Book Review: The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

The Girl on the Train is a decently paced, entertaining & an adequately well crafted thriller. 

The first person storytelling where the principal narrator is an unlikeable human being; someone who makes your insides squirm & yet makes you root for them - is difficult to pull off and I think this book has managed to do that fairly well.

The premise is different and original - a depressed, alcoholic woman - who on her way to work via train everyday - likes to watch and obsess over a seemingly perfect couple living close to the train tracks - doing their household, routine things. The story starts from this innocuous fascination of this woman with the couple.

But then again, it becomes too messy and melodramatic after a while. You sort of figure out who the killer is and the characters take such an unnecessarily long & winded path to get to the conclusion that you wish there was a way to fast-forward the whole thing. To be honest, even though the mystery is good - I found the execution of the ending just meh.

In trying to make every character a complex, hot mess, some of them have actually turned out to be pathetic & pitiable.

Overall, I would give it a 3/5. 
Give it a try with realistic expectations and turning a blind eye to all the hype (this was apparently rated as one of top books of 2015).

Book Review: 'The Man in the High Castle' by Philip K. Dick

Insanely entertaining, cleverly written & an intriguing piece of storytelling by Philip K Dick. 

The Man in the High Castle (TMITHC) falls under the category of alternative history fiction. But it is so much more than just the action and the drama that the characters in Dick's alternate version of the world go through. It is a profound commentary on the meaning and essence of a person's identity.

It's the 1960s. The Axis powers - Germany and Japan - have won the Second World War. Between the two, they basically control the world. The United States is split between 3 regions - everything east of Mississippi river is governed by the Nazi Germany (called the United States of America), the west coast is governed by Imperial Japan (called the Pacific States of America) and the middle states act as a buffer between the two 'countries'.

The story is told from the point of view of 6 or 7 people - living in the Japan controlled San Francisco. They are not 'heroes', they are everyday people - people who live and have no choice but to accept the world they live in - the world in which slavery is still legal, the world in which Jews are still being prosecuted.

The story adds an additional 'meta' level when in this alternate history, there is a famous  book - which talks about what would have happened had the Allies won the war. All the characters are reading, interpreting and philosophizing about this 'what-would-have-been'  scenario ! 

No matter how much it may appear so, the book is not "action-packed" - in the traditional sense. The point of the book is not to construct a dramatic action-fueled, gun-slinging heroes, but to point out how a person's psyche accepts the world around them. how it shapes their values, their fears, their joys. The characters ruminate about their choices, their day to day actions and the world around them in general. 

In fact, fair warning, at places the story becomes really trippy, borderline hallucinatory. And that is the beauty of the book!

The author points out, very astutely I must add, the racial and ethnic prejudices that we all have. The cross cultural miscommunication is depicted very well. It is interesting to see how peoples' sense of self and identity could be sculpted and influenced by history. 

In summary, a solid 4/5. Recommended.

Book Review: "Being Mortal" by Atul Gawande

"If end of life discussions were an experimental drug, the FDA would approve it." - one of my favorite quotes from "Being Mortal".

Yes - the book is about mortality, aging and the slow, steady descent into the oblivion.

And yes - it does make you feel a bit uncomfortable since you are forced to think about your own mortality and the mortality of your loved ones.

But the book makes a few great points and it is definitely worth swallowing the hard pill.

We all accept & acknowledge death as a distant entity - something that we can deal with when the time comes. We prefer not to think, discuss or even entertain the notion of 'the end' - and understandably so - who would ? "Being Mortal" points out that it is never too early to at least give one's own mortality a thought. 

Instead of bombarding with too much medical jargon & statistical data, the author takes you through various stories of real life people - his patients in fact. The book explains what getting old means from a physiological, medical standpoint - but also points out the human & psychological aspects of it. The pitfalls of 'just-fix-what-is-broken-right-now' attitude of modern medicine is explained pretty well. 

The book talks at length about the existing facilities & institutions in place. But it doesn't sugar coat it. It blatantly points out the depressing state of affairs at these facilities & logically explains how we arrived at such a state. It does mention some refreshing options too - like hospice care, assisted living etc.

We always prefer the most aggressive procedures, the most modern harmful-but-effective medicines, the most risky surgeries - and it does make sense in 99.99% of the scenarios, but not always.

Failure to recognize that the aged and the sick might have priorities beyond merely staying alive and living longer is important. 

I have to admit that the book definitely made me think about this fact.

I did not find the book too preachy. It clearly accepts that we do Not have answers. 

But it at least raises and asks us to think about the right questions.

All in all, definitely recommended.

It probably wasn't the right decision to start reading this book on my birthday, or maybe... it was just the perfect timing for a book like this. :-)

Book Review: "Tales From the Road" by Aniket Ketkar

"Tales From the Road" is a great read. It is a collection of experiences by an accountant turned full-time backpacker as he navigates his way through SouthEast Asia. And behind these experiences is a perceptive mind making a commentary on human nature, thought process of young adults & convincing us why sometimes just having plain fun is good for the soul. :)

It is not a travel book, nor is it a reference book for wannabe backpackers.

Traveling an unknown country with unknown people, barebones planning, self imposed spending limit & still having the time of his life - reading some of his experiences is really intoxicating. The author paints a beautiful picture of different mountains, volcanoes, jungles that he hikes through. He introduces us to the many different characters & fellow backpackers he meets during his journey. It is fun at times to read about his 'escapades' and you can't help but admire how he still manages to stick to his tight financial budget. It is fascinating to read about the thought process, the reasons & the philosophy that backpackers from different countries, different cultures, different backgrounds have.

But beyond all of this, it is a subtle commentary on human nature, the 'artificial bubble' as the author calls it, of ambition, material wants & familiarity of routine life. The author does not just lay down these facts - he 'arrives' at them via his experiences & this personal realization of sorts does not make it preachy at all ! That I believe is a win for this book.

A slight nit-pick I have -
I wish the book had included phonetic pronunciations of names & places. Maybe its just me but it always helps to associate the correct intended sound to the words.

Disclaimer: I know the author, Aniket Ketkar, personally through mutual friends. And after reading this book, my respect for this dude has increased manifold ! 

You can get the book from Amazon here

Freakonomics !

Not sure how to put this mildly - but stop whatever you are doing and read this book - seriously!
I kid of course - but not really.

This is by far one of the very few books that are educational - almost to the level of being an eye-opener - and yet entertaining as anything!
In the prologue, writers say they are going to "explore the hidden side of everything" - and that perfectly sums up the book.

The anecdotes mentioned, the stories told, the detailed descriptions of analyses done, the conclusions drawn are all presented in a factual, data-driven and statistical manner. They are not just hand-waving or theorizing - the evidence presented is convincing enough - at least to the naive, having-no-prior-economics-expertise me.


The book explains how important - knowing what to measure and how to measure it from a pile of data - is. It forces the reader to confront the notion that incentives (moral, economical, social) are a cornerstone of life and that replacing moral policing with an honest assessment of the data will reveal how conventional wisdom is just a by-product of convenience or sometimes how conventional wisdom is just plain wrong.


That being said, barring one or two exceptions, the examples and stories are all from developed, relatively stable socio-political communities and primarily from an American society's point of view.

This is understandable since the authors are American and they had access to data mostly from America.
But I believe the questions they ask and answers they seek need to be analysed and dissected with a much large and diverse set of people - where the primary notions of incentives and survival are a lot different and complex.

Again, the questions that writers ask might not themselves seem fundamentally important or they may appear just "meh" - but the motivations behind seeking these answers and the conclusions that can be drawn from these answers are fundamentally important to our understanding of the society and maybe to just better understand ourselves!

For example, a chapter tries to answer whether the name given by parents to their child matters in the child's subsequent success in life or not. Even though the obvious answer is 'name does not make any damn difference' - the way the authors comb and analyse the data - the way they present how changing economic, educational and moral values of the parents do matter and how a child's Name is not 'causal' but 'co-related' to his/her success in life is very impressive.

So anyway, I'll shut up about the book and let you get on with it.
Hands down, a must-read.

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