Sunday, February 01, 2009

Snapshot

The following two books are my recent good reads.
The Gifted - Nikita Lalwani
The story is about an Indian immigrant family in Cardiff (Wales). The head of the family is an Indian mathematics professor and the main character in the story is his "gifted" daughter who is a maths prodigee. The family's aspirations are centred around the girl and the whole plot is about how this affects the normal living of the girl. I really enjoyed reading this book,especially understanding the psyche of the girl. For example there is an instance where the girl prays to God to get her out of a problem by counting to 30th digit of "Pi", the transcendental number.


Show Business - Shashi Tharoor
Excellent parody of the Bollywood industry and closely resembles the life of Amitabh Bachchan. Shashi Tharoor has devised an intelligent structure to the book, with chapters resembling film-shooting takes. I really enjoyed the monologues of each character.



Other reads
Introduction to Freud - comic series
This was quite an eye-opening read. Came across some shocking theories like the Oedipus complex. Overall the book was a good introduction to Sigmund Freud's theories some of which are quite relevant. Freud says that reason is not an obvious outcome of the mind but an outcome of a struggle between the ideal and raw-inconscious mind and the practical conscious mind.

Now playing:
Kangal Irandal - Subramaniyapuram
Dreams on Fire - Slumdog Millionare