Ok, so its another review of few books that I read.
Shadow over Innsmouth by H.P. Lovecraft: I don’t particularly enjoy horror. But the cosmic horror has another kind of pull. And who will be better to start reading a new genre than the creator himself? Recently I read many Lovecraftian stories, and my fascination for weird tales is growing day by day. This story was a decent size, and it was one of the earlier works of Lovecraft. His story weaving is gripping. The tales are not laconic; however, the details are certainly curtained, which makes the reader fill in his/her interpretations. And that is a common theme in all of his works. It creates a fear of the unknown and helps the reader to individualise the story to a certain extent. It’s also an excellent book to start the Lovecraftian genre. The English could be a little tricky as the writing is of the 1920s, and Lovecraft was an anglophile. You could also catch a dramatised audio version of the story on The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society performed by the “Dark Adventure Radio Theatre”.
The visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte: You should read this book. And if you are in science its a must. This book concerns with what the title says. It’s an easy read with mostly visuals as an example. It shows what bad examples of representing visual data. Why this happens and what should be done. While reading, I realised a few interesting things about the perception of your visible receptions. However, the best outcome of reading this was I became more receptive towards graphs and charts all around me. I also use many of the concepts from the book in my academic work.
Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World - and Why things are better than you think by Hans Rosling: I don’t remember how many times I have recommended this book to people. It is my top non-fiction recommendation. I got to know about it from gate notes, then I saw a few of his lectures, and I was hooked. One thing that I realised from this book and recent experiences that as a species and as a global culture, we have a terrible memory. However, at an individual human level, we are dogmatic. The stereotype at the time of their conception might be right. Still, things in the world have changed dramatically - we need to update our stereotypes. Rosling also makes a point about what drives the lifestyle. Contrary to belief, a lifestyle is a stronger function of income than of culture. Read this book - everyone should read this book.
Man’s search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl: A mater piece. It is a real gut-wrenching story. It’s also an in-depth psychological study inside human nature. The author is a Holocaust survivor in WWII, and he was a neurologist and psychiatrist. The first part of the book was the story of his experiences in the camps. It details his individual observations and his observation through the lens of his discipline of psychiatry. It’s a book which takes a step back from labelling the guards as morally corrupt and makes the point that the line dividing good and evil runs through the heart of each individual. It is an observation of oneself as a separate entity and not as a unique individual but an average person in the crowd. This observation is powerful. I think Jordan Peterson explains it best. He describes that statistically odds of us being an Auschwitch camp guard is much higher than the one who saves Anne Frank. And once we could get rid of this superiority mindset, then we could work towards not being that. The similar observations could be found in Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The second part is of the book is about the logo-therapy (literally “healing through meaning”) which is a branch of psychotherapy founded by Viktor himself. The event like holocaust shouldn’t have happened, but it helped open new domains of understanding. While reading this book, one could infer similar conclusions when something traumatic happened in their life. I, for one, could see the similarity between the thoughts and actions of inmates and my own experience during my time at N’hat due to ragging. But this is not a book with bleak conclusions. It went on and showed the resilience and adaptability of a human. It strengthens my faith in humanity despite whatever situation seems to suggest.