Pratik
What a disappointing read. Initially, it was meant to be a trilogy but now Yarros wants to make it five books coz reasons 🙄 I liked the first book and excused the passable second one as something she was using to set up the grand finale. But this ended up as another rambling and often frustrating over the same angst and fights between Violet and Xaden.
In fact, other characters also seemed to get tired of their own existence. Ridoc, one of the more likable characters in the book, offers the best review of the lead pair’s relationship:
“And it’s always the same fight.” He lifts his hand to his chest. “I’ll trust you if you stop keeping sckings!” He drops the hand and scowls. “It’s my secretive nature that attracted you, and why can’t you just stay out of harm’s way for five f*cking minutes?”
You couldn’t have reviewed it better. Sheesh!
One of the most delightful books I've read in a while. Well, ‘read' (I started with the ebook and switched to the audiobook halfway through). Gretchen walks us through internet folklore right from its origins to current usage. The chapters on emojis and memes are particularly great since I've lived through (or still am?) their popularity phase. Language, as Gretchen emphasizes over and over again, is and always has been fluid and the internet is just another medium where it has flourished. Whether you are an avid user of memes and emojis or are completely baffled by them, this book will enlighten you in more ways than one.
PS. the audiobook is one of the better produced ones I've heard in recent times. I think the joy that Gretchen feels toward her topic radiates through her voice that she uses to great effect even with certain unpronounceable internet references.
Five stars may be a one star too many given the criticisms faced by this book. While understandably, this book is aimed at the upper-middle class of parents (and the author admits that!), it contains plenty of advice and truth-telling that is applicable to most parents, unexpected circumstances notwithstanding. In fact, if life takes an untoward turn toward the unexpected that results in a significant loss of net worth or a downgrade in life style, your kids may be better prepared to handle the turn of fortune.
Even if most of the advice is geared toward the rich families e.g. like the kids from the 2-million-dollar home halving their footprint to a million-dollar-home and donating the difference in value to charity, it sets a precedent among the rich that may address several social ills prevalent today.
For most, the whole ‘rich kids of Instagram' and the opulent lifestyle they project on social media has a more deleterious effect on the other 99% who then try to emulate their lifestyle by going into debt or resorting to resentment that can manifest physically health-wise. Most of us don't resent the ultra rich but we do detest the obnoxious and privileged offsprings who seem to flaunt wealth while lecturing us about merit. If the advice in this book is heeded even by that segment of the population, it would make the world a much better place.
I give 5-stars mostly because of handy and pointed advice with plenty of real-life examples that apply to my current status. We've been subconsciously following most of the advice by having frank conversations with our son about money matters and even answering questions about buying price of our home. We do inculcate the role of budget and trade-offs when choosing gifts and we are definitely not shielding him from the realities of life. At times, we thought we may be going overboard and causing him to think we are pinching pennies but the book puts my mind at ease in suggesting that we may be on the right track. It may be better to err on the side of more financial management-oriented thinking than not.
I got the recommendation from Obama's 2018 book list and ‘read' it during my commute over the past two weeks. It offers a general understanding of the current status of AI technology and its potential and threats (real or perceived). As with every technical field, some threats are exaggerated but our limited knowledge in terms of its extent temper any attempts at dismissing most fears. I like that Tegmark delves into the ontological debates and poses the “should we” questions. I particularly liked the 7 potential scenarios that AI can lead to.
The delivery is a tad dull and it would've helped if the reader didn't spell out the ‘colon' and ‘backslash backslash' in URLs that are peppered throughout the book.
I've never read James Patterson but I was mostly intrigued by this Clinton partnership. It's your regular potboiler pulp fiction novel where the world is about to end and the public doesn't know that. You can clearly see the parts where Bill Clinton contributed and there are plenty of similarities and callbacks to his presidency. He relishes the opportunity to bash the House Speaker while upholding the goodness of the President in standing alone against the nation's enemies. Perhaps it doesn't ring true in 2018 but keeps the readers' attention. The pace is decent and plot twists are believable. Overall, it is a better page turner than Dan Brown's more recent works.
Anu is in a unique position of having had the experience of living in a Nordic country that's often blasted as being a welfare socialist nanny state by Fox News. She brings that experience when she moved after her wedding to the United States and busts several myths along the way. She tackles everything from healthcare, education, innovation, etc. that separates the two countries and touts the vast superiority of her home country, Finland. She makes a solid case as to why the Nordic way confers more freedom and individualism to its citizens, letting them focus on the things they consider important and yet achieve prosperity.
I've my issues with some of the things she said including the fact that she ends up becoming a U.S. citizen in spite of the differences that she touts as being superior in her home country. Immigration is something the Nordic countries are new to and with the recent trends, not everything is going well. Once we see how the Nordic countries handle immigration, we'll have something to compare it to the U.S.
The title sounds a little pompous but I was pleasantly surprised by the book. For one, it busts the myth of the passion hypothesis (“Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life”) I have always been skeptical of that hypothesis so was glad to see it being disproven using research and even anecdotes of people who are held up as examples of passion-driven career. The emphasis on patiently and often painstakingly developing your craftsman (craftsperson?) skills and then cashing in your career capital seems to be how most successful people land on their feet. It takes Gladwell's 10,000 hours to the next level and emphasizes deliberate practice as one of the key things in honing your craft. This applies to not only artists, musicians, athletes, but also programmers, managers, social scientists, etc. This fits right in the growth mindset pantheon as even the person with seemingly the most latent talent has to still practice his craft to stay relevant.
Add social capital to the mix and you'll realize quickly how a certain segment of the population are more likely to “drop everything and travel the world” only to come back to their parent's basement while they recover to look for something that pays the bills. Newport succinctly puts his 5 rules to the test and weaves a coherent path between them toward career success. The advice may not be the easiest to follow but at least it warns you where you may be going wrong.
It's a quick and short read and stays on the point. I recommend it just for the first couple of chapters.
It's an entirely different India than the one I left behind more than 18 years ago. Starts with Mukesh Ambani's meteoric rise to now qualify as one of the Crazy Rich Southasians, and then talks about people that I've only heard a passing reference to. Nepotism, good ‘ol corruption, and at its basest the plundering of public resources, the nouveau rich Indians are just a brown version of the East India Company. But it's a good look behind the curtain just to get a glimpse of what you're not missing and all that patriotic saccharine BS we're fed through Bollywood movies and cricket are simply a charade to tamper down the resentment that most Indians palpably feel. But the instinct isn't to overthrow these oligarchs (or as Crabtree calls them Bollygarchs) but in fact to think about how to join them in the plunder. I don't see any inkling of the progressive revolution, much like what helped America recover (somewhat) that will stem this rot.
What can I say, it's the typical Dan Brown book; full of sentences crammed with tangentially related factoids just to justify countless hours that Brown must've spent unearthing them. Of course, it's no Dan Vinci code. The final reveal isn't even that “earth-shattering” after all that buildup. But it's compelling enough to keep reading and go through that familiar guilt for reading this instead of something else.
I started reading Being Mortal nearly a year ago and somehow never got around to finishing it. It's admittedly a difficult read in the sense that it can be overwhelming at times. I finally finished it last night.
The premise focuses on the quality of life rather than the length of life and more specifically, the manner in which you choose to pass away. Medical science has advanced to such a degree that humans can be kept alive for a much longer time than you would imagine. But no one has stopped to ask the question of whether we should. Or as in Amitabh's immortal (no pun intended) words, yeh jeena bhi koi jeena hai. Gawande cites several examples from his professional and personal life that focuses on the individual's choice on care and ultimately, way to die. The Republicans' favorite chant ‘death panels' actually referred to the end of life counseling that doctors offered their patients. It's the ultimate decision you can take for your life.
You do not choose to be born in this world and as of today, most laws even prevent you from actively choosing to die but at least you can choose the way you die when and only when you're diagnosed to. The DNR is the most commonly known legal process in our pop culture and medical professionals are taught to honor it just as they're taught to honor the first do no harm principle. Others like hospice care are fraught with emotions that you may not be fighting back hard enough. But after a while, it's useless fighting nature.
Being Mortal will not only make you aware of your mortality but actually prepare you for it. I say that in the most humble and optimistic way. You aren't immortal. You're going to die. You're born in perhaps one or two ways but you can die in umpteen different and uncharacteristic ways. The worst I believe, waiting to die which can be a long and painful process not only for the person but also for their loved ones. Modern medicine can perhaps keep you alive for as long as it is possible today but it's entirely within your rights and choice to decide when enough is enough.
To read about something that took 13 billion years in a hurry almost seems like a travesty. I wouldn't say that now I have unlocked the secrets of the universe. Far from it. But Tyson goes the extra light year to make it somewhat understandable and I think I may have made a slight dent in my universe. I recall trying to read Hawking's A Brief History of Time and by the time I finished Chapter 1, I was gasping for breath. Contrastingly, ...in a Hurry is more patient with you but I freely admit going back couple of paragraphs to re-read what I thought I understood but hadn't.
There's plenty to learn in this short tome especially about the latest strides in discovery and how Einstein really was a genius and justifies all the hype around him. But at the same time, I feel as if physics is keenly awaiting its next Newton or Einstein to explain so much that still remains unexplained. As Durant once said, education is a gradual discovery of your ignorance is so apt when we look up to the skies and look beyond every year.
As far as the solar eclipse on Monday is concerned, did you know that it's such a unique phenomenon just because of this fact - “The Moon is about 400 times smaller than the Sun, but it also just happens to be about 400 times closer. The result is that from Earth, they appear to be the same size.” Mind blown.
Couple of months ago at work, as we were writing a grant proposal, I seemed to interpret a sentence contrary to how everyone else was interpreting it. Eventually, I asked the one person I trust the most in terms of proof-reading - my wife - and she agreed with the others. So I decided I had to up my game and improve what I thought was one of my strengths - writing intelligibly and better reading comprehension. Luckily, I found this book by Mary Norris available to download at our public library.
Yes, she is a copy editor at The New Yorker and yes, her job is just as nerdy as you imagine it to be. Partly a biography and mostly a primer on common writing rules at The New Yorker, she does get into the weeds on some aspects of grammar. There are entire chapters devoted to just one punctuation mark and as the title suggests, she also busts several myths on what people consider correct grammar (It is Between You & Me and not Between You & I). She even has traced the origins of a hyphen. To be fair, it was a famous one. Did you know, Moby Dick is used to refer to the whale but Moby-Dick is used to refer to the book? Well, now you do. The books out there without the hyphen have it wrong; at least according to the copy editor who inserted the hyphen after Melville wrote it.
It can be a dense and at time boring read especially at 11pm but for some crazy people like me, it can be captivating. However, the downside is that, now I find myself doubting myself each time I use a comma or a semi-colon and I'm sure Mary would mark up this review in her favorite No.1 pencil if she could. So don't judge me just yet. I've tons to learn.
I picked this book up on a lark after seeing it on the bestselling list at the bookstore. I admit that the first few chapters are engrossing and even make sense. It is, at best, an extended version of the serenity prayer i.e. focus on the things you can change and ignore the ones you can't. There are definitely some lessons in there that many of us need to be reminded about but nothing that can't be said in a longish blog post. The latter half of the book simply drags on and focuses mostly on the author's personal life and his life-coach blogging.
I would recommend reading the first 2-3 chapters of the book in couple of hours and then tossing it aside.