Rating: 4/4 (Another un-put-downable creation from Rowling!)
Sirius Black, a much feared murderer and crony of Lord Voldemort has escaped from the prison of Azkaban and is out to kill Harry Potter in the third book Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. In their year 3 at Hogwarts, Harry, Ron and Hermione are settling in well. There have been some changes in their teachers. Lupin, a shabby but competent new entrant is their new Defense of the Dark Arts teacher and Hagrid debuts with a class on Care of Magical Creatures. Dementors, the soul sucking prison guards from Azkaban believe that Sirius is in Hogwarts, so they hang around the school casting a dark shadow on the students and causing trouble to Harry. To be capable of fighting them, Harry learns the difficult Patronus spell from Lupin. The lives of Harry, Sirius and Lupin come to a head one fateful night, when time itself becomes the protagonist.
Rowling can write, and write well! Book 3 is slim and about the same size as the previous 2 books. Using mostly the characters we already know from the previous books, she is able to churn out a twister of a climax. The use of time and of Harry’s Patronus charm by the lake is one of the coolest parts of the book. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is a breezy, addictive read. Keep your bag of chips close by! 
Rating: 4/4 (A thrilling followup to The Philosopher’s Stone)
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is the second title in the Harry Potter series where Harry returns to Hogwarts for his second year of study. The plot structure of the book is almost the same as the first one, only darker. Much like the first book, a secret that is hidden away inside Hogwarts is revealed pretty early on (i.e., The Chamber of Secrets). J. K. Rowling shows some confidence and ups the gore factor for her series a bit here with several near-deaths (called petrification) and writings in blood. If I were a kid, I would be thrilled and scared reading this book!
The most interesting plot device is Tom Riddle, the top student from Slytherin who would go on to become Lord Voldemort. Introducing him, Rowling mixes into the story the idea that Harry and his nemesis are very much alike. They both are brilliant, like to break rules, learn new tricks, can speak to snakes, and even the Sorting Hat had selected them both for Slytherin. The similarity of the hero and the villain, or put another way the thin line between good and evil is probably one of the strongest plot ideas in fiction (ever), which will never lose its appeal. Memorable is how Dumbledore solaces Harry about this:
“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is a good followup to The Philosopher’s Stone. The plot is gripping, even though I was not reading it for the first time. Maybe the only gripe I have with this book is that it is a bit too much similar to the first one. Thankfully, Rowling does not repeat that mistake with her later books.
Rating: 3/4 (Both exciting and plodding in parts)
Twilight is probably the most popular book I have seen on SG buses/MRT this year, other than the Harry Potter series that is. The craze began here after the teen-vampire romance movie based on this book was released last year. My friends cringed through the movie, though I found it pretty well made. I must admit though that I could not see the fascination that Bella had for the pale Edward. Having gifted this book to my sister (a lame gift idea, I know!) I got a chance to read it back home while on vacation.
Twilight is the first in this vampire romance series written by Stephenie Meyer. The setting is Forks in Washington state, a town which is always pregnant with dark clouds and rain. Bella comes here to stay with her separated father Charlie Swan, who also happens to be the police chief of the town. New at her school, Bella is immediately drawn to the Adonis-like (sic) Edward, who initially thwarts her, but later accepts her love. The reason for his uncertainty? He is a vampire, albeit one who abstains from feasting on humans! The book deals with the problems this odd teen couple undergo on their journey of love. The climax is a faceoff with a killer vampire, when their love is tested.
Meyer sets up a good premise and environment for Twilight. The book is written in first person, spoken by Bella. The Fork high school settings, crushes and friends are all too familiar. The lure of the book is of course delicate Bella going for the dangerous forbidden fruit, Edward. The romantic parts are especially drawn out, too verbose for my taste. Also, it is overwhelmingly written for a female audience. Most Martians will find it hard to sit through pages full of chatting between a girl and her lover about the tiniest aspects in their relationship! Still, to give Meyer due credit the book drops an interesting anchor for a new teen romance series. Twilight is both exciting and plodding in parts. Open with caution, you have been warned!
Rating: 4/4 (A great start to a magical journey!)
I started on Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone having decided that I should reread the entire Harry Potter series before the release of the final 2 movies (which are based on the last book.) Though I had read this book a long time ago, it turned out to be a refreshing experience thanks to the ravages of time on my memory and the influence of the Harry Potter movies on my imagination. J. K. Rowling opens the book with the aftermath of a calamity in the world of magic. Voldemort, the super villain wizard has been vanquished while trying to kill infant Harry Potter. Harry is left to grow in the human (muggle) world at his uncle’s home, where he is subjected to years of bad treatment. Finally, when he comes of age, he is invited to the world of magic to study at Hogwarts, the school of magic. At Hogwarts, Harry forms strong friendships with Hermione and Ron. He studies the various forms of magic, learns to fly, to play the wizard sport of Quidditch and has plenty of adventures. Finally, the search for a secret philosopher’s stone pits Harry against his nemesis Voldemort in an epic battle.
I love beginnings, both in books and movies. Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone is a delightful read, for the dreamy world of magic and wizards it throws open to the reader. Rowling shows great finesse in creating compelling characters like Harry, Hermione, Ron, Dumbledore and Snape. The school aspects of the book remind me of the Malory Towers and St. Clare’s series of books by Enid Blyton. In her own unique approachable style, Rowling explores aspects of justice, fairness, racism and discrimination in the book. Now that I know what happens in the later books in this series, it is quite satisfying to note the various plot elements that Rowling has thrown into her first book for later use. (Scabbers, the strangely behaving mouse owned by Ron is one example.) The book is a short quick read (I was left wishing it was longer) and is full of humour from cover to cover. Though written for children, the book was a great read and I am eagerly looking forward to rereading the rest of the series.
A bit of trivia:
“Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus”, the Latin motto seen below the Hogwarts coat of arms (seen on the title page of the book) means “Never tickle a sleeping dragon”
Rating: 4/4 (A journey of a lifetime!)
Are all the great literary works of man already written? That is what I was left wondering after closing the final page of David Copperfield. This semi-autobiographical novel by Charles Dickens took me several failed attempts before I finally acquired the taste for it and tore through it. It was written and published towards the middle of his writing career in the form of 19 serial installments. It is the bildungsroman of the protagonist David Copperfield, following him from birth, through his hard life filled with colorful characters of all shades.
[ A bedraggled David appears at his aunt's garden. Illustration by Phiz. ]
David Copperfield is born to a young widow who has no pecuniary problems. He is brought up with love by her and his nurse Peggotty. But, his mother remarries and Murdstone, his stepfather turns his rosy life into hell. He is sent off to a horrible boarding school where he befriends Steerforth, the top student. After his mother’s tragic demise, David is removed from school and put to menial work in London. Sick of this, he runs away to find his great aunt Betsy Trotwood, who takes him in. She helps him finish his schooling, while he boards at the house of Wickfield. Agnes, the daughter of Wickfield becomes his close friend. After education he joins as an intern at a firm of proctors. David soon falls madly in love with Dora, the daughter of his boss. Just when David’s life is reaching its zenith of happiness, everything he has in his life is taken away, people he knew turn evil and he is tested. David and his good friends together emerge from all these setbacks to a happy ending.
[ The cheap Penguin Popular Classics edition which I read. ]
David Copperfield is a long, but fantastic read. Hats off to the master of prose that is Charles Dickens. I had previously read several of his works only as abridged editions, which I now think do no justice to the originals! Dickens has an extremely close eye for detail, with which he creates his myriad characters, places and situations. Much like The Adventures Of Oliver Twist, David Copperfield will be remembered for its well etched characters who span the spectrum from funny to honest to plain evil. It is hard to not be repulsed by a character like Uriah Heep or not to fall in love with Agnes (who I felt was like Betty in Archie Comics). An adult reader is sure to relive his entire life while turning the pages on that of David Copperfield. Written in 1849, the book plunges the reader into a world before the advent of electricity, automobiles or wireless media. People rely on post, travel by horse driven wagons and ships and spend nights by candle light. It is mindblowing how vividly Dickens is capable of pulling the reader into the world of his creation. David Copperfield takes the reader on a journey of a lifetime!
Related:
- List of characters: Due to the sheer number of characters and my bad memory, I prepared this list while reading the book. It proved to be useful whevever old characters reappeared.
- The Phiz Illustrations of David Copperfield: Phiz was the original illustrator when David Copperfield was first published as serials. I wish my Penguin edition had included these beautiful illustrations, which put a face on the characters.
Rating: 3/4 (Pretty useful)
Anyone who has tried some method of personal productivity in the last few years is bound to have heard of Getting Things Done or GTD, as it is popularly known. I heard about GTD though the productivity methods which I currently use, Zen To Done (ZTD) and Inbox Zero, both of which are heavily influenced by GTD. So, for a long time it was quite disconcerting for me to keep procrastinating from reading the book that started all of this, Getting Things Done, written by David Allen. In contrast to its fandom on the internet, the book is actually quite old, published in 2002. It has not undergone any major editions or changes since then. That could be seen as a testament to the broad sweep and generality of the GTD method.
What David Allen tries to attempt in GTD is to help you set up a system which helps offload every last little nagging task from your mind. His core premise being that, a task, no matter how tiny or inconsequential it is, drills away in a dark corner of the human mind unless it is put down in a place which the mind (itself) has confidence in. Keeping many of such tasks in the mind (which is what we all tend to do) affects the focus on the current task and makes the tasks highly susceptible to be forgotten.
GTD grapples with this problem by setting up a system which (1) captures all tasks as they emerge in the mind (2) process them sometime later (3) organizes them into lists or calendar events and (4) periodically reviews them. One of the key insights comes in the processing stage where Allen suggests that you (1) delete or archive a task if it is not important (2) delegate it if that is possible (3) do a task immediately if it can be done in a few minutes or (4) defer it by putting it on a list. The underlying idea everywhere being to free the mind of tasks it has to remember and also to clear the lists of tasks as quickly and by as much as possible.
The book is broken into three sections. The first two sections which explain the above system seem to me most interesting and as having the most takeaway. I found the last section to be quite vague on details. I like the fact that David Allen sticks to laying the groundwork for a system without getting into the nitty-gritty of specifying the actual tools for that job. That means that you can use any medium that you are comfortable with for the job, from paper to personal organizers to computers and online tools. And in fact, lots of online fora and software have sprung up today around the diverse implementations of GTD.
“You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink,” goes an old saying. GTD ensures that the horse is brought to the water, but it does not (or as Allen insists, it cannot) help with the drinking. There are a few aspects of GTD which I could not fully understand, especially that surrounding projects. Allen is very particular about a weekly review for the system, but does not say anything about when to process or how to pick the next action. Also, given a fully cranking GTD system, it still cannot indicate what tasks might be important in a given day. (I find that most of these lacunae are fixed in ZTD and Inbox Zero.)
Whether I can completely incorporate the GTD system in my workflow is doubtful. My current system, a hybrid monster of ZTD (for tasks) and Inbox Zero (for email), has worked pretty well for me. But, after reading this book and related online articles about GTD, I am able to notice, and attempt to fix the places where I needed better capture and processing. All in all, GTD is a good book to get initiated into the framework of freeing the mind from being a TODO list. I recommend this book for anyone who is looking at improving the productivity in their life.
Rating: 4/4 (Must see book!)
Landscape Townscape is a coffee table book of 105 photos captured by Henri Cartier Bresson. Most of the photos were taken during 1940-1970s in Europe, USA, Japan, SE Asia and India. All the photos are in B&W, which is Henri’s defacto medium. A majority of the photos seem to be taken with a wideangle lens, especially the landscape ones.
I’ve seen many of Henri’s famous photos and know a bit about the man who essentially created photojournalism. But, this is the first proper compilation of his that I’ve got my hands on. The landscape photos all show a very keen eye for patterns and composition. In fact, every photo has so many composition elements captured beautifully right that it’s a joy to study each one. Long stark shadows evoking feelings of decay and sadness are a repeating feature in a lot of these photos. The landscape photos are mostly bare of humans, who are traditionally Henri’s popular subjects. But, people going about their everyday lives start to appear in the townscape photos. It’s a testament to Henri’s small camera (the legendary Leica he’s known for) and quick eye-arm coordination to see photos where a certain moment has been captured. A moment (Henri calls it the decisive moment) so fleeting yet precious that one can only wonder how the hell Henri happened to be at precisely the right place at precisely the right time!
I highly recommend this book for all those interested in photography. The book is huge due to the large print of the photographs and is surely expensive. Just see if you can borrow it at your library. The book is full of some of Henri’s most seminal works. The grainy faces and images are sure to remain etched in your memory. Every Bresson photo is such a joy to look at and study and it’s sure to influence your photography the next time you put your eye to the viewfinder.
Rating: 4/4 (Reads like a thriller)
I picked up the book Show Stopper!: The Breakneck Race To Create Windows NT And The Next Generation At Microsoft in the library after listening to it being mentioned by Joel Spolsky on the StackOverflow podcast #48. I wasn’t really intending to read it, but after racing through the exciting opening of the book there was no way I was going to let it go. Written by Pascal Zachary, this is a book that tells the story of the creation of Windows NT and was written way back in 1994 after NT was released. More than the software, it’s the story of the people, the teams and their efforts and achievements that made the first version of Windows NT possible. The book is a very breezy read and should be un-put-downable for any techie. Recommended reading.
Rating: 4/4 (Hilarious, must read!)
In his travelogue Chasing The Monsoon, author Alexander Frater follows the 1987 monsoon across India. Frater spent his youth in the New Hebrides (now called Vanuatu), a splattering of volcanic islands in the Pacific Ocean where his dad worked as a Mission doctor to the tribals. A strange set of personal events convinces Frater to undertake the monsoon journey across India. Starting from Kerala he follows it across the West coast to Mumbai, then Delhi and Kolkata. His final aim is to experience the monsoon in Cherrapunji, the place with the heaviest rainfall in the world back then. This is when Indian bureaucracy throws a spanner into his works, not allowing him entry into Meghalaya due to the sensitive conditions there. Crestfallen he returns back to London. But, due to his persistence and with the help of some enterprising friends he gets that elusive permit and finally gets wet in the Cherra downpour.
Alexander Frater totally won me over with this book. The monsoon is a religion in India and it plays a major role in the lives of Indians. When it’s delayed or less, it causes droughts. When it’s early or heavy, it causes floods. Yes, it’s old and dated, but Frater’s travel tale is laced with such delightful and funny anecdotes and filled with such colorful characters that it’s hard to not love it. Though monsoon is the main theme of the book, Frater also weaves in his own personal life journey into the threads. And even those parts are just as interesting. This is the best Indian travelogue I’ve read in years. A very good read.
Rating: 4/4 (Deep, dark and vivid)
Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad could very well be the darkest and most serious book I have read until now. The story is narrated by a fictional character named Marlow to the author and others resting on a yawl. Marlow describes a journey from his past, on a steamboat up a river in a dark continent to bring back an ivory trader named Kurtz, whom everyone reveres for his achievements. He reaches the colonial station after a risky adventure through the tropical rainforests and finds Kurtz in a near death state. His image of greatness is shattered after Marlow discovers the real activities of Kurtz in his colonial trading post. He now sees Kurtz as a reprehensible being. Kurtz dies a while later on the journey back downstream. His last words indicate his probable realization of the havoc he has caused during his lifetime. Back in Europe, Marlow faces Kurtz’s widow and has to pass on his last words.
This novella by Joseph Conrad draws inspiration from his actual journey on the Congo river in Africa. The narration from the start is strongly evocative of darkness. Everything from the descriptions of the European towns, the Congo river, the African continent, the color of the inhabitant savages, their ways of life, the colonies of the Europeans, the cannibalistic Africans who form a part of his steamboat crew and ultimately Kurtz himself. The language drips heavily with vividness. I almost felt like being in Marlow’s shoes journeying slowly up the Congo through his primeval continent. Though Marlow grows to hate Kurtz, in the end he is compelled to leave him with a good name. Like Life Of Pi, this book feels great since it left me with more than one interpretation. Is Conrad talking of the dark continent or the darkness inside us? That questions hangs in the air for a long time after I have closed this book.
Heart Of Darkness is short (hence called a novella ) at just 112 pages. I read the Penguin Classics version edited by Robert Hampson. It has Hampson’s long (and IMO boring) introduction which would interest only those studying the book. It also has Conrad’s actual Congo Diary in which he noted the happenings of his African journey. This book has a detailed notes section at the end of the story. Published in 1902, the book is now available at Project Gutenberg free for everyone.
An excerpt:
We were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet. We could have fancied ourselves the first of men taking possession of an accursed inheritance, to be subdued at the cost of profound anguish and of excessive toil. But suddenly, as we struggled round a bend, there would be a glimpse of rush walls, of peaked grass-roofs, a burst of yells, a whirl of black limbs, a mass of hands clapping, of feet stamping, of bodies swaying, of eyes rolling, under the droop of heavy and motionless foliage. The steamer toiled along slowly on the edge of a black and incomprehensible frenzy. The prehistoric man was cursing us, praying to us, welcoming us — who could tell? We were cut off from the comprehension of our surroundings; we glided past like phantoms, wondering and secretly appalled, as sane men would be before an enthusiastic outbreak in a madhouse. We could not understand, because we were too far and could not remember, because we were traveling in the night of first ages, of those ages that are gone, leaving hardly a sign — and no memories.
