From Bill Bryson’s “Short History of Nearly Everything“, a para summarizing Einstein’s three papers - that made the scientific world sit up and say, ” why didn’t i think of that”
Sphere: Related ContentThe first won its author a Nobel Prize and explained the nature of light (and also helped to make television possible, among other things). The second provided proof that atoms do indeed exist—a fact that had, surprisingly, been in some dispute. The third merely changed the world.
This from Bill Bryson’s “Short History of Nearly Everything“, my current read - a quote from biologist B.S.Haldane:
“The universe is not only queerer than we suppose; it is queerer than we can suppose.â€
Have just begun the book. I am hooked ! Just finished the chapter on how the universe was formed - would make a great programme.
Sphere: Related ContentI have been infected with, what the blogger who infected Yazad calls, the
….. intellectual version of venereal disease.
And Charu has passed it on to me:)
So here goes.
Total number of books I own: Never really counted. But 6 tall book shelfs are groaning under the weight of the books! Every month i add a few more. My mother threatens to revolt every so often and we sell pulp that all of us have purchased. But, I usually see it as clearing up of shelf space to put new books.
Last book I bought: Ek nahin 4 books! Patrick French - Liberty or Death. I gave my last copy to KD.Bimal Jalan on the Future of India, Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, and Adi Deo Arya Devta - a panoramic view of Tribal Hindu cultural interface by Sandhya Jain.
Last Book Read:
Blink - I really didn’t enjoy this offering from Malcolm Gladwell as much as I enoyed Tipping Point. Though i enjoyed the bit about how decision making becomes more imprecise and more likely to fail with more data. In most cases less is more.
Five Books That Mean a Lot to Me
Difficult to say. it keeps changing with time. My current favourites are:
The Complete Calvin & Hobbes. A little boy and his pet tiger and their view of an extremely crazy universe.
Mahabharat - various authors. The ones that i have read most frequently are by Kamala Subramaniam and C.Rajagopalachari. The human drama, the slow spiral down to violence, a war in which less than a dozen warriors survive, the story of Draupadi the nemesis of the Kauravas.
Gospel according to Jesus Christ - the review is here.
The The God Particle - if the Universe is the Answer, what is the Question by Leon Lederman- the first science book that i read - and I was hooked. There is this incredible three way imaginary - imaginary because Democretes has been dead for just over 2000 years:) - conversation between Lederman, Demorcretes and God on the nature of the universe. Lederman is a Noble Prize winner for physics and he explains the search for the ultimate particle.
Knightfall series of Batman Graphic Novels. Dark, moody, pshychotic,violent and on the edge - and this is just Batman. Brilliantly drawn, this set of graphic novels that includes Knightfall, Knightsend and Knightsquest.
My five Heraldblog, Kamesh, pH, akshay, and jayadev.
Jose Saramago is probably one of the greatest writers of our times, and the The Gospel According to Jesus Christ is one of the finest books that I have ever read.
It is the story of Jesus - who is not the son of God, but the son of Joeseph and who loves a Mary. All he wants is to be a good carpenter, a good husband and a good man. But God has other plans for him.
There is a brilliant scene in the book where Jesus has this amazing conversation with both the God and the Devil. God offers him a screwd life but immortality in terms of being remembered, while the Devil offers him a normal life, a happy life. Both God and Satan play for Jesus’s loyalty. and the relationship between God and Satan is this friendly banter of old men who know each other well, are fond of each other but want to appear contrary. Their bickering masks a deep understanding and friendship. The relationship between Jesus and Satan - as the Pastor - is extremely well written. Satan comes out as an incredibly attractive character - the only friend that Jesus has. God comes across as an incredible manipulator - more in the mould of the ancient Aryan Gods / Greek Gods - Indra - than the benevalont, cuddly lovable God that I believe in.
More than anything else, the style of the narrative is superlative. The book has no dialogues, yet it has conversations. Saramago has written it in almost a fly in the wall, an “echo of the psyche” style. And you feel like a vouyer reading this book.
If you are devoutly Christian, then read this book - you will empathise and become more fond of Jesus and the sacrifices that he made. If you are fanatically Christian avoid it - there are other things that are more readable.
Sphere: Related ContentI came across a great repository for on-line books. The section that was the most interesting was banned books
The who’s who of writers has ended up getting banned at sometime in their life or the other. Ulysses, Cantebury Tales, The Arabian Nights, Moll Flanders, The Bible, The Koran, and hundreds of others have been banned. Why - because they pissed off someone’s sensibilities. Someone, somewhere decided that book x had to be banned to protect citizens.
In India there is a very easy way of getting a book banned - offend someone’s religious sensibilities or write an analytical work on the life and times of a dead hero. Unfortuantely the problem is that the raving right ends up burning the library first, and baying for the blood of the author next. The government invariably ends up banning the book to keep order.
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