This is one of the best book with which one can learn all about the formal systems. Its computer science book written by a WRITER. The author Douglas Hofstadter got Pulitzer prize for this creation. He tries to explain how meaning can be created from a vast amount of meaningless things - still preserving everything thats needed to maintain an order.
Set as a conversation between Achilles and Tortoise (the famous Lewis carroll creation) and with many more, the author tries to make the reader analyze his thoughts and how his thoughts are created, modified and confused. A series of challenging problems are pasted across the chapter - which itself are simulating and too good to keep aside the book.
This is one of the best book i have read so far - you be a mathematician, a musician or a artist should read this. I guarantee that you wont be disappointed.
I always wanted to run away. Run away from this present, to an unknown present of others.
To walk into darkness, leaving behind everything that I created. And walk into another life with nothing to loose. I don’t know what that feeling is all about, but I found out something close to it.
Night train to Lisbon is a novel, originally written in German by Pascal Mercier, translated into English by Barbara Harshav. This I am afraid to say, now stands on the top of my favorite list. I don’t have the language to express my emotions and that I believe is my greatest weakness and as well as my greatest strength.
Our life, those are fleeting formations of quicksand, formed by one gust of wind, destroyed by the next. Images of futility that blow away even before they have properly formed.
Sometimes I grapple with the things that happened and try to reason out. Flailing most of the time.
I stand here completely by chance; you stand there completely by chance, between us the champagne glass. That’s how it was. No different.
I hated expectations and commitments. But no matter what, they always looked up on me.
Once could have the hope that he would become more real by reducing expectations, shrink to a hard, reliable core and thus be immune to banished every long, bold expectation, a life where there were only banal expectation like “the bus is coming”.
In order to understand life, you need to experience death. So should we take the promising immortality by god in his kingdom of heaven?
It is death that gives the moment its beauty and its horror. Only through death is time a living time. Why does the lord, the omniscient god, not know that? Why does he threaten us with an endlessness that must mean unbearable desolation?
It took me almost a month to complete this book, not because it language is so mystifying and deep, but because I didn’t want it to end. I really am looking forward to read the original version.
Thousand Splendid suns - Khalid Hooseini : The best book of 2007
Miniaturist - Kunal Basu - A drag with a fantastic ending.
We are Orphan - Kazuo Ishigiro - Supposedly a great book which i found as an utter boring one.
Collected Short Stories of Khushwant Singh - A collection of ironies, good one.
Black Book - Orhan Pamuk - I am yet to finish it , not to going to finish also. He is beating around something. I fail to follow him,may be my incompetency.
Gods and Godsmen - Kushwant Singh - Another nice one from him.
Ahmadou Kourouma wanted the title of the story to be like -Allah is not oblighed to be fair about all the things he does here on earth. and sometimes he is right .
Birahima is 10 year and he is a child soldier fighting his way through sierra leone , Liberia, and all the _ucked up places in Africa. Gnamokodé! Walahe! . The novel is stark revelation of what africa is going thru, its geopolitical mess and its muli million conflict economical travesty.
In search of his aunt, birahima lives his village after the death of his beloved maman. Yacoube, the money multiplier turned GrigGrigman , takes the little brihama to his destination but only reaching his final destination a little late. hoppin from one gang to another and fighting for someone who doesnt stands with you just for some hash and few american dollars or a bottle of petrol, the novel depicts the silenced life of people of africa from a childs point of view.
This one is not a novel but a memoir by a surgeon. Dr barry says his life as a general physcian, as a psychartist, as a peadeatric and as a surgeon.
The opening page starts with the college from he passed. He tells you the pain, the happiness , the anxiety and perils of being a doctor. one is amused when he tell you all these because i happened to believe a doctors were not human. Not knowing who is sitting in opposite to you, Dr barry tells you innumerable stories that stranger talks to him in personal .Between the lines you could smell some wounds still open but tried to be hidden in the best way one could.
Dr barry's memoir, i count as a must read, not because its memoir (huh!) but it tell you the other side of the picture- that of doctor's!
This time Paulo Coelho disappointed me. I would say it was frantic effort for repeating the success. But he failed miserably in that attempt.
Witch of Portebello tells the story of Athena as perceived by others. Some say she was divine some evil. Some despised her yet some other adored her. Some were mystified by her whereas some got transpired. And in the end she was casted as witch. Athena tries hard to fill the blanks of the life but always end up missing something. The story is told by third person account involving Athena, they are her husband, her mother, her teacher, her disciple, a journalist.
If you got anything else to read this one simply can be ignored. I guess that’s states it all.
Once in while you read a book that is supposedly a fictional work but the places and narration makes it difficult to believe its not real. Elizabeth Kostova’s Historian is such a kind.
Historian tells you the story of..Umm…well about the historians, not just any historian but world’s finest historians who are chosen by the prince Vlad Tapes A.K.A Dracula to catalogue his centuries old book and epilogue collections. But before they do that everybody has to undergo a test to prove their mettle. They are given a book all identical with just a dragon in the middle page and nothing else. They are to decipher the hidden meaning of the book. While in this journey the Prof Rossi comes to realization that Dracula is not a myth but an evil that still hunts in the dark. The story takes you through eastern Europe to Middle east then back to the happening place America. The description of kostova about the places, mainly the universities and Monasteries even more interesting and this adds to reality that blinds the fiction. There is no vampire slaughtering pictured in this book, so don’t look for one. But tell you what it would definitely create goose bumps and some sleepless nights.
Its in line with Da Vinci code and others like it.Another fine piece of literary skill. A must have in your collection.
One of the best debut novels I have ever read. And I find it strange that I found it in british council and I was not surprised to see that author was not British. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a Nigerian by birth, has written her first novel so eloquently that you sometimes wonder how somebody could picture the life so well.
Narrated by a girl of 16, kambili, about her family whose patriarch is staunchly catholic, the story takes you through the crumbling social and economic environment in Nigeria. Papa(kambili's) is a generous business man with a strict devotion to the lord but he fails to keep his warmth with the family. Kambili and her brother leads a time-table life which is immersed in fear and an unpleasant eagerness to please their dad. Every thing changes when they get a chance to be with their aunt Effoma, whose place is filled with loud laughter and haughty air of frankness coupled with freedom.
A nice read, which you will enjoy on any given day.
Orhan pamuk is a gifted writer. My name is red is quite an exquisite piece of fiction that’s very rare to find now a days. From the page one, it’s an interesting and a wonderful read.
The story revolves around miniaturists in Istanbul in early 15th century. The sultan of Istanbul has secretly placed an order to make book to reveal his might to Europeans (franks), only problem is that people think book contends are anti Islamic. There is also a notion that illustration in the book is dealt in a mix of venation and old master of herat style quite contrary to style followed by the miniaturist present at that time. The story starts with a murder of the a miniaturist who is one among the 4 assigned for this work. And until the second last chapter, the story is told by different characters in view that perceive and the most interesting part is - one would never leave the continuity of the read. Simply superb. The main characters are Black,Shekure, Elegant Enshinte, Effendi Enshinte, Olive, stork and butterfly.
As soon as I finished this book, I ran to the nearest book shop to get another book of his. The guy is too good and the mystery that he plots in a multifaceted manner is simply splendid. I am too thrilled and looking forward for a good read with book in my hand right now….!! Btw red got orhan the 2006 noble prize for literature .
