Book Review of "Tuesdays with Morrie"

Tuesdays with Morrie is one of those books that I found to be 5-star worthy in some parts and 1-star or even zero-star worthy in some. Maybe that’s because I should have read this at a time when my tolerance for preachy or pseudo-self-help books was high or maybe when the cynicism of being in the early 30s hadn’t settled in.

When you learn how to die, you learn how to live.

 

The book chronicles the story of Dr. Morrie Schwartz, a University Professor diagnosed with ALS - a lengthy, slow, and painful death sentence. But with this compelling premise, the book, IMHO, is just an overly dramatic, drawn-out discussion about life priorities. There are definitely some heartfelt moments that make you stop and reflect but those are few and their impact gets diminished by the saccharine and not-so-subtle wannabe tear-jerking prose.

Anyhoo, I wish I had enjoyed this book, but I couldn’t. Let’s say it’s just me and not the book and move on; 3/5 

Book Review of "Children of Time"

“Children of Time” is an insanely imaginative and brilliantly crafted piece of writing! This may sound like a cliche but reading this book is akin to watching an artist paint a masterpiece. It might seem slow at the start, might seem to meander a bit but by the time the last brush stroke is done, the whole picture; the entire story comes alive and leaves you awestruck. This is not your typical SciFi and you should probably steer clear of it if you are looking for aliens and spaceships and such. What the writer Adrian Tchaikovsky has achieved here is exceptional and deserves 5 stars. I am going to leave here with, what was to me, one of the best lines from the book:

“If there had been some tiny bead present in the brain of all humans, that had told each other, ‘hey, they are all like you’; that had drawn some thin silk thread of empathy, person to person, in a planet-wide net—what might then have happened? Would there have been the same wars, massacres, persecutions, and crusades?”

Book Review of "Legion #3 - Lies of the Beholder"

The third and the final novella of the Legion series is as unforgettable as the first two - a well made cocktail of crime & science fiction with a dash of some psycho-thriller elements. It’s fast-paced, action-packed, and comes with a few cheesy quotable quotes. My complaint is the same as before - wish the book was a little bit longer! 

“Who cares?” I said. “Yes, it’s all in my head. But pain is ‘all in my head’ too. Love is ‘all in my head.’ All the things that matter in life are the things you can’t measure! The things our brains make up! Being made-up doesn’t make them unimportant.”

Recommended for a perfect weekend afternoon popcorn entertainment!

Book Review of "Troubled Blood"

I am extremely conflicted about this book. In all honesty, there was no need for this to be close to 1000 pages long! The main case or the main murder mystery that the “Troubled Blood” centers around is meticulously crafted, all questions and loose ends exquisitely tied up and there are definitely quite a few chapters of pure JKR gold. The character arcs of both Robin and Strike are beautifully developed and the will-they won’t-they relationship dynamic is executed very well without seeming like a boring cliche. 

But then, you have to also sit through a lot of unnecessary fluff, a set of characters that don’t really add anything to the whole story and sometimes just bad editing. I seriously think the editors need to grow a pair, stop being afraid of JKR, and actually start editing the Strike novels. 

About the brouhaha around this book being transphobic, I’ll say read the book completely and then decide how much you will let JKR's personal comments affect your perception of her artwork. IMO, this book is as transphobic as reality shows are unscripted.

Book Review of "From Tryst To Tendulkar"

This is not a bad read, it is just not as good as it could have been, especially if you have followed the writer’s - Balaji Vishwanathan’s - answers on Quora. A 3.5/5 from me.

A book solely aimed to capture the History of Independent India sounded very interesting. I still remember how the school history books would just stop after the Independence struggle, as though anything that happened after that was just not worth teaching the kids. That coupled with the fact that I have been a follower of Balaji Vishwanathan’s answers on Quora increased my expectations. Unfortunately though, my high hopes turned out to be futile and IMO, this book feels like a sequence of good Quora answers stitched together without a cohesive narrative thread. 

The main weakness is its short length. In ensuring that everything fits within 250 pages, each chapter feels rushed and unless you already have some context, you are left catching at straws figuring out the missing details. 

I applaud the writer though for talking about “contentious” topics in our country’s recent past - like the Shah Bano Case, the Mandal Commission, the Operation Blue Star and the IPKF embarrassment - in detail and applauding as well as criticizing the actions taken. Some chapters and/or discussions are true gems -reminding one, unfortunately of the writer’s well researched quora answers. I can’t help but think that this book could have turned out better had there not been a hard requirement to fit everything in 250 pages. Anyway, with all said and done, 3.5/5.