A dish spinner keeps spinning disks on top of sticks afloat and needs to alternate spinning each dish before one of them slows down and falls, making the performance fail. An author’s role is similar in that he or she must keep characters alive before they fall from memory, so that the reader is not […]
‘How to build a car’ is a fascinating read that starts with a hard-to-educate boy hobbying in the shed with his dad, who picks up a study in aerodynamics. Much of Newey’s approach lays in these formative years, en route to becoming one of the most dominant car designers of Formula One. It’s interesting to […]
Despite 300-something pages, the book feels compact and leaves me wanting for more. Any of these chapters could be a fantastic standalone book, and any of them raises a lot of important questions — although not necessarily ‘Lessons’ as the title suggests. Nobody has these lessons, and while Harari sometimes over-simplifies or dramatises, he acts as […]
Helen Macdonald has written poetry before and it shows. She writes not just about things seen, but also things felt — intuitive thoughts and feelings turned into words. Macdonald writes about taming a hard-to-handle goshawk as an escape from the world and the loss of her father — and even though the subject is very […]
Libbrecht starts as a jovial old man, not too serious with modern life and its many quicks, but gradually pulls the book into other territories. Some gathered paragraphs: “I carry within me the whole past of the earth. I’m the product of everything that has preceded me, and in fact of the entire cosmos. However, […]
“If you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in which you—you so remote from the night of the first ages—could comprehend. And why not? The mind […]
Maybe Salter just lucked into being a great writer — but more likely it’s the inevitable result of someone who graduated from a military academy, flew fighter planes in the Korean War, dined with celebrities in Europe, and one who had the desire to write it all down. Salter was probably an even better conversationalist, […]
While this little paperback doesn’t really warrant the title ‘masterclass’, it’s an entertaining and inspiring collection of anecdotes. I doubt any of the examples are directly applicable in most cases, but the bigger message is, and it’s a great way to live by. Trott’s teachings are a powerful anti-sound against the increased jargon, complexity and […]
What a journey Liu Cixin takes us on. Ball Lightning is science fiction without the spaceships or time travel, but at a more abstract, magical and even philosophical level. The character of the book are vastly different from each other, unconventional in their own ways. Chen, the narrator of the book, is obsessed and unravels […]
Folding Beijing is a simple story, yet it carries incredible depth by combing Chinese conventions within a futuristic scenario alongside a powerful message. Quarrels are made in an apartment flat, baijiu is served in a state of surveillance, chow mein alternates with autonomous cars, and a girl has to choose between romance and money. It’s […]