Author: manuscrypts

  • #Bibliofiles : 2019 favourites

    Preface: Every 2 months, we buy 7 books. 6 that I choose, and one for D. 3 fiction, 3 non-fiction. From experience, 6 is my balance between Tsundoku (piling up without reading) and abibliophobia (running out of books to read). In keeping with the pattern, the list below has 6 books that I enjoyed this year, from the 36 I read. For a lark, the text has been limited to 66 words each. 😉 (more…)

  • The Evolution of Everything

    Matt Ridley

    For a while now, I have believed that Darwin’s theory of evolution is the most paradigm-shifting idea to have emerged from a human mind. On a related thought journey, I have also shifted from determinism to free will and back to determinism, all in a few years. This book connects both these thoughts, and is fundamentally an argument for evolution and against creationism. It argues that change is incremental and emergent and has a momentum all of its own, as opposed to the idea that it is directed by a person or a metaphysical force like God. (more…)

  • Cobaja

    Cobaja was unique sounding enough for us to make the trek to the city centre. The pictures and menu convinced us and we dropped in during the Diwali weekend when traffic in Bangalore wasn’t likely to burst a vein!

    Cobaja is just before Shoolay Circle and I remember this place being a Bhavan/Sagar genre of joint earlier, but I can’t be sure. It’s located on two floors, with some fun illustration on the stairway. The top floor has a very pretty alfresco set up, thanks to those windows, cosy corners, and tree cover.  It rained a bit while we were there, but we had judiciously shifted to a covered area.

    After we got there, we realised it was somehow related to Chavadi, a place that we had immensely liked during our sole visit.

    (more…)

  • Change Signalling

    The end of the year signals a time to reflect. The perfect opportunity presented itself recently, when a colleague was bidding adieu after 5 years. There seemed to be no better venue than Monkey Bar, which was itself in the last week of its operations. Our group was mixed – early and mid thirties to early forties – and we talked about life in Bangalore, kids or not, and where we planned to settle after work. When I said that I was considering Cochin, at least a couple of my colleagues wondered if I would be able to adapt. I explained that the biggest joys in my life, in addition to reading and travel, were Malayalam movies and porotta-beef, that I wear the mundu a lot at home, and nostalgia or not, my mind often wanders the roads of my hometown. (more…)

  • The Andromeda Strain

    Michael Crichton

    I am quite a bit late to the Crichton book party. For me, his name has always been associated with Jurassic Park (as a movie) and now I find that quite surprising! It took a combination of Westworld (the current series version) and a couple of “science fiction you must read” lists to get this book into my shelf.

    I really liked the premise. When one thinks of an extra terrestrial “invasion”, the usual suspects are a highly advanced species arriving in spaceships. But this book shows that first contact could actually be anything. In this case, it is less the physics of space travel, and more biology. As one character explains, any form of radiation would lose its potency over space, but a living cell can retain its characteristics if it is made with that end in mind.

    It all begins in Piedmont, Arizona, a small town where a probe has crash-landed. The probe is part of
    Project Scoop, whose objective is to collect organisms from the fringes of space for study. The fear of contamination by returning space probes has also led to the formation of Wildfire, a team that can handle a contingency at a specially created facility.

    The team is called upon to handle exactly that when something starts killing off humans in seconds. The characters who make up the team are not completely fleshed out beyond their professions, but have enough details to take them beyond names and roles. The underground facility that the team operates in is thought through in great detail and has a part to play in the climax.

    This is one of his earlier works and is quite an engaging thriller. The number of days I took to finish it is a testament to that. The pace really quickens towards the end and gives it an edge-of-the-seat feel even though the narration indicates clearly that humanity will survive. But anyway, that does not really take away from the gripping story.