Grey Matter

I got the book called the Society of Others as part of my book hunting.It was written by William Nicholson who is the co-writer for the movie gladiator.I didn’t know anything about the book when i started reading that.I like it that way.When you read the reviews before reading the book most of the times you will know more than what you need to know and that spoils the fun of finding things out yourself.

Society of others is a dark,funny,cinematic,thriller-like,intelligent,philosophical novel.Writing a philosophical novel is a difficult task.You must take care the reader doesn’t get bored.And this book pulls it off very well.

I am not going to divulge the story to you except for this: An uninterested guy makes a back packing tour to nowhere.Not nowhere exactly.Its just that he doesn’t have a destination and goes about hitch hiking without asking for the place names.Doesn’t it sound like an interesting adventure?

Society of others is a brilliant novel.It transcends from the realistic world to a bit of surrealism at the climax.And i didn’t have a problem with that. When you introduce surrealism the whole essence of the book shouldn’t be lost. The Alchemist was one book that i know of which made this mistake.Alchemist is an over rated crap according to me.
The other philosophical book that i started reading recently is Atlas Shrugged.Now you might very well recognise this book and its author Ayn Rand.Atlas shrugged is considered to be a master piece of Ayn Rand.But then i didn’t like it at all.I stopped reading it after reading the first 355 pages.
I had many problems reading that.Its central theme of objectivism sucks.Not just because its just similar to selfishness.Infact its more dangerous than that. Objectivism would create more problems than solve the existing ones.
There are books that i have read just for the beauty of the narration even if i didn’t like the story. Atlas Shrugged doesn’t qualify for such a read also. The style of Ayn Rand is pretty ordinary. The plot is cliched,sex introduced at random intervals just like item numbers in Desi movies.

It is a highly over-rated crap.Just like the Alchemist.

Lesson learnt: Crap can become popular.Learn to write perfect crap.

PS: I can lend you the Society of Others book if i know you.
But you will have to return it in good condition before i forget who i gave it to or before you forget that you got a book from me.

Books-Its everywhere.Written by so many people.Some as lucky as J.K.Rowling to make millions out of it.Some not so lucky, who would not have written more than a book.

I was hunting books two weeks back.I was not sure what i wanted.Hunters never go hunting thinking they will hunt only a deer.If they see a tiger they hunt that too.Thats how my book hunting also went by.Chennai lacks good libraries.But good is subjective term.Good library for me is the one which has books of my liking.Since i ruled out visiting any library, the options left where moore market,the road side book shops in Luz Corner,Landmark and Odessey.

I went first to luz corner.The road side book shops could sometime have very good books.I have earlier picked up some good tamil books written by srilankan writers from this place.But this time there wasn’t any book that i felt like reading.Then i went to moore market.Most of the books were of “self help” category.I hate the self help books.They are so artificial.When i read ‘the alchemist’ i decided never ever to read a self help book again.The Alchemist was so bad.I didn’t like the narration,didn’t accept the story or the moral behind it.

So moved over to the Landmark in the evening.The books available in these stores can be easily categorized…Self-Help,Management,Computers,Best-Sellers,a lot of Sidney Sheldon,Archer,Puzo,Ayn Rand books,some more glossy paperback books which are mostly suspense/mystery/thriller kind.And these days there are a lot of books on India itself.Books like in-spite of gods,argumentative Indian to some obscure Indian experience books by people never known.So many of them have written on India that they are occupying a whole rack in Odyssey.

As i didn’t like anything in landmark the next day i went to Odyssey.There was a discount sale going on.They where selling the a large quantity of books at discount rate.These are the books which they had either over bought or the non-bestsellers that are never bought by people.Me and my friend who came along with me searched ,read excerpts,back of the book etc., for more than 2 hours.In the end he had picked up 3 books and i picked 5 books.There was a huge queue at the shop as the discount sale was going on.
I had picked up Goodfellas,Society of others,unleashing the killer app,’The book with no name’ written by Anonymous(Really there is a book like this),and the select nonsense of Sukumar Ray(Yes he is related to Satyajit Ray.He is his father, in fact).The queue moved very slowly so I started skimming through the select nonsense book.It had some poems.After reading a few pages i came to a conclusion that i am not going to buy this book.Goodfellas has already come as a movie.i was wondering for a while whether I should see the movie itself or read the book.After a while Goodfellas was also out of the contention.Down to 3 books now.I picked ‘The book with no name’ just out of curiosity.The book cover had all the marketing elements to grab your attention.First of all a crazy name and author(Author’s name is anonymous) The back cover of the book issued warnings like ‘never ever read the book with no name’ and ‘those who read the book will die’.But then i was also afraid it might turn out to be yet another ’somebody-you-don’t-suspect-is-villain’ kind of book.(Have you recognized the pattern in Dan Brown’s books they always have this ’somebody-you-don’t-suspect-is-culprit’ end,anyway most of the suspense books is written in this format only) So i thought may not be now and dropped the idea of buying the book.So in the end i was left with Society of others and unleashing the killer app.I bought both of them since i wanted to read both fiction and non-fiction.

Morals of the story:
1.Every one wants to know what others say about them.(The number of books written on India is proof for that)
2.Never ever have queues in your shop.If you have queues people buying 5 books may decide to buy only 2 when they come to the counter

Never have i liked reading technical books and this dislike grew further after completely following the google religion..using the google god for anything and everything until two thinks happened to me.

1 .head first series of books by O’reilly
2.wrox series of books by john wiley
The first series (head first) is a funny way writing the technical books.It makes a novel attempt to present the technical content in a light manner with loads of cartoons,witty remarks,and cool metaphors.

The second gets into serious talk right from the start.But the way of presentation is very simple and has a no nonsense approach.

So when you have ample amount of time and you are in good mood to learn choose head first.And when you want to learn quickly and be a master choose the second