The most important and eagerly awaited literary event of the year is just round the corner. The Booker Prize 2021 starts next week with the announcement of the long list of 13 books. Looking forward to relish “Fiction at its Finest” of 2021!!
Key Dates to watch out for…
Long List (13 Books) – 27 July
Short List (6 Books) – 14 September
Winner – November First Week
Want to join me in this journey as I read and share my thoughts on the longlisted books. Pls. sign up below
My thoughts on the book Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins by Garry Kasparov
Preet Bharara, former US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, is well known for the prolific and high profile prosecutions during his tenure. He went hard against public corruption, mafia, insider trading and other financial frauds. He prosecuted nearly 100 wall street executives and several current and former elected officials. One of his cases which gathered a lot of publicity in India was the insider trading case against Rajat Gupta, the former chief of Mckinsey. (Rajat Gupta details out his side of the story in his book Mind without fear)
Continue readingLast year was an eventful one for me. A lot happened this year – which can be summed up in three simple words – I changed jobs. More than half of the year, I was occupied with stuff related to new job, new profile, new company and its culture, new coworkers, etc. etc. Reading really took a backstage. Continue reading
I am a huge fan of Keigo Higashino’s earlier works – Devotion of Suspect X and Salvation of a Saint. I consider him one of the most intelligent mystery novelists of our time, and in the same league as Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. It took me no time to decide that I have to read this book as soon as I saw it on my amazon recommendation page. Continue reading
There are very few books where the agony and pain of the characters haunts you enough to keep you awake at night. It happened to me just twice before – with Saleem Senai in The Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie. And with Florentino Ariza in Love in the time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez. The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris was the third one. It is definitely one of the most provocative (and somewhat unnerving) books about marriage love and relationships. Continue reading
“Most men live their lives vacillating between hope and fear,” he’d say. “Hope for heaven, on the one hand, fear of nothingness on the other. But now consider doubt. Do you see all the problems it solves, for man and for God?” – Excerpt from To Rise Again at a Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris
To Rise Again at a Decent Hour tells the story of Paul O’Rourke, a dentist in Manhattan. Continue reading
Salvation of a Saint by Keigo Higashino is the second book of the Detective Galileo series, the first being the hugely popular Devotion of Suspect X (see my review here)
The series revolves around Inspector Shunpei Kusanagi and his friend, Manabu Yukawa, a physics professor who, occasionally, helps Kusanagi solve some of his most challenging cases, and is known as the Galileo detective. Continue reading
Which is harder: devising an unsolvable problem, or solving that problem? Ishigami to Yukawa in The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino
A divorced woman, Yasuko Hanakoa, along with her daughter Misato, accidentally murders her ex-husband Togashi. Tetsuya Ishigami, their neighbour, a brilliant mathematician having unrequited romantic feelings for Yasuko, offers to help her cover up the crime. He comes-up with a near perfect plan to dispose the body, leaving the police completely clueless about the crime. Continue reading
I was a voracious reader during my college days at IIT Guwahati. Those were the days when I had ample free time, access to a superb library, and a set of awesome friends who shared my passion for books. After leaving college, due to multiple priorities and other pressures, the amount of time I was able to spend reading books gradually declined. Until this year. Continue reading
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