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What a delightful reading of a favourite classic!
Rosamund Pike brings to elegant life all the wonderful characters that populate Jane Austen's novel on class, snobbery, and discrimination (and lopsided inheritance laws) in Regency England. There is no male hero quite equal to Mr Darcy, and Elizsbeth's wit amuses anew. The narrative, despite it being written more than two hundred years ago, can still make me laugh, especially when narrated in the honeyed voice of Ms Pike. Who would have thought?
One of my absolute favourite lit classics.
A dense, but rewarding read. The narrator is an unnamed young woman living in an unnamed city in - we assume - Northern Ireland at the height of its political strife. She escapes in literature, burying her nose (literally, as she indulges in “reading while walking”) in lit classics. Her determined attempt to live life as quietly as possible, however, fails when “Milkman”, the nickname given to a feared, influential, middle-aged (and married) “renouncer”, sets his sights on her. The narrator is (linguistically) very clever, and often amusing, though in emotional pain. The hidden rules that govern her society, one of renouncers and informers, with very little allowed for political neutrality, defines what is normal. Conformity, even when it results in personal anguish and misery, is demanded (and “reading while walking” is frowned upon). Women face additional restrictions, with women's rights decried (a band of “feminists” are regarded as strange and dangerous, though allowed to continue their meetings in the end). Such precarious living, especially for those who choose to be (at least in action) politically neutral. If the premise intrigues you (as it did me, though the synopsis at the back of the book does not do the story full justice), and you're looking for a different kind of read, I highly recommend this book. “...you do that reading-while-walking and you look nearly-blank and you give nothing which is too little and so they won't let go and move on to the next person....”Dense ==> Both in content and form. The paragraphs are very long, often more than a page, and chapter breaks are few and far in between. This is not a book to read when the mind is tired, which is why I took much longer than expected to complete this book.
I had never been as engrossed in a non-fiction book as I was with this one; there were so many jaw-dropping passages within the book.
This is the story of Theranos, founded by Elizabeth Holmes, who was heralded as the next (female) Steve Jobs / Bill Gates for ‘revolutionising' the blood-testing industry by inventing (or attempting to invent) a device that could run “hundreds of tests” with a small pin-prick of blood. Despite the regulations governing the industry, and the usual demand for peer-reviewed studies and scientific data, Elizabeth Holmes, with the help of her partner-boyfriend, the much older Sunny Balwani, managed to dupe CEOs (including of Safeway and Walgreens), investors (Rupert Murdoch among them), the government (high-ranking military officers included), politicians (she rubbed shoulders with the Clintons and even attended Obama's events), and highly respected older individuals (former Secretary of State George Schultz comes prominently to mind), for a dozen years on the viability of her (non-viable) products through a combination of charm and charisma (Elizabeth's), legal bullying (mostly of staff who were made to comply with harsh confidentiality clauses), inspection blind-siding (inspectors were only allowed into certain sections of the laboratories), and (eventually) damaging shortcuts (the labs did not follow proper procedures, and patient results were often inaccurate).
It's also a telling tale of how easily we can be duped by the media (Forbes and Fortune helped catapulted her image, because the editors themselves fell into her “reality-distortion-field”) and by the endorsement of people who are generally held in high esteem by the society we live in (George Schultz, for example, believed in her until right up to the end, even estranging his own grandson in his beliefs).
Elizabeth Holmes remains a fascinating character. It's tempting to believe she started out with truly noble intentions, but then got snared herself in her own hype and ambition (she saw herself as the next Wunderkind and, growing up upper middle class, wanted to be rich), and that of her product's potential (how does that quote go? if you repeat a lie over and over, people will believe you?). I'm pretty sure Silicon Valley hasn't seen the last of her, and the world certainly hasn't seen the last of people like her, who weave such a compelling smoke-screen around themselves, that very few people are able to see through the tales. We are human, and we all want to believe the Wizard of Oz is real.
The story itself is well-laid out, taking us step by step on Theranos's incredible journey from being just another start-up to what was considered the darling of the tech world (at its highest point, Theranos's stock was valued at US$10 billion). There's plenty of end-notes, for the diligent reader who likes to follow the trail of breadcrumbs, but this also means the main narrative doesn't get bogged down with too much facts and technical details.
A more thought-provoking read than I expected and I had to slow my reading speed significantly to absorb the arguments.
A well-argued essay (and response to its feedback) not just on computers and why he prefers not to use one but also on technological progress, feminism, and the environment.
I'd only vaguely heard of Berry but in these past two weeks, I've heard his name and books mentioned at least three times.
If the TBR pile is reduced, perhaps I will pick up his novel Hannah Coulter.
Not the most relaxing read but worth it to appreciate the beauty of language and the weight of every single word in a piece of literature. She includes a reading list (“Books To Read Immediately”), from which I confess I've only read 5%. There are plenty of extracts from literary classics to illustrate what good writing is. And she makes me want to read Chekhov.
A book that merits a second, even a third, reading.
Interesting comparisons with the tech industry and venture capital. Also I didn't realise his machine was “stolen” by two of his funders when one partner died. The writing is a bit plain, but the references and facts have been checked out by the author. I started this month's ago and didn't realise I had a chapter left.
A 3.7. It was a heart warming “read” (via Audible and read by Richard Armitage) about a rich, grumpy old man whose best friend hires children to liven up his mansion at Christmas. Did get me to tear up at the end. A good Victorian Christmas tale that would make you sympathise with the girls born in that time.
Despite the fact that the book was published likely in the 19th or early 20th century, the prose is quite accessible and entertaining. More tell than show as was typical of writers then but the author's descriptions were smart and sophisticated.
The pacing can be a bit ponderous and one wonders at a four year old who speaks and behaves much better than teens in most cases (OK that's perhaps not an apt comparison!), but it's a charming Christmas tale with a solid emotional core. And for a Christmas story, thats really what you look for.
3.5 stars. This was a long slog especially in the first half. There are many themes explored: race, identity, independence, inequality, but it's all told as from a distance. The protagonist works for a celebrity who decides to build a school in West Africa. We never even know the name of the protagonist even though the tale is told from her POV.
But the writing is brilliant, and she describes perfectly emotional reactions. Love her insights into elitism as well. Some parts are humorous, though because the distance from the story is such (imagine you're viewing the tale via an old TV set), it never gets to funny the way On Beauty did.
This book is weightier than it looks! Extensively referenced, a call from the author for a radically new way to run businesses and live our lives, and a more optimistic take on AI and Robotics. I wish the references were organised as chapter end-notes or footnotes instead of in one long section at the end as hunting for the sources is almost impossible if you didn't highlight them in the first place. I'd recommend reading this in electronic instead of dead-tree format.
Marvellously entertaining, with non stop action and a fascinating rendering of the world in 2045 (not a very happy place for most people but life goes on). Love the What If scenario - what if adults can be gene-edited to become another person entirely? The protagonist, Kenneth Durand, is a rather bland Interpol analyst who gets gene edited into becoming the notorious criminal he's chasing, Marcus Wyckes. His neat little life in Singapore (tech capital of the world in 2045) gets ripped to shreds, and his efforts to regain his genes take us to 2045 Malaysia (kinda crummy), Thailand (still the same), and Myanmar (even worse).
There's nothing literary about this novel but the questions it raises on gene editing, identity, the right to choose one's genes, may be ones we would have to face in the near future.
More a 2.8. Well written of course but all characters were hard to sympathise with, and DeMille tends to make all his women folk beautiful and sexy (a trend across all the books of his I've read), and - in this tale - still dependent on the men folk. I didn't like a single character in this story, and couldn't care less if all of them got blown to bits by the Russians.
