Review: Funny Story

Funny Story by Emily Henry
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Hooter: The book version of Rihanna's we found love in a hopeless place.

I rarely do RomComs but hey, I do get out of my comfort zone once in a while and GoodReads win bolstered this book's ranking on my "Light reads" list. The ending is cliched but that's with all romcoms - the predictability of that cliche is why the genre survives. The dopamine hit of a feel good ending has to be contrasted with the trials and tribulations prior to that for that heightened sense of an enjoyable ending.

Emily takes an interesting premise of our main protagonist Daphne who is about to marry her fiance Peter- a Greek God of the modern dating world till he drops the bombshell that he has decided to marry his childhood best friend Petra instead. Daphne moves in with Miles - Petra's ex boyfriend and is the exact opposite of Daphne. Being complete opposites yet united by a common tragedy, they learn more about each other and in that journey learn more about themselves. There was a phase of intense lovemaking that carried on for pages which felt a tad overboard in the scheme of the entire book.

Emily creates extremely flawed yet loveable characters (except the villains of this story Peter and Petra) making their challenges in dealing with family and life relatable and makes for a fun(ny) read.

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Review: Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering

Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering by Malcolm Gladwell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Hooter: A study on how small insignificant events can bring about a large change

Malcom Gladwell's sequel titled the Revenge of the Tipping Point focuses on numerous anecdotes backed with his research on how something insignificant can reach a tipping point and change the momentum across.

Using examples from how a TV mini series like Holocaust brought about a lot more awareness even amongst the Jewish communities of US apart from the broader world and led to a slew of museums across the world correlating with that timing.

How the spread of virus correlates to the concept of super spreaders with everything else even targeted sales rather than just blanket coverage. He introduces the concept of "A Magic Third" - an imaginary number that tends to be the tipping point to bring about any change - like a third of women members on a board , a third of minority population in schools to bring about effect for affirmative action in education and so on.

He reiterates how these forces can bring about unintended changes like triplication of presciptions in pharma reducing the opiod crisis in some states and the reverse in others. Or the privileged sports quota in premier universities create a back door.

Gladwell continues to pick compelling narratives and correlations in the complex world we delve in but compared to his prior books - this one felt a tougher one to trudge through from a writing style.

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