The Word is Murder, Anthony Horowitz, 2017

Rating: 3/5

Horowitz has mastered the art of crafting detective stories differently, in a meta format. For example, in Magpie Murders, the clues to the mystery reside in another book that’s embedded within the main story. The Word is Murder is structured in the form of a true crime novel where Horowitz himself plays a role as the biographer of fictional detective Daniel Hawthorne during the process of solving a murder. Diana Cowper is found strangled a few hours after she visits a funeral parlour to plan her own funeral. Key characters in the mystery include her son and his girlfriend, her maid, a producer friend, and a family who was hurt in a car accident caused by Diana. Daniel Hawthorne, a detective, contacts Horowitz to write a book about himself and offers him a role in investigating Cowper’s death. 

True to his style, Horowitz structures his detective story interestingly — he intersperses actual events in his life (such as the publication of his novels and involvement with TV and movies) with the fictional role that he plays in the murder mystery. After a while, it’s difficult to separate fact from fiction and Horowitz uses this style to dwell on the process and challenges of writing novels. You can imagine him having a quiet chuckle when his fictional self writes about how he accepts Hawthorne’s offer as a shortcut to write a new murder mystery, without doing much research. Or when that fictional self talks about his insecurities around missing out on opportunities that could possibly be life-changing or of saying the wrong things in a literary event with journalists present. This does have its jarring moments though. At one point, there is an entire chapter on a tangential narrative of his involvement with Spielberg’s Tintin movies (which is part real and part fiction), which has no bearing on the story. But there are the parts that makes one think too, like the time when he was trying to make television viewers try to understand the turning away of a gay couple from a hotel from the homophobic owner’s point of view but got pilloried — “we need to tolerate intolerance” as he puts it.

The build-up is top-notch and makes this book a page-turner — Horowitz throws lines early in the book, such as one where he indicates that the first chapter includes a clue that quite clearly identifies the killer or the one where he regrets getting involved because of what happens later, that hooks the reader completely and builds anticipation. And like all good novels, there are enough clues strewn about that would make the reader feel that they could have solved the mystery. 

But eventually, I will not rate this among the finest murder mysteries that I have read. Unlike Agatha Christie’s Poirot or Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes, Hawthorne is an extremely unlikeable person. Even the more recent Strike from Robert Galbraith’s (JK Rowling) books tends to be brusque, but you can still root for him. And you need a protagonist that you can root for! Hawthorne’s homophobia is also quite apparent early in the book and while Horowitz’s character expresses his displeasure at it, he continues working with Hawthorne and this apparent conflict remains unresolved even at the end. Also, while a Dr. Watson or a Dr. Hastings come across as nincompoops occasionally, it’s easy to empathise with them and their relationships with the main detectives are endearing. Horowitz, on the other hand, comes across as a weak person, a poor foil to Hawthorne, has no chemistry with the detective and for a successful writer, some of his actions are inexplicable. So, for me, this book gets full marks for the writing style but is an average detective story otherwise.

Pros: Clever structure, page turner

Cons: Unlikeable protagonists

The ABC Murders, Agatha Christie, 1936

Rating: 5/5

I rate this as one of Christie’s three best Poirot books, along with “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd” and “Then There were None”. 

The story follows a series of murders with the towns in which they are committed and the victims’ names following an alphabetical sequence. For good measure, the killer leaves a ABC rail guide at the scenes of the crime. Early in the story, we are exposed to Alexander Bonaparte Cust who seems to have a close link with the killings. The structure is that of a typical Poirot book — the initial crime, the follow-up crimes, assorted characters related to the victims, a prime suspect, some romantic entanglements, and Poirot’s dénouement at the end in a room full of people. Poirot’s actions, just before the dénouement, are usually strange — in this book, they are even more inexplicable than usual.

A hallmark of a good detective novel, in my view, is its ability to give the reader a sporting chance to solve the mystery while at the same time being clever enough to make it very difficult. “The ABC Murders” scores on that front — the challenge here is to figure out the underlying thread of the story rather than the killer themselves. The only grouse I had it with the book was that certain aspects of the story seemed a bit far-fetched. And like most Christie books, this one is a page-turner!

As a side note, When I re-read the Poirot books, I am struck by how naive Christie has made Hastings out to be — early in the book for example, Hastings believes that Poirot’s grey hair is turning black. While Christie means Hastings to be a perfect foil for Poirot, a sort of Dr. Watson to Sherlock Holmes, she does do a disservice to him! :-)

Pros: Page-turner, clever plot, satisfying end

Cons: Some elements of the story seem far-fetched

Coromandel: A Personal History of South India, Charles Allen, 2017

Rating: 2/5

I started reading the book with a lot of excitement as I hail from the southern part of India but know precious little about its ancient history. Unfortunately, the book is too dry to really enjoy it!

Coromandel (the south-eastern coast of India and derived from Cholamandalam of the Chola dynasty) is an extremely well researched book, however. Allen starts off by discussing the ancient history of northern India starting with the Harappan civilisation and then proceeds to the “south of the Vindhyas” — the Narmada river neatly divides India into two halves and is flanked by the Vindhya and the Satpura mountain ranges on either side. The book covers the beginning of Tamil culture, the prominence of Jains and Buddhists in southern India which was taken over by Adi Shankara’s Advaita philosophy, the history of the south-western coast (Kerala) and some of the dynasties such as Cholas and the Satavahanas.

The book is as much about (if not more) the discovery of the history of southern India in the past two centuries as much as about the 3,000-4,000 years of history itself. At one point, in a moment of self-realisation, he does point out that he’s risking boring the reader … and then promptly discusses one more Orientalist. All this makes the book a laborious read. It’s a pity because give the amount of research that Allen has conducted, he could have woven an interesting narrative just sticking largely to the actual history. Also, the book seems to take huge time leaps — there’s a fair amount of discussion of the BCE and very early CE years and then of the last three or four centuries and consequently, the mention of many of the important southern dynasties seem superficial. And the writing style is extremely dry!

I often look out for interesting factoids in books such as these. Again unfortunately, these were few and far between. The most interesting one: Mark Shand, author of Travels with my Elephant, noticed that his elephant Tara refused to move as it approached the Kalinga battlefield where hundreds of elephants had died 2000 years ago. He ascribes it to ancestral memory and elephants indeed remember everything!

Allen does dare to touch upon the touchy topics of Hindutva and revisionism of history in his endnotes. He laments the fact that Indian culture never had accurate historians and  makes an interesting contrast between the British (who elevated the historical at the cost of the mythical) and the Indian (the exact opposite) cultures. He celebrates Swami Vivekananda for helping create the perception of a spiritual India based on ancient truths even as he seems somewhat critical of Dayananda Saraswati and Savarkar for their brand of Hindutva. Whether one agrees or disagrees with this view, the book is reasonably balanced overall and Allen’s love for India does stand out.

Pros: Well researched and accompanied by interesting images

Cons: Too much focus on the discovery of the history versus the history itself, dry writing style, superficial discussion of the dynasties 

The Lincoln Highway, Amor Towles, 2021

Rating: 5/5

This book is clearly among the best fiction ones that I’ve read! I was almost tempted to skip this review because I’m sure it cannot do justice to the beauty of this book.

It covers ten days of a road trip undertaken by four boys — Emmett Watson, Billy Watson, Daniel (Duchess) Hewitt and Wallace (Woolly) Walcott — from Nebraska to New York along the Lincoln Highway. The Watson brother eventually want to end in California on the same highway in search of a new life and a mother who abandoned them. The other two are heading out to retrieve Woolly’s inheritance in New York. Emmett is the serious one with a high sense of integrity but is doomed to cause unintended adverse consequences by his actions. Billy is young, precocious, filled with wonder at each of life’s experiences and mature beyond his eight years. Duchess “loves it when life pulls a rabbit out of a hat” as he puts it. His sense of morality varies as per his convenience but a fractured relationship with his father eventually spirals it downwards . Woolly is a free-spirited but a lost soul, addicted to some form of drugs but possibly the most perceptive of the four. Each character is etched so beautifully that you can’t but help root for them, even for the grey Duchess. For me, my favourite was Woolly!

One of the best features of Towles’ writing is his ability to flesh out even the minor characters and have them play an important part in taking the story forward. We saw this in Towles’ previous book, A Gentleman in Moscow, and this book has even more minor players, complex and nuanced, scattered around the book. For me, one of the best passages in the book was the interaction between Ulysses, a vagabond in search of his family, and Professor Abernathe, the author of a book of adventures that Billy has read 25 times, despite both of them playing fairly minor roles in the book.

Like in his previous book, Towles’ writing is excellent — it’s easy to read but at the same time etches each actor’s thoughts beautifully. And to enable this, he’s chosen a structure where the narration alternates among the points of view of the various characters. He has also numbered his sections in reverse order (one section for each day) to give us a sense of countdown towards the inexorable determination of each of the boy’s futures. The only downside to his writing is perhaps the unnaturally high level of sophistication that he awards to the actors — which eight-year boy (Billy) thinks so maturely or which young adult (Duchess) is able to do the things he does given his messed-up upbringing! It almost makes the reader feel inadequate!!

Fun fact: The Lincoln Highway ends around the same date as A Gentleman in Moscow (summer of 1954 with June 21 playing an important role)

Pros: Superbly written, brilliant characters, an enjoyable re-read

Cons: Overly sophisticated characters perhaps

The Empire of Pain, Patrick Keefe, 2021

Rating: 5/5

This is the third such book that I have read in the last couple of years, the other two being “The Billion Dollar Loser” on WeWork and on Adam Neumann and “Bad Blood” on Theranos and on Elizabeth Holmes. While the first is about a business built on hubris and the second about a complete fraud, “The Empire of Pain” was the most shocking of the three. It is about a legitimate business that was extremely successful but one that was built using several unethical means and one that ultimately caused the death of thousands of Americans.

The book traces the history of the Sackler family and of Purdue Pharma, starting with the early years of Arthur , Mortimer and Raymond Sackler, children of an immigrant family in New York. Their parents desired their sons to become doctors, given the perceived nobleness of the profession, which turns out ironic given the later history of the family. The first section traces the lives and the initial wealth creation of the three brothers, especially that of Arthur. It gives an insight into their ambiguous views on integrity around medical products and conflicts of interest and their desire to be recognised as a leading family in the country. The second section is about the rise of OxyContin as a majorly profitable drug for Purdue, the issue of widespread addiction caused by it and Purdue’s attempts to fight the hundreds of legal cases. The final session is about the third generation and the eventual fall of the company. The book is extremely well-researched and written in a way that makes it interesting reading despite the subject matter and the length of the book.

The Sackler empire was built on Roche’s Librium and Valium, especially the latter. By the time Valium was controlled, it was used by 20 million Americans and became the most widely consumed — and abused — prescription drug. The second generation of Sacklers multiplied that wealth with OxyContin.It could be argued that OxyContin was a legal drug, approved by the FDA, but the fact was that America did not have an opioid crisis before the drug’s introduction. It is also clear that the company was aware of the problem for a long time but chose to ignore it for selfish reasons. And its usage of its legal teams, influential government representatives, threats and otherwise Machiavellian methods to thwart any attempts to stop it is simply shocking. The lack of oversight by government institutions is particularly galling — as Keefe puts it, “the opioid industry is, among other things, a parable about the awesome capability of private industry to subvert public institutions”. 

As I write this review, the Sackler family appears to have got away with it. They have had to pay billions of dollars as penalties, have had to give up their stake in Purdue Pharma and have to bear the ignominy of seeing their family name stripped away from many of their philanthropic attempts. However, they still have several billions of dollars of wealth created by the opioid crisis, have had no criminal charges against them and seem to have procured immunity against future legal liabilities. And that’s indeed a pity!

Pros: Extremely well researched, the narrative style makes it an interesting read despite its length

Cons: The length of the book to some extent

The Financial Expert, R K Narayan, 1952

Rating: 3/5

Books like PG Wodehouse’s for example age very well despite the fact that the idyllic world that they are set in and societal norms that they refer to are completely unrecognisable today. And that is due to the romanticisation of any situation and the ample use of humour. I have always viewed RK Narayan as an Indian version of Wodehouse with his semi-rural South Indian locales, quaint characters and understated and wry humour. His world of Swamy, for example, has provided endless delight to me and I’m sure to generations of readers. However, The Financial Expert, frankly, was somewhat disappointing — the plot was too simplistic and the humour rare to find!

This book, like most of his other stories, is based in the fictional town of Malgudi in southern India with the characters and their milieu being similar to his usual ones. Margayya (literally the person who shows the way) is the resident financial expert who helps the villagers inveigle loans from the local co-operative bank but aspires for more wealth and respect from his fellow citizens. His journey towards that goal forms the crux of the novel and his long-suffering wife, his spoilt son Balu, and Dr. Pal, a bohemian author, play important roles in that journey.

Narayan has managed to imbue his central character of Margayya with multiple facets to his nature — greedy, miserly, pompous, sensitive, self-righteous yet one who appears simple at his core. His relationship with his wife is the one that Narayan has captured the best, he’s usually dismissive of her yet tender on occasions. Parts of the plot, like his engagement with his clients, his conflict with the co-operative bank officials, his encounter with the local priest, his hunt for a red lotus and his experience as a publisher have subtle humour and irony and are a delight to read. His writing is simple (perhaps a bit too simple at parts) and easy to read. However, the story and the writing does drag on for a significant part of the book. The beginning of the book is extremely promising with Margayya doling out advice to his customers under a banyan tree outside the co-operative bank but the narrative surprise peters out in the second half of the book.

Surprisingly, while this movie was adapted for an award-winning Kannada movie, it has not been recreated in any of the mainstream languages. Malgudi Days, Narayan’s collection of short stories, was made into an absolutely delightful TV show back in 1986. I will hope that the same is done with The Financial Expert!

Pros: Subtle humour, quaint characters and milieu

Cons: Second half was simplistic and dragged

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, Claire North, 2014

Rating: 5/5

What a book! Right from the opening line of “The second cataclysm began in my eleventh life, in 1996” until the very satisfying final chapter (or as satisfying as a time-loop story can get), “The First Fifteen Lives” is a page-turning ride filled with imagination, great story-telling and wonderful writing.

The book’s essence is a “Groundhog Day” type of story — only that an entire life is lived repeatedly in a loop  rather than just a day. Harry August belongs to a class of men and women known as kalachakra (it’s literal meaning is a wheel of time and is a term in Buddhism that refers to time cycles) or ouroborans (from the serpent swallowing its own tail, an Egyptian-Greek symbol of life-death-rebirth) who, after living their lives, are born again in the exact same way at the exact same time and place but with  complete memories of each of their past lives. Additionally, Harry is a mnemonic, a type of kalachakra, who retains all his memories perfectly. During his eleventh life, he discovers that something is changing the course of human history and possibly leading to its destruction and it’s up to him to prevent it.

A usual problem with such a genre of books is the inevitable repeatability, and that leads to such books dragging somewhat especially in the middle parts. North (a pseudonym for Catherine Webb), however, structures “The First Fifteen Lives” cleverly in a non-sequential fashion that makes each chapter feel fresh. And towards the latter part of the book, which is more traditionally structured, the story transforms into a cat-and-mouse type of thriller that prevents the reader from keeping the book down. This book could easily have been caught up in the science behind the events and while there is some perfunctory discussion on it, it does not distract and the book is as much about history, philosophy and ethics as it is about science.

Books involving time travel or time loops invariably need to adopt the concept of a “multiverse” to explain away the anomalies of the story and even that adoption does not offer a full explanation. “The First Fifteen Lives” is no different and the reader is bound to have lingering doubts about the plot once the book is read. But that’s only to be expected — my approach while reading such books is to take a few things for granted and just simply enjoy the ride.

Pros: Imaginative plot, page-turner, superbly written, satisfying end

Cons: Unanswered questions in the end, as to be expected from this genre

The Billion Dollar Loser, Reeves Wiedeman, 2020

Rating: 4/5

The “Billion Dollar Loser” chronicles the history of WeWork and its founder, Adam Neumann, mainly from the beginnings of WeWork to the failed IPO. While Wiedeman acknowledges Adam’s ambitious persona and the possibility that he may be back sometime in the future, the book largely focuses on his hubris that eventually led to the collapse of the IPO process and to his sacking from the company he founded, poking fun at Neumann and his wife, Rebekah, along the way.

While following the WeWork story as it unfolded, I was amazed at the strategy of venture capital investors such as SoftBank and the book reinforces that feeling tremendously. While I can understand how early investors were willing to take a bet that a simple real-estate leasing model can become a “physical social network” (in Adam’s words), it’s mind boggling that an investor could pump in $10 billion at a later stage, especially when the founder spouted inanities such as “we used the work mission to enter into the larger category of life”, had a mission statement “to elevate the world’s consciousness” and pointed to financial parameters such as “return on community” and valuations based on the company’s energy and spirituality rather than on revenue (my favourite was the concept of “community-adjusted EBITDA)! Also, a part of SoftBank’s investment gave Adam a sizeable exit for himself. 

The WeWork story highlights the many issues with modern-day venture capital investing, which appears to be based on the “greater fool theory of finance”, as Wiedeman points out. There is too much money to be deployed rationally (SoftBank had raised $100 bn in its Vision Fund). The entrepreneurs with the most chutzpah and ambitions, however impossible the ambitions may be, are preferred to their more solid but conservative peers, and in the process, the latter’s genuine business models are often wiped out. Unlike a traditional model where valuations follow the success of a business model, companies such as WeWork have had to pivot their model often to justify the lofty valuations that they commanded early on. And venture capitalists are willing to turn a blind eye to serious governance issues such as conflicts of interest or blatant nepotism. This issue was best summarised by Jake Schwartz, one of of Adam’s early competitors: “the reason I care is that if the most successful companies are the ones that just drive really hard, and play fast and loose with the truth, then maybe the whole idea that capitalism is great, or even useful, is really challenging to uphold.”

My benchmark for a great biography is Walter Isaacson’s one on Steve Jobs (on a separate note, I can’t wait for him to finish the one on Elon Musk). Jobs was a multi-faceted character and the biography brings out the various nuances of his life — the good ones and the bad ones. On the other hand, Adam comes out as a unidimensional person in this book, all bombast and hubris, and that was a slight disappointment.

Pros: Details the rise and fall of WeWork well, gripping especially towards the latter part of the book

Cons: A uni-dimensional portrait

Foundation, Isaac Asimov, 1951

Rating: 5/5

“Foundation” is the first part of a trilogy and comprises five short stories (four of which were published several years before the book) which are interrelated and fit nicely as a single novel. The novel is based approximately 50,000 years in the future when the Galactic Empire presides over twenty-five million planets inhabited by a quintillion human beings. Hari Seldon, a psychohistorian (an imaginary branch of science that predicts future events), foresees the demise of the Empire within five centuries and a period of thirty thousand years to rebuild a second empire, which he hopes to shrink to just a thousand years. The administrators of the empire send him away to a planet called Terminus at the fringes of the galaxy to work on his plans along with a hundred thousand people. He creates the first Foundation there while a second one (which is not discussed much in this book) is set at the other end of the galaxy. The rest of the book covers the next 150 years and is about the efforts of Salvor Hardin - mayor of Terminus, Hober Mallow - a trader, and others to ensure Seldon’s plans are executed, making the Foundation more and more powerful. Quotations from the “Encyclopaedia Galactica” fill the reader in, as the story leaps through time.

“Foundation” has many of the typical elements of science fiction. It is set in a futuristic world and has tropes such as hyperspace travel, ultra-wave beams, televisors and others. But other than that, it is also a commentary on human psychology and behaviour — the secondary role that nature plays to technological advancement (the key city of Trantor has 40 billion people but no greenery), the fall of an empire due to rising bureaucracy and reducing curiosity, the use of religion to control humans and the eventual might of economic power over religion. And this commentary provides the book with a soul and makes it interesting reading. It is light on the action elements that we have got used to in science-fiction movies and it will be interesting to see how AppleTV+ interprets the book when they televise it later this year.

I had read this book when I was much younger (and remembered very little) and was pleased to see that the book still feels modern despite the seventy years of significant technology advancement and the umpteen dazzling sci-fi movies that I have seen in the past few years. One glaring feature, however, is the absence of women in any pivotal role in this book, possibly a reflection of the times in which it was written (the trailer of the TV show seems to be correcting that though). I look forward to reading the next two books of the original trilogy (more books have been written since then) and watching the AppleTV+ show!

Pros: A grand landscape, interesting plot, human psychology at the centre, contemporary feel

Cons: A complete absence of women in the plot

Absolute Power, Sucheta Dalal & Debashis Basu, 2021

Rating:4/5

Sucheta Dalal and Debashis Basu, over the past few decades, have created a formidable reputation for themselves in financial reporting with their exposé of the Harshad Mehta scam in the 1990s being their crowning glory. All through their reporting, they have been tenacious in building evidence, have built a strong network of contacts and most importantly, they have been fearless in taking on influential personalities, regulators and powerful politicians. They have approached “Absolute Power” in the same vein, making the book a compelling read.

The book traces the history of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) of India, from its uncertain beginnings when it took on the cartels of the corrupt Bombay Stock Exchange, its rapid rise to becoming the largest exchange of India aided by some visionary policies, a nationwide presence and the use of technology, to the utter lawlessness in the Exchange under the leadership of Ravi Narain followed by Chitra Ramakrishnan. Dalal and Basu track the key issues in the latter stage of the NSE including tax evasions by brokers, the lack of sufficient risk mitigation steps, the blatant suppression of competition, the capture of regulators and finally, the illegal co-location facilities given to some investors for high frequency trading. The book builds on their regular reporting on these issues over the past several years.

In the process, they do not shy from naming the key perpetrators, whether they be senior NSE employees, the top brass at SEBI (India’s stock market regulator) or even the finance minister during that time. I can imagine the immense pressure that they may have been under during this reporting, especially when the NSE sued them for Rs1 bn (about $15 million at 2015 exchange rates). While Dalal and Basu had built formidable reputations for themselves by that time, this lawsuit would have ended their professional lives and significantly damaged their personal ones if it had been decided by the courts in favour of NSE. To me, this aspect of fearlessness exhibited by them is the most impressive.

While I was familiar with many of these issues due to my involvement in Indian equity markets over many years, the blatant disregard for external and internal rules as depicted in this book is shocking. And the lack of will to protect all investors and players depressing. Unfortunately, this seems the case all over the world, including in the US, even now. For example, Robinhood’s strategy of “gamifying” trading will surely bring grief to thousands of small investors who are not even fully aware of what they trade during any significant market downturn, whenever that happens. Robinhood customer suicide is one such example.

I had two issues with the book. Dalal and Basu paint the various characters as either completely black or completely white. The bulk of their criticism is directed against Narain and Ramakrishnan with nary a good word to say about them. Surely, there must be something right that they did to ensure that NSE became highly profitable and had features more advanced than those in international exchanges during their tenures? The second issue was the bland style of narration. Dalal and Basu are financial journalists and they use their usual writing style for this book. But we have seen how the writing can make a world of difference to a book as in the case of “Bad Blood” – it’s a book about the scam at Theranos but reads like a thriller. Nevertheless, I would strongly recommend “Absolute Power” to anyone with an interest in Indian equity markets.

Pros: Fearless reporting, painstakingly researched, compelling read

Cons: Bland writing style

South of the Border, West of the Sun, Haruki Murakami, 1992

Rating: 4/5

“South of the Border” is a first-person narrative by its protagonist Hajime and his relationships with three women — with Shimamoto during elementary school and then again later, with Izumi in high school and with his wife Yukiko. Hajime’s choices in life seem largely driven by a desire to be different and by a want that seems just beyond reach — the “west of the sun”, a place that’s just not possible to reach and a phrase that Murakami compares to Arctic hysteria. This contrasts with the “south of the border” part of the title, that refers to a song that Hajime and Shimamoto listen to often (although I have been unable to locate the Nat King Cole version that Murakami refers to in the book), and could be symbolic of an ordinary life. 

The more I read Murakami, I realise that several common elements thread through this books — flawed protagonists, the inability to remain satisfied with one’s circumstances, overt sexuality and mysterious women, and others. Additionally, this book is fairly similar to “Norwegian Wood”. It’s a book about love and relationships with a love triangle of sorts with many of the surreal elements that are staples of Murakami’s novels missing in it. Both the books are based on songs with the stories having some faint resemblance to parts of the songs. And this commonality is the reason for the missing star in my review! 

One of the features of Murakami’s novels that I find intriguing is the translation into English. The prose is often simple yet extremely evocative of the protagonists’ feelings and the environment around them. This is one of the things that I find most appealing in his novels and it intrigues me whether it is Murakami’s doing or the translator’s. “South of the Border” is no different — the simple prose make the book easy to read (and it is a short novel in any case) while its evocative nature makes it a thoughtful read. There are some sentences that made me cringe though — “it wasn’t a record that she was handling, it was a fragile soul inside a glass bottle” as one example. Mercifully, these were few and far between!

There are multiple ways in which to interpret this book and the characters, notably Shimamoto and Izumi. For example, it is possible that the characters are real or they could be imaginary and are created in Hajime’s mind to reflect his desires and guilt. And each interpretation would take the reader to a different conclusion. I can easily see myself re-reading this book in a completely different way. Therein lies the beauty of this book, especially given its very short length, and what ultimately makes this book a great read!

Pros: Powerful prose, open to interpretation

Cons: Feels somewhat similar to other Murakami books

Mythos, Stephen Fry, 2017

Rating: 5/5

For someone like me who had little knowledge of Greek mythology, Mythos is the perfect introduction to this subject. Fry covers it comprehensively, even if not in great detail, and his easy and humorous writing style makes the book an easy read.

The book tries to be as comprehensive as possible, commencing from the origins of the titans and the gods, and concluding with several fables. It also discusses the origin of many words commonly used today — euthanasia coming from Thanatos, Kronos contributing to chronometers, and tantalised from Tantalus for example. As Fry puts it, this “splendidly exemplifies the continuing relationship between Greek myth and our language”. There are interesting origin stories as well — the creation of peacocks or the Sahara desert and icy polar regions or a swan song for example. The book also provides insights into the linkages between Greek (and Roman) mythological characters, even minor ones — an interesting bit of trivia is that Apollo was the only Greek god worshipped by the Romans under the same name.

This book is essentially a dummy’s guide to Greek mythology. If your objective is to learn more about the subject, “Mythos” is a great read.

Pros: A great introduction to Greek mythology, easy writing style

Cons: In his attempt to be comprehensive, there is a bit of an overload of characters

The Brilliant Life of Eudora Honeysett, Annie Lyons, 2020

Rating: 5/5

I found this book to be very similar to “A Man Called Ove” by Fredrik Backman — with an old, cantankerous protagonist who has lost the desire to live, a new neighbour that brings in a ray of hope, a poignant back-story interspersed with the main narrative, a writing style that’s simple yet touching and a cat as well.

The book deals with the life of octogenarian Eudora Honeysett as she contemplates the final years of her life. Unlike her peers, she’s not scared about death and she would rather go early than approach it slowly and painfully. Her life then gets upended by the entry of Rose Trewidney, a loveable precocious child, and her family and a new friendship with Stanley Marcham, who’s only a few years younger than her. Her back-story incorporating her mother and her younger sister forms the concluding part of each chapter

The book is poignant in parts, and funny and hopeful in others — a bitter-sweet journey as Dora thinks about her past, explores her feelings about death and revels in her new relationships. It is also an emotional commentary about death. “We are living longer but not better”, as one of the characters in the book puts it, took me back to one of the best books that I’ve read recently, “Being Mortal” by Atul Gawande. 

Overall, this is a very enjoyable book to read — it would have been even more enjoyable had I not read Backman’s book first!

Pros: Funny & poignant, easy-to-read

Cons: Very similar to "A Man Called Ove"

The Code Breaker, Walter Isaacson, 2021

Rating: 4/5

The Code Breaker traces the history of gene editing while simultaneously tracking Jennifer Doudna’s life — she has received a Nobel prize for being a pioneer of the CRISPR technology (an immune system that bacteria adapt whenever they get attacked by a new virus).

There is a key difference between this book and Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs. I did not learn anything new from the latter as I was aware of most of the key events in the life of Jobs and in the history of Apple; however the insights that he provided into Jobs’ personality and the behind-the-scenes happenings at Apple made it an extremely interesting read. The Code Breaker, on the other hand, was extremely informative given my limited knowledge of gene editing; however, in its quest for being informative, the book ends up being somewhat tedious.

Doudna has led an extremely laudable professional life. However, her personal life has been largely commonplace, and while Isaacson tries his hardest to create a sense of excitement around it, he fails to do so. He focuses all his efforts on this front in the third part of the book — Gene Editing — where he chronicles the intense rivalry between Feng Zhang and Doudna, tracing their race to get credit, important prizes and patents. But this attempt falls short.

The most interesting part of the book for me was the section where Isaacson explores the moral or ethical issues around gene-editing. This is best exemplified by the question, “would it be wrong to do so or would it be wrong not to do so”. Isaacson discusses where boundary lines should be drawn — somatic editing versus germline editing (the latter is hereditary), the use for treatment of diseases versus for enhancement of human characteristics, the types of diseases that should be edited out, disadvantages that are disabling versus those that are simply so because of societal constructs (such as homosexuality) and finally whether the individual or the community should control this. From this part onwards, the book is less about Doudna and more about the science.

The book ends on an optimistic note, while discussing the Covid-19 disease and the race to find a vaccine, on how reprogrammable RNA vaccines could pave a way for finding faster cures to diseases and pandemics in the future.

Pros: Helps understand the science of biogenetics, interesting debate on the ethical aspects

Cons: Drags in parts

Moonflower Murders, Anthony Horowitz, 2020

Rating: 4/5

I rarely read sequels back-to-back — I find that doing so diminishes the charm of the first book for me and I prefer revisiting a story after a period of time. But Magpie Murders was such delightful reading that I couldn’t resist jumping into Moonflower Murders right away.

The structure of this book is similar to that of Magpie Murders, i.e., the book consists of two complete stories which are separate yet linked, with one story embedded in the other. However, unlike Magpie, the main story here is neatly cleaved into two and bookends the embedded one. This also makes the book a bit more difficult to follow given that there are several characters in each of them and there seems to be some correlation between the two sets.

Like in the earlier book, the Atticus Pünd story titled “Atticus Pünd Takes The Case” is a pacy one — detective Pünd has been called to investigate the murder of a famous actress at Tawleigh-on-the-water, and the cast of suspects include her husband, household help, hotel staff, people that live in the village as well as some outsiders. In the main story, the parents of a missing woman hire Susan Ryeland to find their daughter — she has gone missing after spotting a clue while reading APTTC that could solve a previous murder and Susan had edited and published the book.

Horowitz, as in his earlier book, devotes a lot of attention to both the stories and neatly fits all the pieces of the puzzle by the end. Having said that, I did enjoy this book slightly lesser than its precursor. Perhaps, it was the back-to-back reading that reduced my enjoyment or perhaps it was the fact that Horowitz appears to try too hard to be clever to live up to the expectations of this book. Either way, I would definitely recommend a reading of this book, but not immediately after the previous one!

Pros: Two interesting mysteries in one cleverly combined

Cons: A tad too clever perhaps, too many characters

Magpie Murders, Anthony Horowitz, 2016

Rating: 5/5

“A bottle of wine. A family-sized packet of Nacho Cheese Flavoured Tortilla Chips and a jar of hot salsa dip. A packet of cigarettes on the side (I know, I know). The rain hammering against the windows. And a book.” This is how Magpie Murders begins and this is exactly the way this book needs to be enjoyed (minus the cigarettes, of course)! 

The structure of the novel right at the outset — a book within a book and meta fiction of sorts — clearly signals that this novel is not just another mystery where the murderer will be unveiled in the final act. In the first mystery, which is embedded within the main story, detective Atticus Pünd is exploring a murder or murders in the charming village of Saxby-on-Avon. This seems to have been clearly (and intentionally) inspired by Agatha Christie with the village settings and the multitude of characters — there is even an allusion to a nursery rhyme early into the story. This mystery is written by a writer called Alan Conway and in this universe, this is the ninth book featuring Pünd. And even as a standalone story, this ranks with many of the best Agatha Christie mysteries.

But this is just a part of Horowitz’s book. In the main story, Susan Ryeland is an editor at Cloverleaf Books and is going over Conway’s manuscript (which is the embedded story). As she lays out in the first three pages of the book, the manuscript will upend her life eventually and this main narrative present another mystery.

Horowitz has paid careful attention to both the stories in the book. And his writing style makes this a page-turner and keeps the reader guessing until the end. At its simplest, this book is two interesting mysteries for the price of one. But in reality, it is an extremely clever derivative of the typical whodunnit — well-structured and cleverly plotted! I can’t wait to read the sequel, “Moonflower Murders”.

Pros: Agatha Christie and more, clever plot, page-turner

Cons: None really

Americana, Bhu Srinivasan, 2017

Rating: 5/5

Americana is a fascinating look into the various capitalistic ventures in America’s history, ranging from tobacco, cotton, and gold to slavery and from various industries to the American way of life. And in all of this, there’s a common thread, first voiced  by Adam Smith — despite the risk of total loss, money finds its way to opportunity when the potential rewards are high enough. For a non-American like me, the nuances and origins of many of these were extremely interesting, especially factors such as slavery or anti-completive behaviour, which are clearly to be hated now but have played a role in America’s progress.

In all of this, it is interesting to see how history repeats itself. The formation of “trusts” to overcome laws against pricing collusion and the government’s battles against them in the nineteenth century seems to have its echoes even now. The concept of venture or risk capital used to finance the first shipload of passengers to America came back after 350 years to fund technology companies. Or corporate America’s tendency to latch on to investor fads have remained unchanged from the time pointless trusts were formed to the time when existing companies rechristened themselves as “dotcoms” towards the end of the last century.

Given the vast number of topics covered, there may be an element of superficiality in their coverage but Srinivasan’s focus is more on making it comprehensive rather than detailed. His writing is pacy and interesting which makes the 500+ page length quite easy to read. He makes an attempt at humour as well, as when he sardonically explains the movie Pretty Woman away by saying that it is entirely plausible that a call girl could serve as the moral compass for a financier!

A bonus is the presence of several interesting factoids through the book. For example, slaves formed the single biggest asset class around 1850 with an estimated value of US$2.8 billion at that time. Or the origin of the term, “$300 man” is from the Civil War where rich men could pay that amount for a substitute to take their place. Or that the Remington typewriter is probably what facilitated women into the white-collared working class!

Pros: A comprehensive look into nearly all of America’s capitalistic ventures, pacy and interesting

Cons: Some superficiality in the coverage of topics

The Midnight Library, Matt Haig, 2020

Rating: 4/5

How many times have we wondered with regret, as we grew older, on how life could have been otherwise — what if we had chosen a different career, what if we had loved differently, what if we had held on to some of our broken relationships, or what if we had handled our finances better? This, despite understanding that such regrets can only diminish the quality of our current lives. The Midnight Library cautions us to think more carefully about what we wish for, and gently nudges us to be more comfortable in with what we have.  

This book is a combination of science fiction and human relationships pertaining to the little things that matter. It is not completely new though. I’m aware of at least two movies (Click and the Bollywood movie Baar Baar Dekho) that had similar premises. The main protagonist is the extremely talented 35 year old Nora Seed, who lives in her childhood town of Bedford. She could have been an Olympic swimmer, part of a Coldplay-like band, an academic high-achiever or an oceanographer and a happy wife and mother at the same time. But a combination of misfortune and a “life fright”, as one of the other characters in the story puts it, causes her to disintegrate wanting her nothing more than the absence of pain. And that brings her to The Midnight Library where there are seemingly endless books on how her life would be if she had made some other decision at some point in her life. The starting point is The Book of Regrets which details all that she would have liked to change. And she can choose to change any of that and then step in to live the life that would have ensued.

Haig has had his own issues with depression and nearly killed himself once. In that light, the book is one of the struggles of a depressed person and redemption. The book begins with a lot of promise. The setup is  interesting and provokes thought. However, despite a short length of under 300 pages, the book starts feeling repetitive fairly soon, feels episodic and seems a tad too glib.  It’s almost as if Haig came up with a brilliant idea but didn’t really know how to stretch it to a decent-sized novel. This book was somewhere between a 3-star and a 4-star for me. What swung it towards the latter is that it can help readers minimise the regrets that they have and leaves them with an important message, as voiced by Mrs. Elm, The Librarian: “Never underestimate the big importance of small things”.

Pros: Interesting plot, helps readers minimise the regrets that they have

Cons: Becomes repetitive

A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson, 2003

Rating: 4/5

This is a book that discusses the formation of the universe, the determination of earth’s size and age, the role of physics and chemistry in enhancing our knowledge of the universe, volcanoes and glaciers, genetics and anthropology — in short, as Bryson puts it, “how we went from there being nothing at all to there being something, and then how a little of that something turned into us.

This book addresses an amazing range of scientific topics and is a sort of cheat sheet on them. As Bryson puts it, “we live in a universe whose age we can’t compute, surrounded by stars whose distances from us and each other we don’t altogether know, filled with matter we can’t identify, operating in conformance with physical laws whose properties we don’t truly understand” — in this book, he attempts to address some of this ignorance.  And incredibly, he does it with some humour along the way!

As with any Bryson book, there are several interesting tidbits strewn on the way. For example, if the diagram of our solar system in our school geography books were drawn to scale, and if Earth was pea-sized in that diagram, Pluto would have been two and a half kilometres away! Or when we sit on a chair, we are actually levitating (albeit at a height of only one hundred millionth of a cm. Or that the origin of the phrase “cloud nine” comes from an old classification of clouds into ten types in which the ninth type was the fluffiest cloud. The book is filled with large numbers and Bryson finds interesting ways of presenting them. For example, the earth is 4,500 billion years old, or put another way, if the entire history of the Earth was a day, humans emerge only one minute and seventeen seconds before midnight. On a lighter note, I managed to deduce that the movements of Harry Potter’s Knight Bus may have been an application of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity!

As to be expected in a book of this genre, there are parts that drag. And given the 500+page length of the book, it may make sense to skim over a few parts. Also, Bryson often dumbs down the science for us. This may be a good thing or a bad one — it could irritate more knowledgeable readers but then, this book is probably not meant for them.

This book helped me revisit parts of the physics, biology and chemistry that I had learnt in high school. Ultimately, It’s a book that makes readers marvel anew at the size of the universe and allows them to look at things around them in a new way — Bryson’s senses of wonder is contagious. And for that, it’s worth a read!

Interesting factoid: Mary Anning used to gather fossils (including the ichthysorausus) and sell them and is most likely the source of the tongue twister “she sells sea-shells on the seashore)!

Pros: Wide range of scientific stories, interesting tidbits and analogies

Cons: Drags at times