Book-Review

Author : Daniel Keyes Yes, there are spoilers. Please don’t read this if you haven’t already read the book and intend to. Charlie was just a guy who wanted to fit in, you know? He just wanted to be smart “like everyone else” and understand what people said and..fit in. That’s why he tried so hard. He jumped through every hoop Dr.Nemur and Dr. Strauss showed him and he got his wish. He became smart. He became smarter. He became the smartest person humankind ever possibly knew. Life would be so simple and happy if that was the end of the story. We love happy endings, don’t we. We want the underdog to succeed. We want a triumphant person at the end of a story. Maybe that’s what we get at the end; I’m not going to give anything away. But I will tell you about the process to that end. Charlie Gordon has an IQ of 68 when the story begins and life has been extremely hard for him - being abandoned by his parents, working at a bakery where he seems to have been given a chance from his perspective, but we can see they’re plain bullies there, having fun at Charlie’s expense and he bears it all with a grin and a laugh, because he wants to have friends. He thinks they Are his friends. And that heart of his is what makes you want to take the entire journey with him through his journal, go through everything he’s gone through, through his memories of his mother - Rose, his father -Matt and his sister, Norma…. The only glimmer of sunshine Charlie has or seems to have through this gloomy cloud of a fast-paced IQ-rising life of his is Alice Kinnian, one of his tutors at the facility where Charlie is to undergo treatments and eventually therapy sessions. In her, Charlie finds love and safety and I love that Daniel Keyes had her as a character. Another character that is constantly alluded to and is really, the titular character is Algernon, a mouse that Charlie is pitted against at the beginning. It’s heartening to see how Charlie’s relationship with Algernon changes, even if one-sided - first as a goal, then as a rival, then as a subordinate and subsequently as a pet. The symbolism of Algernon’s microcosmic journey is telling and when flowers Are placed for Algernon, one can’t help but feel the ground drop from under them even if they have been expecting it. At the core of it, Flowers for Algernon is, in my opinion, about relationships - the relationship with one’s self, with those you count friends, those you count lovers, those you count superiors and others. Underneath the veil of a man climbing a ladder of IQs was a man .. ...

I normally write my-version-of-reviews after I’m done reading a book, but this time I thought I’d do things differently because of the nature of the book I’m reading, which is, Guards! Guards! by Sir Terry Pratchett. It is the 8th book in the publishing order and the 1st in the City Watch series. Initially, it seemed as though the book was following the Hero’s Journey …well…not so much a Hero but the journey of a dwarf who is not quite a dwarf - Carrot. He’s sent to the City of Ankh-Morpokh to do that which is the highest calling of a human - “join the City Watch”. Quite voluntarily as opposed to how people normally join the Watch. It is here that he meets his reporting officer Captain Vimes, Corporal “Nobby” Nobbs and Seargent Colon. They’d been quite content in their lack of a purpose for quite a while, allowing crime to thrive and all that. But Carrot’s arrival has coincided with a genuine need for the Watch to well…watch. And act. A dragon has been sighted flying and razing the city and it’s the Watch’s duty (among other aspirational, self-proclaimed Dragon Hunters) to take it down, so to speak. ...

This post was originally published on Medium on Sep 13, 2018 and has now been migrated here because Medium sucks. I’ve been putting off starting a fantasy fiction saga like this for a long time now; the only ones I remember reading prior to starting this have been Harry Potter and Lord of The Rings; and that was a decade ago. Since then I’ve read a few hundred books but they’ve all been standalone novels. The only thing that comes close to a series since then was the Millenium Trilogy by Steig Larsson but that doesn’t fall in this category. My reasons for not having ventured into these waters again are frankly, juvenile — chief among them and the only one worth mention being the fear that nothing will come close to the aforementioned works, which is, if the rest of the reading populace is to be believed, a blatant fallacy. ...

Author : George Orwell This book was a roller coaster of emotions, culminating in the equivalent of a huge tidal wave crashing against a boulder, scattering into indiscernible droplets of water. The story describes a dystopian world (or is it?) where every action of every individual in the land of Oceania is monitored by an all-seeing, all-knowing body called “Big Brother”. The system is one devoid of free thought and speech, the very first scene opening with scenes of hatred towards the only attempt at a revolting entity (Goldstein). Amid all this, there are still those who understand that this is not how the natural order of things should be, that they should not be rewriting history to match the present or the past predictions of Big Brother, that people should not be “vaporised” for committing thought crimes and the story follows one such individual — Winston. His journey from cautious citizen to a reckless revolutionary is a breath of fresh air in the suffocating environment of Oceania, as he finds a cohort in the plucky, young Julia. Together they dream and scheme and believe they aren’t alone, and find this to be true when they meet O’Brien. ...

Estimated time to read: 2 minutes This is the first design-related book I’m reading. I’ve read blogs in the past though. I picked this up because of its rave reviews and my own interest in wanting to design software and represent data better. Here I list some notes I made from the book peppered with my own thoughts during the reading. Chapter 1 : The psychopathology of everyday things ...

AUTHOR : AGATHA CHRISTIE *No spoilers * The 23rd Hercule Poirot story, but only the fourth Christie I’ve ever read. Perhaps I should have started in sequence of publication, I don’t know, but no matter. The story here begins with pain. Dental pain that Hercule Poirot faces, like every man and is eyeing his fellow patients as he waits at a dentist’s’, with great suspicion. It is true and AC displays some brilliant observational skills of the human psyche when she relates personal pain as being projected onto the world, giving one a negative view of everyone while in that state. Shortly after being freed of said pain, Poirot is given news of the passing of his dentist, Dr. Morley and this is really where our story begins. An innocent dentist is dead; did he kill himself or was he killed? The see-saw of this question keeps shifting sides throughout the story till the very end and every co-patient of Poirot’s or co-inhabitant of Dr.Morley’s establishment at the time of the death is understandably a piece of the puzzle. There aren’t many remarkable characters in this book, save Poirot himself. Inspector Japp (who I’ve not seen in any of the other books I’ve read) and Poirot share a something of a cross between a Sherlock-Lestrade-and-Sherlock-Watson-ish bond, chiefly because of Poirot’s more amiable personality and that is nice to see. The story is fast paced for a while but towards the 60% mark, it seems to start dragging a little. I haven’t felt this in the other 3 works of hers I’ve read. But towards the end, it accelerates again to the point of impossibility of putting the book down because “you Just Have to Know”. ...

Author : Scott Lynch Disclaimer 1 - SPOILER ALERT Disclaimer 2 - I had no frame of reference for comparison in the previous book. This time I do. And I intend to make full use of the privilege. There will be multiple references to “The Lies of Locke Lamora”, hereby abbreviated TLoLL. I started this as soon as I was done with book #1 in the Gentleman Bastard series and that’s saying something about how captivated the first book’s world building left me that I didn’t want to get out of it. This, the 2nd book in the series was very good as well. Did I like it as Much as I did Book 1? No. But it still stood well on its own. Feels familiar to how Well of Ascension was in comparison to The Final Empire (Mistborn #2 and #1 respectively.) If TLoLL had us following Locke Lamora and Jean Tannen solely on land, this time their time was distributed between both land and sea. The book opens to a present-scene of confrontation and double-crossing (Scott Lynch wastes no time) and then we’re taken to a time when their previous story ended and this one began - aboard a ship sailing for Tal Verrar from Camorr. As in TLoLL, here as well, we have multiple timelines being narrated - a timeline of preparation for their activities and setting the stage for the “play” they mean to enact around unsuspecting characters and another timeline 2 years hence where the trickery is afoot. The main antagonists, so to speak, are Requin & Selendri and Maxilan Stragos and Merrain. Initially all Locke and Jean wanted to do was hoodwink Requin at the Sinspire and escape, but they find themselves unwillingly at the mercy of Stragos after the latter poisons them and enlists them as his contractors, giving them the task of stirring up trouble from the seas and bringing back piracy to Tal Verrar, so that he, Stragos could defeat them using his navy and seem victorious in the eyes of the city, so as to seem in control as opposed to his current shunted standing. This puts quite the dent in Locke and Jean’s plans, so they have to improvise their plans to factor this new development and Locke decides to do what he does best - pretend to be a double agent, trying to gain the favors of Requin to beat Stragos, who the Master of the Sinspire does not like either. Following this brief bit of initial setup on land, the duo are sent to sea to pretend Captain and First Mate of a ship called The Red Messenger, assisted and directed behind the scenes by an actual seamaster, Caldris. Unfortunately Caldris dies while they are at sea and they are found out by the crew and mutinied. This is the first of admittedly very few hints of convenience I felt Scott Lynch exploited as he introduced Captain Drakasha and her ship, the very people who the Archon needed as pawns for his plan, into the mix, with no real struggle on Locke and Jean’s part except a few hours of sailing on a boat. Aside from that and a couple other mild issues, I felt the overall plot was well done and tied together. The finesse of TLoLL was missing as was a lot of the banter and Father Chains, Calo, Galdo and Bug were missed. There was also a gaping hole in the non-usage of an “ally” they picked up as they were training for their tower-jumping escapade at The Sinspire. But I’m sure that was a calculated move. ...

Author : Brandon Sanderson Preceded by : Alloys of Law Succeeded by : Bands of Mourning The second book in the Wax and Wayne trilogy (Not sure if there’s a fourth book to come?) is titled “Shadows of Self” and is titled so, in my opinion, because there’s some heavy introspection that goes on in this book - both on Wax and Wayne’s part. We get some deeper insights into what makes these characters tick in this book. The plot revolves around a rogue murderer that’s going around creating all sorts of mayhem in the city, shaking its very political pillars in the process, starting with the killing of the governor’s brother and it’s upto Wax, Wayne and Marasi to get to the bottom of it. Brandon Sanderson’s magic system itself is somewhat diminished in its use here and the book seems to revolve more around the characters’ interpersonal relationships and how they grow in the process. ...

Author : Austin Kleon When I read books like these, the reaction is as I expect to have going in - very little surprise overall. But what I do get out of them are reminders. In this case, to “Show your work”. Austin Kleon is compelling with his ten tips on what he believes are different ways in which you can show your work. Work that is tangible, work that is an act of constant progress and work that while humble, is effective. Both, from a sense that demonstrates your growing skill in any field that you choose to show your work in, and in a sense that you have the satisfaction of having journaled work sufficiently to look back on time well spent. Now much of what I’ve said above are what I interpretively took away from the book. and not what was exactly said in it. And I think that is the job of the book well done. In fact, at this point in time I cannot even remember the ten tips that he’s provided. I think there is one that relates to social media, one that tells you that if you show your work, people will find you, a couple of quotes and …I don’t know. More stuff. But the point is, it made me remember to work on sharing my work but more importantly, Doing the work. Work isn’t meant to be done to be shared. The sharing should be a natural action that follows the doing, but the doing is not an option. And while I don’t remember much of the Content of the book, I do remember that I found myself disagreeing with very little of what he said. This was a good book for simply reminding me about things I knew but hadn’t taken consciously seriously. I will likely read it again. ...

Author : Leigh Bardugo Succeeded by : Crooked Kingdom I didn’t know what to expect when I started the book. I just associated it with the word “heist”. I didn’t read the blurb at the back for some reason before I started it, but I was given to understand that it was good , so I decided to give it a shot. I went in thinking about “Ocean’s 11”, “Now you see me” etc. I was pleasantly surprised to discover the characters as they were being fleshed out, each more enigmatic than the last - the best of all being the main anti-hero Kaz Brekker. What a well-created character! But just as I falling in love with him, the other characters - Jasper, Inej , Nina and even Matthias and Wylan were given their backstories and it was impossible to restrict my affection to just the bastard of the Barrels. I liked that none of them were..perfect. They all had their flaws, their weaknesses and most of all, motives. Each of them had a reason for being a part of the plot. This is a good segue into the plot itself - It wasn’t a straight B & E and the number of obstacles in their path were to be many. The fact that Matthias and Wylan were familiar with the target destination was of assistance without making it too convenient. The minor twists towards the 60-70% mark were very welcome even though things were never boring, even till then. I loved the non-overt romantic relationship between Matthias and Nina, the description of discovery of feelings Kaz has for Inej and vice-versa and even the dynamics between Jesper and Wylan. It was a nice journey to see of a somewhat dysfunctional team coming to trust each other over the course of the mission. The introduction of the Grishaverse terminologies took some getting used to but despite not having read the other books in the universe, I was still able to understand the different specialties of each of the Grisha - the Fabrikators, the Heartrenders etc. Good magic system. All of this takes place in a city called Ketterdam and Bardugo builds place descriptions just as vividly as she builds character sketches. Overall, I completely enjoyed the book and, being part of a duology definitely has a story to complete. I look forward to reading “Crooked Kingdom”. 4/5. ...