Synopsis: Alcoholic philanderer, good time guy and congressmen funds personal war against the Communists in Afghanistan breaking multiple principles of governance and ethics and (allegedly) winning the Cold War.
My Take: Last year I saw the movie “Charlie Wilson’s War”. To be honest, while it was a great story, I didn’t exactly love the film (other [...]
Entries from June 13th, 2009
"Charlie Wilson’s War", George Crile
June 13th, 2009 · No Comments · History, Politics
Tags:George Crile
"The Sailor Who Fell from Grace With The Sea", Yukio Mishima
June 12th, 2009 · No Comments · Asian, Japanese, Literature
Synopsis: Teenage boy watches widowed mother sleep with handsome sailor through hole in bedroom wall. Boy becomes disillusioned with handsome sailor when he chooses his mother over life on the sea and begins plotting revenge.
My Take: In a word, dark.
Brett Easton Ellis dark.
Reminded me a lot of the Catcher in the Rye for its [...]
Tags:Yukio Mishima
"An Artist of the Floating World", Kazuo Ishiguro
June 11th, 2009 · No Comments · Asian, English, Japanese, Literature, Under-Rated
Synopsis: An aging painter contemplates his life as an artist of the ‘floating world’ (’Ukiyo‘) of Tokyo’s pleasure seeking districts and struggles to come to terms with his place in post-war Japan. Sometimes hindsight doesn’t come with 20/20 vision.
My Take: As you may have guessed by now, I have a real peccadillo for Japanese fiction. [...]
Tags:Kazuo Ishiguro
"One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich", Alexander Solzhenitzyn
June 10th, 2009 · No Comments · History, Literature, Politics
Synopsis: The story of a day in the life of soviet gulag prisoner Ivan Denisovich Shukhov.
My Take: I enjoyed this book tremendously. I’ve had a bit of a hit and miss history with Russian writers, some I’ve loved while others I’ve found interminable and depressing. What made this book so rewarding for me was that [...]
"Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China", Fuchsia Dunlop
June 9th, 2009 · No Comments · Asian, Chinese, Travel
Synopsis: Englishwoman moves to Chengdu, China for post-graduate study only to end up as the first Westerner to train at the Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine. The author’s following 14 years of Chinese culinary exploration is recounted in this memoir/travelogue/cookbook.
My Take: While I love Chinese food, I’ve always approached it from a the perspective of [...]
Tags:Fuchsia Dunlop
"The Pianist", Wladyslaw Szpilman
June 7th, 2009 · No Comments · History
Synopsis: The true story of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Jewish pianist who survives the German invasion of Poland, the Warsaw ghetto and the ultimate destruction of the city.
My Take: It’s sad to say but at a certain point, first hand accounts of holocaust survival start to have a numbing affect. It’s hard to know whether it’s [...]
Tags:Wladyslaw Szpilman
"The World is Flat", Thomas Friedman
June 6th, 2009 · No Comments · Economics, Policy
Synopsis: Cheap, ubiquitous telecommunications have reshaped the globe into a ‘flat world’ in which individuals compete on an equal footing regardless of their geographical location.
My Take: Um, yeah Thomas – where have you been for the past 7 years??
A shallow (excuse the pun)conceptual analysis stretched into a 500(!) page book. Friedman is sometimes an ok [...]
Tags:Thomas Friedman
"The Fall of Yugoslavia", Misha Glenny
June 5th, 2009 · No Comments · History, Politics
Synopsis: A German, Czech, Serbo-Croat and Greek speaking BBC war correspondent’s first hand account of the collapse of Yugoslavia and its descent into civil war.
My Take: A friend had recommended this book to me as a comprehensive account of recent history of the Balkans so on a sunny afternoon in Bosnia last year, I sat [...]
Tags:Misha Glenny
"Dry", Augusten Burroughs
June 4th, 2009 · No Comments · Literature
Synopsis: Having escaped from a childhood in which his mother adopted him out to her cult leader/psychologist, was repeatedly raped by a fellow patient/cult member and developed a passion for hairdressing, Burroughs’ autobiography continues in Dry with the tale of his adult descent into a life as a high paid, alcoholic advertising executive. Who would [...]
Tags:Augusten Burroughs
"The Black Swan, The Impact of the Highly Improbable", Nassim Nicholas Taleb
June 3rd, 2009 · No Comments · Policy
Synopsis: Highly improbable and unpredictable events are the main drivers of change in society and as such forming predictions of future events or developing explanations for past events is futile. If you go around using the words “will” or “because” you’re a very silly boy.
My Take: Hmmm. An interesting concept and more power to anyone [...]
