The Psychology of Money, Morgan Housel, 2020

Rating: 4/5

Investing is a combination of financial acumen and behavioural skills. While there are several books and blogs devoted to the former, The Psychology of Money focuses on the softer skills around investing. As Housel points out early in the book, investing is one area where a formal education and a person’s connections do not matter much.

Housel has divided the book into short chapters and eighteen of them highlight a particular lesson for investing. These vary from recognising the role of luck, long tails in investing and keeping a margin of error to distinguishing between being reasonable versus rational and understanding that different motivations drive different investors. He supports many of his main themes with interesting anecdotes related to the economy or to famous people. But ultimately, this book is not just about investing — there are life lessons that he imparts as well such as the need to save and to know when you have enough.

This is a short book, but Housel is still unable to avoid repetition, especially within chapters. He sometimes takes several paragraphs to make the same point in different ways. But I guess he would have needed to get to a minimum size for this book to be recognised as one! Having said that, it is an easy read. Also, while some of the insights that Housel provides are extremely compelling, others are self-evident. I would recommend this book particularly to young people starting their careers as a guide to manage their money and avoid the behavioural pitfalls that many of us fall prey to (they will find the last chapter quite useful). But it will also be a good read for older folks, helping them recalibrate their financial goals.

Pros: Thoughtful, easy read, useful guide for young people

Cons: Some repetitive points, some self-evident insights

Never, Ken Follett, 2021

Rating: 3/5

Never is an epic story covering political events in the US, China, the Koreas, Chad and Syria, that inexorably spiral into a possible nuclear conflict. It details how a relatively small event in a remote part of the world could force the superpowers to get involved and how the compulsions of international relationships could actually end up escalating the conflict rather than ameliorating it. A scary possibility, and more so with the enhanced threats of cyber warfare now (interestingly documented in Nicole Perlroth’s “This is how they tell me the world ends” — my review here)!

However, what could have been a compelling political thriller becomes a mishmash of government manoeuvres and personal stories of some of the protagonists. The 800-page length consequently seems unnecessary — the entire track covering an undercover CIA agent in Chad and a mother-son duo from one of the Chadian settlements seems irrelevant and has very little bearing on the main plot, for example. Some of the personal side-stories are somewhat jarring and long, like the ones covering the lives of US President Pauline Green and her husband and daughter or even the relationship between a CIA operative and a French attache in Chad. The romantic tracks are awkward at best — when one of the key protagonists voices that “a woman’s heart can be an unexploded bomb … handle me delicately so that I don’t detonate”, you know that this isn’t Follett at his best. Foes of some of the main characters are reduced to caricatures. In a way, Never reminded me of the old Sidney Sheldon books — I would gobble them greedily when I was younger but would probably get nauseous reading parts of them now.

Given its length, the book is mercifully an easy read. However, only parts of it are real page-turners such as an escape from a terrorist camp or the spiralling of events towards the end. While I wasn’t tempted to leave the book unfinished at any point, Never was a bit of a lost opportunity to be a great book, in my view.

Pros: Epic story, easy read

Cons: Unnecessary length, awkward personal tracks

This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends, Nicole Perlroth, 2021

Rating: 5/5

In a way, this is possibly the scariest book that I’ve ever read! While physical threats to countries around the world are bad enough, digital threats are several times so. While I was familiar with the superficial aspect of cyber espionage, the book fleshes it out in detail and reveals the extent to which it is used, both by bad state actors as well as the supposedly more ethical governments against their own citizens. It covers the early days of hacking when the Russians used the typewriters in the US embassy in Moscow to obtain information to Project Olympic (the joint efforts by the US and Israel to bring down Iran’s nuclear capabilities), to the more recent attack on Ukraine’s infrastructure by Russian hackers and Russia’s interference in US elections. 

By going light on the technical aspects and focusing on stories, Perlroth has made the book easy to read. It is also structured in a way that makes the narrative easy to follow and it covers the key actors involved in cyber espionage using zero-days (backdoors to control software and hardware that can be exploited) — the hackers (both the good and the bad actors), the brokers, the buyers, and the ones that try to prevent it. 

Perlroth raises two important issues in the book. The first one concerns the zero-day buyers. How do we prevent them falling into the wrong hands? At the same time, is it even okay if they are sold to the “right people”? For example, can the usage of the Stuxnet worm by America and Israel to damage Iran’s nuclear capabilities be justified and where will the line of interference in other nations be drawn? And the second is the dilemma that governments face when they are aware of zero-days — do they turn them in to the vendors so that they can be patched or do they exploit it against their enemies but with the risk that the latter might exploit them as well. 

Cyber espionage gets scarier as more and more devices get connected to the Internet. Apparently, 127 new devices are being plugged into the Internet in the US every second. Our homes, cars, offices, financial systems, transport infrastructure, power infrastructure, basically everything impacting our day-to-day lives can be manipulated. Also, unlike traditional arms, any country can afford cyber arms. There is a large economical cost too, with some estimating annual cyber losses to be more than two trillion dollars. But the scariest part for me was the lack of a significant moral compass in all the players involved — “nobody in this trade ever seemed to take a stance” as Perlroth puts it.

Perlroth suggests, naively in my view, that the solution is to increase focus on security in multiple ways while building hardware and software. That is easier said than done given the fierce race among companies to go-to-market and security issues can never be eliminated completely in any case. The only solution perhaps is a global cyber treaty where companies promise not to attack civilians and critical infrastructure during times of peace, a digital Geneva Convention of sorts!

Pros: Extremely interesting content, easy-to-read

Cons: Some parts belabour points and consequently drag

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