Category Archives: Books

Books read, reading, want to read and general book ramblings.

This is not a reading list. (Part 2)

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A round up of the books I read in the last couple of months.

1. The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ

The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel ChristLike Satanic versus for Christians but without the fatwa. :)

 

 

 

2. A Case Of Exploding Mangoes

A Case of Exploding Mangos

Even though I have sworn off fiction like other sickly sweet calorie laden treats in my life, Mohammed Hanif is a an excellent writer that you just can’t help but binge on. Heard him speak at the Karachi Literary Festival (best speaker of the day) and apparently he’s coming out with another book soon.

 

 

3. Building Social Businesses

Building Social BusinessesBest part of the book is that is really gets to the nitty gritty of discussing successful (and un-successful) attempts at social businesses, plus a how-to manifesto. I hope, aim, plan one day to put it into action in something I do.

 

 

 

4. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine

The Big ShortExcellent book. Like a hard-boiled crime thriller for the financial age. Not much to be said since it spent like most of last year on the NYTimes bestseller list. I would say A LOT of understanding specifically how the financial instruments worked and the particular micro/macro effect of it went over my head. And honestly, that’s after like two years of listening to NPR Planet Money Podcast which really breaks it down for the lay person, so I’m not sure how easy it is to dig into for the uninitiated.

 

 

5. The Rules of Life: A Personal Code for Living a Better, Happier, More successful kind of Life

The Rules of LifeI admit, I’ve become a self help junkie. The first step is admitting you need help. :P  Well anyways, I think there were some good nuggets in this book that I jotted down for future reference.

 

 

 

 

6. What the Dog Saw

What the Dog Saw

So Gladwell-y, Glaswell-esque.  Lacked a central theme, as it was random essays thrown together in book format so I would say Blink, Tipping Point and Outliers were all more enjoyable for me.

 

 

 

7. The Male Brain

The Male Brain

Continue to love all things science-y + brain-y. Actually, despite my decent amount of reading on the wonders of the brain it is interesting to find out how early (as in the belly) male and female brains get shaped. I think the author wrote ‘The Female Brain’ as well which I’m going to read sometime soon. This book isn’t supposed to be a whole ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus’ b-s, but it does make you more accepting of the times when you feel like the men in your live are living on the same planet with different understanding of basics of physics.    :P

 

Reading List: Half the Sky, Risk, Hapiness

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A quick round up of what I’m reading these days. (Yes, I’m still up to my multiple books at a time shenanigans.)

1.  Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women WorldwideHalf the SkyThis book is E Y E   O P E N I N G. (Yes, in the all caps sense.)  I’m not exactly why, but I never actually realized how oppressed and lacking in resources and opportunity most women are.All the more ironic since I’m currently living in Pakistan. This should be at least a little bit more in the forefront for me. I can just say its a testament to how totally awesome my parents are ’cause I can honestly say I’ve never had less freedom, opportunity and benefits to live a fulfilling life just because I’m a girl.The book is immensely readable with stats and stories to show how empowering the women of the world is the key to solving some of the worlds biggest problems (exploding population and starvation level poverty).  Plus, what I love about this book is the practical steps that the enraged reader (read: me) can take to ‘make a difference’.  Recommended for all. Especially men.

 

2. Risk: The Science and Politics of FearRiskI think I’ve read this book before in some other format. Yes, humans are irrational about how we process fear and risk. It’s ’cause our stupid caveman brain.  It’s got silly rules of thumbs and you know panics first thinks second because you know – it need to survive. Yes, the political / business marketing machine uses this to sell us stuff (products and votes). Got it.Basically, nothing new here for me. It’s get’s a little repetitive for me. But I guess a good read if you are new to the subject. Ok, wait one thing was new. Apparently we are ACTUALLY underestimated/under-fearing the risk of a meteor hitting us and making us extinct like the dinosaurs. Time to PANIC.

 

3. Happiness: The Science behind Your SmileHapinessI’m only 1/4th of a the way into this book.  All I can tell you is that I’m not increasing my happiness level. (j/k).I’ve only read like 1/2 of a self help book (How to Get What You Want and Want What You Have), which despite the supposed shame of reading a self help book, I actually found quite insightful and useful.  It will be interesting to see what the science perspective of happiness will be. Will report back.

This is not a reading list. Hitchens, Stuffed, Hesse, Seth

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A round-up of books I’ve been reading (some that I AM reading and am not quite finished with).

Hitch 22

The short of it is, that this is a book about a man that I know (knew) absolutely zero about (as in, never read any of his published books, essays and other journalistic outputs).  I *think* the only reason I had even heard about this book was because he was featured on one NPR podcast or another that I am so fond of listening to. (I must have been one about ‘God’ or ‘Religion’ from PRI: To the best of own knowledge because he is also author of ‘God is not Great’.  Or not.)

Hitch22Given that pre-amble I’m very much enjoying this memoir (about a man I don’t know much about). I AM struggling with the fact that I have to google almost every paragraph that he writes because he references events, movements, people that I have zero knowledge about. You can blame that on my very poor grasp of history, or the fact that (hello) he is OLD and the things he talks about are usually very much before I was born.

Although he has chapters devoted to very famous people (James Fenton, Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie) – I just enjoyed reading about his mother Yvonne and father ‘The Commander’ .  And I can say that without feeling embarrassed about being a ‘writter groupie’ – ’cause again I had never heard of the dude.  They are just seem to me the most unselfconsciously written with a detached but forgiving view of how these who people shaped who he is.

Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World’s Food System

So I continue to be very interested in all things about our food. I mean I can feel guilty and bad about spending money on *things* and buying into the consumerist culture that makes you buy,buy,buy to feel better…  but since ‘buying’ food is something that is not optional I guess it’s about time to start getting serious about understanding what the impact of what I eat is.

Stuffed and StarvedAs a starter, I think this book is a good follow-up for reading anything by Michael Pollan. As in, his books are a lot more read-able. Also at it’s core its about the love of food- and I’m a food lover-not about feeling guilty about eating things (including meat) but about how we can both ‘eat well’ and also ‘eat right’.

Stuffed and Starved is more about the economics of food production, across the globe and the global system that ships food across the world so that I can in fact, buy coffee in Pakistan. I’m not that far along to say that much more – but in a weird way almost everything in the book is new information for me. Like I know farmers get subsidies in the US and I also know that there are almost zero small time farmers. But I didn’t actually connect the dots; farmer subsidies = subsidies to major corporations.  I have to take the book in small doses because it makes me in turn mad and despondent.

Hesse Fest: Siddharta & The Glass Bead Game

SiddharthaThe Glass Bead GamePure chance of luck that I was in the particular Vietnamese hostel while traveling and my eye caught on the bright yellow cover of The Glass Bead Game (not the the same cover as shown on the left, which is also lucky for me because like it or not people do judge a book by its cover).  At another point in my life the long narrative and non-story arc of the book might have bored me instantly. But in fact this is exactly the type of book you should be reading when you are forced to lie horizontal for many hours on the train while you are on a 3-month long trip of a life-time / soul searching escape to question where the hell is your life heading exactly and what the hell are you gonna do about it. I can’t say much more about the book, except that ‘this book changed my life‘. In my mind I can completely visualize the ‘sun dance’ – the celebration of awesomeness of existence – of the young apprentice and the final words as the Magister Ludi is gripped by icy death.

I read Siddhartha a couple of weeks ago – again a slow read where I tried to enjoy the pleasure of the words instead of hurriedly racing across the page as I some times do. But it probably wasn’t really the right time; it’s was too hard to not let my mind wander to thoughts about my exercise tomorrow or what I’m need to do at work or whatever else. WHICH I think is a good case for the necessity of a restorative vacation.

From Heaven Lake: Travels Through Sinkiang and Tibet by Vikram Seth

From Heaven Lake

Read it several months back. Not for everyone, at every time I agree but at this point I wasn’t working so I had lots of lazy afternoons.  It’s a travelogue – but I found it pleasant to read about the still ‘lone ranger charting to unexplored territory’ feel of the journey although even by then Tibet had become a major tourist destination.

Review: The Sexual Paradox

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*** FYI – It’s a catchy title, but the book is NOT about sex in the ‘doing it’ fashion. ***I’m almost done Susan Pinker’s eye opening book which is nicely fitting along my general reading on human brains (The Stuff of Thought), evolution (The Selfish Gene), morality (Moral Minds: The Nature of Right and Wrong), civilization (Guns, Germs, Steel: The Fates of Human Society’s).

Here are the cliffnotes:

The Sexual Paradox

1. Men are extreme:

On the smart and stupid scale.

2. Men have a biological / evolutionary inventive to be risk takers:

Fight to get more women, which they impregnate, spreading their seed etc. You know, the usual evolutionary stuff.

3. Brain Stuff:

Dyslexics are more often men, their brain has functional differences that drives system level / conceptual thinking.

4. Successful Women Opt-ing Out (in particular Out of Science / Technology but basically high earning careers):

They need people connection, work less intensively to have / raise kids. Want to raise own kids even if more economically profitable to let someone else do it.

5.  Women are more Emphatic:

Evolution prompted this so we could understand babies needs before speech. (Also raise babies in groups).

6. Women don’t plan careers:

They fall into very successful, lucrative career patterns based on others expectations. They are very successful, which gives them the flexibility to opt-out. Women want flex time for family, personal life more than men.

7. (Some) successful women feel they are impostors:

Less ego centric – less likely to thing recognition, advancement is because of own success (true or not) vs. men (true or not).

8. Men are more competitive:

Again, the whole evolution / biology thing.

IMHO

So the basic idea is that hidden behind current gender equality in (western) societies is the reality that women want and are motivated by different things in their life (and hence career) which is reflecting the ‘real gender’ gap in the workforce. The big missing link in the book so far is how do we (as individuals) and as a society effectively manage these differences given that what women want leads to them having less economic power?

Service Review: The Readers Club

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We recently joined the readers club which is an book rental service in Karachi.  I’ve heard about the service for a while and we decided to take the plunge after it was featured in last weeks weekend issue of Dawn.

What I Love.

  • Really fast delivery! I ordered a book on Monday and it was delivered to my door by Tuesday evening
  • I was happy to learn that there isn’t a reoccurring cost model with the program. You select which ever level you want to be at (minimum is 500PKR per month, unlimited rentals, one book out at a time). Once you rent a book you pay your monthly fee upon delivery and you have 30 days from that date to borrow unlimited number of books. I think this model is really well adapted the local environment; there would probably be a HUGE barrier to trial if you had to pay for the rental via a monthly billing program. As it is, you only pay for the first book you rent if and when you choose to rent it.

What they gotta work on.

  • Surprisingly, the biggest weakness of the readers club is not service delivery, or even catalogue size, but the website itself. I found that the search feature doesn’t work well (e.g. I searched for “in defense of food” which is the title of the book and found no results, but if I search for the author Michael Pollan I found the book).
  • Thanks to Amazon, Google, and other repositories of information which not only help us find what we are looking for but to also help us find stuff when we don’t know what we’re looking for. The site had ‘readers club picks’, but I really missed features like similar book, reader reviews, most read books (by category), reading lists etc.  I found myself basically looking for books I might want to read on Amazon and then searching on the readers club to see if they had them.

What they should do.

  • I would be great of the readers club would be able to create a partnership with other clubs like Karachi Club or Gymkhana both of which is a decent library. The readers club could offer a white-labeled online book rental solutions to these clubs offering members the ability to rent books online and not have to both with pick / drop facilities.
  • If they are getting the rental part right, then there are lots of other products they could venture into. What about rental of kids toys? Sounds funny – but it’s happening. How about rental of school books? I’d also love to see rental of sports equipment like roller blades, skateboards, bikes etc.

Beware and Watch Out.

  • Well the photocopied books available at Sunday bazaar might be a threat. Maybe e-books eventually in the future (at least 3 years for a country like Pakistan). Probably the biggest threat is that we don’t have enough people reading (in any language) in Pakistan.

After The Quake: Haruki Murakami

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Going to be sacrilegious and just go ahead and say it. I don’t get nor, particularly enjoy Murakami. As in I know, he’s the Japanese Wonder boy and I’m super un hip if I don’t like him but like… whatever.  :POkay, maybe its just a half-truth. I don’t think any of the short stories in After The Quake connected with me even though it really did try to take my time and read each one slowly and take post-story analysis breaks to extract meaning.I really liked “The Little Green Monster” which is part of The Elephant Vanishes collection, but I heard it on select shorts podcast so I think hearing a actor say the story make all the difference.Final query: Why do Audiobooks generally have the most monotone-voiced person telling the story? I recently heard The Tell Tale Heart on Selected Shorts and man, I’ve read the story before but it was AMAZING having heard it. And also the reason why David Sedaris audio books are so fun to listen to over and over again.  Alright, that’s my rant of the day.

Breaking The Curfew

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Finally finished – Breaking The Curfew by Emma Duncan.Yes, so it’s an old book about Pakistan and reading a book about politics in history written in 1989 fully 20 years later in 2009 is a little weird. What is surprisingly un-weird is how much the class, political, tribal and ethnic breakup (and alliances, affinity, identity) that the writer describes (with clarity, sharpness and openess) is still so valid today.Most of the key players in the book in Politics, Tribal Power, Feudal Power, Business Power are the same people from 20 years ago, or at least from the same family. The army and its power play is the same. All you really have to do is replace soviet threat with Tabliban and whamo – you gotta book for 2010.

Mailer’s Barbary Shore

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Finished reading Barbary Shore by Norman Mailer. Ok to be honest, I skipped maybe 30-40 pages in the end because I kindda got bored with the inquisition part of the book. Plus the copy I have is so old and tattered that there was pages missing and as I finished the last page the backcover disassembled from the spine.The book is definitely ‘of a certain time’; for the most part it was hard to relate to the Soviet/Communist interrogation as it feel like its part of such a long-gone time.(As in, my post 9/11 world had other concerns like secret prisons, Gitmo, Blackwater etc.)The best part of the book is the way the Guinevere manipulation of the main character are vividly and deliciously described. There are passages of double meaning in the book that make you re-read them thrice and leave my mouth gaping at Mailer’s ability to shape plain ‘ole words into beautiful art.

Dogs and the Brain

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I saw the most disturbing things yesterday…I was driving around 8.30pm so the city was dark and as usual there were not streetlights working. On a busy fast moving street (sunset blvrd) the traffic suddenly started swerving weirdly.I was a dog trying to cross the street.I don’t think he made it un-harmed – he barely missed the car right in front of me only to slam right into the taxi in the next lane.  When I saw him as I zoomed by, he was still up but I’m not sure he got to the other side.Makes me think – what exactly was the dog looking for on the other side of the street? Couldn’t he wait till like 2 am, when his survival rate would be better? He is dog after all – its not like he has to BE somewhere.The little doggy clearly did not have the proper crossing technique mastered. I see people everyday; women in buqas with kids in tow, old men, cross the ‘highway’ near baloch colony. You know they see you driving by when they are looking past your car into the distance behind you trying to gauge the timing between cars.I’ve been reading ‘A users guide to the brain’ (ha ha – I know! The title gets me every time).It seems surprising since we do it so easily; but at the brain level gauging speed and distance are pretty complex tasks. Our brains evolved so that we can quickly access data in the brain and make decision (cross or not) in an instantaneous gut-reaction instinct kind of way.Which is why humans are better at crossing the street than dogs.

Although dogs can do some pretty fun things…