The Plague by Albert Camus

“All I maintain is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims, and it’s up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces with the pestilences.”

This is a haunting fictional tale of a very real problem that has descended upon very real characters. Albert Camus has dissected the society that is plagued by all kinds of viruses and yet that resists with all kinds of goodness. The setting is of a French Algerian city, Oran that has been struck by a deadly bubonic plague in the middle of the twentieth century. But you could be forgiven to think that large parts of the novel are a description of any modern city and its response to the current viral outbreak.

The slow creeping realization by the large populace that their lives are going to be upturned like never before, the response of the authorities from dismissive carelessness to knee-jerk responses, the role of religion and its proclamation of divine punishment, the separation and exile and the accentuation of class inequities; all of these ring too close to the current times to not feel a sense of eeriness and also weariness, weariness with the character of society and the near constancy of human nature across geographies and eras.

But the novel is not merely a tale of despondence and darkness. The story (and the city in the story) stands on the shoulders of people who are ready to work overtime, to wear themselves out, to extend themselves thin for the sake of others. Not because they think they are heroes, far from it in fact. They rise above themselves to help others because they think that’s the only thing to do in such times.

I picked up this book to look at the times that we are going through right now through the eyes of a distant narrator, from another time. I wasn’t disappointed, even though some of the things are vastly different than how they are now (with respect to the medical facilities and the basic nature of disease itself), the novel still captures the basic essence of these current times. But the journey that this novel essentially takes you through is more inward-looking than what is external, the basic philosophical questions about human nature, God, destiny and purpose, and their practical realizations.

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Abundance by Peter Diamendis and Steven Kotler

“…perspective shapes our reality. The best way to predict the future is to create it yourself”

This is as much a book about optimism as it is about technological innovations. The argument that the author tries to make is that technology is creating limitless opportunities and a better (more abundant) future is in store for all of humanity.

There is ample evidence strewn across the pages to prove the author’s claim that technology and its ramifications are bringing about exponential improvements in people’s lives. I read this book just after I finished Factfulness and I think I could draw some parallels at least in the way that change is put into perspective and that the present condition is compared to the past trends.

Surely, there are enough reasons to think that the world is progressing towards a better future and that we have come a long way from past horrors and problems. Author states that much of the progress is owing to new technology and its adoption; from aluminum to internet. It is also a fact that multiple things are correlated in a way that a lot of positive exigencies result from the solution of one problem. Like the debilitating problems of illiteracy, poor health standards, child mortality and overpopulation might be pretty much clubbed and solved together.

I found the book pretty inspirational and full of brimming positive enthusiasm, and it sort of propelled me to look around and observe how technology brings about drastic changes; changes that are both profound and achieved in relatively far lesser time period compared to how changes have progressed in the bygone eras. It is perhaps a bit daring though, the optimism, at least at times, hence it should come as no surprise that the author released a sequel to this book and named it ‘Bold’.

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Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

“That is the secret of happiness and virtue, liking what you’ve got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny.”

Brave New world is a difficult book to talk about, owing to its strange ambivalence. Characteristically, utopian books envisage a perfect future and dystopian ones, the exact opposite. This book imagines a world well into the future that is built on the idea of a perfectly happy community and this is where it gets a bit tricky. The world envisaged is where everyone is indeed happy and content and yet there seems to be something horribly wrong with the world.

This new world, built on values of Community, Identity, Stability is a place of perfect order and contentment. Sadness has more or less been eliminated and rebellion is unthought of. In short, we can more or less conclude that this world has everything that is desirable from a happy individual to a closely bonded, stable community.

But, as you go deeper into this world you realize that everything is superficial and devoid of any depths. Can happiness and order replace meaning and struggle? Can eugenics solve the problem of class and talent? Can labs replace all the centres of spirituality and can the metaphysical be done away through hedonism and scientific innovation? The novel does not necessarily seek to answer these questions but it raises the spectre of what might come about if we were to only aspire for (what may seem like) desirable outcomes without giving much ethical thought to the means of getting there.

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The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee

“There is no such thing as perfection, only the relentless, thirsty matching of an organism to its environment. That is the engine that drives evolution.“

To an inquisitive mind, a mind that seeks answers to the general questions of life, universe and everything else, it is hardly possible not to be fascinated by genes. The idea that there is a genetic code behind all life and that it is encrypted and decrypted generation upon generation by natural processes present within all life forms is riveting to say the least.

The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee delves into the history of the long, arduous and incredibly captivating discovery of genes, replete with all the excitement, rediscoveries, forgetfulness and rivalries within the scientific community. The book is woven into an extremely interesting chronological story from Pythagoras and Aristotle to Watson and Creek and beyond. Another story runs parallelly too, a more personal one, that talks about the mental illnesses that run in the author’s family. A touching and moving account that makes it clear that the science of genetics and heredity is not just a theoretical pursuit but indeed something that affects, shapes and determines a large part of all our histories and futures.

Some sections may get too technical but the author has more or less been successful in simplifying the various stages of the history of genes and the multifarious ramifications associated with the idea. He has particularly emphasized upon the dangers of eugenics and the immense possibilities of gene therapy. The writing style is pretty much conversational and you may be forgiven to think that this is an intensely gripping fictional story of an elusive link that unites all the characters and events in the book!

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Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

BIASES. We need a good vocabulary to understand and identify biases. Even the most intelligent people, otherwise highly successful in their respective fields, may fall for the most common of cognitive biases and make erroneous choices/decisions based on intuition. I haven’t ever thought about thinking the same way after I read this book.

Daniel Kahneman will enrich your vocabulary about biases and in the process help you understand what really goes behind a lot of decision making and intuition building process. This is not a strictly biological/anatomical take on brain, rather it attempts at understanding human behaviour through the help of conclusions drawn from various experiments and observations.

This is not the kind of book that you read with much enthusiasm and then keep it away under voluminous tomes to never see again, this is a book that needs to be there on top of your bookshelf or in your kindle library for whenever you may want to refer back to it because trust me, you will most certainly want to refer back! Even though come concepts can be can be complicated, the conversational style of the author, interspersed with surprising humour will keep even the uninitiated interested right till the very end and beyond.

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The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

What do you say about an author who lends himself as an adjective to a language in which he did not even write? There are so many interpretations of Kafka’s works but the threads of needlessly complicated bureaucracy , obligations of a modern working life and difficult relationship with family (especially father) are almost always woven into his works.

Metamorphosis is one of Kafka’s most popular and critically acclaimed works. Like almost all his stories this one too has many layers to it and may have different interpretations depending on the reader. The story, by itself, if taken literally will haunt you for a while even after you have turned the last page. You may be left wondering what you may become once you wake up the next day!

What really struck me was how the protagonist worried most about his work schedule and leaves even after turning into an insect! It is worthwhile to read and reflect upon this work of fiction that is truer than many non fiction books even today. The perils of becoming mere cogs in this mechanized, heartless world governed by incomprehensible laws and deliberately confusing machinations are rarely expressed as starkly as they are in Kafka’s works. Metamorphosis, read together with ‘The Trial’ awakened me to the genius of kafka and his ability to bring alive a truly dark and hopeless reality.

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The Noonday Demon by Andrew Solomon

“..and that certain springtime afternoons carry in their gentle breezes a quality of nostalgia that stirs the heart to longings and imaginings kept dormant by the snows of a long winter.“

Andrew Solomon weaves magic word by word and invites you to a treatise on the whole spectrum of depression from mild to major, from suicidal and manic to paralyzing. Surely, there may be many other books and references on depression but I doubt if any approaches the subject as delicately and with such tenderness that Solomon does.

At one place in the book, the author writes that depression can be described only in metaphor and allegory and that is how beautifully and honestly the book deals with such a complex and indescribable emotion/illness/state of mind. The eclectic mix of almost everything under the sun related to depression from ancient beliefs and techniques to modern medical definitions and procedures, the book opened a new world to someone like me who was reading serious literature about depression for the first time. There is an underlying emotion in the book of kindness and understanding maybe because the book, in part, is an extremely personal journey of the author himself through his own depression.

It showed me a world where we can talk about the general melancholy that sometimes comes along with a deeper understanding of life. A world where the unwillingness to get up in the morning or to be generally active due to lack of a deeper purpose is studied from the prism of mental and philosophical state rather than deriding it as undesirable laziness. This is a book that will help you discover yourself layer by layer and in the process will help you deal with your innermost demons in your own unique way.

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Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

I am convinced that if there is a book that needs to be read again and again and a book that needs to be read by every person who has ever read anything and a book, the message of which needs to be disseminated amongst all those who can’t read; it is Sapiens. If this book does not change you, you probably need to read it again.

So why am I waxing eloquent about his book and what does it really talk about that makes it so important for everyone to sit up and take notice of it? I am not merely advocating the importance of the book due to the fact that it condenses the whole of human history (or at least the most significant parts of it) into immensely enjoyable paragraphs, no, a lot of other books could also maybe lay a claim to that, but what makes Sapiens really stand out is its breathtaking ability to strike at the heart of things. Do not pick up this book to read about the detailed history of all empires or religions or agriculture or civilizations because you may be left a bit disappointed on that front, however if you are interested in how these factors came about into being, how they have changed the course of human history and what effect have they had on the emergence of sapiens as the master species on earth, then this is the book for you. It will make you think about where we came from, where we are and where indeed are we going.

The open-mindedness, the frankness and the readability of the book has made this a sensational phenomenon and has catapulted Yuval Noah Harari into a rockstar thinker and you might find him at the forefront in seminars, talks and conferences about the biggest questions that humanity faces.

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