief was that having high foreign debt was quite common in most economies and that it wasn't really something to think much about because "banks and governments don't default on loans"! This assumption of mine was completely blown out of the water by the things that Henry shows in this chapter.
On the Debt/Capital Flight cycle
Debt goes to the Finance ministry of a government with no oversight or accountability to the tax payer.
This capital is either wasted on projects that are intentionally priced above the market rate or is fleeced by the people inside the government or companies with close ties to people high up in the government who are supposedly working on "development projects"
The fleeced capital is moved out of the country through a web of offshore investments contributing to capital flight. This is powered by clever, high priced lawyers and bankers who are working on islands like Jersey, England (a previous chapter)
The country is left holding the bag: An unproductive loan that taxpayers have to pay interest on as debt service, each year. The principal will almost certainly not be paid for several years.
The existence of this cycle might appear to be semi-obvious if you have followed the trajectory of some countries and their economies: They get huge loans from the World Bank or from a group of foreign lenders, but the money never ends up making any difference. Eventually, the country gets a follow-up loan or everyone gives up on the country's economy. Corruption and transparency issues are pegged as the root cause of this problem.
Here's the sitch: The debt-based development model doesn't work when it comes to low-middle income countries where the government is a weak institution and almost always over-run by corruption.
The World Bank model of neo-liberalism peddles the "free-market" as the silver bullet which is going to solve all the problems that plague the lower income economies of the world. But the problem with this model is that it is focused on lending to the government, reducing the government's role in the economy, bringing in private players for local services and foreign investment for new industries, effectively reducing the government to a license-issuing institution with no real power to set policy or even the minimum wage that should be paid to citizens or even control the amount of local labor that must be used for a given project.
In search of the free-market, the government has just accepted World Bank advise and reduced it's own role and made itself weaker. This makes it even more simpler for corrupt individuals to take over the government and fleece future and past loans even more efficiently! This kicks off the cycle which leads to a small elite who control the government, are extremely rich, keep their assets safely in First World economies in offshore investments, thus ensuring that anyone that the loan was originally meant for will never benefit from it.
Export Credit Agencies
The list of projects that were funded by ECAs from across the First World is quite long and each project has it's own problems. As the author of this chapter (chapter 10), Bruce Rich, introduces a lot of issues with ECAs: Lack of oversight, lack of accountability to the tax payer even though they can enjoy the benefits of tax money and the government's clout, an impenetrable curtain of secrecy that ensures that they don't even have to publish the list of projects that they approved and funded! The author uses a phrase that can be used in several situations including while describing the development that was supposed to come from the huge loans that have been sanctioned over the past few years to the lower income countries:
perpetually around the corner
There are some important numbers and a little bit of discussion about why China, India and Korea had some structural, geographical and political advantages and thus were able to mostly ignore advise from the IMF and outright reject the neo-liberalism that is being peddled as the "road to development".
I could not find anything problematic about the book. The sources are extensive and most of the facts that are not just personal experiences are backed up with official sources. My reading list after reading this book has a couple of papers about ECAs and how economists in the First World view them. The one thing that might threw me at first was how old all the data was. Reading the introduction gives some background on this, it appears as if this book has been around for a while but wasn't published by anyone because no one wanted to touch a book that was flaty critical about the global economic system and what had basically become a cartel of the richest countries bending loans and lower income countries to their will.
Quotes
China and India alone account for about $500 billion of this developing country "present value debt." Both countries have been careful about foreign borrowing, and they have also largely ignored IMF / World Bank policy advice. The result is that their foreign debt burdens are small relative to national income. Both countries -- partly because they refuse the follow orthodox neoliberal policies -- now have high growth economies and large stockpiles of foreign reserves.
-- p.222
The fundamental problem, glossed over by some debt-relief campaigners and conventional "end poverty now" economists, is that comabting poverty is not just a question of providing malaria nets, vaccinces, and drinking water, or incremental increases in education, capital, technology and aid. Ultimately, as China's example shows, long-term poverty reductions requires the promotion of deep-seated structural change. This implies the redistribution of social assets like land, education, technology, and political power. These are concepts that BWI [Bretton Woods Institutions] technocrats may never understand -- or may recoil from in horro. But they are the root of every major development success story that we know.
I now don't think the ideas that come up in the TV show are Black Mirror are that absurd anymore. This book is my first sci-fi book in almost 2 years.I now don't think the ideas that come up in the TV show are Black Mirror are that absurd anymore. This book is my first sci-fi book in almost 2 years. It was marvelous!
There are 8 stories of varying lengths here.
1. Tower of Babylon (Build a tower from ground to heaven: I didn't completely get this one) 2. Understand (Enhanced intelligence = Lucy!) 3. Division by Zero (arithmetic inconsistency!) 4. Story of Your Life (Arrival: this is the most touching story in this collection) 5. Seventy-Two Letters (Names, automatons and euonyms: this one is the strangest) 6. The Evolution of Human Science (is Interpretation of an advanced species' scientific discoveries a worthwhile use of human time?) 7. Hell is the Absence of God (Hell = Mortal Plane - God; Angels visit often and it's a completely different world altogether) 8. Liking What You See: A Documentary (Let us all get Calli: This was my favorite)
Story of Your Life's movie adaptation has made me slightly biased throughout, but I absolutely love stories 4, 5, 7 and 8. They are all about characters who are painstakingly written to be no different from the average human being, yet they live in a different world where all the rules are different and the world itself is topsy-turvy. I have several pages of notes from this book. A few follow:
From Understand:
It wouldn’t be transcribed in the form of words arranged linearly, but as a giant ideogram, to be absorbed as a whole. Such an ideogram could convey, more deliberately than a picture, what a thousand words cannot. The intricacy of each ideogram would be commensurate with the amount of information contained; I amuse myself with the notion of a colossal ideogram that describes the entire universe.
(This is a reference to the language that the Heptapods use, I think)
From Division by Zero:
So much of mathematics had no practical application; it existed solely as a formal theory, studied for it's intellectual beauty. But that couldn’t last; a self-contradictory theory was so pointless that most mathematicians would drop it in disgust.
(Having had a course of Real Analysis this semester, I certainly empathise with this statement of hers!)
Physical entities were not greater or less than one another, not similar or dissimilar; they simply were, they existed. Mathematics was totally independent.
(This last one is a view I share with Renee)
From Story of Your Life:
I can’t believe that you, a grown woman taller than me and beautiful enough to make my heart ache, will be the same girl I used to lift off the ground so you could reach the drinking fountain, the same girl who used to trundle out of my bedroom draped in a dress and hat and four scarves from my closet.
It’ll be when you first learn to walk that I get daily demonstrations of the asymmetry in our relationship. You’ll be incessantly running off somewhere, and each time you walk into a door frame or scrape your knee, the pain feels like it’s my own.
(Louise is a great parent!)
what kind of worldview did the heptapods have, that they would consider Fermat’s principle the simplest explanation of light refraction? What kind of perception made a minimum or maximum readily apparent to them?
This last sentence is the hook of this story. There are several other things that come after this. Like how Heptapods understand minimums and maximums and integration and differentiation, but never understand the simple concept of Geometry, coordinates, algebra or most importantly velocity.
There’s no ‘correct’ interpretation; both are equally valid. But you can’t see both at the same time. Similarly, knowledge of the future was incompatible with free will. What made it possible for me to exercise freedom of choice also made it impossible for me to know the future. Conversely, now that I know the future, I would never act contrary to that future, including telling others what I know: those who know the future don’t talk about it. Those who’ve read the Book of Ages never admit to it.
Knowing the future doesn’t make you want to change it, it simply makes you want to enact the future with more urgency. Like performing in a play. Chiang outdoes himself in this story.
From Seventy-Two Letters:
The assassin chuckled. ‘Men are no different from your automata; slip a bloke a piece of paper with the proper figures on it, and he’ll do your bidding.’ The room grew light as the man lit an oil lamp.
From the final story, Liking What You See:
Every study on this issue turns up the same results: looks help people get ahead. We can’t help but think of good-looking people as more competent, more honest, more deserving than others. None of it’s true, but their looks still give us that impression.
I have 17 pages of notes from this book. I am not kidding when I say that I have had to severely cut down on the things I think are beautifully expressed in this book....more
This was probably the first book that I was determined to read because of this awesome review. I started reading, and in the prologue, I discovered thThis was probably the first book that I was determined to read because of this awesome review. I started reading, and in the prologue, I discovered that they had killed their friend. An attrocious act, on the face of it, but surprisingly towards the end, I was empathising with their situation, and although, I feel that this may not have been the best course, I can't question the decision that they made to kill their friend. That, only because of some really involved and amazing writing!
Starting out, the book feels really obscure, the characters seem to be ideal versions, who have had too much of education of the Classics, and have withdrawn into a world of their own where murder is required, and covering it up will only make the act harder to digest.
The first five chapters delve into Bunny. The last three are set after the act. Initially, the book is heavy with philosophical references, and description of everything in general. But as the book proceeds, it gets darker and concentrates more on the plot itself, rather than the surroundings. Throughout the book, I felt as if Richard (the narrator) is a passive part of it all, and is able to provide us with something more than just a plain narration of what's going on, but something that is more involved with his own emotional conflict, and the perceived lack of remorse in his accomplices.
This book does lend itself to a movie wonderfully, and now I wish there was a movie based on this book. I am intrigued by her style, and her characters, but most of all, the boldness of the premise of this book.
Re-Read: August 25th, 2019
The first time I read a PDF version of the book. It was nearly 4 years ago and I remember reading a really good review and that being the reason I started reading this book. Well, this book has aged incredibly WELL! I absolutely loved the nuances that I was able to catch on the second time that I read this book. This time, I read it on a Kindle, so I was able to mark several passages that I thought were just absolute FIRE!
I envied them, and found them attractive; moreover this strange quality, far from being natural, gave every indication of having been intensely cultivated. (It was the same, I would come to find, with Julian: though he gave quite the opposite impression, of freshness and candor, it was not spontaneity but superior art which made it seem unstudied.)
Over-all, the book evoked the same kind of emotions in me, I believe. You start with the disbelief: is there ever anything that a person can do to you that would make you want to kill them in cold blood? Then, you learn more about the 5. In particular, I learnt an incredible amount about Bunny in the first section of the book. Then, you realize how cruel he is, and how he gets on everyone's nerves all the time. And how he does it with a relish for the results.
I did know. Bunny had an uncanny ability to ferret out topics of conversation that made his listener uneasy and to dwell upon them with ferocity once he had. In all the months I’d known him he’d never ceased to tease me, for instance, about that jacket I’d worn to lunch with him that first day, and about what he saw as my flimsy and tastelessly Californian style of dress.
The above quote describes perfectly the way Bunny was blackmailing all of them. And then, the act. Once it happens though, you are only half-way done. This book is much more a story about the consequences of one decision than it is about the build-up to that decision. People dislike other people a lot. It comes quite naturally. Taking the decision that this dislike would lead us to, is quote natural too. But the consequences of that decision are un-savoury and push the remaining 5 people (including the narrator) into an extremely unpleasant sequence of events.
Richard has a particularly enlightening realization.
One might expect that I, being at that time perfectly innocent of any crime against either Bunny or humanity, would not myself be a target of this ongoing sniper fire. Unfortunately I was, perhaps more unfortunately for him than for me. How could he have been so blind as not to see how dangerous it might be for him to alienate the one impartial party, his one potential ally?
Richard was Bunny's only potential ally. He was the only "outsider", so to speak. He was the only one in their group, who Bunny believed didn't know about the act, and was confident wouldn't approve of, if Bunny ever chose to tell Richard. In turning Richard on to his side, in a fashion that was so natural that one might even question this particular theory as cynical or diabolical, Henry displays his master-y of people and understanding what motivates them. (Henry would have been one hell of an engineering manager!)
Finally, I have never stopped admiring Camilla for the amazing character that she is! In this book, particularly, she is the hinge to all the guys around her. She is the person around whom all the others spin. In some ways, Henry was the leader of the group, he was flying the plane. But Camilla was the Pursor, she was the one responsible for charming the outsiders and keeping them happy. (including us, the readers). Tartt puts the reader in Richard's place, that's quite clear. And then, in drawing similarities between Richard and Camilla, she forces us to see Camilla as the endearing one. The character that you can't quite not love.
Camilla was no different, secretly preferring, as I did, the easy delights of English literature to the coolie labor of Greek. What was laughable was that poor Bunny should display concern about anyone else’s intellectual capacities.
I started re-reading this book in search of a quote about money. The main character, Matthieu, who is strapped for cash and looking for about 40
I started re-reading this book in search of a quote about money. The main character, Matthieu, who is strapped for cash and looking for about 4000 francs for a medical procedure, spends 200 francs on a bottle of champagne. In his inner monologue, Matthieu says that money is like sand and exists only to fall through one's fingers. Atleast, that was my recollection of the quote. On re-reading the book, I realized that there is no such quote in the book at all. Nevertheless, I am glad that I re-read this book. The first time I read this book (back in 2016), I was not very familiar with the tradition of the "novel written by a philosopher," which meant that I did not appreciate much of the philosophy that is sprinkled throughout the book.
What is freedom? Sartre was obsessed with this question. This novel explores this question from the perspectives of characters who are living lives which are normal to the outside world; but even the slightest peek into their inner monologue is a terrifying reminder of the dissonance that can persist within a person's character. For e.g., Their ability to violate principles that they believe in deeply can easily coexist with their belief that these principles form a core part of their identity as a person. In this case, what is the right path for the person? Every character in this book deals with dilemmas like this one.
This time around, I focused on the various characters and how each character is not like-able in their own way. They are all ruthlessly competitive, and their inner monologues are filled with contempt for others. There's Boris who is trying to steal a dictionary. There's Matthieu who doesn't seem to flinch before asking for money, and does not flinch or betray any sense of disappointment when the loan is denied. There's Ivich who is cold, distant and inscrutable throughout, and seems to have only one noticeable thing about her: that she is pretty. No doubt, all of this is intentional. The inner monologues that Sartre has written might be exaggerated versions of the ones running inside the minds of normal people, who are nowhere close to as strange and distant as the characters in this book.
None of the characters is truly likable. In some parts of the book though, I felt some empathy for the situation they were in.
For e.g., at the club, where Boris and Ivich stab themselves with the new knife that Boris has bought for himself. They are both listless and drunk; and it's hard to dismiss their action as reckless behavior, given how thoughtful and well-calculated all of their moves until then had been. (For e.g., Boris' calculation that dancing with an older woman would ignite the jealousy of the young admirer who was sitting in the club.) Their behavior was one way in which they were flirting with suicide; and a masked attempt by Sartre at the existential philosophy that he is famous for (I think).
Another example is with the main character Matthieu himself. He is mostly despicable because he is unfocused and prone to wasting his time, rather than accomplishing a goal. But this flaw in him is a natural tendency and I can relate with his desire to do something completely reckless as he is engaged in a high-stakes struggle, that has pierced through his veneer of "not caring about anything" and turned him into a anxiety-ridden human being. The banality of his position in this moment of crisis is anathema to him. He believed in principles and philosophy; he believed that he had virtues which he would not sell out, no matter what; but when it finally came down to the wire, and he had to choose between stealing money (against his principles) and losing his "freedom" by getting married and becoming Marcelle's husband (also against his principles), he chooses the easy way out and steals the money.
Matthieu's double standards are clarified once again when he advises Ivich: He tells her that she shouldn't wreck her life to save her dignity. But Matthieu himself is ready to marry Marcelle rather than steal the money to prevent that marriage (for a while).
Daniel is another example of a character who is easier to despise. He is incomplete and uncomfortable with his homosexuality. His initial scenes with the cat, his later scenes at the shady location, his refusal to lend Matthieu the money he needs, and his lies to Marcelle about Matthieu's reaction during their discussion of his marriage. All of these are isolated and lack motivation in any direction. He seems to enjoy tormenting Matthieu; but Matthieu is an expert at hiding his anxiety and disappointment, and is adept at depriving Daniel of the pleasure of reacting to his torments with an outburst: something that Daniel tries very hard to provoke.
This is a great book! I started reading this book because I realized how much shipping has changed the things that one has access to, it was also part
This is a great book! I started reading this book because I realized how much shipping has changed the things that one has access to, it was also part of the book recommendations on one of the Ezra Klein Show podcast episodes. I don't remember who recommended this book anymore or in what context, though! I am glad I read it nonetheless.
First, a brief word about the good stuff. This is a comprehensive and very very detailed account of how containers started, who started using them, how they came to be standardized and why they make sense beyond a given scale. It refers to a lot of incidents that proved to be rather important for the adoption of containers: the aftermath of the second World War, the Vietnam war, dockworkers unions across the world, shipping companies, freight forwarders, railroad operators, trucking companies. It's hard to think of anyone from the factory right up to the end consumer that this book doesn't touch or talk about.
Perhaps the most stunning thing throughout the book is the consistent resistance that container shipping had from every single person involved in the old process: unions didn't like container shipping, ports didn't like containers, governments weren't really convinced and were far too slow to adopt or create the specifications for standardized containers. Undoubtedly, a significant percentage of the time, most of the resistance ends in a placid acceptance and a sudden interest in getting deeply involved in the process of container shipping (in the form of huge government investment in modernising ports, subsidising the building of containes and container ships, negotiating contracts with shipping carriers that promise them space and cargo at ports)
There is one caveat though: The book is long, and it's not very coherent, the author chose to tell the story of how containers took over global shipping not as a timeline starting from non-container shipping (break-bulk) to container shipping, and rather, as a story of incidents which overlap in time, but are mostly independent in place and time of occurence. That makes the book confusing to read because there are several references to what happened in 1967 and it gets harder and harder to understand in the first half of the book until it all comes together in the second half of the book. That is my only gripe with the book.
Nevertheless, it's an incredibly informative book about a fairly simple concept's hard journey from being an idea to the finished product that now powers all global commercial shipping.
AHA! The book that Straw Dogs (2011) was based on. I really wanted to get this down, I knew it was a loose adaptation so I wasn't going to get a lot oAHA! The book that Straw Dogs (2011) was based on. I really wanted to get this down, I knew it was a loose adaptation so I wasn't going to get a lot of insight into Amy's mindset in the first part of that movie where she more or less just goes berserk, in her bet to provoke David into a passion about something, anything!
I really liked how the characters develop over the course of the book. The change in both George and Louise throughout the book is phenomenal and amazing to watch. Especially, after the Siege begins George's change from no violence to violence to outwitting Scutt to getting them all!
Apart from the main two characters, Bert Voizey is definitely the one I am most fond of. The moment George replies to Scutt with some confidence and tells him to clear out of the house, his behaviour comes out in this incredibly good line:
The third man - Bert Voizey - never felt comfortable in this kind of fancy house. Like one of his own ferrets, he had a natural instinct for creeping about in darker corners. He was not at ease with loud, confident people who stared you straihgt in the eye when they talked to you.
I can't get enough of that line and more that describe who Bert really is.
At 200 pages, I wasn't expecting to love the characters so much. (Psst, psst, so much so that I wrote a rather long blog post analysing George and Louise and their movie counterparts, Amy and David....more
noun. (a) a mass for the dead (b) a solemn chant (such as a dirge) for the repose of the dead
Dream
noun. (a) a strongly desired goal or purpose
Requiem
noun. (a) a mass for the dead (b) a solemn chant (such as a dirge) for the repose of the dead
Dream
noun. (a) a strongly desired goal or purpose (b) something that fully satisfies a wish
I understood the title after I had finished reading the book. For almost 3 years, people I know have been telling me how this is the most disturbing movie about drug addiction ever made and how it changed their perception of the parties involved. I concur with them: this is definitely one hell of a disturbing book.
Selby Jr manages to convey the hopelessness and the helplessness of Harry, Tyrone, Marion and Sara in a single sentence:
Their disease made it possible for them to believe whatever lies it was necessary for them to believe to continue to pursue and indulge their disease, even to the point of them believeing they wer not enslaved by it, but were actually free.
This book reminded me of everything that is great about reading and why I stick with this habit in the first place. I don’t have anything except good things to say about this book. This book doesn’t have any punctuations. Single quotation marks (like those in I'll) are replaced by forward slashes. There are no double quotes. Thankfully, there are full stops, the characters are very less so it’s possible to make sense of who is talking. I got used to this after reading around 30% of the book.
Marion’s character is the most fascinating. Her psychologist’s reaction when she asks him for the money and he asks him about the needle marks in her arm is painful and sums up my thoughts about where the book was going to go in the first half:
I mean, you’re not like those … those peopel who roam the streets mugging old ladies for enough money to get dope. Your’re cultured and delicate and have been under therapy – and the therapist – they looked at each other for a few moments. Arnold becoming more and more confused and pained. But why? Why?
And Marion’s answer to that:
Marion stared at him for a moment, then sighed loud and long, her body responding as if it had been squeezed tighter, Because it makes me feel whole … satisfied.
This book is worth a read. And then some. The writing is fabulous; the subject matter is dark and disturbing; the characters are vibrant and extremely troubled.
A few quotes from the book that I have to share here:
It wasnt that they couldnt stop using, it was just that this wasnt the time. They had too much to do and they werent feeling well. When everything was straightened out they would simply cut the whole scene loose, but for now theyd take an occasional taste to hang loose.
Sometimes they would fix up new cookers just for the sake of doing it. It was part of keeping house. The entire routine made them feel a part of something. It was something looked forward to with the greatest of joy and anticipation. The entire ritual was symbolic of their life and needs. The careful opening of the bag and the dumping in the cooker of the dope, and dropping in the water with the dropper. Making a new collar from time to time for the dropper so the needle would fit snugly, Harry using a piece of matchbook cover, Marion a piece from a dollar bill.
There was a voice, loud and clear, saying they were hooked, but good, and they tried to shrug it away but it persisted, more as a feeling than a voice, that permeated their every cell just as the dope they were addicted to had already done, and they tried combating it with another voice saying so what, it was no big deal, they could stop any time they wanted to, it was no big thing and what else was there?
The enemy ate away at their will so they could not resist, their bodies not only craving, but needing the very poison that ground them into that pitiable state of being; the mind diseased and crippled by the enemy it was obsessed with and the obsession and terrible physical need corrupting the soul until the actions were less than those of an animal, less than those of a wounded animal, less than those of anything and everything they did not want to be.
Historical non-fiction worth every moment spent reading it. A huge list of speeches and books have been added to my list as a by-product of reading thHistorical non-fiction worth every moment spent reading it. A huge list of speeches and books have been added to my list as a by-product of reading this book. This book itself serves as a good summary of the whole thing.
The writing might have been a bit more coherent and the author should have chosen to move chronologically forward from 1600, tracing the company's history. Instead, Robins skips around here and there, often talking about signs of Indian nationalism in 1806 while talking about the EIC in 1850s but never having mentioned anything about it before. Owing to all this, the book is disorienting, but nothing a little more time spent can't remedy.
I have seen the Victoria Memorial in Kolkata before, but I look forward to returning there: informed of what really transpired, with a list of the atrocities that Clive committed, that Curzon chose to memorialize and Queen Victoria chose to stand silently by....more
I can hardly give this book any rating below 5/5. It was an amazing book. For the first few chapters, everything is puzzling, and hardly anything abouI can hardly give this book any rating below 5/5. It was an amazing book. For the first few chapters, everything is puzzling, and hardly anything about this new world that everyone lives in is known to the reader. As the book progresses, things become easier to comprehend, and the world clears up for us. Rick's own role becomes clear, and as does the role of the other POV character, J R Isidore, the chickenhead. Do androids really not have empathy? Can they really not gang up, and be one collective mind against the whole human race? Well, PKD seems to think not. We, must wait to find out....more
This was my first horror book, and my first Stephen King book as well. It was good. Creepy in parts, a page-turner in it's pure form for the last 100 This was my first horror book, and my first Stephen King book as well. It was good. Creepy in parts, a page-turner in it's pure form for the last 100 pages or so. I could literally not put it down, because I knew what was going to happen, but I wanted to know how exactly they got to a point where Jack would become what he was prophesized (for lack of a better word) by Danny/Tony to be. The writing is clear and easy to read, and in the few vision sequences that Danny has, the scenes are easy to visualize. That's something authors like Thomas Harris really struggle with. (Especially with the geography of a room where she is held captive in Silence of the Lambs)
Wendy's character is the one that I would like to really get to know more. She's a protective mother, who puts Danny above everything, and would take it on herself if it was her and Danny against the world. But apart from this, there isn't much that is revealed about her. What books does she read? Does she like poetry? What does she think of Jack's work? Does Jack let her read his work, at all? There are so many answers to be answered about her character. I wish she was probed a little bit more.
This was a great start to the year, and to Stephen King too, I believe. I do plan to go ahead and read Carrie and Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, and the other 3 novellas, in the following year....more
Z is a really good book. It leads you to think critically about the government and the people in it, especially the beaurocrats (not the politicians)
Z is a really good book. It leads you to think critically about the government and the people in it, especially the beaurocrats (not the politicians) and the power they weild over people. What does it mean to be righteous? What does it mean to do the right thing at any cost? There are several books that go through those dilemmas. Several classics, surely.
Z is another book that does that. What would you do if you were a poor carpenter, dependent on the police's grace for your license, if you saw a murder happen? Would you report it? Would you volunteer to reveal what you know? Would you stick to your story even when you know the consequences? It's hard to describe this book because there's so much going on. At the core of the story is the murder of Z. What follows, is a sometimes-comical, sometimes-Kafka-esque, mostly realistic game of shadows and mirrors as people try to mask their role in the murder.
In every man—especially in a porter—there are smoldering embers from a life never lived, a house never built, a pickup license never obtained. At the slightest breath, the embers flare up and the past comes to life.
Such things keep bobbing to the surface and there are left, unexamined forever, because no one can wrest the truth from those who don’t want to tell it.
P.S: If you have ever had to get a group of engineers to explain what their system does to you with a diagram and they were unable to explain it to you despite 4 hours of meetings over 2 weeks, you know what the author is talking about in this quote.
The Longer Version
Every once in a while, you come across a movie so good, so intricate and subtle, so resonant with your own experiences around the system the movie is depicting, that you are stuck watching it in a never-ending loop. Shanghai (2012), a Hindi movie, was one of those movies for me. It perfectly portrayed everything that I had experienced and heard about from other people about the way the government really works, about how contracts are awarded, and how people talk to each other when they are the ultimate decision makers in their own little play-world.
I found out that the movie was actually adapted from a book on my n-th re-watch of the movie in the first few weeks of September this month. Once I realized that a book existed, I had to read it. And now, I have read it and I am very glad that I did!
Z is a really good book. There are several parallel narratives which go hand-in-hand as the story progresses:
the conversations real and imagined, between Z, his followers, his wife, Z's own thoughts
The Investigator's beliefs and attempts to bring the truth to light, his almost spiritual belief that light can be shone on the truth no matter how long the process or how crafty the people who want the darkness to persist forever
The Journalist and his make-belief world of a private investigator, the advice he gives to people around him, the assurances of protection, often putting himself at risk
Yango, Vango, Baron and the world of the toughs, the people at the very bottom of the food chain. They are at the mercy of everyone else most of the time. But at a few key moments, they rise to the top and they are beyond everyone's control. And these moments, even though engineered by the people at the top who like to believe that they control the outcomes and are acting in a crafty knowing way, are just as powerless as the victims that they wish to oppress
The General and his belief in the ideology, his frustrations with the people around him, the difficulty he has in getting out of an analogy that he thought was useful but turns out to be too all-encompassing
The Tiger and Nikitas, the righteous people in this group. The people who believe that it is their duty to tell the truth, whether the consequences be favorable or not. The people who are hard to pursue, the people on whom even their own mother turned. It is the sense of duty in the people like Nikitas that leads to an inability to ignore facts.
And finally, at the very end, The Commissioner. He was at the top of the food chain, and now he was imprisoned with the likes of Yango. He was orchestrating the events, and before he knew, he realized that he was part of a much larger plot with a much more important conductor. He decided to tell-all and thus, we understand the full story. Right from the first meeting about downy mildew to the last scene of the book, the General trying to pay off the Tiger
In all these narratives, the common thread is often Z. The other common thread is the system that they live in. Implicitly, they understand their place in the system. The General knows that by being at the meeting, he has undermined the command of the Chief. The Chief knows that by being there, he's basically taken over control from the Assistant Chief. The Commissioner can't act when a "full-blown General" is at the scene. Yango wants people to see him having coffee with The Commissioner. Whether they like it or not, whether their interest is on the left or the right, whether they are Communist-Zionist or Hellenic-Christians, the system has kept them aprised of their place and their responsibilities. The Baron doesn't see a choice when he's asked to beat up people, he must do it. He has a stall and he would only be asking for trouble if he were to deny to perform an act that ensures his place in the system.
This book forced me to ask the question: What system are you a part of? What is your place in the system? Do you know your responsibilities? Are you performing them? Are you doing the right thing?
Hard questions, and half imagined, I am sure.
Quotes
When he compared the number of patients he cured with the number of human beings the world over who could not buy even the most ordinary medicines, it was enough to make him shudder. The same with begging. What was the good of giving money to the poor? The balance of poverty on the planet remained unaltered. For the world to change, the system had to change.
-- Z on the importance of systemic change
His own pulse was calm. For the speech ahead, he’d merely made some notes. When you have something to say, it’s not difficult to say it. The difficulty comes when you have nothing to say and must talk anyway.
-- Z on oration
I imagine myself at a railway crossing and the guard has put up the chain between us, an endless train roars over the rails, with as many cars as the years I shall not see you. Only at fleeting moments, through the spaces between the cars, I catch a rare image of you waiting for me on the far side.
-- Mrs. Z on Z
What was politics anyway, Hatzis wondered. Did it hold nothing sacred? Or maybe there was no difference at all between the bourgeois parties? Sometimes the one rose, sometimes the other, like two peasants sharing the same mule, and the mule—the common people—just went on carrying them one after the other upon its back, understanding the change only from the difference in weight.
-- The Tiger on Politics
The first chapter where Z narrates in first person is the best chapter in the book. I always wondered what that character was thinking and what his beliefs were whenever I saw the movie, this chapter was incredibly enlightening on that account.
P.S: This was also the first time that I was able to fit all my #quote Kindle notes into the review of a book!
personally, I think that this is one of the best books by Crichton. Although, at the end of the book, you may end up being just that little bit scaredpersonally, I think that this is one of the best books by Crichton. Although, at the end of the book, you may end up being just that little bit scared to fly, believe me, the fear passes. and soon becomes empowering, so you can actually feel the wheel turning, as you take off, cruise or land. the avionics, the forces, everything is explained in much detail, but at every step, skipping the drab text book language.
**spoiler alert** Yay! So, the fourth book is done, and the series is finally left behind. The purely literary experience has been amazing.
I was able**spoiler alert** Yay! So, the fourth book is done, and the series is finally left behind. The purely literary experience has been amazing.
I was able to appreciate that way more than A Storm of Swords, because the sections in this book which were purely book-only (specifically the Iron Isles part) were beautifully written.
Now, the spoilers begin. SPOILERS AHEAD!
This book has been mostly Jaime, Cersei, Arya centric. Their story lines have gone on and developed into something that was way more than just the series.
So, a little back story here is required. I don't remember most of the details of season 5, I remember the major events, but not the details. As compared to season 4, which I remembered almost in complete detail.
Jaime has become a character that I have started to love even more. He started as the quintessential bad boy (brother? I won't even go into the twincest part). But now, after he was maimed, raised to Lord Commander of the Kingsguard and sent off by Cersei to recapture Riverrun, his character has become a tactician. Although, I would like to say that he has become more akin to Tywin, than before, I still can't shake that he did exactly what Tyrion would have done, in every case. In Edmure's case, when he decided his cousin Lancel's fate and so on. I am looking forward to the development of his character.
Now, on to the exasperating and frustrating twin, Cersei. When I was reading the books, I was clearly stunned by her actions. She continued to not pay heed to facts, she continued to think that dry one around her was trying to usurp Tommen's throne, when nothing of the sort was really going on. And finally, the way she armed the Faith, was just plain stupid. The first Aegon, the Conquerer, as mentioned in the books "dealt carefully around The Faith", while Maegor the Cruel, removed the weapons from the Faith's hands. To do something that Targaryens with dragons were afraid of, not a great move. Nah.
Her feeble attempts at killing Bronn, killing Margaery, which finally ended up in her getting caught by the new high septon has finally completed that circle, and it would be fair to say that she writ her own destruction.
Arya. Well, there's not much to say of her. Expect, wait for it. She's blind. I am pretty sure this was the last scene of Season 5. In the book, her own part of selling sea shells wasn't pushed too much, and neither was it stretched too much. I felt that the series was giving unnecessary screen time to the cute Maisey Williams, when her character wasn't really moving forward, but simply selling something. Her following someone, and then going into a brothel and a beheading scene. Well, all of it was drama cooked up to make it more interesting. The book summarises it beautifully "She entered a deserted alley". And some pages later, it is revealed that she tells the kind one about her transgression (not sure if it's one, though!) and day after that, she wakes up blind. So, no, horrible, eyes being scorched out by Jaqen scene). Honestly, I can't say I am looking forward to her characters chapters in the next book, but I wouldn't mind them, because I am curious about what is going to happen to her.
Samwell reached Oldtown with Gilly, and that was one hell of a voyage. Some more marked paragraphs about the Prince that was Promised (a.k.a Azor Ahai) which I totally loved.
And after all ththe see three characters, the last and final character who was introduced in this series and who is probably going to have a major play in deciding who sits on the iron throne at the end is Euron "Crows Eye" Greyjoy. As the HBO poster shared yesterday from their Facebook page confirmed, he is very much a part of season 6, and even his ship, the Silence, was shown in the poster.
His victory of the Shield Islands and the audacity with which he captures them is fantastic. I can't wait to read more about him. A POV chapter for him would be an icing on the cake. So long, it has been either his brother, Victarion (who has a nasty plan of his own) or of Aemon Damphair, their other sibling.
A haunting recounting of the facts of World War 2. It has a long Introduction section, which I think you should skip just to ensure that you start theA haunting recounting of the facts of World War 2. It has a long Introduction section, which I think you should skip just to ensure that you start the book with a blank slate in your mind. Apart from that, a solid history with a LOT of facts.
In the first half of the book, she looks at Eichmann himself and what his career looked like. In the second half, she looks at each country near Germany and talks about what the situation there was. Extremely objective, I never felt like she was leading me on or had an agenda of any sort. There has been a bunch of controversy around this book, but they have all been about who Arendt really is and not about the facts in this book (I don't think). So, I didn't read Arendt's note about the controversy at the end of the book.
There are several passages worth remembering in here. I will quote just a few:
Good can be radical; evil can never be radical, it can only be extreme, for it possesses neither depth nor any demonic dimension yet—and this is its horror!—it can spread like a fungus over the surface of the earth and lay waste the entire world.
The Nazis had succeeded in turning the legal order on its head, making the wrong and the malevolent the foundation of a new “righteousness.”
The attitude of the German people toward their own past, which all experts on the German question had puzzled over for fifteen years, could hardly have been more clearly demonstrated: they themselves did not much care one way or the other, and did not particularly mind the presence of murderers at large in the country, since none of them were likely to commit murder of their own free will; however, if world opinion—or rather, what the Germans called das Ausland, collecting all countries outside Germany into a singular noun—became obstinate and demanded that these people be punished, they were perfectly willing to oblige, at least up to a point.
This is not to say that such a sacrifice would have been morally meaningless. It would only have been practically useless. None of us had a conviction so deeply rooted that we could have taken upon ourselves a practically useless sacrifice for the sake of a higher moral meaning.” ... The holes of oblivion do not exist. Nothing human is that perfect, and there are simply too many people in the world to make oblivion possible. One man will always be left alive to tell the story. Hence, nothing can ever be “practically useless,” at least, not in the long run.
I absolutely loved this book. It is more of an academic book, with a lot about Crypto, but it gets better and better as it approaches the recent ways I absolutely loved this book. It is more of an academic book, with a lot about Crypto, but it gets better and better as it approaches the recent ways for Crypto. Both the historic part and the present part are very well written.
I have read the public-key Alice-Bob analogy twice. And probably the best thing I can say about this book is that I read this book more than three years ago, and even today, I like it enough to read some parts of it again and again. (Especially the last few chapters!)...more
For a moment or two, I considered that this might be a dystopia that has proven itself to be better than 1984, even. The more I thought about that, thFor a moment or two, I considered that this might be a dystopia that has proven itself to be better than 1984, even. The more I thought about that, the more I was convinced that it was definitely better than 1984, this book never explicitly explains anything. Be it the room that Offred lives in, the commander's chambers, the bedroom with Serena, the sitting room, the "RED" center, everything is described in pieces and among other people's dialogues or the setups for their dialogues. All in all, this is a VERY COMPLEX book to read, there are many moving parts and I can guarantee that there's almost nothing that can be understood (except for the expectation of the facts in the synopsis) for the first few chapters, but soon after that the story picks up. Somewhere around half the book, the back story is revealed: the fog clears and the dust settles, there's some end in sight at least. The next 100 pages go by rather fast and I didn't even notice the pages going by so fast. The story was THAT engrossing!
This book was shocking. The ease with which Offred, the protagonist describes the acceptance of the coup, the suspension of the constitution is frightening. It really puts the power of the government in perspective, there's almost nothing that the subjects (governed) can do when the government decides to take an extreme measure. Eg: Demonetisation in India in November 2016. It was announced at 8 pm, it was in effect starting midnight. Botched implementation, millions of man-hours wasted by people in standing in ATM queues, forcefully having to use digital means of payment effectively reducing the flow of portable cash in the system. Eerily enough, this is EXACTLY the situation that leads to the world Offred lives in and describes throughout the book.
The final few pages are again about hope and it's existence. I think this ending pushed it just that little bit above 1984. A dystopia is not about showing a bad fictional world, that's horror without the psychic elements. A dystopia should show a world that's clearly screwed up, but the characters in it haven't yet lost their sense of the "days before" this happened and haven't given up hope at getting even that small chance to improve their lives, in my opinion. This hope is what defines characters and what satisfies me as a reader.
In 1984, I really wanted a happy ending for Winston, but what ended up happening to him was hideous and depressing, rather than being thought provoking and something that gives you pause to think about what you want the end to be for the main character. For eg, I want Offred to be safe in a safe house and for her to escape to England and start a new family and see the shadows of Luke and her daughter in her husband and children there. The author made space for this possibility, for this "alternate ending", if you will, and that's what makes this book a sweet read!...more
This was an amazing book. It was anemia-inducing right from the beginning. I started reading it while travelling on a train, and completed close to 40This was an amazing book. It was anemia-inducing right from the beginning. I started reading it while travelling on a train, and completed close to 400 pages before I reached my destination.
It had been close to a month since I had read the last book, and I was not much of a reader, before I laid my hands on this book. It was just awesome.
Now, I will go into specifics. Spoilers of course, don't read on in case you are contemplating on reading this book. If you have a broad idea of the story line from watching Season 3 and Season 4 of Game of Thrones, then there is nothing to lose by reading on, all plot points must already be known to you anyway.
Some of the early chapters of this book are directly picked up from where the story was left hanging in the second book. Most notably, Catelyn's story line, in which the last book ends with the words and she asked Brienne for her sword
Having seen the TV Show, of course, I knew that she wasn't going to kill Jaime but in fact was going to release him and give him to Brienne to take him to King's Landing, but IMHO this part of the story is covered in far more detail in the books, and also gives Jaime a look for someone who has lost the one part of him that has defined him, his whole life, his right hand.
Jaime's chapters are perhaps some of the best in this book.
Next to Jaime, I would settle for Catelyn and Tyrion, simply because her POV covers most of the story of the third season of the show (everything leading up to the Red Wedding). It has Robb baked into it, and of course, her own fears for Sansa and Arya and every other Stark.
Next I would like to dwell upon the story line that Davos talks about and more importantly, Stannis' further plans for the realm. Davos' last chapter is close to the beginning of the book and it ends with the words and he started reading. It can be calculated pretty easily that he is reading the letter from the Night's Watch, calling on all the kings to help them with men to fight the war that matters. There are a lot more references to the Azor Ahai or the Prince that was Promised. In Samwell's last chapter of the book, it is made clear that Aemon has heard of the War for the Dawn and also knows everything there is to know about the Prince that was Promised as well. Although, he seems to mistrust Melisandre because he questions Samwell about whether he felt any heat from the prophesied sword Lightbringer that Stannis wields and shows to both Samwell and Aemon. It is not made clear whether Aemon acccepts King Stannis as Azor Ahai, but simply questions Mel about it.
Another one of Joff's cruelties is the revelation that he was the one who tried to kill Bran by sending the guy with the dagger, of whom a chunk was chewed away by Bran's direwolf. This was completely unexpected, and while the series leaves you hanging, the book does not and throws it right in your face, I, for one was totaly blindsided by the notion. Tyrion uncovers it and later Jaime and Cersei do as well.
Of course, the second gruesome wedding leading to the killing of Tyrion and the subsequent killing of Tywin. Jaime has a re-union with Tyrion and Tywin does say that he does not mean to let Tyrion die. If that's true or not has been left to be speculated on till eternity. I have believed that Tywin has always said that family is the only thing that stays on, and knows that if history were to say that one Lannister was beheaded while his Lord Father was the King's Hand and the King himself was half Lannister, then it would reflect really badly on their family's name and it would be in his interest to not let Tyrion die. Although, we must as always tread with caution in this series. (Throwback to Ned's beheading in the first book)
In closing, I would like to say that I have only now completed reading this book and can't wait to start reading the next one, and probably complete all five books as soon as I can just so I can enjoy the sixth book soon as it releases.That's what ASOIAF does to you. It makes you crave for more, even for forthcoming books.
tl;dr It is an amazing book and if you follow the series closely and want to know more about the exact mind-set of the characters and what led them to do whatever they did, then, you should certainly give it a read....more
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