Sid

This novel was a solid read but was slightly let down by its long-winded commentary on unrelated topics and the insistence that economics expects rationality from humans. Yes, I got it the first time!
It is striking how much even slightly-well-off people will argue about the irrationality of the masses and how much ‘thinking' instead of ‘feeling' they are - only to expose themselves as hypocrites in the next five minutes of conversation. Thinking, Fast and Slow tells us why. It is heartening to find that it's possible to improve these facets of our personality to the point where we're not dictated solely by our intuition. In good news for pedants everywhere, Kahneman concludes that it's difficult, albeit doable, to spot yourself slipping into a hasty decision - but you can ask others to check if you're doing so.
The analogy of system 1 (‘gut feeling') vs system 2 (rational, but lazy) and the experiencing self vs remembering self were remarkable psychological constructions, and I could see how Kahneman got his Nobel. All in all, this is not just a read for economists and psychologists - it should be essential reading for everyone if you can get past the verbiage.

This book can only be described as a flawed masterpiece - had the novel bothered in fleshing out the characters from the bland caricatures that they were (lucid vs mysterious, ‘clever' vs pragmatic/complacent, and so on), it would have been an amazing read. But it was not, and I can't even blame Barnes for the result - the book is meant to be a short slice-of-life piece, and that's what it remains till the end.

This is a short read, but the ending, while not being a gut punch, was a surprise for sure - of facades and of avoiding responsibilities.

TL;DR - good read for a lazy weekend afternoon, the protagonist is worth empathizing for, and the digressions are not dumped, and feel natural.

Tim Urban's “What's Our Problem?” asks two very important questions: what is fundamentally broken with our society at present, and how can we fix it? As it turns out, Urban has a framework for looking at the world that, albeit devoid of any foundation, works to an extent. He suggests adding a vertical axis (up vs down) to the horizontal axis of politics (left vs right), where your place on the ladder denotes how rational or irrational you're acting. He argues that the world is slipping into low-rung thinking, where confirmation bias leads people to favour one ideology over another, or they become completely closed off to others' viewpoints, creating an echo chamber called a golem. This unchecked golem absorbs high-rung people who can't or won't speak up.
To be honest, that's where the book's good parts end. After some amazing, nuanced discussion, it becomes annoyingly USA-centered – astounding for a book that claims to know our problems, not just the USA's in particular. The next chapter is a short, emotionally-detached Wikipedia-style summary of how Republicans in the US are forming their own low-rung golem, with little to no detail as to the why.
The meat of the book, however, focuses on wokeism and social justice fundamentalism, which Urban sees as a huge problem disintegrating society. I've encountered this topic online numerous times (mostly discussed by right-wingers and “enlightened” centrists), and I have never found a convincing argument in support of it - and Urban fails to provide one. Believing that inequality is not only structural is one thing, but pretending that it is not structural at all is another. Maybe it's just me, but I think high-rung thinking should also involve not becoming excessively angry when confronted with topics one dislikes, a fact that Urban conveniently forgot.
After an excruciating discussion on how progressives are responsible for the US's downfall and how (renamed) social justice warriors are bad for everyone, and why even progressives who believe in social justice should stop doing so, the book concludes with a contemplative redemption. It suggests that people should strive to find common ground even when it doesn't exist, treat political opponents as humans, and remember that we're all in this together.
All idealistic and logical and sufficiently high-rung of you, Tim. Wish the rest of the book was like that, though.

Max Tegmark says that there are three stages of any significant physical or mathematical theory - first its insignificance (Einstein's famous papers on special relativity languished for years in relative obscurity before he was propelled to fame), then its controversy (Everett and parallel universes, or even Schrödinger and his equation), and finally acceptance - as much as quantum physics doesn't make ‘sense', it is at more or less a consensus to which an alternative has yet to be found.

This piece is a study of the author's own theory, which I would say is stuck between the first and the second stages (above). To many, it is simply a way of life that math more or less explains the universe and/or multiverse - why, though? Tegmark's simple but highly controversial answer, to which he devoted the book, is that we, as in the entirety of everything there was, is and ever will be, are self-aware parts of a mathematical structure.

To put it even more dramatically, Tegmark says that time is an illusion, and we might as well be living in a Mandelbrot set fractal for all we know. Segregating reality into four parts with humans being in one corner of the lowest level is a sobering thought, to say the least. However, he repeatedly hammers the point that we might be the luckiest creatures in existence, as the existence of a particular reality is not a guarantee for the existence of sentient intelligence as well.

Sprinkled with personal anecdotes which only humanise the staggering conclusions, this is a book meant to be absorbed, not devoured. Reading it in a day might not do it justice, as this has no Math whatsoever, but is still technical enough to get the point across - so you are free to ruminate on the possible conclusions.

I am excited to see where Tegmark's Mathematical Universe Hypothesis (MUH) is going to go, notwithstanding it being proven or disproven (although I would bet on the former). There are very few books that I have read that rekindle my interest in the world around me (such as Asimov, Feynman and Penrose), and this is one of those. A must-read.

(4.5, rounded down to 4)
This was written by a friend of mine over a period of two years. I'll try not to be biased here.
The only poetry I've ever read is Roald Dahl and Lewis Carroll, so suffice to say that I don't “get” poetry. Like most other people, I find ‘serious' poetry that is not epic length (for example, Homer's Odyssey) nauseous.
I'm reluctantly impressed by the fact that the poetry didn't feel heavy-handed, even though it got a bit pretentious for my liking at times. Keeping in mind this is my friend's first book, I'm willing to give the poet the benefit of doubt in this case.
The diagrams add value to the sparse and minimal aesthetic that the work aims for, which is another thing I quite liked. This is one of ‘those' books that one can just reach for when they're feeling bored, and whittle away five or ten minutes at.

I was born a Hindu, but I shall not die a Hindu.

People know that Ambedkar ‘bowed before Gandhi's superior popularity' and had to ‘surrender' and sign the Poona Pact in 1932, which effectively ended the concept of Reserved Electorates, as envisioned by him - meaning that the system of dual representation for the Depressed Classes (or the Scheduled Castes, as they are now called), that Ambedkar had envisioned as a means of upliftment, effectively died a premature death. Arundhati Roy, S. Anand, and Ambedkar demolish this argument to smithereens, and express in no unclear terms that Gandhiji's fast unto death was a method of blackmail, and that Gandhiji was not so ‘radical' as the nation was made to believe. That, alone, is worth the read.

In this manifesto against caste (yes, the Marx comparison that most people assign to this is very apt), Ambedkar speaks with the logic of a pragmatist, who believes that the caste system was founded as a method of segregation, not so different from the racial segregation practiced in the West (and in some ways, he argues, even worse). He believes that the caste system pollutes even religious conversions - in some ways, Ambedkar says, the Muslim and the Sikh religions grew caste systems because of mass conversions of the downtrodden Hindu populace looking to escape their chains. He believes that the methods adopted by ‘moderate' reformers such as the Arya Samaj (and even its more radical offshoots, such as the Jat Pat Todak Mandal), such as inter-dining and inter-marriages between castes, were always doomed to fail. Above all, he believes that the system of pandits should be made on the basis of merit, not on birth - and the number of pandits ‘passing out' each year should have a fixed quota.

Writing this masterpiece now would be ahead of its time. Writing it in 1936? No wonder it remained as just a speech manuscript, which Ambedkar had to print with his own money. Gandhiji also started an argument from his own magazine, Harijan, which started an intellectual clash that is responsible for much of Ambedkar's maligned image. Because, who, after all, would dare to argue with the Mahatma?

The Outlook, a magazine of some renown, carried out a poll in June-August 2012, which asked readers and scholars - who, according to you, is the greatest Indian, after Mahatma Gandhi? Ambedkar won by an overwhelming margin. If you read Annihilation Of Caste, you'll understand why. One of the most important Indian pieces of literature ever written.

This was a really great glimpse of diplomacy, politics, and governance. Must read for all those interested in the nitty-gritty of bureaucracy!

PV Narasimha Rao. The only Indian PM (till date) who has completed a full term with a minority mandate. The PM who is not credited for the economic reforms (‘liberalization') of 1991, which occurred under his term in office. The PM blamed for corruption (bribing of MPs), communalism (his connivance in the demolition of the Babri Masjid is suspected to this day) and collapsing under US pressure (the nuclear tests that failed to happen in 1995/96, his last years in office, occurred in 1999, under Vajpayee). The man who was vilified by all sides of the political spectrum - left, right, and centre. What made him the political conundrum that he was? Was it avarice, cowardice or both?

In this no-holds-barred biography, the author lays bare Rao's entire political philosophy (if it can be called so) - and how it was shaped. How his failed stint as CM of the united Andhra state in the '70s convinced him that he had to be a pragmatic socialist, and how his stint as Cabinet minister for a dozen or so Ministries under various PMs convinced him (for better or for worse) exactly how much sycophancy was needed to thrive within the corridors of Delhi. Why he insisted on giving credit to Manmohan for the (presently) much-lauded economic reforms, why his experiments with the PDS (popularly known as the ‘Ration Card' system) mostly ended in failure, and how the Babri Masjid demolition took place even when he was (falsely) convinced that there was no chance it would happen.

It is remarkable to witness how little the Indian public knew of this giant of Indian politics before this book's release, and how his political career was destroyed by none other than the Congress - the party to which he devoted effectively his entire life. Treated both as the villain and the hero, as an independent and a sycophant, this biography doesn't eulogize Rao - it just gives credit where it is due. And that is a necessity in these fractured political times.

Inspite of all of Guha's perceived ‘centrism' and his reverence (bordering on idolatry) of Gandhi and the first Nehru, this collection of essays (both old and new) by the eminent historian is immensely readable, dealing with a variety of issues - ranging from his favorite (now defunct) bookshop in Bengaluru, to the ticking bomb that is South Asia.

Guha comes across as a charming and erudite (if somewhat snobbish) scholar, one whose numerous tangents are read fondly, a rare quality for a author to have, and an even rarer quality for a historian to possess.

The main pitfall of this compendium will be the fact, that since it is a collection of essays, and not a standalone treatise on a single topic - many topics are repeated, and this happens fairly frequently. This collection would have been better served by a more meticulous editor, but oh well.

TL;DR - good read if you're interested in history/politics, must read if you're cynical about Indian politics (you'll become even more cynical, but that's a different matter altogether).

Although it lives up to its title (‘Concise History since 1945'), I could not help but think that a concise view of history, by definition, excludes a lot of narratives - which was the case here.
For example, there's a very shallow treatment of the horrors of colonialism. Since this is US-centric - there's a tendency to go off on tangents lambasting communism and its lack of ‘innovative' character, and capitalism's superiority is treated as a fact. The USA interfering with elected governments to bring about anti-communist governments is hand-waved as ‘yeah, that happened, get over it - at least we're better now!'. In contrast, USSR's successes till the 70s/80s are ignored as coming from an authoritarian regime.
There's no problem with history being brief and to the point, but there is a problem when your bias is evident. This is still immensely readable, and it's worthwhile to read it in full to get to know Africa/Asia's history, which is generally missing from many history books. Plus, it's funny when Spellman's hope for world unity in the conclusion aged like milk.

Even though the name and the cover blurb might give you the feeling that you're about to read Frankenstein fanfiction (and you might not be half-wrong), this was astounding in its scope and boldness. Taking place in two time periods – the 19th and the 21st centuries – Winterson narrates the tale of a behind-the-scenes story of the writing of Frankenstein (in the former), the rise of AI and sex-bots (in the latter), and manages to merge the disparate aspects so beautifully that you feel as if you're not reading glorified fanfiction.

Mary and Percy Shelley are merged to form the trans protagonist Ry Shelley; Lord Byron becomes a flamboyant entrepreneur called Ron Lord, and so on – only the tragic Dr Frankenstein remains the same. The juxtaposition of characters should not have worked so well, but here we are.

To give you an idea of the sheer scope of the novel, some issues that Frankissstein tackles with aplomb are - feminism in the Victorian era compared to the modern era; how different the lives of cis and trans people are (the refrain ‘What are you' in the 21st century used for Ry is surprising, but considering many people are of this mind-set, not that unexpected); the debate on the value of a woman as more than her body (Ron Lord's USP for his sex-bots is that ‘they don't say no'); and the age-old debate on automation, AI and Luddites. All of this takes place in paragraphs which are so densely packed with witty information that you have to read some twice before it strikes you how good Winterson is as an author and as a conveyor of ideas.

This is one of those stories with a premise that is as outrageous as it sounds, but it works so well that you cannot help but wait to reread it. Would highly recommend.

3/10
This was a steaming pile of crap and not much better than the reprehensible stuff I used to binge on AO3 or Fanfiction an eternity ago.
There's so much to unpack regarding this novel, but what would be the point? Every second page has an offensive line of dialogue, some character having fucked up thoughts about the other, and so on. Ninety per cent of the novel is about sex or the lack thereof - which would make sense if it was erotica, but why in the world was this marketed as a thriller? I saw the twist coming from miles away, and the second twist came so out of left field that I'll consider it as being there for the shock value.
What irked me the most was the constant babying - rephrasing sentences a few pages after they were first mentioned grated on me greatly, to the point where I considered dropping this book. I persisted, and to be honest, except for the previously mentioned double twist, there's not much I would have missed.
All in all, there's not much to like in Verity - what with all the horrifying depictions of everything. If you want smut - there are tonnes of better authors you could read (I don't know any, except for E.L. James, but they couldn't be worse than this), and if you want cheap thrills - you could always listen to Sia!

This collection of short sci-fi stories (almost always dark and depressing) left me with a mixed taste after I finished it.
The titular short story is one of the best sci-fi stories I've ever read, period (tied, for me, with The Last Question by Asimov). It makes HAL, from Kubrick's 2001:A Space Odyssey look like a cuddly teddy bear in comparison. Since all of them are extremely short stories, any detail will just be a spoiler, but let's just say Ellison attention to mental torture is much more unsettling than it has any right to be.
The rest of the stories are all over the place, much to my disappointment, the best amongst them being ‘Delusion of a Dragon Slayer', which describes a person for whom heaven is hell, and the worst being ‘Eyes of Dust', which is just plain boring, and has a premise which intends to shock but just dulls instead.
What struck me after finishing the work though, were three things.
Firstly, Ellison is a magnificent writer, with his writing, prose and his ideas making him a sheer delight to read.
Secondly, Ellison has one of the worst egos I've ever encountered in writing, and his ego practically oozes from every word of the story (along with not-quite-humble remarks in his prefaces to every story, in which he describes himself as a magnificent ‘man of Stature', whatever that means). If egoistic writing is unsuited to your tastes, it's not a bad idea to skip this.
Thirdly, Ellison is also the brand of extreme misogynist that would be labelled as an incel nowadays. If there are any women in the story, you can rest assured that nothing good will happen to them (even considering he writes dark tales, the fates of women in his stories range from bad to horrific). His prefaces are littered with women being treated as objects again and again, and at some point you want to just tell him to get on with the story. His three-page preface to his last story straight up said that his story was based on a woman he met in Vegas (guess what - the woman has a bad ending, and gets a good ending by manipulating the naive man).
So there's a lot of good (prose, ideas, wackiness) and a lot of bad (misogyny, ego). If you can stomach the bad, this is a beautiful sci-fi collection.

Take the Cultural Revolution - one of the most unprecedented phases in Chinese history, the actions of which could be easily labelled as an Orwellian.

Now add micro-dimensions (postulated dimensions existing beyond the normal four dimensions of space and time), first contact (debating on how humans will establish contact with aliens, and its consequences), and the three body problem (a famous classical mechanics problem which states that in a system of three bodies, it is impossible to predict any future configuration) to the already volatile mix.

Add in dry character development, and what looks like a clichéd plot at first glance. The result should have been an implosion - but thankfully, it is not. It is, instead, one of the greatest sci-fi novels ever produced. It is fine, distilled art in a hitherto unforeseen form.

There is no point in putting my words in this review - because it is impossible to write down the emotions evoked. Tranquility and anger to sheer, unbridled awe - this novel makes you feel them all, and more.

TL;DR - if you're a fan of hard sci-fi (tinged with a significant dose of reality, so not recommended for the casual reader) novels, or are thinking of getting into them, give this a chance. You'll never be the same again.

This is a masterpiece of the mystery genre, pure and simple. Few books have captured my attention as this work did - without even trying, at that.
Written by le Carré at the height of his literary prowess, it details the story of a British spy - whose last mission is to plant himself in Soviet-occupied East Germany, to get the Russian spy division head assassinated.
Although the plot looked trite and banal in the beginning, I slowly realized that reading this work was like peeling the layers off an onion - there's so much more to it than meets the eye at first glance. And boy oh boy, it didn't disappoint one bit.
Right when you think that you've got the plot all figured out, it turns out you didn't. The best part is, that action is sidelined in favor of dialogue, which I'm actually in favor of - two of the best scenes in the book were simply long dialogue chains.
TL;DR - deserves space on every reading shelf (or device) - this is the tour de force of an unparalleled writer, and it (deservedly) holds its place amongst the classics. Must read.

This was an eye-opener for me - a politically interested person, who used to believe in partisan/labelled politics - left over right, secularism over fundamentalism, and so on.

This book should be mandatory reading for every person even slightly interested in politics and activism - it will make you realize there is no such thing as left/right (both are equally morally bankrupt), ‘news' (media coverage is extensively covered in the book), and fundamentalism.

It will be an absolute disservice to label the book as simply ‘eye-opening'. It will be more accurate to say that you begin to see things in color, rather than simply black and white. And that is simply the gift that keeps on giving,

9/10
To give a brief introduction, Leibniz was an Enlightenment-era philosopher whose mantra could be simplified to ‘This is the best of all possible worlds.' Now, anyone who has stepped outside the bounds of their homes knows that this is not the case. Another philosopher of the same era, Voltaire, seemed to be infuriated with it – Candide was written to attack Leibnizian optimism and ridiculed government, military, religion, money, and the concept of honour itself.
When things seem to be getting better, Candide jumps to an entirely new plotline which makes you lose hope. That, to me, is Voltaire's genius. He leaves no holds barred in his unrelenting attack on optimism, so much so that each person takes for granted the horrors of our existence, even when confronted with it first-hand. Cunégonde's caretaker narrates the act of her buttocks being eaten by slavers for survival with an astounding lack of interest in the matter. Candide, the eponymous character, undergoes almost every calamity possible – ranging from being thrown out from his residence to nearly being hanged and even narrowly escaping from cannibals. There are dozens of such tales scattered across the text, and at some point, I just started laughing at Voltaire's ‘show, don't tell' philosophy – this novella might be the best example of the phrase I've ever seen.
Although abrupt, the ending felt perfect – primarily because of what it took for Candide to realise that we cannot always view the world through rose-tinted glasses – it helps to have a sense of realism, however tiny. Philosophy apart, Candide is a beautiful read, and it deserves its place in the Western canon.

Don't panic.
Only rarely does any media manage to merge sci-fi with humour - for most other genres, they can meet sci-fi somewhere in between, but it isn't easy to meld comedy, from my experience.
H2G2 towers above the rest when it comes to this - through a spectacular mixture of humour in the vein of Monty Python, surrealism/absurdism and excellent quotes.
There's little to no plot, considering the novel takes its hitchhiking aspects seriously - so the book is just characters meeting, interacting and then moving on. This lack of story can understandably be a dealbreaker to many (the destruction of Earth takes place within the first few chapters, and it's just glossed over). But if you can read beyond that, H2G2 begins to take a life of its own. Another plot point I loved was the treatment of sentience - and the iconic ‘the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything.'
All in all, as an intro to the series, I couldn't have asked for anything better - and even read as a standalone piece, the humour is amazing - well worth reading for, and I'm looking forward to reading the entire series soon.

I was blown away upon finishing this work, no doubt - but not in the way I expected. I didn't expect this to be amazing, don't get me wrong, but this novel just managed to cross the ‘decent' bar, and that was solely due to a few memorable scenes encountered in the middle of the book.
There was absolutely no characterization to speak of. The main characters were poorly developed, and this was compounded by the fact the language of the book is absolutely steeped in metaphor - there's a figure of speech every two lines or so. Half of the book contents could easily be trimmed.
If this was not already enough, the narrator has the excessively annoying tendency to spoil the plot many, many pages in advance. Hence, there is no buildup of tension, and the language or the characters don't come across as particularly deep (as already said above), so there's no justification of the plot being sidelined in favor of developing the characters.
The ending was also a big letdown. Not to spoil it, but suffice to say it completely broke any sense of immersion one might be preserving till then.
Keeping in mind this is a children's book, this was still a mediocre read. Would not recommend, if you've not read it already.

One of the best investigative pieces I've ever read - and also, by the nature of the case, horrifying.
This book deals with Theranos, the famous Silicon Valley unicorn (a term coined for a tech startup which is valued at more than $1 billion) and its neurotic founder, Elizabeth Holmes and her equally neurotic boyfriend, Sunny Balwani.
Many people have heard that Theranos has had shady dealings (myself included), but how shady they were is revealed by this book - a treatise on Theranos spanning from its foundation till its demise (of which the author was the main catalyst). The amount of laws and regulations that the startup flouted is staggering in itself. But what is more staggering is that the premise on which Theranos was founded (that hundreds of blood tests could be performed on a tincture of blood nipped from your index finger) and which gave Holmes a personal valuation in excess of $5.5 billion, was all a hoax. How this hoax came about, who all were wittingly (and unwittingly) involved in the hoax, and how the hoax could have led about to hundreds of deaths, forms the basis of the investigative novel.
On reading this book, one can easily understand how Carreyrou has won the Pulitzer Prize twice - his treatment is precise and cutting, and very easy to decipher and absorb - even medical laymen like me will have a ton to draw from the book, as is the book's intention.
TL;DR - roller-coaster work spanning the rise and fall of a Silicon Valley startup that got too ambitious for its own good, and in sight of its goal, flouted everything there was to flout. A dense but fulfilling read.

How do you feel after waking up? There is disorientation and irritability, and you're trying to remember what you dreamed about - but it all slips away. If you could distil that feeling of disorientation and grudging acceptance that comes when you have awoken and compressed it into a novel - it would be The Memory Police.
There's so much and yet so little to talk about this. You could say that the novel has its own Kafkaesque and Orwellian sense of prose and humour, true, but that would be doing it a disservice - Ogawa has her unique brand of melancholy that has to be seen to be believed.
Then again, many questions are left unanswered - how and where does this island exist? How was the technology for selectively discarding people's memories made in an environment where even aeroplanes and mobiles are not present? Why do some people remember everything? What is the moral, if any, of the story-within-a-story? Ogawa doesn't bother answering these questions, and for a good reason - her focus is on the characters more than the setting.
The characters are the fulcrum of the story - but the mute girl and the typing teacher, the Memory Police and the island have a life of their own. I think that is what Ogawa's entire point is, about how inanimate objects and sensations dictate our life. “Hole in the heart” and “hollow soul” are terms that repeatedly pop up when even something like calendars disappear - and I began to wonder if these weren't hyperbolic terms after all.
As a story, The Memory Police is amazing - but as a thought experiment, it is even better - I would rank it amongst the classics of dystopian fiction. Reading this amid a rewriting of history through politics around the world imbued me with a sense of nervous energy I didn't know I had.

I read this book over three sittings - it was worth every moment invested.

Right at the beginning, you realize that there's something very wrong about the main character - it's only much later that you realize that there's something wrong with his obsession (his ‘love interest') as well.

Suffice to say that there is not a single likeable character in this novel, and yet you can't help but plod on, thinking of what monstrous behavior you'll encounter next.

Obviously, this being the author's first novel, some loopholes were found, and there were some Deus ex machinas to make the plot plod along - but these minor transgressions are mere specks of dust in the cesspool of moral decay and corruption that is described by this masterpiece.

TL;DR - spellbinding, stupefying, so on and so forth. Worth every moment of binging it.

It is recognisable for its influence, and the “don't aspire beyond the human limits of knowledge” is a tale as old as time itself, but this still holds up magnificently, which I wasn't expecting.
A play written in blank verse with the theme of a repentant God, an unrepentant Devil, and a human having sold his soul to the latter in exchange for knowledge and relief from boredom sounds (and is) exciting. It helps that Marlowe keeps it simple, doesn't get too preachy, and fills up the gaps nicely even with a foregone conclusion.
TL;DR - don't sell your soul to the Devil, with a capital D - who would have guessed?

Mathematical education is in dire straits - this is a fact. But this book is not something I'd recommend for people who have always struggled to get into Math or for people who were good at Math but didn't necessarily like it.
The very issue with trying to please everyone is you end up pleasing no one. This book overextends itself in trying to court the seasoned amateur and the professional, not to mention trying to help people who loathe the field. Spoon-feeding the latter the absolute basics (what is multiplication, what is a circle, etc.) would hardly work as the basics are also the most tedious part of Math.
Paul Lockhart puts it aptly when he suggests that Math education needs to be fixed down-to-top - giving students time to come up with proofs by themselves and not simply giving them the absolute basics through flowery details. This is my opinion, of course, and if more people are interested in Maths because of this, then it's all the better - this is not how I would recommend starting your journey.
This is a breeze, so you could quickly finish this throughout a single afternoon. I'd recommend this if you have free time to whittle away, doubly if you're even slightly interested in the field.

9/10
A true-blue masterpiece. Engrossing, to the point that I felt a kinship with the unnamed protagonist, and nihilistic to the fact that I thought that Nietzsche developed his theory of anti-nihilism precisely because he anticipated such a piece of media being created.
The TL;DR version is that a woman convinces herself that she needs a year off - away from work, all responsibilities, and relationships. To that extent, she quits her job, stops talking to the little people she is already talking to, and stops focusing at all on anything other than the bare minimum to get by. Between her progressively deranged ramblings, her self-described best friend (who she simultaneously loves and hates) pops in to supply her with news from the outside world (and her own).
If that sounds like a dreary ride, I can assure you it's not. The protagonist's biting inner monologue is every bit as uncomfortable as it is darkly funny; her recollections of her childhood are part victimization and part acceptance to the point of hilarity, and every once in a while, the protagonist also offers some solemn ponderings on the state of the world which stops you in your tracks. My only qualm with the novel lies in the last quarter, which is pretty predictable but is still entirely absorbing.
Overall, My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a fantastic collection of musings on the vagaries of consumerism and late-stage capitalism, with some plot sprinkled on as garnishing.