Brian Greene
Brian Greene’s Until the End of Time is ambitious in scope. It’s an attempt to tell the story of everything – from the Big Bang to the ultimate fate of consciousness. Almost like a biography of the universe through the lens of the species which is (in our understanding) the first to ask why and how it all happened – how physics, chemistry and biology led to matter, mind and meaning. And how all that will dissolve back in time.
(more…)Richard G. Wilkinson, Kate E. Pickett
The Spirit Level (2009) has been on my list for so long that it got relegated to unread. I didn’t want to repeat that mistake with The Inner Level, so I bought it as soon as it came up on my radar. 8 years after it was published, but hey! The authors provide a quick get-to-speed about the former whose core idea was that people in societies with bigger income gaps are more likely to suffer from a wide range of health and social problems. Not just the poor, mind you, but a vast majority of the population.
(more…)Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski
A big theme of my reading in 2024 was around answering “why am I like this?” The Worm at the Core has given that understanding a paradigm shift. The basic premise of the book is that the awareness of our own mortality is the hidden engine of human thought, emotion, and culture.
(more…)Arundhati Roy
I have been an unabashed fan of whatever Arundhati Roy writes, and Mother Mary Comes to Me is no exception. This is a memoir, but I’d say it’s her love letter to her mother, and to some extent, others whom she loves, including characters in her works of fiction. It is also very Arundhati Roy – poignant and visceral to the point of tear-jerking, and yet funny – sometimes with wit – both the scathing and irreverent as well as the loving kind, and sometimes with the inherent hilarity of situations.
(more…)Rutger Bregman
On one hand, I really hoped Humankind would be meaningful, and on the other, I am quite a cynic. Bregman writes towards the end of the book that cynicism is just another name for laziness, an excuse not to take responsibility. I am not sure I agree completely because I do feel the rage against injustice, and do take action sometimes, but largely my question has been ‘what is the point?’
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