Category: Book Reviews

Underrated underworld undertones.

The books begins by tracking Elwood, a young African American on the fast track to college with all the “desirable” traits – conscientiousness, intelligence, righteousness and industry – the traits the American dream sells us on. The fact that such a boy ends up in a reform school masquerading as front for the near torturous, murderous, and often paedophilic urges of it’s administrators is a stunning indictment of American police. They saw an old white man and a young black man in a car – and immediately arrested Elwood for car theft.

The problem is this – Elwood wants to believe in humanity and people. He wants to hold on Martin Luther King’s assertions. He wants to break up fights on campus and report errors to authority. He still wants to pay his dues, “graduate” from Nickel Academy quickly and continue with his life – an objective which even he realises quickly to be naivety.

The book not only tracks his journey through Nickel, but also the trauma after. The fundamental realisation that just like war, abuse at levels so pervasive has permanent impacts. The idea that there are naturally inviolate parts of us, thresholds not meant to be crossed, sanctum sanctorums that we are meant to protect – parts that if fiddle with, can have unfathomable impacts.

But the beauty in this book is in it’s specific symbolism – how on their escape from Nickel, idealism (Elwood) is shot, while skepticism (Turner) runs faster and further without looking back. How Turner realises that maybe he could have protected Elwood from being the Icarus that flew to close the son. How Elwood interacts with his grandmother Harriett – the war-weary soldier who lost her husband and children, and now stands to lose Elwood.

The realisation that in a world as shattering as 1960s Florida, life takes and it takes and it takes, and they keep giving anyways. The realization that life-shattering circumstances steal from our heart and whittle us down to our essence – that the parts we decide to give up decide the sculpture we are carved into.

It’s a story so populated by lively characters and insanely courageous bonds that it gently warms one’s heart into a wide, wide smile. It’s a book that makes you feel alive – as the characters and words and actions and settings fly off the pages in sumptuous paragraphs.

That’s why I said the book was delicious – it’s a book to devour. It’s not a book that felt like a chore to read. It’s a book that laughts in the face of deriving beauty from sadness and fragility and introspection – chosing instead to derive beauty from friendship and love and the present.

A book like no other, it lucidly weaves together the tale of a presidential campaign, a delicate royal image, personal frustrations and desires: and most importantly, places the unconventional on the center stage with the spotlight flashing brightly on it.

These are examples of questions that WILL make people lie to you, because they don’t want to hurt your feelings. This book leads you away from fluff, compliments, and mere annoyances to facts, data, and real world user problems.

It’s written in a dry, real style. It gives advice so practical that you could read this book and go off and ask questions.

“It boils down to this: you aren’t allowed to tell them what their problem is, and in return, they aren’t allowed to tell you what to build. They own the problem, you own the solution.”

It offers succinct explanations that can be understood by the layman (I mean, I first read this in 6th or 7th grade). My biggest gripe while re-reading this book was the optimism. There’s nothing inherently wrong with optimism- but I found it a little concerning Mars was depicted more as a heroic adventure story than an engineering challenge of magnificent proportions.

I utilize this book mostly as a Mars 101 lecture, which after all, is what TED is all about.

Nolite Te Bastardes Carborundorum.

In the introduction, Margaret Atwood writes:

“If you mean an ideological tract in which all women are angels and/or so victimized they are incapable of moral choice, no. If you mean a novel in which women are human beings — with all the variety of character and behavior that implies — and are also interesting and important, and what happens to them is crucial to the theme, structure and plot of the book, then yes.”

It is very important to understand this basic perspective to consider Atwood’s novel.

The book captures beautifully the humans in tyranny- those that simultaneously suffer from it and uphold it. It depicts the deep, flawed guesswork that goes into forming friendships and alliances in a dystopian world, and the longing and nostalgia for love that has been lost.

It’s a classic for a reason.

Academic, vast, imaginative.

However, this book really falls apart in it’s prose and characterisation. While diversity of race was not an issue, I did note that the entire book had exactly one female character, who too, was the sour wife of a political leader. Furthermore, the plot proceeded at a constant pace, the rhythm of the stories and the actions of the main characters felt almost repetitive after a while – so the writing did feel somewhat monotonous.