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