the brook

A marvelous story told in (almost) classic British comic style by Hugh Laurie, who played Bertie Wooster in the “Jeeves and Wooster” TV series. A review I read before reading the book spoke of this as a mix of P. G. Wodehouse and Fredrick Forsyth and I didn’t believe it. I won’t say I buy into that description, but I understand what they meant.

The book tells the tale of retired British military serviceman Thomas Lang, who accidentally gets involved with a dangerous crowd involving British politicians, Middle Eastern terrorists and the American military-industrial complex. The plot is actually not too bad, and certainly hangs together; even if there are a few somewhat incredible parts to it. I won’t give it the highest praise for suspense and thrill, but that is more than made up for by the way the yarn is spun — in the first person of T. Lang. The language is dry, self-deprecating, dripping with sarcasm, and outright funny. I’d forgotten how rarely one reads books that have laugh-out-loud moments. Certainly not to be missed.

I’ve been reading quite a bit lately, but with a new job and tons of other things; writing reviews hasn’t kept up. Here are a couple of quick reviews of recent reads. More later.

Game Change

John Heilemann and Mark Halperin

A great inside look at all aspects of the 2008 US Presidential election. It covers both the Democratic and Republican nominations as well as the general election. The book is fast paced and perfectly embodies the theme of truth being stranger than fiction. In parts thriller, and in parts soap-opera, the book contains quite a few surprises for a political outsider or novice.

The biggest surprise is that the major drivers of the successful candidates were seemingly small “mistakes” by others — a chance misstatement here by a spokesman or spouse, the focus of the press on one particular story instead of another. If you believe the book’s causality chain, this book will leave you feeling quite disturbed about the workings of democracy.

Elsewhere, the book speaks of the various dramas that unfolded over the course of the election — Hilary and Obama’s bitter fight with the surprise ending of Hilary becoming SecState, the unexpected selection of Sarah Palin as McCain’s running mate, the McCain campaign’s recovery from a near-death spiral into oblivion, Obama’s embarrassment by his preacher Jeremiah Wright and more. Pretty much like the juicy part of the West Wing, with not much emphasis on policy. That’s one thing the book does not deal with… I do know that there were proper policy debates on issues like health care and so on but they’re rarely discussed and if so, only in a political context. Fair enough, I guess, given that the book is meant to be a thriller.

Your Brain at Work

David Rock

I decided to read this book after watching a wonderful presentation by the author at Google (here’s the video). The book and the author’s work is aimed at improving and optimizing mental performance. The central theme of this book is to explain various kinds of ‘blocks’ to clear thinking, insight and mental productivity to the reader, and to provide strategies for avoiding or getting around them.

I found approach in the book to be unique. At the beginning of every chapter, the author describes a scene from the life of a couple at work and sometimes at home — usually a scene where mistakes by the characters lead to them making poor decisions. The author then explains the issue, presents solid research about his point, and ends the chapter with a ‘take two’ — how the story might have unfolded if the characters had followed the right strategies.

A sample of the issues discussed — external distractions, internal mental competition among tasks that we must perform, interactions with emotions, the nature of mental insights. I could pretty much relate to every single chapter. In any book like this, it’s quite easy to get lost in the nitty-gritties of the research material presented as you go through it; so the author very helpfully provides a clear summary of the points discussed and improvement steps at the end of each chapter. I picked up this book from the library, but this is one that I’ll buy and read again and again.

Decided to give the Dresden Files series a try based on the recommendation of friends. It’s a fantasy series, only set in modern Chicago. The main character, Harry Dresden, is a wizard, master of spells and deals with demons and the like.

I’ve always been interested in what a fantasy story in the modern setting would look like. This book, however, isn’t exactly what I was looking for. There’s little character development, no clear belief system for the magic being used, and no major philosophical exploration. In short, this isn’t a book by Tolkien or Robert Jordan. It could hardly be one at just over 250 pages.

Having said that though, it’s a great read. It’s fast paced, witty and you can quickly identify with the protagonist, who pretty much narrates the story. Lots of action and a decent plot kept the pages turning for me. I’ll move on to the next few books in the series and hope it doesn’t get boring!

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Looking into it.

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I read this book about a month ago. Off the bat I can tell you that Bryan Peterson is an amazing writer, and when it comes to teaching photography technique, I’ve not read a better author (I highly recommend his other book as well, titled “Learning to see creatively”).

I wanted to wait till I’d tried out a few techniques before posting a review. Today, I can confidently tell you that this book is a winner. It has taught me some of the most important things I’ve ever learned about photography. I was slightly embarrassed after reading this book because I realized how little care or thought I put in for most of my photography.

Since I’ve always dealt with automatic cameras (even my film camera half a decade ago was an automatic), I’ve never thought much about exposure – how much light is captured by the camera and in what way – something that is determined by the triplet of aperture size, shutter speed and sensor sensitivity (ISO). Understanding Exposure offers a wealth of insight into the subject, divided by two main themes.

The first theme describes a “correct” exposure is and how to get it. This is mainly about determining the correct amount of light that’s captured in each shot. The automatic metering of a camera can often be wrong for complex scenes – especially those that involve both sky and land – which used to often result in washed out scenes that didn’t look too impressive. The biggest change this book induced in my shooting: I now mostly shoot in manual mode. Even on my compact Canon Powershot A570 IS. And I can tell the difference.

The second theme is about getting the “creatively correct” exposure – and this describes making the right choice of shutter speed and aperture size to enhance your composition. These concepts I was more or less aware of but its still very well explained, and it was good to go through it again.

Of course, the ideas are explained with the help of many photographs from the author’s portfolio. The photographs are relevant and often breathtaking. Overall, this is an inspiring book and has certainly changed the way I shoot. I’d heartily recommend it to anyone who’s getting serious about photography.

One the one hand, I’d say Great Britain owes Bill Bryson a ton for this amazing book and travelogue across Britain. On the other, the book is so well written that it’s a toss up to say whether an actual trip would be more enjoyable.

Kidding, of course, but not too much. Bryson captures more than just the scenery or culture of Britain – having lived there for a long time, his writing captures the essence of the people, the history, and the stories that define the place.

The book is a commentary as Bryson traveled around Britain just before he was moving back to the USA. What I loved about the book is that it’s not merely a summary of the high points of Britain – Bryson writes about every situation he found himself in, whether good or bad, and makes it interesting using a wonderful sense of humour and his signature dry wit. One can’t help but appreciate and connect with a book in which the boring conversations on trains make you laugh as much as the descriptions of grand views and cathedrals make you daydream in wonder.

The personality of the writing (and writer) is charming as well. Self-deprecating at many occasions, and very human, the Bryson isn’t afraid to admit that his opinion about a particular county changed overnight – for three nights running. And some of the personal incidents he narrates are hilarious. Here’s a gem:

Eventually, a voice annouced that because of faults further up the line this train would terminate at Stockport, which elicited a general groan. At each station the voice apologized for the delay and announced anew that the train would terminate at Stockport. When at last we reached Stockport, ninety minutes late, I expected everyone to get off, but no-one moved, so neither did I. Only one passenger, a Japanese fellow, dutifully disembarked, then watched in dismay as the train proceeded on, without explanation and without him, to Manchester.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you – this book will make you laugh out loud. An absolutely delightful read.

Recently saw this PBS production detailing the landmark Dover trial in which evolution and intelligent design battled each other. A really well-made documentary, and a fascinating story both for the human and legal interest.

Convincing a conservative judge appointed by George Bush to rule that Intelligent Design is not science and shouldn’t be taught in science classes is no mean task!

You can watch the thing online here.

I picked up a Star Wars book after a long time. This is the first book of the Dark Nest Trilogy, set after the completion of The New Jedi Order series.

A new species is starting to colonize the Galaxy, near the borders of Chiss space – a species with a collective mind. A collective mind that can influence and absorb the will of some Jedi. As the younger Jedi Knights of the New Jedi Order go and answer the Colony’s call, the elders – Luke, Mara, Han and Leia rush to their side in the interest of preventing war and restoring sanity.

Although the book starts off a tad slowly, the plot gets really interesting; and had me totally absorbed. A number of subplots, including one where R2D2 is trying to hide something from Luke make the story really interesting. What I like most about Star Wars books is the ever greater challenges that the authors come up with for the Jedi – and that the solutions to these are always complex and never black and white. Let me stop before I give away the plot.

In fact, I’d always like to remember how I read this book – I finished it off by sitting in a coffee shop (Gloria Jean’s at Raffles City Tower) for three and a half hours with a blueberry cheesecake and a cup of coffee. Something I hadn’t done in a long time – sipped caffeine and got myself a sugar high while being totally absorbed in a galaxy far, far away and reminding myself what I often forget – reality is overrated.

Oh, and Star Wars fans of extended universe fiction can rejoice – although this book is the first in a trilogy, it actually has a reasonably decent ending and a conclusion, though of course there are enough loose threads. Some Star Wars trilogies are notable for ending bang in the middle of a sentence. I’m looking forward to reading the other two books.

Rating: 4 / 5

This book is actually statistics explained in layman’s language, and how it applies to our daily lives. It’s actually less about the mathematical parts of statistics, and much more about the hidden assumptions and surprising results that are counter-intuitive but built-in to statistics – what we perceive as success may be pure luck, or vice versa.

The author has been a trader in the investment industry for most of his life, and thus a most of the examples given are finance and trading related. The markets are particularly prone to randomness and the material therefore is all the more interesting.

The book does extend its results and principles to life in general. One of the most interesting points that is reiterated is Karl Popper’s observation that science should be taken with a grain of salt – simply because anything based on experimentation suffers from the black swan problem – no matter how many white swans you see, you cannot conclude that all swans are white. See one black swan, however, and you can conclude that not all swans are white. Positive results, as such, are extremely hard to prove.

Another principle that I enjoyed reading about is thinking of success probabilistically – while a given trader may make more money than a given dentist – in expectation, given all possible twists of the dentist’s career, the dentist is far more likely to enjoy reasonable success compared to the trader, who is far more affected by events that are random.

The writing flows very nicely and is very easy to understand – I highly recommend this book. It certainly gives a few fresh perspectives to life.

Rating: 4 / 5

Al Gore, one of the most lucid American political commentators I have read, explains clearly and persuasively why he thinks American democracy is going downhill and is in dire need of a shot in the arm.

His main arguments are – the overwhelming influence of the television media, leading to a sudden decrease in citizen participation (TV is mostly one-way communication); the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few (directly related to media influence as well); and massive abuses of power and unconstitutional actions by the Bush administration which have gone either unchecked or uncorrected by Congress and/or the judiciary but also by the American public.

He gives ample substantiation (though anyone who follows the American democracy or even the Daily Show closely enough should need none). But it was shocking to learn that a huge percentage of Americans believe that the President needn’t follow the orders of a Supreme Court judge – simply because Bush has ignored a few. Gore’s is the most lucid explanation I’ve read yet of why reason and rationality – the tools that are the presumption of a working democratic system are being eroded.

The book is definitely food for thought for Americans. But it has a lot of implications for the rest of us as well. America is the birthplace of real democracy – built from monarchy. They still learn – and care – about what their founding fathers struggled with more than two centuries ago, and how the system of checks and balances works. And so perhaps it’s not as surprising that they (or at least some of them) can see better than the rest of us what plagues the institution of democracy.

As an Indian, I am very proud of being part of the largest democracy in the world. Yet democracy is something we adopted, and now take for granted, something we sort of assume is the best mode of government there can be. We all learned the how of democracy in civics lessons – who elects the national and state legislatures and what the division of powers are and what that parliamentary system means. But the why of it – thats something that we don’t bother about much. We don’t learn too much about why our constitution is the way it is, and what the logic of democracy is.

The problems that Al Gore points out for the US are as applicable to India or may become in the future – mindless sensationalizing of the news media for one; and increasing lack of participation of the educated electorate for another.

At the end of the book, Al Gore suggests that the Internet can play a major role in rekindling the role of citizens in a true democracy. He also makes it quite clear that democracy is no panacea – without a well informed citizenry willing to participate in the process, power will naturally go into the hands of select few who will then have no checks to prevent its abuse.

The only negative – perhaps only for an outsider – is that the middle of the book is a bit rambling about how much Bush has abused his power – some of which may be due to the fact that they’re natural rivals.

Rating: 4 / 5