My notes on reading experience July onwards. The books I read before July in this year 2022 are here.
My immediate next step is I need to memorize the spelling of my new favorite author Sylvain Neuvel. I read 4 books by him in 2 months. First 2 books of 2 trilogy. Last books of both are not in library yet.
Most of the books this year brought me personal comfort & peace; answered the questions that were pestering me. Appropriate Self-help books have a good reason for existence and I am just finding out.
My book count is up. My count is almost 18+ books this year. I re-read my old favs for comfort (like Hunger Games, Tintin, etc). I think this count has been going up every year. Nice change, I say. I started reading more books to get away from the mindless-scrolling phone addiction that has been on steroids' this year.
Em And The Big Hoom - by Jerry Pinto
I have always been aware of the caliber of Mr Jerry Pinto by his newspaper & magazine publications and fame; this was the first book I read. This book won the Shahitya Acakami award in 2016 and I feel very well deserved. And I was happy to find his book in a GA, USA Library.
Very well written book, it has brought immense comfort to me. I don't even feel guilt, on how much pain & suffering is captured in the book and all of it non-fictional. Its because it got me answers to many questions. The book captures the grudge holding that happens in large family through their long-lasting relationships, even if in begrudged way.
No movie or even OTT series can cover the roller coaster of his family. No acting can convey what even the bland reporting is doing. I can almost see all of them; maybe I already have.
80s Bombay almost had an epidemic of such cases. I have always been curious why? Also depicted in movies like "Honeymoon Travels" - Bomen Irani part of movie.
Something about restrictions telling against marriage, not wanting kids but having them , all pile up in their head. Also the suffocations induced by financial limitations, no resources , no budget for travel or hobbies or acquiring beauty objects to satisfy or divert minds.
This superstition of acknowledging love or good stuff or happy birthday to their children. It’s almost like they are worried someone will hear & spoil it. Power of superstition can drive anyone batshit crazy. "Angel roaming around can hear what you say & make it true" was used as caution to stop any kids or naïve people from bragging or saying ill. Extrapolated someone believing it from childhood will start seeing things.
But it always bothered me that when there is no financial or health or personal or other misfortune, why they create relationship troubles ? Because once broken or splintered, they were never fixed again.
PSA ask us to limit resource usage to save earth from thrash. But that is a surefire way to drive 7 billion humans to craziness..
Noteworthy passages:
Page 21-22: "Em's mother spoke in code. She omitted almost all the important words in each sentence. She had had far too many languages drummed into her ears - first Konkani in Goa, then Burmese in Rangoon , then Bengali in wartime Calcutta and now English, in which her children spoke and dreamed. It had taken away most of her vocabulary. She communicated through gestures, facial expressions and the assumption that everyone knew what she was talking about. "
Page 26 - "Hierarchy breaks down and revenger must be had." to describe a class which just got a nervous teacher.
Page 68 - Analogy of tower is perfect -
"Love is never enough. Madness is enough. It is complete, self sufficient onto itself. You can only stand outside it, as a women might stand outside a prison in which her lover is locked up. From time to time, a well-loved face will peer out and love floods back. A scrap of cloth flutters and it becomes a sign and a code and a message and all that you want it to ne. Then it vanishes and you are outside the dark tower again. At times, when I was young, I wanted to be inside the tower. so I could understand what it was like. But I knew even then, that I did not want to be a permanent resident of the tower. I wanted to visit meant nothing because you could always leave. You're a tourist; she a resident."
Page 137 - "It puzzled me, this ability to fight over things that had happened years ago until I realized that Em and Granny could only fight over things that had happened years ago. They used them as placeholders for the slights and hurts of the present. In ten years time, whatever was bothering them now would spill out in the open, when it could be handled just that much better"
The Art of Gathering - How we meet and why it matters - by Priya Parker
I managed to scrambled through and finish this book on the last day of Dec, so I had to update it in this blogpost.
The book is very impressive. Given the authors extensive work, every chapter is filled with different instances of gathering. And each kind of meeting, conference, wedding, parties etc is used to explain a certain principle. That makes it all interesting.
The only other book I found talking formally about hosting was the fiction novel Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. I found it hard to follow, because of its hard language. But at an young age, I got an idea of the power of a party.
Most of my work life have been defined and structured by meetings. So with The Art of Gathering, I found the great breakup and methods for different aspects of a meeting. Some of them may sound incredulous to apply in our situation. But it obviously worked in that situation. What might be missing in the book, is the resistance to some of these methods, that would have happened. Knowing those, would help in being prepared to be mocked while we try it out.
But the good part is reading all this, opens our mind to find solutions to better our own gatherings.
I heard of this book after attending a live event by Priya Parker hosted by MURAL. Now MURAL is a great tool for making even remote meetings very interactive. So it made sense for her to share about the book. To know more, here is the YouTube interview of Priya Parker.
Noteworthy passages:
The one on Page 132-133 is something I have been repeating a lot in my house about device usage - there are millions of dollars & hours of work involved in overcoming our willpoer of giving up device.
Page 120: If etiquette is about sustaining unchanging norms, pop-up rules are about trying stuff out.
Page 121: Etiquettes allows people to gather because they are the same. Pop-up rules allow people to gather because they are different - yet open to having the same experience.
Page 132-133: Making it an individual's responsibility not to be distracted, Harris told The Atlantic, "is not acknowledging that there's a thousand people on the other side of the screen whose job is to break down whatever responsibility I can maintain."
A Man Called Ove - Fredrik Backman
I LOLed at many places. I read it all in 3 days of reading. It's a fast pace book; pages keep moving from one to another. Its set in a cozy setting - a housing community with an assortment of interesting characters.
This para summarizes the book aptly:
Page 230: Considering how they are constantly preventing him from dying, these neighbors of his are certainly not shy when it comes to driving a man to the brink of madness and su?ci?e. That's for sure.
The book is a gem and ends with a happy ending. Found it after seeing the Tom Hanks movie trailer.
Third Culture Books - The Experience of Growing Up Among Worlds - By David C Pollock and Ruth E Vad Reken
Most emotional book for me, in a long time. I filled up a separate blogpost with notes from this book.
The book lists a load of frustrations that we suffer all our life, Not knowing the real reason & assuming our reaction from a totally different reason like family background or luck or the entire world. This book lists them with all with explanation & hence brought me peace with a lot of points.
Steal Like An Artist - by Austin Kleon
I can't every begin to say how beautiful and important this book was. I want to buy & gift it to my favorite people.
Starstruck - Cosmic Journey of Neil DeGrasse Tyson
Good one. When NDT wrote on his FB abut the book being banned in some Philly library, I needed to check it out; so got it from my local library.
Take Them To Stars series - by Sylvain Neuvel - A History of What Comes Next (1) & Until the Last of Me (2)
Since I couldn't finish the previous trilogy, I hopped on to the next trilogy by same author. Totally different in tone, language, setting & everything.
Again my favorite genre of space science fiction. Here the desire to reach the stars, so no real space adventure. But lot of adventure on earth, in different countries, in innumerable time-eras and cultures.
First of all such an intriguing premise. And then executed well. The multi generation of ladies meant multi stories from decades & centuries & cultures. Multi cultures are refrenced - those who have been involved in astronomy in some way but yet to spot India yet; lets see in 3rd book, not a big deal.
The gore in Book One was hard to digest and one particular story gave me nightmares I have to say. Back story for it based on true incidents upset me & I had to take a break from reading the last of the book. No such violence in the Book Two.
About the violence in the Book One, made me doubt about maybe the villain & victim are interchanged & not what is portrayed.
In Book One, the information section in the end is multiple pages. Every historical reference in the book (which is a lot) is provided its real back story. That was very educational.
The Further Reading section in Book Two is an entire chapter in itself, with each that can send you down the wiki rabbit hole.
There is even a Spotify playlist of songs which named the chapters. Haven’t enjoyed a true blue space s I-go in a long long time.
The Diet Trap Solution - Train Your Brain To Lose Weight and Keep It Off for Good - by Dr Judith S Beck & Deborah Beck Busis
I found this book useful, as it was not about dictating what to eat or recipes. It was about how to handle situations, which throw us off from our diet. Holidays, traveling, family pressures, eating to seem nice, etc there is a chapter & different strategies for each.
Older Reading lists: Entire Book list | 2022 (1) | 2021 (2) | 2021(1) | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 |
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