marginalian's reviews
42 reviews

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe

3.0

I extremely enjoyed the narration but regarding the poem I tend to agree with Emerson even though I am not sure whether he actually said it. It is a good poem but unfortunately, it didn't resonate deeply with me. Its craft felt visibly crafted, not in any organic way. Not saying a poem has to be a certain way or the other. But for me, that was a factor in not fully enjoying it.

In Real Life by Jen Wang, Cory Doctorow

adventurous lighthearted fast-paced

3.0

This was interesting despite a predictable storyline. Video games when properly made can be a force for good? But the last scene where Raymond tells Anda about how the world of a video game is also real gave me chills. I haven't yet formed my mind on that. Despite the emotions you feel, one literally spends hours in front of a screen without interacting with the tangible elements around them. Wouldn't we end up feeling disconnected from our bodies? I haven't played such video games yet. So, I am not sure whether we are lying to ourselves or not.

The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center by Rhaina Cohen

emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective fast-paced

3.75

This book contains around eight stories of deep relationships outside marriages and romantic relationships we are so used to see at the centre of everything. One of my favourite paragraphs from the book summarises the problem with this centering of romance:

"Ivy plants will always follow whatever trellis you give them.... But if they don't have a trellis, they look for light..... A lot of us follow a societal trellis that is not actually ideal for who we are and what helps us thrive... " 

This book is filled with stories of people who showed the courage to follow the light, instead of the trellis. Thus, they were able to build lives "uniquely beautiful" for them. She even cites historical examples of relationships other than romantic ones. The author wants us to acknowledge our valuable friendships and dislodge our fixed ideas about what fulfilling relationships could be. 

It is not a completely rosy picture of these relationships either, as the book also shows how the law and culture severely limit such relationships.  

But I did feel that the chapters were needlessly long at times. There were times when I said to myself, "Okay, Cohen, I got your point, thank you. Move on." The chapter on grief was bit confusing too. I couldn't fully understand what's going on with M and the author at the time. There was less clarity.

Still, this is an important book because there aren't many books like this which shows us how people have always been trying "to detach from the trellis and grow towards the light", and we should also consider these questions asked by Ellen Willis:

Why do we choose what we choose?
What would we choose if we had a real choice?

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

dark emotional inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

Reading this novel was like attending a sombre funeral. Roy's cutting humor was such that it also meant struggling to stifle a laugh on seeing the human drama unfolding, knowing that it's not the right moment to laugh. 
A really provocative novel!

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder by David Grann

adventurous dark fast-paced

3.0

It is a thrilling account of a sea voyage. A great escape for few hours. But the blurb was more interesting than the actual book !!!!

The critique of the empire and the complicity of the ordinary people are all quite good points to make. But there was not much deep diving into those issues as I expected.

The Case Against the Sexual Revolution: A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century by Louise Perry
Did not finish book. Stopped at 44%.

From objectification, we are in the era of constant subjectification of women in the media. Wherever we are coming from, it is really important to constantly ask where our choices are coming from, and what factors are shaping our lives. This book starts provocative in that regard but soon falls off. 

I think the author's grasp of evolutionary science is superficial. Also, correlation is not causation. 

India Is Broken: A People Betrayed, Independence to Today by Ashoka Mody

informative medium-paced

1.75

This book seems like a post hoc analysis of past events. Mody's analysis is top-down. He covers macroeconomic policies, political leaders and businesspeople through newspaper and other global reports over the decades. Thus the book doesn't have much new information to provide on the recent years than available from credible news sources. Yet, it provides valuable information about the first few decades of India's independence. The book might be interesting for rich investors or students of macroeconomics.  And unemployment as shown in the book is, indeed, a huge crisis.  

But the stories of ordinary Indians don't find any voice here. They are considered to be mere victims of bad politics and economics. Also, despite reading the entire book, I don't know what Mody as an economist wants India to be like. He criticizes almost everything that it is difficult to figure out where he stands as an economist. Mody, like Nehru in the book, have all the diagnoses correct without any solutions ahead! At times, there was no choice but to be tired of what I felt like the armchair cynicism of an academic who has never stepped into the grassroots. 

Aren't we at a juncture where we should be asking better questions? Why do we come back to the old narratives on the need of manufacturing more and more consumption goods (despite the environmental damages) to feed western fantasies, the spread of school-based literacy and education just for the sake of being better employees, and the need to move away from all types of farming in a world where we are already facing the consequences of a destructive and illogical western model of development? What we need is probably a new culture with radically different priorities suited to our planet. From that perspective, the concerns presented in this book seem a little bit overdebated and outdated. When the author touches on aspects like UBI, decentralisation and civic communities, he does so only in passing reference.

101 Things I Learned® in Psychology School by Tim Bono

informative relaxing fast-paced

3.0

Bites of information neatly put together. A fun, quick read.

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad fast-paced

I am reading this book for the second time. I like the rhythm in Joan Didion's writing, her meticulous note taking which is reflected in her writing (possibly based on Dunne's warning that "the ability to make a note when something came to mind was the difference between being able to write and not being able to write"), her transparency, vulnerability and sincerity as a human being and a writer.

But I couldn't help myself from thinking about the unbelievable privileges she enjoys and the casual (but sincere) way in which she writes about them. On one side, the book made me realise that elites, despite their huge potential to take control over their lives, remain thoroughly helpless and shaken in front of death, grief, pain and loneliness like rest of us (at least until now). On the other side, despite the huge literary merit and self-awareness, I felt an urgent need to wean away from books like this to find similar stories of people from less-privileged backgrounds.

Bob Dylan Chronicles by Bob Dylan

challenging mysterious reflective

I didn't know much about Bob Dylan and nothing has changed after reading this book. I came across his songs about five years ago and stayed with them. Now, after reading this, I realised that I don't know much about song making either.

I like how Dylan openly speaks about his influences. There's nothing completely original in the world. His words made me realise that one's output is determined by what one takes in. Apetite grows by what one dines on. So, one must always dine best. Be it books or role models. People are only good as what they surround themselves with. Dylan followed his favourite artists to the core, studied them intensely and scraped his own work out of that. 

One thing that struck me about the book was his observations on attention. Sociologists were already warning about dwindling attention spans due to TV. Long songs were replaced by smaller ones and back in the 60s, Dylan, therefore, tried to cram long poems !!

Some quotes from the book: 

• "The books were something. They were really something"
• "Privacy is something you can sell, but you can't buy it back"
• "Art is unimportant next to life and you have no choice"
• "Even if you don't have all the things you want, be grateful for the things you don't have that you don't want"
• "With basically not much media to speak of, it was basically life as you saw it"