en-US Tue, 15 Apr 2025 04:26:02 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg ReadStatus9311186198 Tue, 15 Apr 2025 04:26:02 -0700 /review/show/7490179547 Venky has read Brother Odd by Dean Koontz
]]> Review7477731679 Thu, 10 Apr 2025 07:18:49 -0700 /review/show/7477731679 Venky gave 3 stars to BOWIELAND: Walking In The Footsteps Of David (Kindle Edition) by Peter Carpenter
bookshelves: travel
“Walk everyday if you want to stay on this planet�� was the simple yet non-nonsense advice imparted to Peter Carpenter by his physiotherapist, coming on the heels of a major heart surgery. The freelance writer, tutor and publisher not only paid complete heed to the instruction but transformed his peripatetic episodes into a memorable garland of tributes to one of rock and roll’s greatest ever artists, David Bowie.

Bowieland is both a homage to David Bowie as well as an ode to the pleasure of assiduously putting one foot in front of another in a sustained and resolute manner. An impossible and incorrigible fan of David Bowie, Carpenter finds himself moved by the spontaneous vigils mushrooming around “Bowie shrines�� across not just the United Kingdom but also spanning continents. Carpenter decided, spurred by a combination of circumstance and fancy, to embark on a series of “Bowie walks,�� visiting as many Bowie shrines as time and energy would permit a recuperating heart patient to visit.

What follows is an elaborate and poetic descriptions of memorable experiences that throw shades of wistful nostalgia upon the spiritual psyche of carpenter. Chance acquaintances with shared admiration led to jaw dropping stories and recollection of captivating incidents. For example, an impromptu meeting with photographer Daro Montag brings out the fascinating tale of how Montag happened to find the pair of boots worn by Bowie in the video “Space Oddity,�� in an apartment in the West End �� Number 39 Manchester Street to be precise. Upon an excited Carpenter inquiring about the fate of the illustrious boots, the response is indescribably gobsmacking �� “I think they were just chucked out.��

Carpenter chugs along at a brisk pace traipsing through Brixton, Beckenham, and Soho. We are introduced to hallowed places and events, veritable portals leading to a multitude of Bowie heavens. Heddon Street, for example, the reader is informed represented the site of the cover photo shoot for one of the most popular Bowie albums, The Rise and Fall of the Ziggy Stardust and Spiders from Mars (mercifully shortened to just Ziggy Stardust).


Carpenter’s Bowie mania is not restricted to the shores of his homeland alone. He also pays a visit to Berlin, where Bowie famously and in a manner that caused horripilation amongst millions of his fans, belted out an immortal rendition of Heroes in the year 1987. Bowie, while performing on the second night, began by telling the crowd, in German, “We send our wishes to all our friends who are on the other side of the wall.�� A decade earlier Berlin had hosted Bowie, in tandem with producer Brian Eno as the duo recorded the Berlin Trilogy, three studio albums which have now attained status of legendary proportions.

Bowieland is replete with reminiscences, unabashed adulation, fanboy moments and bouts of serene introspection. In Carpenter’s own words, “My peripatetic trampings, I came to see, echoed Bowie’s own creative spirit. A self-confessed lodger, a nomad, acting out the role of the explorer. From Tolworth to outer space, from Pett Level to New Mexico.��

Bowieland �� honest, humble and heart-warming! ]]> Review7455751033 Tue, 01 Apr 2025 23:35:04 -0700 /review/show/7455751033 Venky gave 3 stars to Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts (Hardcover) by Oliver Burkeman
bookshelves: non-fiction
Oliver Burkeman sets his readers off on a four-week quest at the end of which lies the beauty of “imperfection.�� While the enchanting realisation that each one of us is unique, warts and all, has been the bedrock of many a philosophy, this recognition has been relegated to the status of an inconsequential footnote in the modern rigmarole of life.

Burkeman sets the tone by visualising us as occupying a one-person kayak, floating unceasingly along the river of time. While inexorably the kayak is hurtling towards death, the experience along the way is an agglomeration of excitement and anticipation. A state described by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger by using the word, Geworfenheit. Literally meaning ‘throwness,�� the expression is used to denote the sheer unpredictability that is the outcome of existence itself.

Instead of getting bogged down by the dreaded “to do list,�� Burkeman suggests that we maintain a “done list�� instead. This list according to Burkeman provides much needed motivation by plotting and charting things that have been accomplished when weighed against the hypothetical probability of curling up in bed and doing nothing. Paraphrasing the philosopher Byung-Chul Han, ‘we produce against the feeling of lack.�� A ‘to-do list�� is emblematic of the frenzied activities which we unrelentingly engage in to wedge ourselves within the parenthesis of societal acceptability.

In addition to Martin Heidegger, Burkeman also draws on a fount of wisdom propagated by an illustrious phalanx of writers such as Jorge Luis Borges, Saint Benedict of Nursia, and Zen practioners such as Paul Loomans. Even though the book has been designed to
be one chapter a day to cover the recommended four-week period, it is a breezy one sitting read.

Burkeman produces some interesting concepts possessing great introspective value. For example, the notion of “scruffy hospitality�� predicates that there is no need to wait until the house of a host is spick and span before the guests arrive. Ensuring that the most obstinate piles of stuff are picked would do the job nicely. Similarly, instead of scratching one’s head over the perfect gourmet meal to be served, one would do well to make spaghetti!

Burkeman also warns us from bestowing too much attention to our future self thereby ignoring the present. Many of us trudge through life in the hope that the sacrifices and grind of the present would lead to a glittering future. Burkeman warns against such an attitude and exhorts us to be mindful of the present while weaving plans for the future.

It is the acknowledgement of our imperfection that helps us tide over the travails of life. Possessing an “imperfect�� state of mind lends a wholesome and refreshing perspective to limitations. Limitations which have always been viewed as failures. Imperfectionism enables moving away from such a negative mindset and facilitates viewing limitations not as failures but as invaluable bouts of liberation.

Meditation for Mortals �� a healthy dose of medication for the mind. ]]> Review7450574332 Mon, 31 Mar 2025 09:03:05 -0700 /review/show/7450574332 Venky gave 4 stars to When We Cease to Understand the World (Kindle Edition) by Benjamín Labatut
bookshelves: fiction
Exploring the liminal space between fact and fiction in a frighteningly ingenious manner, Benjamin Labatut leaves his readers enveloped in a sense of extreme enervation. A fatigue brought on by a hitherto employed combination of exhilaration and perplexity. When We Cease to Understand the World begins with an arresting narration of facts and concludes with a stupendous bout of fiction. In between can be found a Byzantine concoction that challenges the intrepid to unspool the threads of reality from the tapestry of imagination.

Labatut attempts to reprise the bewildering origins of Quantum mechanics, an esoteric concept that held the entire scientific community in thrall during the first few decades of twentieth century. A bunch of maverick theoretical physicists transformed the staid world of Newtonian mechanics into a teeming, throbbing and pulsating microcosm of abstract probabilities that threatened to upend the very understanding of Physics. Labatut wades into this period with gay abandon and attempts to explore the minds of some of the protagonists in the Quantum mechanics theatre.

Labatut begins his book with a story titled “Prussian Blue.�� Labatut refrains from engaging in extensive literary licenses as he elaborates on the facts leading to the discovery of Cyanide. Ironically, one of the pioneers of the discovery of chemical weapons, Fritz Haber also had the distinction of discovering a process that isolated nitrogen from air and thereby expediting the production of fertilizers �� a discovery that handed Haber a Nobel Prize.

The dizzying experience for the reader begins with the second story, “Schwarzschild’s Singularity.�� Reminiscing about the tragic life of German polymath Karl Schwarzschild, Labatut attempts to penetrate the mind of this genius whose obsession with the notion of singularity kept him occupied with abstruse equations even as he was left grappling with a deadly and terminal skin disorder courtesy chemical attacks experienced in the trenches of the First World War. Labatut wonders if Schwarzschild, while working on the Einsteinian equation of general relativity had any prescience about the horrors that singularity would wreak, “in the eyes of dead horses buried in the muck, in the bullet wounds of his fellow soldiers, in the shadowy lenses of their hideous gas masks,�� …��

At the core and crux of Labutat’s collection of stories, is the experience of Werner Heisenberg, as he embarks on his now immortal Uncertainty Principle. The reader is forced to go the extra mile, and beyond, in trying to separate events from fantasies. While competing with yet another brilliant, albeit eccentric German physicist Erwin Schrödinger in codifying the limits of measurement in the subatomic realm, Heisenberg retreats to the extraordinarily isolated and desolate landscape of Heligoland. Walking the beaches of this windswept sliver of land and navigating its cliffs, Heisenberg is plagued by visions almost fictional realism and is confined to his room with a ferocious bout of fever. His landlord, unnerved by both his physical and mental states summons a doctor before Heisenberg deteriorates into a medical state of worrying proportions.

Labatut portrays Schrödinger to be embroiled in his own set of psycho-spiritual afflictions. Admitting himself into a sanatorium, Schrödinger gets himself entangled in a platonic relationship with the young daughter of the owner of the Sanatorium. Lapsing into auto-erotic fantasies, the physicist works himself into a manic state by working on his equations like a man possessed when he is not fantasising about the young patient occupying the adjoining room.

Yet another Nobel laureate, Prince Louis de Broglie, finds himself closeted in a Gaudí-Esque mansion, and producing phenomenal degree of mathematical output. De Broglie is obsessed with a personal museum of curated by his recently deceased artist lover. One of the possessions of the museum represents a gargantuan replica of Notre Dame made totally from excrement.

Every story exacerbates the fictional quotient attached to it and the more the reader immerses herself into the piece, the more exaggerated her task of making sense of the phantasmagoria that leaps out of the pages with unbridled ferocity.

When We Cease to Understand the World �� an agglomeration that defies genre. ]]> Review7449958137 Mon, 31 Mar 2025 04:05:40 -0700 /review/show/7449958137 Venky gave 4 stars to Meltdown: Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse (Kindle Edition) by Duncan Mavin
bookshelves: economics
In March 2023, Credit Suisse was taken over by its archival UBS, thereby bringing the curtains down on a kaleidoscopic saga of greed, ambition, and hubris. Repeatedly racked by scandals and consistently embroiled in sleazy business deals, the once storied and venerable behemoth of the banking and finance industry was finally brought down to its knees.

Financial journalist Duncan Mavin, in Meltdown, chronicles in compelling detail the continuing excesses at Credit Suisse which led to the financial institution’s collapse. The reader at times is left wondering whether the 275 pages represent a mere primer into the financial and ethical chicanery practiced by the head honchos operating at the highest levels of power and politics.

Just a year before the bank was gobbled up by UBS a revealing report prepared internally described the unenviable state the bank found itself in. With a burgeoning headcount and accumulating expenditure to rival that of the hugely successful investment bank Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse generated a meagre fifth of Goldman’s per capita revenue. The lopsided policy of the bank is captured in a telling detail shared by Mavin. While staring at cumulative losses of more than $2 billion over a decade leading to its consequential takeover, the bank had doled out a whopping $35 billion in bonuses during the same period.

Straddling two continents, Credit Suisse found itself in a continuous struggle to establish a definite identity. As Mavin informs his readers, the cultural differences between Zurich and New York prevented a permanent acculturation of thoughts and deeds. When John Mack, the former President of Morgan Stanley, was hired by Credit Suisse to head its Wall Street operations, he refused to learn German (language of Credit Suisse’s Board) and constant clashes with the senior management ensured that Mack’s tenure lasted all of three years.

The gamut of scandals permeating Credit Suisse range from the bewildering to the banal. In the year 2018, former Credit Suisse advisor Pascale Lescaudron was convicted by a Swiss court in 2018 of having forged the signatures of former clients, over an eight-year period. One of the clients included former Georgian Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili.

An appalling lack of internal controls within the bank led to the unearthing of a scandal surrealist in its sweep and wake. Bankers at the London office of Credit Suisse arranged for representatives of the Mozambique government to borrow $500 million towards procurement of a fleet of tuna-fishing boats. When the dust finally settled on the deal, approximately $200 million of the loan went towards kickbacks to Credit Suisse bankers and Mozambican government officials. Even though knowledgeable of a material shortfall between the funds raised and the value of boats bought, the bank failed in its fiduciary duties to disclose this to investors.

The government of Mozambique withstood the worst of the swindle when the International Monetary Fund (“IMF��) pulled its support for the country after details became known about Mozambique admitting to existence of $1.4 billion in undisclosed loans arranged by Credit Suisse, right under the nose of the IMF.

Credit Suisse has also been a revolving door for Chief Executives. Every controversy at the bank has been inevitably preceded by and invariably succeeded by departing and income CEO, respectively. For example, the tumultuous reign of Tidjane Thiam, a French and Ivorian national was marred by the “Spy gate�� incident. A former associate at the Bank who had fallen out of favours with Thiam, before heading to UBS was followed by private detectives. Even though Thiam denied any knowledge about the covert surveillance activity, the perpetrators of the misdeed were assigned the job by a consultant working for ‘Credit Suisse’s Chief Operating Officer.��

Meltdown, a sordid tale of unfettered greed and gluttony. ]]> Review7419603653 Thu, 20 Mar 2025 08:56:03 -0700 /review/show/7419603653 Venky gave 4 stars to Hunkeler's Secret (Inspector Hunkeler, #9) by Hansjörg Schneider
bookshelves: fiction
Hansjörg Schneider’s fourth instalment of the phenomenally successful Inspector Hunkeler crime novels, begins on a sombre and timid note. Retired Inspector Peter Hunkeler wakes up in a state of torpor in Basel’s Merian Iselin Hospital after undergoing a successful operation for the excision of a benign tumour. He shares his hospital bed with an irritatingly chirpy patient, who incidentally also happens to be an acquaintance dating back to Hunkeler’s University days. Dr, Stephan Fankhauser, Hunkeler’s constantly chattering companion is suffering from an irreversible bout of cancer. Possessed of a skeletal framework, signalling the end of days, Fankhauser is a name to be reckoned with in the corporate circuits of Basel.

Initially famous or rather infamous for his left leaning firebrand activities as a student, Fankhauser reneges on his own ideology by joining the bastion of hyper-capitalism, the Basel Volksbank before retiring as its director. A few nights before Hunkeler is to be discharged, a strange and unsettling episode occurs in the room housing the former Inspector and the retired banker. A nurse after handing over a sleeping pill to Hunkeler calmly goes over to Fankhauser’s bedside and ignoring the latter’s feeble protestations, administers an injection. Fankhauser begins gasping for breath and before Hunkeler could protest, the sleeping pill takes definite effect and Hunkeler goes into deep sleep.

The next morning Fankhauser’s bed is empty and a bewildered Hunkeler is informed that his fellow patient suffered from a massive heart attack the previous night which turned out to be fatal. Hunkeler initially attributes the nightmarish episode involving the night nurse and Fankhauser as a figment of hallucinations caused by the sleeping tablet before a series of violent crimes specifically aimed at Bankers makes him revise his position. But since Peter Hunkeler is retired and does not have any authority to either investigate a crime or pursue leads, he finds himself in a tight spot.

Hunkeler’s tranquil and uneventful retirement sojourn soon succumbs to the excitement of a major discovery. To add to his existing set of intricacies, his granddaughter Estelle manifests at his doorstep and soon Hunkeler and his trusted girlfriend Hedwig find themselves sharing an apartment with a teen, and due to some inexplicable circumstances, a goat!

The murder of Fankhauser leads Hunkeler into a labyrinth that threatens to upend the much-vaunted Swiss position of neutrality assumed throughout the course of World War II. The pristine white of Basel’s reputation suddenly assumes murky shades of grey fast threatening to culminate in a menacing coat of black. Hunkeler’s quest seems to contain a plethora of questions and not a single plausible answer. Was Fankhauser an accidental victim or a deliberate target? Why are the bankers in Switzerland being targeted specifically by people possessing a violent bent of mind?

Hunkeler’s Secret is a gripping one-sitting read that firmly establishes its author as a force to be reckoned with in the thriller genre. The narrative is exquisite and the plot tight and taut. Astrid Freuler does a capital job with the translation.

Hunkeler’s Secret �� A rabbit hole worth plunging into headlong!
]]> Review7419603653 Thu, 20 Mar 2025 08:55:28 -0700 /review/show/7419603653 Venky gave 4 stars to Hunkeler's Secret (Inspector Hunkeler, #9) by Hansjörg Schneider
bookshelves: fiction
Hansjörg Schneider’s fourth instalment of the phenomenally successful Inspector Hunkeler crime novels, begins on a sombre and timid note. Retired Inspector Peter Hunkeler wakes up in a state of torpor in Basel’s Merian Iselin Hospital after undergoing a successful operation for the excision of a benign tumour. He shares his hospital bed with an irritatingly chirpy patient, who incidentally also happens to be an acquaintance dating back to Hunkeler’s University days. Dr, Stephan Fankhauser, Hunkeler’s constantly chattering companion is suffering from an irreversible bout of cancer. Possessed of a skeletal framework, signalling the end of days, Fankhauser is a name to be reckoned with in the corporate circuits of Basel.

Initially famous or rather infamous for his left leaning firebrand activities as a student, Fankhauser reneges on his own ideology by joining the bastion of hyper-capitalism, the Basel Volksbank before retiring as its director. A few nights before Hunkeler is to be discharged, a strange and unsettling episode occurs in the room housing the former Inspector and the retired banker. A nurse after handing over a sleeping pill to Hunkeler calmly goes over to Fankhauser’s bedside and ignoring the latter’s feeble protestations, administers an injection. Fankhauser begins gasping for breath and before Hunkeler could protest, the sleeping pill takes definite effect and Hunkeler goes into deep sleep.

The next morning Fankhauser’s bed is empty and a bewildered Hunkeler is informed that his fellow patient suffered from a massive heart attack the previous night which turned out to be fatal. Hunkeler initially attributes the nightmarish episode involving the night nurse and Fankhauser as a figment of hallucinations caused by the sleeping tablet before a series of violent crimes specifically aimed at Bankers makes him revise his position. But since Peter Hunkeler is retired and does not have any authority to either investigate a crime or pursue leads, he finds himself in a tight spot.

Hunkeler’s tranquil and uneventful retirement sojourn soon succumbs to the excitement of a major discovery. To add to his existing set of intricacies, his granddaughter Estelle manifests at his doorstep and soon Hunkeler and his trusted girlfriend Hedwig find themselves sharing an apartment with a teen, and due to some inexplicable circumstances, a goat!

The murder of Fankhauser leads Hunkeler into a labyrinth that threatens to upend the much-vaunted Swiss position of neutrality assumed throughout the course of World War II. The pristine white of Basel’s reputation suddenly assumes murky shades of grey fast threatening to culminate in a menacing coat of black. Hunkeler’s quest seems to contain a plethora of questions and not a single plausible answer. Was Fankhauser an accidental victim or a deliberate target? Why are the bankers in Switzerland being targeted specifically by people possessing a violent bent of mind?

Hunkeler’s Secret is a gripping one-sitting read that firmly establishes its author as a force to be reckoned with in the thriller genre. The narrative is exquisite and the plot tight and taut. Astrid Freuler does a capital job with the translation.

Hunkeler’s Secret �� A rabbit hole worth plunging into headlong!
]]> Review7347653101 Sun, 23 Feb 2025 06:43:54 -0800 /review/show/7347653101 Venky gave 4 stars to In Praise of Shadows (Paperback) by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki
bookshelves: non-fiction
In this fascinating book length essay, Japanese author Junichiro Tanizaki mesmerises, teases, provokes and even exasperates his readers with a degree of deliberateness that is calculated yet spontaneous; facetious yet severe. Tanizaki dwells with great vigour on an aesthetic that has its edifice in the murkiness of shadows, not just symbolically, but literally. Arguing that the Japanese sensibilities derive their glow and shine from the tranquillity and serenity of shadows, Tanizaki bemoans the unstoppable annihilation of the profundity of shadows, hastened by a profusion of Western progress one of whose inevitable handmaidens is the harsh glare of the electric light.

In Praise of Shadows takes us to places unusual and acquaints us with material objects otherwise ordinary in embellishing the worth of shadows. Prior to the advent of electricity, Japanese houses served dinner in lacquerware under the muted glow of candles. Tanizaki extolls the beauty of lacquerware that is revealed only under the benevolent gaze of shadows. “Darkness is an indispensable element of the beauty of lacquerware…�� Frowning upon the increased use of ceramic, Tanizaki contends that “there is a beauty in that moment between removing the lid and lifting the bowl to the mouth when one gazes at the still, silent liquid in the dark depths of the bowl, its colour barely differing from that of the bowl itself..��

Tanizaki is neither an apologist for medieval mores of living nor a confirmed Luddite. His obsession for shadows does not translate to a jeremiad lamenting the discovery of the incandescent bulb. “I know that I am only grumbling to myself and demanding the impossible understanding that things have changed, and some will never be the same again.��. Probably if In Praise of Shadows was to be authored today, it might have birthed an immediate zeitgeist with cultural, architectural and even social ramifications. The genre itself might have worked as a bildungsroman making a reverse transition from light to darkness. Tanizaki startles his readers by making questionable switches from the profound to the petty and vice versa. His ruminations span a bewildering range from architecture to toilets, to jade to women to food.

In Praise of Shadows is a man’s personal angst in attempting a reconciliation between an inevitable future and a nostalgic past. An endeavour that extrapolates in a futile vein, personal wistfulness to universal longing. “The tatami room is fine as far as it goes, but it is the design of the toilet that truly soothes the mind and soul. To squat in the faint glow of the light reflecting off the shoji and surrender to a meditative state or gaze out the window at the garden scenery is a sensation that is impossible to describe.�� What a far cry from the contemporaneous toilet design!

Tanizaki also posits an incredulous theory equating the beauty of a Japanese women with darkness. In a darkened room, the beauty of a Japanese woman finds exquisite expression in the view of Tanizaki where all that is visible is a powdered face and two hands extending from a dark mass of clothing. Much before ‘stream of consciousness�� was elevated to a kitschy pedestal, writers like Tanizaki defined this oeuvre with delightful confoundedness.

Thomas J. Harper, one of the translators, creating magic out of this Tanizaki tract has an interesting story which reflects the paradoxical and a near hypocritical view nurtured by Tanizaki. Tanizaki decided to build himself a new home. An ebullient and egregious architect who happened to have read In Praise of Shadows, offered to construct a dwelling that exactly mirrored Tanizaki’s notions and aspirations regarding the much vaunted and regrettably forgotten Japanese aesthetics. To the architect’s utter chagrin and surprise, Tanizaki replied, “but no, I could never live in a house like that.�� Call it a sly sense of humour or an informed expression of resignation, it denotes Tanizaki’s willing acceptance to evolve with and adapt to changing mores and time.

One of the greatest philosophers of all time, Rumi said, “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.�� Tanizaki would have preferred to “let only measured rays of light to enter the wound.��

Thomas J. Harper and Edward G. Seidensticker have done an indescribably capital job with translating the original work preserving its essence

In Praise of Shadows is a delectable take on darkness and light, loss and gain, and more than everything else, a mercurial man’s attempt to come to grips with himself. ]]> Review7326095674 Sun, 16 Feb 2025 08:09:51 -0800 /review/show/7326095674 Venky gave 4 stars to How to Feed the World: A Factful Guide (Kindle Edition) by Vaclav Smil
bookshelves: medicine-nutrition-health
Vaclav Smil loves to inundate his readers with data. Statistics, charts and graphs keep hurtling off the pages at the rate of knots. An apologist for facts and an acolyte of information, the Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba �� and the author of more than forty books �� is also an extraordinary researcher.

How to Feed the World is no exception to the information barrage. Dispelling many a myth about how our dietary regimens shape us, and where our food comes from, Smil leads us into a dizzying journey whose beacon is quantitative rigor and destination conclusions of incredulity. The granular details that occupy Smil’s research defies imagination and provokes undisguised astonishment. Consider this piece of information:

The metric of Water Use Efficiency (WUE) is measured in terms of new plant mass photosynthesised per unit of volume of water used by a plant. WUE also indicates how much water is needed per unit mass of crop yield. The average amount of water to yield a ton of legumes is 4,000 tonnes, while producing a ton of coffee requires a jaw dropping 18,000 tonnes of water. This prorates to a whopping 130 kilograms per cup that uses all of 7 grams of roasted beans! Incidentally, it takes a small amount of water at 300 tonnes to obtain one tonne of beer.

The fundamental premise underlying Smil’s work is his emphatic assertion that there is no need for any radical solutions to combat the problems of global food security as well as for ensuring that the next generation is adequately supplied with a fair share of nutrition. However, a combination of measures such as improving production efficiencies, reducing waste, and adjusting diets would need to be implemented in a homogenous and urgent manner universally.

The chapter dwelling on food waste makes for sobering and infuriating reading. As Smil points out, according to a Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) study, households in the United Kingdom waste 6.7 million tonnes of food every year. The wastage amounted to a third of all food purchases, with three fifths of such wastage being perfectly avoidable. But the most remarkable, and frustrating feature about the whole wastage statistics lay in the fact that more than a quarter of all the avoidable waste was discarded unopened!

Inefficient methods of food production also result in significant, and in cases, irreparable damage such as deforestation, ground water depletion, heavy metal contamination etc. As is his leitmotif, Smil puts us into a tailspin with a raft of mind-blowing statistics. While Hunan province in China has the unenviable attribute of having three-fifths of all its food contaminated by Mercury, Amazon’s annual rate of deforestation at 27,800 square kilometres equates to the loss of forestland the size of Belgium every year!

Smil also holds forth on the benefits touted by nutritionists and dieticians about the virtues of attempting a myriad number of ingenious gastronomic choices. Paleo, vegan, substitutes, restrictive diets and dietary fats all have had their fifteen minutes of undiluted fame. Smil in an impartial and irreverent manner, weighs the pros and cons of such recommendations, providing data on the inputs in terms of natural and manufactured resources that would be required to facilitate such diets, the energy equivalents and outcome in terms of benefits.

Smil calls for an immediate mitigation mechanism to be instituted to combat zinc, iodine and iron deficiency representing preventable cases of global malnutrition and even deaths. This unfortunate trend is seen mostly in the case of children in sub-Saharan Africa. It is an absolute travesty that a most inexpensive method of iodisation involving the use of fortified salt with iodine (at least 15 parts per million) is out of reach of millions of helpless families.

Smil also informs us about the realities in terms of costs when it comes to novel inventions such as lab processed meat. According to Huw Hughes, owner/director of Echo Veterinary Consulting, the real cost of a kilogram of cell culture is anywhere more than $8,500 �� $36,000. This is comparison to the wholesale price of trimmed chicken meat at $3.11 per kilogram (as of February 2021).

How to Feed the World is a wonderfully compelling and eye-opening guide dealing with a fundamental necessity of life which a great proportion of us take for granted. After reading this food, not only will we think twice about how much we put on our plates but also lend attention �� crucially �� to where and how the stuff adorning our plates have come about. ]]> Review7311460852 Tue, 11 Feb 2025 07:00:00 -0800 /review/show/7311460852 Venky gave 5 stars to Playground (Hardcover) by Richard Powers
bookshelves: fiction
Richard Powers revealed that he read one hundred and twenty books on trees while researching his now bestselling Overstory. I know not how many books on oceans and marine life Powers read in researching for Playground, but the result is electric. The damage caused by the Anthropocene on marine ecosystems is now common knowledge. Powers centres his focus on Makatea, a non-descript atoll comprising the Tuamotu Archipelago in French Polynesia to highlight the unstoppable reach of omnipresent capitalism that envelopes within its influence even the most isolated and secluded corners of our planet.

The narrator of Playground, Todd Keane has been diagnosed with Lewy Body dementia. Multimillionaire entrepreneur, tech magnate and founder of playground, a behemoth of a social media platform and knowledge-sharing site that enjoys a privileged status which are not the prerogatives of some countries even, has grandiose plans to bring the fruits of development to Makatea in the form of a mega sea steading project. The 80 inhabitants of Makatea must vote on whether to hand over their atoll to industrial scale exploitation or to preserve the pristine sanctity of an idyllic existence. Keane has truly little time left to bring his vision to fruition as his rare disease progresses relentlessly.

92-year-old Evelyne Beaulieu (Evie) is one of the 80 people calling Makatea home. A true daughter of the ocean, Evelyne is a living, breathing aquatic body. Her book, Clearly it is Ocean, leaves an impression on a 10-year-old Todd, before the latter goes on to leave his own lasting imprint on the world. The daughter of an engineer responsible for the success of the first Aqua-Lung prototype (first experimented using Evie as a guinea pig), Evie shatters the glass ceiling to become the first woman to be accepted by Duke University’s Ocean studies department, in 1953, before attaining the status of an unparalleled underwater diver and marine researcher. Through the eyes of Evie, Powers gives his readers a magical and magisterial peek into the mysteries and magnificence of a throbbing and teeming microcosm that thrives many miles beneath every ocean.

The son of a Chicago firefighter, whose unrelenting motto in life reads “A black man’s gotta read twice as good as any white, just to get half the recognition,�� Rafi more than lives up to his father’s expectations, bagging a seat at the prestigious Saint Ignatius College. He even receives a scholarship instituted by Tood’s Father. Todd and Rafi meet at Saint Ignatius setting into motion a bout of intense competition over chess and the two-thousand-year-old board game, “Go.�� Interspersed with the competitive streak is also a fierce friendship characterised by respect and mutual admiration. Rafi is a romantic who chooses to spend his time buried in abstract literature and obscure philosophies.

Ina, the result of a union between a US naval officer and a former hotel chambermaid from Tahiti, manifests herself at the Ignatius University’s School of Art and expresses her resolve, reservations, resilience and reticence in the form of sculptures that are testimony to the unrivalled breadth of human imagination and creativity. Both Ina smites Todd and Rafi. Todd voluntarily cedes his spot to Rafi and the trio begin leading lives of constant contemplation.

Rafi and Ina find themselves on Makatea under circumstances representing a contrivance of fate and choice, and in the process find themselves to be an integral part of the arbiters of Makatea’s future.

Richard Powers has in interviews confessed that he is an impossible fan of Solaris, a science fiction by Polish author Stanislaw Lem. The book trails a group of scientists trying to comprehend extra terrestrial intelligence. Lem’s own playground in the book is a great ocean on the alien planet, Solaris. The ocean is a mass of gelatinous material and is surmised by the explorers to represent a single, sentient and planet-encompassing entity.

Power’s Playground has unmissable shades of Lem. It is an unabashed and stirring paean to the marvels of ocean life. A particular passage where a cuttlefish puts on a colourful show of splendour in a virtuoso performance solely for Evie’s viewing pleasure infuses into the reader a true sense of joie de vivre. “His entire body blanched as white as Antarctica, and he knotted himself into a wild warrior pose. Spiky goosebumps erupted all over his skin, which then burst into flame. The arms turned into swords, a saber dance for no one. He thrust his blades out everywhere, the spitting image of Kali, the goddess of time, change, destruction and creation.��

Playground �� more than just an isolated cuttlefish at play. ]]>