Category: Books

  • Collapse

    Jared Diamond

    Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs & Steel ranks among my favourites. Insightful and full of perspectives. While that book was about how and why civilisations unfolded differently around the globe, this one is on why many of them collapsed. The author defines collapse as a”a drastic decrease in human population size and/or political/economic/social complexity, over a considerable area, for an extended time.” He then uses a five point framework to analyse multiple examples, spanning time and geography. The five points are environmental changes, climate changes, hostile neighbours, decrease in trading partners, and finally, society’s response to the above. 

    The author starts with contemporary farms in Montana and then moves on to the Mayans in South America, the Easter Islands natives, the various Viking communities across continents, and the Native American Anasazi to apply the five point framework and understand the causes of their downfall, and sometimes survival. He then examines modern societies and their challenges – Rwanda, China, Australia, and the interesting case of neighbouring countries that went in opposite directions – The Dominican Republic and Haiti. Strangely, this is despite both countries having a history of dictators. 

    The last portion of the book delves into what caused societies to make disastrous decisions, and the impact of big businesses on the environment. The latter is not always a negative, and there are some excellent examples of large corporations realising that doing good can actually help the bottomline. There is also a very interesting section on the responsibility of individual consumers.

    While we still may not know exactly what happened, there is a fair amount of convincing logic in the author’s hypotheses on how and why civilisations collapsed. And it gets more interesting when we look at the problems we are facing now. On one hand, the scale of the problems are indeed much higher. But on the other, there have been technological advances that can aid us. How much of a counterbalance is one for the other? And as one of his students asks, what was the islander who cut down the last tree on Easter Island thinking as he was doing it? Are we too, frogs in boiling water? Do we have landscape amnesia which prevents us from seeing the changes around us? 

    The book is not easy though, and sometimes one wonders whether the depth of research shared in the book takes away from the narrative flow. However, if the subject is interesting to you, it’s a read that will enlighten.

  • Trigger Warning

    Neil Gaiman

    “We are all wearing masks. That is what makes us interesting. These are stories about those masks, and the people we are underneath them.” Thus reads the blurb on the back cover. It’s quite meta, because the book does have a dark theme – “Many of these stories end badly for at least one of the people in them. Consider yourself warned”- and I am reading this after Covid struck! The setting couldn’t have been worse, or better!

    The book has 24 stories (including the poems) and they are of different hues. Made richer because of the long introduction, which provides the context to a lot of these stories. There’s magic, science fiction, twisty fairy tales whose characters you almost know, and yes, ghost stories too! Gaiman also gives in to self-confessed trips of silliness – “And weep, like Alexander” is one such. His own fandom can be seen in a fantastic Sherlock Holmes story, a neat tribute to Ray Bradbury, a Doctor Who tale, and a surreal and profound one for David Bowie as well. There might be more that I might have missed because of a lack of context. Gaiman ends with a story with characters from American Gods. I probably wouldn’t have gotten that if I hadn’t watched the show, I need to buy that book! In addition, there are some clever formats too – A Calendar of Tales has a story for every month, each almost a different genre. Orange is another, a subject’s responses (no questions) to an investigator’s questionnaire.

    What’s common in all of these is the power of imagination, and Gaiman’s way with words. The class of a storyteller is his/her ability to transport the reader to a place and time far away, and Gaiman did that for me more than a dozen times in this book. Pick it up, I am sure you will find your own treasures.

  • The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

    Erving Goffman

    I picked the book up thanks to a post on “backstage” based on it – the stage is where we present ourselves to the world, and backstage is where we allow our true selves to just be. The context was how “social media” was shrinking the backstage area because we are always on show.

    I wondered how a 250-page book could be written on the subject of “presentation of self”, but realised the depths as soon as I had read a few pages of The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. How we behave in the presence of others is indeed a fascinating subject. Goffman uses the metaphor of a theatrical performance to explore the nuances and interplay that occur in practically every interaction we have. A dramaturgical analysis. This interaction need not even be with another specific person but just with the world at large. For instance, he uses an example of how we present ourselves when stepping out on to a beach – our facial expression, the book we carry (or not), whether we go for a swim (or not). Just as an actor uses techniques to present a character, we give performances in everyday life to guide others’ impression of us. The expressions we “give” and the impressions we “give off”. Many stages (contexts), many props (subjects we talk about, clothes we wear, attitudes, beliefs etc) for many audiences. I realised that some are so ingrained that I have to really “step outside” to catch it. 

    It gets even more interesting when we consider that others are also doing the same thing. This leads to intriguing dynamics. It not only means we have to sometimes co-opt them, but that we also play a role in their performance. Teamwork, which involves many rules – in performances within and without- that we must conform to, if we want to stay a part of the team. Familiarity, solidarity and a working consensus on individual roles and interplay all lead to the creation of the team’s “mythology”. The audience is also a part of the performance and without their tacit agreement, the show would fall apart. There is also a “definition of situation” that all constituents must agree on. This not only plays out in social gatherings, but in society at large, which expects its performers to play a role. 

    “Impression management” is a very useful takeaway from The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Reality and perception not necessarily being the same. Not that we aren’t doing it already, but the nuances, and perspectives on the tool-kits we should make for ourselves. The “expressive control” for instance, the lack of which might give away a the believability of a performance. While The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life has been written more than half a century ago and social interactions have changed a lot since then, including the explosion of non face-to-face forms like the internet, there is a lot it offers in terms of perspective, lessons and actionable insights. It is not an easy read, and I have had to re-read paragraphs and pages a few times, but it is definitely worth the effort.

    The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

  • The Complete Calvin and Hobbes

    Bill Watterson

    I remember saving up credit card reward points for a long time and finally being able to afford this – more than a decade ago. It had a pride of place in my bookshelf, but I never really read it, mostly because I used to read the strips online and in newspapers. During the Covid lockdown, books weren’t getting delivered. It was the perfect time to pick up an all-time favourite.
    The set consists of four books, each around 370 pages. I didn’t read them in one shot, and took a break after each book. The first book begins with an introduction to the life, thoughts, and philosophy of Bill Watterson. It’s an amazing story of belief, values, and perseverance. Some of it did remind me of Calvin’s Dad. 🙂

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  • Exhalation

    Before I start, I have to ask, when is the next collection coming out? Can’t. Wait. I read “Stories of Your Life and Others” about 2.5 years ago, and was blown not just by the quality of the stories, but by the sheer range of subjects from physics and mathematics to language and theism, not to mention artificial intelligence. Exhalation has nine stories, and each of them is a work of art.

    I tried to deconstruct Ted Chiang’s magic, and for me, it came down to three aspects – the imagination to think up the most original and profound questions, the skill to weave it into scenarios that make it relatable and accessible to the reader, and the ability to articulate his perspectives in such a way that one is forced to engage with them and construct one’s own thought exercises!

    “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate” is Arabian Nights in terms of setting as well as nested storytelling but beneath all that is a dizzying tale of time travel that questions whether one can really change the past. “Exhalation”, after which the book is named, has an alien setting but with a dash of steampunk and robotics. The core of it though is what makes it profound – entropy and its inevitable conclusion. “What’s expected of us” is the first of the stories that deal with free will, and goes directly into the heart of it, with a first person narrative of one’s reaction when confronted with immutable proof that it doesn’t exist! The Lifecycle of Software Objects is an excellent take on artificial intelligence, with clear parallels to parenting, and the underlying thought that “experience is algorithmically incompressible”and that the “common sense that comes from twenty years of being in the world” cannot be achieved by compiling heuristics. The parenting theme continues in “Dacey’s Patent Automatic Nanny”, but in a different direction, definitely sadder.

    “The truth of fact, the truth of feeling” is simply brilliant, and has two stories that show the parallels when there is a fundamental shift in technology, both around memory. If I really had to choose, this one would be my favourite. The Great Silence is a poignant juxtaposition and a sharp commentary on what we’re missing out on by rampaging through other species. Omphalos is a very interesting take on creationism, and a contemplation of how it would be if humanity were really the reason for the universe, and were literally too, at the centre of it. “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom” is the last story, and probably the most imaginative. It mixes parallel universes and free will, and delves into the meaning of the latter when many parallel “branches” (emanating from a decision) are playing out.

    No story is the same, or even similar. When I read some authors, I think to myself that if one really had to write, then this should be the benchmark. In speculative fiction – my favourite genre, Ted Chiang is that author!