Too Much Words.
Logicomix
Russell, while explaining Hilbert’s infinite hotel to his wife Alys: “When poets are in love they recite verses to their beloved … A mathematician in love will hum his own brand of poetry!”
Russell, to Alfred Whitehead: “…every morning I wake up an optimist, but after a day’s work, I despair.” – Well, life of every research student. This tweet, lol
Kafka on the Shore, Murakami
The girl to Hoshino: “The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.” – Henri Bregson in Mame mo memelay (or Matter and Memory)
The God of Small Things
[when they lay together in bed]…“their bodies fit like stacked spoons.” What a beauifully written statement. Arundhati Roy seems to be the queen of metaphors. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.
Also read Reading Arundhati Roy politically by Aijaz Ahmad
The Plague
I was recently asked If I could have dinner with anyone, dead or alive, who would it be? My two choices were Camus and Feynmann (duh!) What struck me most while reading the book was how slow social development of humans has been, when compared to technological development. It makes sense, since social patterns are emergent behaviour and it would take a lot of effort to change the system enough to observe a change. This book was written in 1947, and the description is probably from that time. It was fun to compare people’s behaviour during the COVID-19 pandemic vs. people’s behaviour in the book. Compare that with the rapid development of vaccines, processing of viral genome, etc. that happened during the COVID.
I was recently reading Limits to Growth,
Shoe Dog
Shoe Dog is a must read. It’s exciting, energizing, absolutely fantastic. I planned on reading it slowly, actually ended up reading all of it over a weekend. His life has been a roller coster ride, and he did a fantastic job in turning it into a book. The book is summarised well by something that my grandfather says very often when recalling some of his life’s stories to he: Paise se hi paisa aata hai which basically means it takes money to make money.
Tuesdays with Morrie
I don’t read a lot of self help books since they are not really my type. I think they all say the same things in a different manner, very much inflated in terms of numebr of pages to make it seem necessary, and can be summarised well in some short blog. Some decide to add in some fiction, and the story makes it more readable. I decided to give this one a try since I got it recommended by too many people. The story is heartwarming and the character of Morrie is really interesting in terms of personality and his outlook to life can certainly add a lot of value to mine.
The Summer That Melted Everything
“He existed. hurrah! He existed, and we shall be each moment celebrating him and singing him and through eternity, we shall hold him with our strong hearts. And strong we must be because we cannot stop in the night, for the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse. The powerful play goes on, and you, dear Grand, have contributed your beautiful verse.”
Samsa in Love, from Desire by Murakami
The woman: “Everything is blowing up around us, but there are still those of us who care about a broken lock, and others who are dutiful enough to try and fix it … But maybe that’s the way it should be. Maybe working on the little things as dutifully and honestly as we can is how we stay sane when the world is falling apart.”