Review: Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI by Yuval Noah Harari
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Hooter: A look at how information has shaped and can shape humanity

Yuval does it again with picking up information as a topic and deep diving through history on how it has shaped humanity. Setting that baseline, he gets into the hypothetical - which is almost real or is steps away from being reality on how that could play out.

From how the written word tried to standardise data and its interpretations, it introduced new challenges of the writer's perspective and then the interpreter's perspective especially in religious texts. Similarly access to information and the delivery channels play a big role. in themselves. Tying this up to how AI today can generate and deliver information - there are so many scenarios where this could go south if not done in a controlled manner and we are probably past the stage where we can try to control. Yuval always leave you away with a deep thought provoking open ended question that lingers after you are done with the book.

Whether you agree or disagree with his points, he atleast sets you up for a debate on the topic .

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Review: After Dark

After Dark by Haruki Murakami
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Hooter: If a photographer's artistic view of a night in Tokyo was converted into a book.

Murakami has a way with taking the usual and the mundane and explain it in a very artistic and compelling manner. After Dark is a novella - focused on a night in Japan where two characters learn more about each other whilst the world around them waltzes by. A 19 year old Mari comes face to face with various actors that make up the night life in Tokyo - from love hotels to midnight diners, the yakuza, prostitution, upcoming music bands and so on.

Murakami's style of viewing these, adding existential questions and philosophies into the mundane make for an interesting reading as always. Chance encounters of strangers and how they awkwardly befriend and unravel each other's mysteries make for an interesting technique to character development which has been a common pattern in his writing.

Considering the big books he has written earlier, for folks want to get a taste of his style with a novella, this is a good one to go with as you can pull a night outer to get through a night in Tokyo

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Review: The Perfumist of Paris

The Perfumist of Paris by Alka Joshi
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Hooter: Adding closure amongst the plethora of vivid scents in this journey called life.

Alka Joshi's trilogy ties up the ends with the Perfumist of Paris focusing this time on the younger sister Radha who is married to a Frenchman in France along with her two daughters. Starting off with regular NRI struggles of keeping the kids true to their cultural origins to the struggles of ambition versus family a lot of women have to contend with - life takes a turn as her dream job as a perfumist gets her an opportunity to design her own signature scent for a client which involves traveling down memory lane back to the multi-sensory world of India.

Reconnecting with characters from the prior books, Alka Joshi continues to build a vivid tapestry of characters - a strength she leans on. You can visualise the settings our protagonists are in with the rich prose Alka uses along with the conflicts that society throws onto our main protagonists. Since Radha has been my least favourite character in the series and this being her swansong made me less enthusiastic of this book compared to the rest so far but having invested in the trilogy, it felt good to get closure in Alka Joshi's signature style.

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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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