Review: The Music of the Primes by Marcus du Sautoy

The Music of the Primes: Searching to Solve the Greatest Mystery in Mathematics by Marcus du Sautoy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It is with books like these that I wonder why I never chose to study mathematics further. I would like to believe it was due to the abysmal, 'learn-by-rote and don't explore' method that I was forced to follow in the rat-race to pick a career. It is extremely unfortunate that I ended up quitting the subject with quite some vitriol, but it is even more unfortunate that I have begun to discover, a little too late, the very subject's beauty. Well, better late than never, right?
But hey, if I really hated mathematics, I should have never looked again at a book that extolled it. Maybe I wanted to redeem myself? Nah! Some part of me probably wanted to give it another chance despite the fact that it always tried to bring me down (all those damn exams!).
Anyway, it was with some haughtiness that I gave into this book. "Stupid mathematicians-I thought-trying to build something really difficult out of something as simple as 1,2,3...stupid theorems, stupid proofs that ended with 'hence proved'"-the rants in my head wouldn't end. I never saw the beauty of primes, never thought them special, actually I never really thought of them after high school. It didn't help that the book is written by a professor of mathematics who gushes over the subject somewhat unabashedly and with seemingly low regard for other disciplines. Sample this- "Those names [certain mathematicians] will live long after we have forgotten the likes of Aeschylus, Goethe and Shakespeare". This is just an absurd argument to me and something I completely disagree with. Really intelligent, well-read people will remember both mathematicians and bards alike, not to mention other significant scientists and artists. A really small point, but it began to put me off the writing, until I began to really get into why the Riemann Hypothesis is such a big deal and the interesting history of mathematics (I think the history more than the math part of it was interesting to me until a certain point and then maths soon began to catch up).
It was interesting to get into the minds of these brilliant mathematicians and read about how math played a role in their lives. It was nostalgic reading about the zillions of theorems that I had touched upon in another life and I felt incredibly patriotic reading about the contributions of Indian mathematicians and-believe it or not-a certain quote by an eminent British mathematician that the Indian education system played a huge role in honing his skills! (Wow, was it just me then?)
But most of all, it was fascinating to read about how little is known of the primal beat and how knowledge of at least a few of the prime numbers' secrets, starting with the Riemann Hypothesis may be linked to quantum theory and eventually a better understanding of the universe. I enjoyed the rare glimpses of humor in the author's writing [for e.g. while referring to the strange case of the autistic twins in Oliver Sacks book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat & Other Clinical Tales -"Before anyone could find out how they were doing it, the twins were separated at the age of thirty-seven by their doctors, who believed that their private numerological language had been hindering their development. Had they listened to the arcane conversations that can be heard in the common rooms of university maths departments, these doctors would probably have recommended closing them down too"]. However, the constant reminders of monetary benefits to solving problems of such significance were a bit of a turn off. Isn't eternal fame enough?
I feel like this book deserved the 4 stars I gave it, because despite some disagreement with his tone, I overall agreed with Prof. du Sautoy in that I was completely wrong in dismissing mathematics as a boring subject with no value in real life except for simple arithmetic calculations.

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Review: Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake

Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In the words of Mrs. Slagg, "Oh my poor heart!" This book is definitely not an easy read! Part humorous, dull, convoluted and yet enticing, lets just say I am glad this book wasn't spoiled for me as a high school read, like say *cough* 'Great Expectations'.
The detail that an artist puts into paintings is what you get when that artist decides to write a book. I read another book by a contemporary artist, the highly publicized ' The Night Circus' and while in that case the story was dull, the writing pretentious, in 'Titus Groan' you get such intimate details of each and every scene, that you might be fooled into thinking the story is dull. I can assure you it is not! While not exactly your fast paced thriller of a fantasy, ' Titus Groan' (which dwells on expanding on every caricature of a character) is a wonderful stage setting to the protagonist whose name is the title of this novel. However, that means, you do not get to see him as much as the surroundings in which he is destined to thrive. I say thrive, because Gormenghast Castle at its best is a mad-house. A place full of strange characters. How did Peake even come up with them?
Each character is so well etched, that the next time I find someone named Cora, or Clarice, I am going to assume they are as batty as the twins in the book. The vocabulary is amazing and the names of the characters roll of your tongue. Soon, you'll love the many eccentricities, be it the stolidity of Mr Flay, the moroseness of the bibliophilic Lord Sepulchrave (I loved that name!), the frostiness of his wife, Gertrude, the batty helplessness of the twins Cora and Clarice, the dreaminess of Lady Fuchsia, the reverent love of the old Nannie Slagg, the jolly, nerdy Dr Prunesquallor (again, love it!), his intolerable sister, Irma with a tendency to repeat her words forcefully when making a point, the homicidal Abiatha Swelter and the cold, calculative, ambitious Steerpike. Against all of these, the castle of Gormenghast forms its own character, the expansive, crumbling walls holding fort for these many weirdos without falling apart altogether. The second book is called Gormenghast and I wondered many a times if these two books should have had their titles swapped.
The book was exhausting, and at many points I felt tired and did not want to read another word. But then some of the wonderful, comic lines would pop up in my mind and I wanted to see if there were more. Hell, the book was about to end and Titus was not even a boy! I wanted to know what was up with that. And then right towards the end there was a morbid twist, that despite the sluggish pace of the narrative kept me hooked.

Anyways, I'd not recommend this book to readers who prefer somewhat of a pace in their book. I fear they might end up ruining the rating of this weird yet likable ( for people like me) book.

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Review: The Charwoman's Shadow by Lord Dunsany

The Charwoman's Shadow by Lord Dunsany
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I am willing to give Lord Dunsany the benefit of four stars, despite the rude connotation that Lord Vishnu is someone a follower of Dark Arts would pray to. Dunsany was a learned man and another book by him makes light of religion as such, so I was somewhat taken aback at this bigotry. Anyway, like I said, I'll not let that stand in my review of a book that I really enjoyed.
The story follows the travails of a young man, Ramon Alonzo who has to learn the art of making gold from a sorcerer so he can accumulate enough dowry for his only sister, Mirandola. The poor man soon finds out the terrible price of learning anything from this evil man, but must keep going because of his love for his sister and out of chivalry towards an old charwoman who is desperate for her shadow that was taken by the sorcerer.
Lord Dunsany writes about a simpler time, when the marriage of a daughter, with a big fat dowry for her future husband was top-most priority, a scenario, that sadly still unfolds in many a place. However, Lord Dunsany gives Mirandola a strong character and lets her take her destiny in her own hands, something perhaps not very common in those times. As usual, the story is made entertaining by the many intelligent quotes and the importance of losing something one takes for granted (like one's shadow) is exemplified by the terrified and hostile attitude of society towards an anomaly like that. The overall tone of the book remains hopeful and at times even funny, especially with Dunsany's trademark humor which in this book concerns the psychology of a dog!
I still am not sure why the knowledge of boar hunting (taught by Alonzo's ancestor to the sorcerer) was such a big deal that the sorcerer felt so obliged to teach Ramon Alonzo something in return. I guess hunting is an integral part of Dunsany's works no matter what they are about, so I won't dwell on it longer, but Dunsany's style is surely growing on me.


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Review: The Gods of Pegana by Lord Dunsany

The Gods of Pegana by Lord Dunsany
My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Clearly, this was sort of an inspiration for 'The Silmarillion'. Do not look for a story because there is none ( except if the slumber and awakening of Mana-Yood-Sushai is considered one). Instead look at the brilliant word-play, the ease with which worldly concepts are described and the scope of the world created and it will amaze you. The Gods of Pegana have a voice, unlike the gods in 'The Silmarillion' and they can be unforgiving, unwavering and at times cruel.
They are the heroes of the book, not the innumerable earthlings they create, for not much is spoken about them. I really enjoyed this book and luckily my fondness for Dunsany's language has only increased. Onto his other works now! ( In case you are wondering,'The Worm Ouroboros' is not gripping enough for me yet)



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Review: The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany

The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany
My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is my first introduction to a work of fantasy beyond Tolkien's or Rowling's and I am glad to report that I absolutely loved it!

First published in 1924, the book is written in remarkably beautiful prose, something sadly lacking in the current crop of fantasy fiction with unabashed and unnecessary violence and vulgarity. Lord Dunsany's writing is just a little short of poetry and I frequently came across passages that were so beautifully described that it was as if a motion picture were playing in my brain.

Interspersed through the sad love story of Alveric and Lirazel, is the tale of an ambitious parliament of the Vale of Erl who fear their village might be lost in the annals of history. And so their solution is to ask the King to bring magic to their town. To fulfill this quest, the King's son, Alveric, must win in marriage, the daughter of the King of Elfland. This is duly done but the story has only begun. What follows is the unfortunate interference of the Freer and his religious biases which crack the relationship between Alveric and the free-spirited Lirazel. As she returns to her father's home, Alveric realizes his folly and seeks her in a long-drawn and seemingly vain quest.

My personal favorite chapters were, the one in which a unicorn hunt is led by Lirazel's son, Orion and another in which Lirazel finally realizes she wants to be with Alveric and her son despite all. The descriptions of the King of Elfland, the witch Ziroonderel, the Freer , the men of the parliament,the trolls and the will-o-the-wisps move with such rapidity from serious (in the case of the former three) to whimsical (for the latter) that it is surprising that they fit so well within the same story. I was completely caught off-guard by the characters of the trolls. A far cry from the meandering, sluggish and cruel trolls from other works of fantasy, the trolls described in this book are fun and smart. Alveric, on the other hand, not so much. Once wedded to Lirazel, he is frequently unimpressed with her, forces his religion upon her and fails to understand her vanity that stems from her immortality.

The book also mentions religion, but it does not seem to condone it, and there are several references to how religion has mostly served to severe bonds of love, despite claiming to persevere towards building them. Cases in point: ["And Alveric did not know that the time must come when some simple trivial thing would divide them utterly"; "And the Elfland poured over Erl. Only the holy place of the Freer and the garden that was about it remained still of our Earth, a little island all surrounded by wonder, like a mountain peak all rocky, alone in air when a mist wells up in the gloaming from highland valleys and leaves only one pinnacle darkly to gaze at the stars"]
However, Lord Dunsany does not preach. He simply reminds us as to how careless wishes can eventually come true as something completely undesired, and how age often makes one discard the childhood curiosity and enthusiasm for a lot of things, especially magic, if not with some contempt, then definitely a new-born fear.

The 'magic' mentioned in the book is that which might enchant children and that which adults have nearly lost a sense of. However, this is by no means a children's book, despite the playfulness similar to "The Hobbit". Every chapter, however mundane (For e.g. Lurulu Watches the Restlessness of the Earth) is imbued with deep allegories of time, space and religion.

Lord Dunsany's frequent repetitions of "that which may be told of only in song" was somewhat less of an irritation to me than Martin's frequent "Winter is coming" chants, only because I noticed that the former phrase weaved into the metre of the sentences in which it was used, while the latter....oh well!

I think I am going to try another of his books, but for now, I am drawn towards a mammoth of a book called The Worm Ouroboros by E.R Eddison, which according to my Nook seems to have 2303 pages!

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Review: What a Plant Knows by Daniel Chamovitz

What a Plant Knows: A Field Guide to the Senses by Daniel Chamovitz
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I cannot say I simply loved this book. It reminded me too much of a botany textbook, despite the author's best attempts to make it interesting. I understand that the author could not put a lot of the theory in layman's terms, but if even someone like me who is moderately familiar with botany found it dull in parts, then it definitely is not a book for someone with no previous background in botany. That said, it was very informative, extremely well written and I hope most of the information will be stored in my long-term memory, like that in a flax seedling(!).
It is a relatively short e-book at 129 pages, only 94 of which contain the actual material, the rest being acknowledgements and notes. The book is divided into six parts, based on the 4 main senses (vision, olfaction, auditory, somatosensory), sense of location and memory, that plants may or may not share with humans and animals. Each chapter begins with an interesting fact about the similarities in one of the above mentioned senses between plants and humans. The most famous example quoted several times in the book is obviously the enigmatic Venus Fly-trap that intrigues children and adults alike and every botanist's favorite, Arabidopsis. The chapter on how several people carried out experiments to prove that plants preferred a certain genre of music was informative and hilarious at the same time. It reminded me of a page in a childhood encyclopedia, called "The Big Book of Amazing Facts" with the title "Why do some people sing to their plants?" It depicted a large woman in an 'opera singer' sort of stance singing to her plant. I do not remember the conclusion in that chapter, but I think it was something to the effect that it was because people thought you could induce plants to grow faster if you spoke to them or even better, sang to them. Considering that my encyclopedia is from the eighties, it is not a surprise that research has since debunked that myth.
But apart from the fact that plants lack the auditory sense(spoiler alert!), the knowledge that plants possess rudimentary forms of the remaining senses was slightly unnerving to me. I mean, I always knew plants were living beings (duh!), but understanding the extent of their 'life' makes me, a life-long vegetarian, ponder my non-existent options for non-violent means of obtaining food. Maybe one day humans will learn how to make their own food with just air, water and sunshine!
As for the rating for this book, I gave it 3 stars because I only just 'liked it'(as opposed to 'really liked' or found it simply 'amazing'), but in terms of information, this book would be well worth five.
All I know is that I'll never look at Felicis, my bamboo plant that sits on my office desk, the same way again!

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Review: The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

The Palace of Illusions: A Novel by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I found this book in one of the last Borders bookstores and it was on sale for only five dollars!I bought this book and 'The Grand Design' together last January, but I haven't read the latter yet.
One of my biggest fascination with the story of Mahabharata is because of a lesser known twist to the tale and so I was absolutely thrilled that 'The Palace of Illusions' promised to talk about it.
'The Palace of Illusions' refers to the ephemeral palatial home of the Pandavas from whose balcony, Draupadi mocks the 'villain' Duryodhana and sets into motion the cascade of events culminating in the great War at Kurukshetra.
Draupadi, the enigmatic heroine in Mahabharata and her brother Drupad, were children born out of a sacrificial offering performed by King Drupad. He burned with anger at being humiliated by Guru Drona, who was the official teacher of the princes of Hastinapura and prayed for a son who'd avenge him. In addition to the son he desired, the gods bestow upon him a beautiful daughter as well.
Draupadi, in a previous birth, greedily prays to Lord Shiva for a husband who would be just, skilled, strong, handsome and gentle(who can blame her for wanting everything?). But God, being who He is, pulls a fast one on her. In her next birth (as Draupadi), she ends up being married to five brothers, each of who embodies one of the traits mentioned above.
The original Mahabharata, narrated by Sage Vyasa, only glosses over the travails of the hapless princess who must share her conjugal life with five husbands. In Banerjee's book, Draupadi gets a voice of her own.
And with her voice, spill her secrets.
Banerjee takes a few liberties with the story. With Draupadi at the forefront, her husbands, the Pandavas are reduced to the background as mere props, except at the end, where she allows Bhima a somewhat three dimensional character. Banerjee's description of her as a child-woman needing her 'Dhai Ma' at the beginning of the story was a little confusing to me. Technically she should have appeared as a full-grown woman  in the sacrificial fire, considering her father had already been humiliated by the Pandavas before she was 'born'.
I absolutely loved the relationship portrayed between her and Karna (my most favorite character in the epic). Who can resist a tall, dark, brooding hero? But my subsequent read, 'Mrityunjaya, The Death Conqueror: The Story Of Karna', in which Karna is portrayed as ever faithful and ever loving to his wife Vrishali, left me very conflicted. There is an anecdote which tells the story of how Krishna reveals to Draupadi that she would have been better off if she had not rejected Karna at her Swayamvara, because he alone had all five qualities that she desired for in her husband. Considering the fact that it was he who initially prevented her from marrying Karna, this must have been a big *facepalm* moment for Draupadi. Of course, all of these stories are just wishful writing by the authors, but I sure love the theories!
Another change from the original is the fact that Banerjee writes about Draupadi witnessing the War like Sanjay(i.e. with the minds eye) but the War itself is relegated to just a few pages. There was so much potential here!
In all, the book is a lovely short read, but by no means a literary classic. I liked Banerjee's writing and wish she would have written a much more comprehensive book rather than just protraying one of the bravest (and notably arrogant) heroines in Hindu mythology as a mere whimsical woman.


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Review: Born to Run by Christopher McDougall

Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I want to live..like animals, careless and free..
I want to live..I want to run through the jungle..
the wind in my hair and the sand at feet!
- Savage Garden

I recently started loving running and so when a friend rated this book on Goodreads, I was drawn immediately to its name. I am not a runner at all. A couple of years ago I couldn't run five minutes without a stitch in my side and my lungs ready to explode. Then thanks to a corporate 5K race in 2010, that I signed up for, I ran the entire distance in 43 minutes (and was the last one from my company to cross the finish line!). However, I was left with a sharp pain in my right knee which recurs frequently to this day (especially if I run after I have been lazy for a few days). As I kept slowly pushing myself, I was able to run a distance of 5Km in 21 odd minutes by last October! No pain, no stitch, just plenty of endorphins.
'Born to Run' by Christopher McDougall begins with him facing a very similar problem and his quest to find out why he was not suited to run despite being in good health. During this time, he learned about the Tarahumara tribe, Mexico's Copper Canyon dwellers, who are known to run for days with no adverse effects on their knees or feet. Although, how the author intended to solve his problem by learning more about the ways of this tribe is beyond me.
Instead, McDougall ended up compiling an enormous amount of information about superathletes (I honestly do not remember any of their names, except for one) who look like and live among us, but can run hundreds of miles at a stretch. I loved the story of Ann Trason, who started jogging 9 miles to and from work each way (18 miles a day, people!), between twenty-five to thirty miles on weekends to unwind, and eventually competing in and setting the women's record for the Leadville ultramarathon. Her time? 100 miles in a little more than 18 hours! Yay woman-power!
Apart from Ann, McDougall intersperses the story of several ultra-runners who run with as much ease as the Tarahumara tribe, against the backdrop of an ultra-marathon, the Leadville 100.He also describes how companies that make running shoes are actually fooling people with their claims of making shoes that 'cushion' your feet as you run. Human feet which evolved from the fins of some primordial aquatic being, says McDougall, are the only part of a human body which did not evolve as well as the human brain or fingers. So we are stuck with feet that cannot adapt well to the ground if cushioned in shoes (It would be akin to blinding someone and making them paint intricate art. And we all know it takes some very, very strong will-power and perseverance to achieve that, and that it is not something just about anyone is capable of.) The solution? Bare-feet running! However, I don't think the book convinced me to try it after all. No matter what the benefits are, I cannot subject my poor feet to the filth outside.
Some of the first few anecdotes were interesting to me, but I quickly started losing interest with the numerous names thrown into the book and to me most people started to seem the same. They were normal, until they started running marathons, and then ultra-marathons.
The book is definitely an extensive account of people who simply love running. So if you really enjoy the book, you've got to be (or might turn into) one of the people who run just for the sake of it-not for weight loss, not just for good heart health-but just to be in one of the most primal states of mind.


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Review: Heidi by Johanna Spyri

Heidi by Johanna Spyri
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I read 'Heidi' when I was in the 6th or 7th standard and fell in love with the beautiful descriptions of sunshine on mountain slopes, primroses and wildflowers, forget-me-not blue skies, fresh goat-milk, cheese, warm bread, cozy beds of hay and soft white rolls.
Heidi is a sweet little girl who is abandoned by her aunt at her grandfather's hut in the Alps, after her mother's death. Unfazed by her circumstances, Heidi revels in her new surroundings, thaws her surly grandfather and makes friends with a goat-keeper named Peter, his mother and grandmother.
Three years pass and everything is perfect in Heidi's life until her Aunt Dete arrives to take her to Frankfurt as a companion to a rich but invalid girl. Claustrophobic in her new life, Heidi longs for the freedom of her mountain life and her loving grandfather and endeavors to get back.
I recently realized that Johanna Spyri wrote this book in 1880 and I was extremely surprised at how old the book was. Even more so when I started re-reading it. Most of the translation was really bad, and some names did not seem familiar (e.g. A village woman's name as I remember was Barbel, but is Barbie in this new book. Clara is Klara and Aunt Dete is 'Detie'). Miss Rottenmeier (in this edition) was referred to as 'Fraulein' in my old copy which is how I came to learn that word as a kid. I also realized that Heidi was mostly preachy and too good to be true. It is interesting how I never understood these nuances earlier. Oh wait, I was a kid too!  To make things worse, I also read somewhere recently that Johanna Spyri could have ripped off this story from a relatively unknown author, Adam Von Kamp, who wrote a similar story some 50 years before Heidi was published. Sigh!
I am not sure I want to re-read my childhood books for nostalgia anymore. I'd rather leave my memories unsullied. However, despite all the tarnishing that I perceived as an adult, I consoled myself with the fact that 'Heidi' to me was mostly about the soft white rolls! But wait for it.....

The biggest dampener on my childhood imagination was brought about by my realization that 'soft white rolls' are actually

and not as I always imagined them in my naivety as...

Thanks Google, adulthood and reality!

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Review: Ex-Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman

Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I had not heard of Anne Fadiman and did not even pick this book because it was written by her. It came as a recommendation after I had read some other book. But after reading her work, there is no denying that I'll continue to pick out her books because they have been written by her.
This book is a collection of 18 essays, in which she describes the love for books and literature that runs in her family and close friends. I wish I could discuss each and every one of them with someone who has read this book too, but alas! Maybe soon.
Beginning with her first essay in which she describes how she and her husband "married" their libraries, Anne Fadiman, goes on to describe the competitive literary games played by 'Team Fadiman' consisting of her parents, brother and herself and her penchant for proof-reading EVERYTHING! My most favorite part was when she described how her family believed in carnal love for books and not the usual reverential sort that most book-lovers believe in. That her father would tear off finished chapters of the book he was reading to 'lighten' his luggage on a trip, or that her husband would read books in a sauna, made me cringe with pain. I think her friends,the one who would not use a thick bookmark in case it left marks upon the pages, or the one who would follow around his mother-in-law until she replaced his book, are someone whom I'd be more comfortable lending my books to.
Her essay (My Ancestral Castles) where she touches upon the idea that children's taste for reading stemming from their parents reading habits, was also one that I enjoyed. My parents never hesitated to buy us encyclopedias, children's books and fairy tales. But if I and my sister had not seen my parents read (even if they were just reading the newspaper, a Marathi book or religious texts), we would probably not have had the same love or respect for reading.
Fadiman's command on the written word is unquestionable, but what is even more surprising, is that her essays keep you interested no matter what they are about. She can write about pens, or mail order catalogues and still be funny and enthralling. It is a high feat indeed if instead of finding her slightly narcissistic tone annoying, you find yourself relishing it.
I'll be definitely going back to her essays, because despite their quirks, I really liked the Fadiman family and I am sure I'll find these essays as interesting as the first time around. I also intend to find the meaning of all the words she mentions in her essay (The Joy of Sesquipedalians) and quiz some poor, unsuspecting soul one day! Maybe her love for proof-reading rubbed off on me, but page 78 and 88 of my e-book had some very noticeable typos (which I blame solely on the e-book publisher). I'll leave you to find them for yourself!

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Review: The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee

The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was as effortlessly attracted to this book by its description as a moth to the yellow light of the bookshop. Written by someone who seems to love books immensely enough to make a career as a bookseller, this book is an ode to books. The opening few paragraphs ring very true with anyone who finds hours of wandering in a bookstore liberating and as exciting as walking through the wardrobe into the land of Narnia. Every sentence made me think how I had done and felt the exact same thing every time I was at the local bookstore. I think the very essence of a bookshop is its coziness. The smell of crisp paper intermingled with the almost over-powering odor of brewing coffee, college kids sprawled between book shelves poring over a tome or the latest YA paperback, and kids being introduced to their very first book by an obvious book lover of a parent.
The author describes a classic case of an atheist turned believer, as he discovered Steinbeck and began respecting books, a far cry from someone who shoplifted a book from a local book store a year earlier. He writes about his first few years at the bookstore called 'The Upstart Crow', the eventual move to a larger one called 'Printers Inc.' and his subsequent transformation into a book salesman with great nostalgia and hits upon a problem that I face in real life myself. The problem with libraries, where in two weeks, he'd have to load up the bike and return the books he had borrowed with a heavy heart. This is why I prefer bookstores over libraries anyday, never mind the hole in my pocket!
Buzbee intersperses his memoirs with a history of books, book-selling, and libraries where, despite adding in a number of interesting anecdotes, he seems to be glossing over a really broad topic very halfheartedly. The numbers thrown around for statistics are ones that are perpetually changing with times and I found it hard to believe that those were actual figures. I'd have even preferred if he had just stuck to his memoirs and written an entirely different book on the history (with perhaps more in-depth research).
I loved the titular chapter of the book where he talks about going to the bookstore with his daughter,buying books for everyone in the family and leaving the store just in time to be able to read in bed. Doesn't that make you want to curl up in bed with your favorite book right now?
I think Buzbee does a good job of describing his love for bookstores and the feel and beauty of paper based books, but a poor one at predictions. Way back in 2006 when this book was published, he prophesied that e-books were not going to be big in publishing. So imagine my confusion when I got to this point, and thought to myself, "But, I am reading this book on my e-reader!" It was then that I saw my copy had an afterword by the author where he extolled the beauty of an e-reader and eventually retracted his words. The resistance towards e-books is waning slowly, because that which does not evolve, might eventually die of obsolescence . And like the author says, who knows someone might soon come up with an e-reader that can be scrolled up like a piece of parchment! After all why should you care about the format if it is ultimately the words that are important to you?  I did, however vacillate a bit when the author asked " How do you press a wildflower into the pages of an e-book?" And then I remembered, I don't really care about such things! I try to keep my books in pristine condition, in an almost virginal sort of way and e-books ensure that.
One of my favorite quotes-"What I have learned about a good many things of the world, both trivial and profound, often started with the back of a book, a sentence read there that led to another book that led to even more books"! This book led me to another, "Ex Libris-Confessions of a common reader" by Anne Fadiman and I am loving every word of it! It is definitely looking like a five-star read! Stay tuned.

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Review: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

My very first review of this book on Goodreads minutes after I had finished reading was this "A terrible, extremely over-rated pretentious book with a love story as lame as they come." And this new extended review does not mean I take any of that back!
Many times after I have read a particularly unsatisfactory book, I throw myself into a recurrent dilemma. Should I be honest and put down exactly how I feel (in this case, violated and cheated) into my review ? Or should I wait until my feelings about the book have simmered down to the extent that I am not waspish anymore? With books like this one, I frankly do not care anymore. 'The Night Circus' is a book that makes me angry. Very angry!
Here's how this scenario unfolded:
Me browsing the internet to see a book being called 'The next Harry Potter!' - Woah, what?? 'Click'. 'Summit Entertainment buys rights to make it into a movie'. Oh wait, didn't those guys make movies out of the lame Twilight series? Maybe they're trying to redeem themselves! Oooh David Heyman's signed on to produce the movie! SOLD!
Yes, I was this extremely naive person, who was one of the several people conned into buying this overly hyped book. Read the following if you are a fantasy lover like me and tell me if anything about it should have been warning enough.

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.

But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway—a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love—a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.

True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus per­formers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead.

Written in rich, seductive prose, this spell-casting novel is a feast for the senses and the heart.


Paragraph 1:
Yes the circus does arrive without warning but why is this never described from the point of view of the people who actually work there? Also to me the feel of a black and white circus seemed extremely claustrophobic and I did not enjoy being it in. The major part of the story is written in second or third person present tense with a smattering of first person present tense at the end. I do not mind the third person style of writing, but it was the second person present tense style that I found the most annoying. It was as if the author was trying to hard to make her readers see things that weren't necessary. And Erin Morgenstern does a good job of describing caramelized popcorn. However, I do not have to smell popcorn or any sort of food in a book to like a story. That's a job for a cookbook! Books should make it easy for you to see what the writer intends to show you. A writer who tries too hard to make you see her imagination is a definite fail. And as if the complexity wasn't enough, there are story-lines that follow no particular chronological order. So you are left to manage the sudden changes in the tense, the period and four different story-lines which if you are not careful, will leave you as twisted as the contortionist from ' Le Cirque des Rêves'.

Paragraph 2:
Let me start off by defining a 'duel'. I used Wikipedia here because I really want to stress upon the ending of this definition. 'A duel generally signifies an arranged engagement in combat between two individuals, with matched weapons in accordance with agreed-upon rules.'
In 'The Night Circus' Marco and Celia, the two protagonists, 'duel' without knowing their opponent and without any rules. They 'strike' by actually creating whimsical things for the circus, so the opponent can drop by to admire and if need be add their own touches to it several years later. I'd rather watch a turtle race a sleepy hare right about now. Well, now that I look back at the review on the book cover (yes the one that I copied above), adjectives like 'fierce' and 'mercurial' actually make me laugh. I wish the editor had used a 'find-replace' feature to replace them with 'lame' and 'nutty' respectively.

Paragraph 3:
No one is in any real danger at any given point in the book and by the end of the book 'NOTHING ACTUALLY HAPPENS'! However, by then I was fuming with rage at  the author and at the loads of loony publishers so bad that I almost missed the forced happy ending to the story.
Example from a news article: "Let's say The Help and The Da Vinci Code were high-water marks in our bookselling history. My prediction is The Night Circus is the 200-year flood. I loved (those books)," she says, "but this is better than The Da Vinci Code and better than The Help. It's a whole different level of writing."-Vivien Jennings, founder of Rainy Day Books Inc.

This might be a good book for a different sort of reader, but I find it worrisome when the writer of a book describes herself in the following words, "I paint very messy. I throw paint around," says Morgenstern, who now lives in Boston. "So when I let myself do the same sort of thing with my writing, and I would just write and write and write and revise, that's when I found my rhythm in writing." *Shudder*

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Review: The Silmarillion by J.R.R Tolkien

The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I am going to attempt to write a review for one of the best books I have ever read, and it is daunting. But then so was reading it.

I read 'The Silmarillion' eleven years after I had read 'The Lord of the Rings. One advantage was that I went into it with a fair knowledge of and love for Tolkien's style, so I knew I was not going to give up after reading a few pages as I had initially done with 'The Lord of the Rings'. But it had been far too long since I read the Lord of the Rings, and in the interim I had not appreciated Christopher Tolkien's intervention in 'The Children of Hurin', despite his best intentions. So I was worried that this book would turn out to be similar, because it too was published posthumously by Christopher Tolkien. I am glad I was wrong.

To be honest, this would probably be a great book for the most ardent Tolkien devotee. I found it really difficult to keep up with, but again like I said before, Tolkien's style and language are so beautiful that they kept me going. I have gone back to read parts of it again, and even now for the purpose of this review.

'The Silmarillion' is right up there with the likes of 'The Kalevala', 'The Mahabharata', 'The Iliad' and 'Odyssey'. Comprising a major chunk of 'Tolkien's legendarium', to be lost in it is a wonderful experience, although very often mind-boggling. You will not remember all the names in the book. It is way too complex for that. So just flow with the narrative the first time around.

The epic consists of 5 major parts.
It begins with 'Ainulindalë', which is akin to the creation myth from different religions. Eru Ilúvatar, or 'God' decides to create the Universe, and from his thought spring several celestial beings called the 'Ainur'. The name of this part is an homage to the Ainur and their Music that leads to the creation of the Earth (Arda/Ea).Ainulindalë literally means 'the Music of the Ainur' and you are free to interpret the Music as you like, because there is no clear explanation of what it exactly is. Melkor, one of the Ainur whose ego gets the better of him, decides to meddle and make his own Music. Some readers might lose interest, and if they don't enjoy the book at this point, they should probably stop and read something else, because it is only going to get way more complex. For those who took up this book because they had a passing interest in the LOTR, they should probably skip right to the last chapter, although that would mean missing the story of the Silmarils. And this is after all 'The Silmarillion'!

If you are one of the few who are determined to persist and finish the book, the next chapter Valaquenta, describes the different Ainur (or Valar) who descend to inhabit Arda, and their constant struggle against Melkor, now known as Morgoth. Close on the heels of that is the crux of the book, Quenta Silmarillion, which narrates the tale of the magical Silmarils. I simply loved Tolkien's story telling, especially the extremely beautiful tale of Beren and Luthien. I will refrain from recounting the events in this part as they are far too many, but if you have read 'The Children of Hurin' and 'The Unfinished tales', you'll come across many a familiar name.

The smallest chapter is 'Akallabêth', which describes the events in the Second Age including the rise of Sauron and the travails of the Dunedain, the most famous of whom is Aragorn, whom we met in 'The Fellowship of the Ring'. The final chapter 'Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age', leads into the events in 'The Hobbit' and 'The Lord of the Rings' and is the one most readers find familiar.

Tolkien draws aplenty from Norse and Celtic myths and legends, so you will find a lot of familiar themes like 'The Creation', 'the Fallen', 'the Flood' and different Ages. On a side note, similar themes also exist in Hindu mythology (and also in the Transformers series!), and comparing the similarities is something that I find quite interesting.

I love browsing through online discussions of the book and when my Tolkien book club was reading it this spring, I went back to skim it one more time. The language makes you a lot more literate with the 'beautiful' old style English and there is just so much to learn by diving into the rich world created by Tolkien. Some critics say his characters are very one dimensional, but I think even if they are, they are the best one-dimensional characters in literature and serve their purpose well in the story. I wish I could do more justice to this review, but it is somewhat beyond my scope. I might review it properly at some point. Right now I am using this as a writing exercise for myself, and if I have somehow managed it, a way to entice few more readers into the Tolkien cult.

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Review: The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I had never heard of this book as a kid. I and my sister were exposed to more British books than American ones. (Well, I didn't even know Dr. Seuss until the World Wide Web came into our lives and by then I was a teenager!). As kids, we owned tonnes of Enid Blyton books (around the age when we should have read this book), and as we grew older more American books (Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys) found their way into our lives. Then it was back to Harry Potter and Tolkien! I came across this book when someone I follow on Goodreads rated this generously with a note that this book should be interesting no matter how old the reader was. Well, it is never too late to catch up with good literature, is it? (Ah I just jumped to "Conclusions"!)

The Phantom Tollbooth is about a kid named Milo, who is completely disinterested in his life. Enter a magical 'DIY' tollbooth that seems to have appeared from nowhere (*cough* Sweden?) with precise instructions on how to use it. A drive through the tollbooth (on the road to Expectations), takes Milo into the kingdom of Wisdom , but not before briefly being lost in Doldrums (!). The kingdom is a place in turmoil because the two nutty brothers who rule each half (Dictionopolis and Digitopolis) have banished rhyme and reason from it. As in literally! Rhyme and Reason, the princesses who tried to knock sense into their warring brothers' brains,were unsuccessful and booted out of the kingdom.

Milo ends up with the unlikeliest of companions, a watchdog and a humbug (again, quite literally so!)and travels to bring back Rhyme and Reason. Along the way he meets more characters and places, whose names are such witty puns on the characteristics they embody, that you can't help but chuckle.

While I went into this book knowing well that it was a children's book, I was somewhat surprised by the amount of word-play and mathematical reasoning depicted in here. I am not sure every kid who read this book or had this book read to him, would have fully appreciated the meaning behind it, but I guess some of them have gone back to re-read it as adults. One star off, only because I kept getting lost in 'Doldrums' myself at some points in an effort to keep up with the puns and navigate the typos in my ebook. Some parts of the story were just plain silly to me, but they would have entertained a kid perhaps. I think at a point I was trying to find puns where there weren't any, and as someone who dislikes mathematics, I did not enjoy being in Digitopolis :-)

I'll leave you with my favorite lines from the book by the SoundKeeper;
..."And it's the same for all sounds. If you think about it, you'll soon know what each one looks like. Take laughter for instance," she said, laughing brightly, and a thousand tiny brightly colored bubbles flew into the air and popped noiselessly. "Or speech," she continued. "Some of it is light and airy, some sharp and pointed, but most of it, I'm afraid, is just heavy and dull".

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Review: A Clash of Kings by George R.R Martin

A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

They say.."Once bitten, twice shy". I should have taken this quote seriously, but alas. I decided to give this series one more chance and now feel terribly abused. The book to me seemed like nothing but immature, perverse rants by the author. I happened to scroll down the reviews list on Goodreads after I saw that the average rating for this book was a whopping 4.38 out of 5, and found everyone raving about the book. I shouldn't have been surprised though. Anyone who disliked the style in the first book would have stopped right there. I just happened to go on with it anyway, because I thought the story had potential. I figured it couldn't get any worse, right? WRONG! The author's writing is perverse,sadistic to the point of nauseating, completely avoidable in the story and just keeps going on and on. Well, it totally demotivated me from picking up the next book in the series.

The book is all about a bunch of mediocre men wanting to be king and killing/looting/raping people left and right, annoying, loose women, upright, boring women and mopey people shuffling along throughout the 800+ pages of the book.

I got to a point where I just could not deal with the depressing story-line anymore, and Martin is excellent at discouraging any hopeful readers. So, I just took the easier way out and skimmed Wikipedia for the story (saved me from dealing with the ugly language in Martin's books) and I am left satisfied that I made the right decision, albeit a tad late. It's too bad that there were a couple of characters I was beginning to have an interest in.
Anyway, an excerpt from Martin's wiki page
"Major themes and areas of exploration in his short fiction include loneliness, connection, tragically doomed love, idealism, romanticism, and hard truth versus comforting deceit. Many of these occur in his magnum opus as well, but most of them are more abundant and obvious in his shorter works." Comforting deceit? Beats me!

Anyway here's the summary of all 7 books,including the couple he's writing. Be ready for spoilers!!




Behead, rape, behead, incest, bastard, repeat. Aaaaaaaaaaaarghhh!!!

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Review: Mrityunjaya- The Story of Karna by Shivaji Sawant

Mrityunjaya, The Death Conqueror: The Story Of Karna by Shivaji Sawant
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I must start off by admitting that this review may be extremely biased. Biased by the fact that I consider the Mahabharata the best epic ever! Every character has an interesting story, and despite a few supernatural elements, every human character is...human. Human, with all the flaws and strengths, and no one is more so than the protagonist of Mrityunjaya, Karna. Since this review also goes on my blog and there is a slight problem with the spoiler HTML tag on my blog, I have removed it. Please stop reading further if you do not want to be exposed to spoilers.

As a kid, I had heard a lot about Mrityunjaya, and seen the book at home, but the fact that it was written in Marathi dissuaded me from touching it. Even though Marathi is my mother tongue, I have never studied it formally and therefore have a greater comfort level with reading English than Marathi. So a combination of my new Nook, Barnes and Noble gift cards from my company (yeah baby!) and Goodreads, revived my interest in hunting for a translated copy. Thanks to an Indian version of Amazon (www.flipkart.com/india), and my sister, I finally laid my hands on a beautiful hard-bound English translation. And then I lived the phrase "lost in translation" right from the first sentence! However, despite the clunky phrases, I was able to translate it back to what it would have sounded like in Marathi in my head and enjoy the beauty of the book.

Even if you haven't read this book, even if your introduction to Karna is through the Mahabharata alone, you cannot help but feel empathy for the eldest son of Kunti. Mrityunjaya only deepens it.
Mrityunjaya was written as a semi-autobiographical take on Karna’s life. The book is written from the POV of six characters. Karna opens and takes us closer to the end of his story, interspersed with chapters by Kunti (his mother), Duryodhana (his best friend), Vrishali (his wife), Shon (his younger foster brother) and a grand ending by the Lord, Sri Krishna himself. Apart from indulging the semi-autobiography of a fictional figure, Sawant touches on one of the biggest realities of human society, one that has not changed since time immemorial. He reminds us of how we, as a society, place an abnormal amount of emphasis on someone's background to form an opinion of them, irrespective of their actual behavior or worth . It never even crosses our mind that each person is the architect of his own attitude, built off of their external environment. Even though the protagonist was in reality the son of the Sun-God himself and as radiant as him, the fact that he was fostered in the hut of a poor charioteer stacked up unfairly against him. The society then treated him as someone of low status and unfortunately, because things haven’t changed by an iota now, nothing would have changed for him, if he were alive today.

Karna is given a three-dimensional personality in Sawant’s version, something which the original Mahabharata does not provide. Sawant also takes a few liberties with the original, but the changes he makes only make the story more realistic. The characters of Vrishali and Shon for example, are given such appropriate voices, that you are left wondering whether Sawant had the fortune of stumbling upon some long lost letters written by them. Kunti’s character is fleshed out very well too, although you can’t help but wonder, what kind of a mother would choose her own honour over her son’s. One revelation on her part would have brought back his lost glory and honour, although it is commonly believed that the war would have happened anyway. Sawant also gives the Pandavas’ characters a darker shade of grey than in any other version of the Mahabharata. Duryodhana’s character remains the same, although it now makes me want to explore Bhāsa’s “Urubhanga”, which is Mahabharata retold from the POV of Duryodhana! Some day!

Despite the atrocities heaped upon him throughout his life, Karna grew to be an invincible warrior , a gentle and fair ruler of Anga (after Duryodhana bestowed the title upon him), a loving husband, an indulgent brother, a loyal friend and above all the epitome of generosity. So generous, that when a poor brahmin comes begging even as he lays dying, he breaks his golden teeth to give them away as alms!

While you commend Karna for being a rebel and not succumbing to the unfair norms of the society, you hit upon the obvious flaw in the hero. His egotism. You wonder why he was so ashamed of being recognized as his charioteer father’s son, despite loving his parents immensely. And if that shame, and the resultant blind loyalty to his lone supporter, Duryodhana, was the result of his downfall. The Mahabharata is an epic more complex than anyone can ever imagine. You can discuss, debate and argue about it until eternity, and yet cover only a fraction of it.
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Hamartia :The character flaw or error of a tragic hero that leads to his downfall. 

Review: The Hobbit or There and back again by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“Far over the Misty Mountains cold…..to dungeons deep and caverns old….
And thus you are transported into a land of goblins, dwarves, elves, wargs, eagles and hobbits!
“The Hobbit” by J.R.R Tolkien was originally a bedtime story for his children and the published version continues the same feel and writing style as a children’s book. It tells the story of a hobbit, which is a creature similar to humans but short like dwarves and with really hairy feet! Needless to say, hobbits became much more familiar to the world, when Peter Jackson made the Lord of the Rings trilogy into blockbuster movies that are sequels to the events in “The Hobbit”
"The Hobbit" has a few familiar characters for those like me who read the more popular “Lord of the Rings” series first. It begins with Gandalf the Grey visiting the quiet hobbit, Bilbo Baggins in his cozy little hobbit hole with the promise of an adventure, that’ll quite change his life forever. And he’s not alone…
Enter twelve dwarves Oin, Gloin (yes, Gimli’s father!), Fili, Kili, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, Nori, Dori, Dwalin, Balin (the future lord of Moria) and the leader of their company, Thorin Oakenshield. These feisty dwarves are off to the Lonely Mountain, to reclaim their stolen treasure from a dreadful dragon named Smaug. So where does Gandalf think a small peaceful hobbit like Bilbo would fit in? Well, Gandalf thinks Bilbo being small and sneaky will eventually reveal his true purpose in the quest, which he does much to the dwarves’ amazement.
You’ll also be introduced to Gollum and the innocuous looking “one ring”, the story behind Bilbo’s sword’s name, and how he comes to possess his remarkable coat of mithril. It is interesting how these events that were narrated so casually in this book, went on to become the epic that is the Lord of the Rings.
The book is narrated in a playful way with plenty of typical Tolkienish songs, and is a book that will appeal to the pre-teen/teen reader who is not yet corrupted by the plethora of poorly written YA books available these days, and those of us adults who are ardent fans of Tolkien’s fabulous Middle earth.
If you are feeling ambitious enough, try a “The Silmarillion”, “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” reading marathon! This long flight home is almost tempting me to attempt it!

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Review: Jaya, An Illustrated Retelling of the Mahabharata by Devdutt Pattanaik

Jaya: An Illustrated Retelling Of The Mahabharata by Devdutt Pattanaik
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Where do I even begin to review this book? I am just glad I bought it when I did.
I was on my way back to Boston from Hyderabad, India and had a lot of time to kill at the airport after the security check. As I was wandering in the airport bookstore, I came across this book, read the back cover and was hooked. It goes thus,

"A son renounces sex so that his old father can remarry

A daughter is a prize in an archery contest

A teacher demands half a kingdom as his tuition fee

A student is turned away because of his caste

A mother asks her sons to share a wife

A father curses his son-in-law to be old and impotent

A husband lets another man make his wife pregnant

A wife blindfolds herself to share her husband's blindness

A forest is destroyed for a new city

A family is divided over inheritance

A king gambles away his kingdom

A queen is forced to serve as a maid

A man is stripped of his manhood for a year

A woman is publicly disrobed

A war is fought where all rules are broken

A shift in sexuality secures victory

The vanquished go to paradise

The victors lose their children

The earth is bathed in blood

God is cursed

Until wisdom prevails"

I grew up listening to stories from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, but I was always partial towards the Mahabharata. I don't know whether it was because of Krishna's adorable childhood antics, the myriad of heroic characters each with their own prowess, or because the unfortunate tale of the Pandava brothers struck a cord in my heart. Honestly, the Mahabharata is an epic in the true sense of the word. The scope is so vast and there are so many characters that typically most interpretations just skim the events and dwell on the famous warring cousins, the Pandavas and the Kauravas.
Anyway, coming back to Devdutt Pattanaik's retelling, I think he makes it more interesting by presenting much more than the bare bones of the story. He delves into the sub-plots, significance of little known events, different folk-lores and the numerous stories within stories which make up the real Mahabharata conceptualized by Ved Vyasa. I absolutely loved it, if I haven't said so before already!
Devdutt Pattanaik is a mythologist by passion, according to his Goodreads bio and I think he does this job exceptionally well. Any lover of Hindu mythology will not be disappointed by this book.


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Review: A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This book is the first in a series called the "Song of Ice and Fire" by George R.R. Martin. Apart from the obvious rhyming name with J.R.R Tokien, the other thing that really drew me to this book was the immense hype over the book and the HBO TV series based on it.
A Game of Thrones begins with a prologue in which three men who have deserted the "Wall", cross paths with the "Other" and subsequently meet their death. Two of them are killed by the Other and the third person is beheaded by the central character Ned Stark at the beginning of the first chapter for deserting his post at the Wall.
And so we are introduced to the Starks, one of the important families in the series. Eddard (Ned) Stark is the Lord of Winterfell, who lives with his wife, Catelyn, and six children, one of which is his bastard son, Jon Snow.
I thought the book started off really well, with the Stark children finding six orphan 'direwolf' pups in the wild, and now each kid can have a pet direwolf that embodies his/her personality. Coincidentally, the direwolf is a sigil of the Stark dynasty. However, everything cannot remain cute and cozy forever and thus enter King Robert Baratheon and the Lannisters.

Ned's deep friendship with the King earns him a role as the new "Hand of the King", the previous Hand, Lord Jon Arryn (also the husband of Catelyn's sister Lysa) having died in mysterious circumstances. To keep his promise to his wife Catelyn, that he would investigate the death of Jon Arryn, Ned must travel south to the King's capital, only to get entangled in a deadly 'Game of Thrones'.

There are atleast three, at times four, parallel storylines in the first book, which are not brought together even at the end of this book and which is clearly the reason for so many subsequent books in the series.

Martin's style of writing each chapter from the third person point of view of a particular character was interesting and something I liked a lot. However, he does not do a lot of justice to most characters, except for Jon Snow, Tyrion Lannister and Arya Stark, all three of whom came the closest to being three dimensional characters. Ned Stark for one is portrayed as being too noble to the point of seeming dumb. Come-on fella, can you really not be more discreet when dealing with heartless, incestuous monsters of a character, who for all you know could be cold-blooded murderers? Why do you have to be as blatant as a Bond villain (haha that dialogue by Schmidt in New Girl cracks me up everytime!)?
Martin has a tendency to repeat a lot of sentences over and over again, which perhaps is the reason why this book is close to 800 pages. For example,"Winter is coming". Be prepared to hear this atleast a gazillion times. Aaaaaand, if Jon Snow was called a bastard one more time, I swear I'd have torn my hair out. Really, Martin, we got it after the first time you mentioned he wasn't Catelyn's son. You really didn't have to beat us over the head with it in every sentence his name was in.

Anywhoo...the bare skeleton of the story is this
1) The central family of Starks from Winterfell in the North are noblemen, whose patriarch, Ned is really close to the King.
2) The King is purportedly an usurper of the Throne (even though he is honorable, a broken-hearted lover and all that) and is married to a b!#*@ of a woman, Cersei, who belongs to the evil Lannister family.
3) The daughter of the ex-King, Daenerys is out to seek revenge and grows from a meek girl of thirteen at the beginning of the book, to a strong woman of...wait for it....FOURTEEN, by the end!
And somewhere along the border of the Seven Kingdoms is a Wall to keep the Others out.
At this level, the plot is extremely interesting. It is, however, unfortunately marred by Martin's writing. His description of sex is disturbing to the point of unnatural. Like a girl falling in love with her savage rapist of a husband, who can barely communicate with her or has any feelings for her in return. I do not shy away from books that describe violence or rape, and I guess Dany's case was very common in a medieval world as described by Martin, but beasts suckling on a human just crossed the line of 'ickyness' for me! This is perhaps one of the several instances where Martin lost complete control over his pen. And don't even get me started on the Dothrakis!

The characters are all either black or white, again except for Tyrion Lannister, who is so far my most favorite character. It just seems as if Martin tried really hard to give shades of gray to all the other characters.

My slight interest in the series remains due to the unfortunate turn of events at the end of the first book (and I commend Martin for giving such a sad fate to one of his central characters), the better defined characters of Tyrion, Arya and Jon (Jon, maybe not as much as the other two) and my curiosity to see if Martin explains the significance of direwolves.

People compare these books to the Lord of the Rings, but I'd rather not venture into a comparison. I have not read a lot of fantasy series, apart from Tolkien's and hence I might come off as very biased. I can see why the 'Game of Thrones' makes a grand TV series, but the story is not one of brave men and heroic deeds, it is one of crafty men and women indulging in medieval politics and a whole lot of sex, violence and drama. I really don't have a problem with the latter type, except for when it comes off as immature and extremely unnecessary at times. I believe this concept would have surpassed excellence in the hands of a more mature writer, but oh..that is again an "if only" question, and seldom are those ever answered.

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Review: The Code Book by Simon Singh

The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography by Simon Singh
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I never thought I'd love a book about mathematics, or ever see the beauty of mathematics. My mother was definitely right when she kept pestering me to work harder on my math and argued that it was EVERYWHERE! (I had argued back saying I would be fine as long as I could perform the basic calculations!)
Maybe this is what growing up is about!
That being said, this is a very informative book about the past, present and future of cryptography. Singh takes us on a journey from ancient times where simple communications and hence simple codes sufficed, through a series of unfortunate events that resulted in the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots,to a time in the future when quantum cryptography might prevail. My favorite part is when he talks about the decipherment of Linear B (which led me to another amazing book of the same name), an ancient language discovered in the remains of a palace in Crete. Oh, and he also makes the Second World War seem interesting in an entirely differently way, by which I mean he doesn't drone on and on about the vile Nazis.
Singh has a knack for explaining ideas and theories, which might seem mundane if explained by someone else, in a very interesting manner. His use of characters called Alice,Bob and Eve to explain the codes, made it easy for a layperson like me to understand the theory behind them.
He even adds a few ciphers for us to decipher at the end. I must admit I skipped over those pages, but might return to them at some point in the future.
I recommend this book to anyone who is fascinated by ancient history, linguistics, cryptography, quantum physics, OR MATHEMATICS!

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