Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Charles Haynes]

On Wed, 26 Feb 2020 at 10:11 am, Thaths  wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 25, 2019 at 9:47 PM Alok Prasanna Kumar  >
> wrote:
>
> > To add to the already fantastic books on this list (in no particular
> order)
> > ...
> > 2. India Moving: A History of Migration by Chinmay Tumbe
> >
> ...
>
> If any of you are interested in the music of the Indian diaspora, this
> episode of Afropop Worldwide might be of interest to you:
>
>
> https://afropop.org/audio-programs/diaspora-encounters-the-indo-caribbean-world


That's great, thanks for sharing it. If you're interested in the
intersection between modern technology and African music, I can strongly
recommend "Music From Saharan WhatsApp" and it's predecessor "Music from
Saharan Cellphones."

https://daily.bandcamp.com/features/sahel-sounds-music-from-saharan-whatsapp-interview

https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2010/nov/01/music-from-saharan-cellphones-mali

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Thaths]

On Wed, Dec 25, 2019 at 9:47 PM Alok Prasanna Kumar 
wrote:

> To add to the already fantastic books on this list (in no particular order)
> ...
> 2. India Moving: A History of Migration by Chinmay Tumbe
>
...

If any of you are interested in the music of the Indian diaspora, this
episode of Afropop Worldwide might be of interest to you:

https://afropop.org/audio-programs/diaspora-encounters-the-indo-caribbean-world

Competition between communities of Indian and African descent has been a
mainstay of politics and culture in the former British colonies of Trinidad
and Tobago, and Guyana. This rivalry plays out in institutions from the
University of the West Indies to the West Indies cricket team, and of
course, popular music. At the time of Trinidad's Independence, the
Afro-Caribbean political elite of the day sought to enshrine calypso as the
country's national music, but new genres have emerged, from the steel-pan
jazz and calypso of the 1960s to soca and its successor, chutney-soca,
which for the first time in the 1980s fully integrated Indian and African
influences in a local popular music. This Hip Deep edition explores all of
these styles, and also the music of diaspora communities in the U.S. and
the U.K.. Ethnomusicologist Peter Manuel of the City University of New York
shares his ground-breaking research on Indo-Caribbean music in all of its
geographic and social contexts. His music and insights reveal a
fascinating, overlooked story of hybrid Caribbean culture.


S.

-- 
Homer: Hey, what does this job pay?
Carl:  Nuthin'.
Homer: D'oh!
Carl:  Unless you're crooked.
Homer: Woo-hoo!

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Tomasz Rola]

[... snipped ...]

- Ursula K. Le Guin
  "No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters"

  This is collection of essays on various subjects. I have also read
  her fiction stories from Earthsea and Hain cycles. So far, all of
  her books were worth it.

- Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
  "Prisoners of Power"

  Science-fiction set in Noon universe. The title as translation from
  original is rather sucky. In my opinion it should be more like "The
  reversed world". I have read Polish translation, let's hope the
  translation to English went better than with the title. There were
  two sequels to the book (as well as many other stories from Noon) -
  "Beetle in the Anthill" and "The Time Wanderers", both good,
  too. Another book of theirs is "Roadside Picnic", which I have read
  years ago and I think there is good time for refreshing.

  Not the average movie-like s-f, not much about triumphing over the
  Universe here.

- William Shakespeare
  "Titus Andronicus"

  Lots of gore.

- Jorge Luis Borges, Adolfo Bioy Casares
  "Chronicles of Bustos Domecq"
  "Six Problems for Don Isidro Parodi"

  Both books have been printed together in my language, as they treat
  with stuff happening in the same surreal world. Albeit they narrate
  things in different way - the first is more about surreal/paradox,
  the latter is more like detective stories, still a bit surreal. If
  you read them, try solving the murder cases by yourself. This
  requires that one reads very carefully, so as to not expose oneself
  to the solution. At some point one has to stop reading. And maybe
  re-read the story from the start, in order to get all the pieces
  together. I had entertained myself for months with this, despite not
  much success :-). Of course, one can also read it all in one go,
  like any other book. There is still some fun to be had, like
  connecting various people mentioned in the stories, their relations,
  what happened to them after their story finished and this kind of
  things...

Also, from previous years:

- Umberto Eco
  "Foucault's Pendulum"

  Detective/history/conspiracy story all in one, very interesting.

- Leonard J. Rosen 
  "All Cry Chaos"

  Yet another detective story, this one involving chaos theory. Looks
  like there is a follow up, which I have not read yet.

- Neil Gaiman
  "American Gods"
  "Anansi Boys"

  This is already known to everybody, I guess.

- Arthur Schopenhauer
  "Eristic Dialectic: The Art of Winning an Argument"

  Interesting small book.

-- 
Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.  **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home**
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...  **
** **
** Tomasz Rola  mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Shenoy N]

My recommendations: Truck de India by Rajat Ubhayakar. This is the account
of a young journalist who decided to travel around India hitchhiking on
trucks. Written in a nice, deadpan way. Quite poignant in parts.

Another book I loved was Incognito by David Eagleman about the subconscious
brain. Simply fascinating.

Also The Pope of Physics, a superb biography of Enrico Fermi

On Sun, Jan 5, 2020, 12:26 AM harry  wrote:

> 1. Who we are and how we got here by David Reich
> 2. Genghis Khan and the making of the modern world by Jack Weatherford
> 3. Blueprint by Nicholas Christakis
> 4. The secret history of the mongol queens by jack weatherford
> 5. Panthers in Parliament: Dalits, Caste, and Political Power in South
> India by Hugo gorringe
> 6. The Warren Commission report (not a new book by any measure)
>
>
> On Thu, 26 Dec 2019 at 11:17, Alok Prasanna Kumar 
> wrote:
>
> > To add to the already fantastic books on this list (in no particular
> order)
> >
> > 1. Caste Matters by Suraj Yengde
> > 2. India Moving: A History of Migration by Chinmay Tumbe
> > 3. Interrogating My Chandal Life by Manoranjan Byapari
> > 4. Mohanaswamy by Vasudhendra (older but read this year)
> > 5. The Flaming Feet by DS Nagaraj (older but read this year)
> > 6. There's Gunpowder in the Air by Manoranjan Byapari (older but read
> this
> > year)
> > 7. Nightmarch by Alpa Shah
> > 8. Early Indians by Tony Joseph
> > 9. The Curse of Bigness by Tim Wu
> > 10. Single by Choice edited by Kalpana Sharma
> >
> > On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 10:32 AM Ingrid 
> wrote:
> >
> > > My top 10 (no ranks) this year:
> > > A Horse Walked Into A Bar - David Grossman
> > > Milkman - Anna Burns
> > > Less - Andrew Sean Greer
> > > Not Quite Not White : Losing and Finding Race in America - Sharmila Sen
> > > Winners Take All : The Elite Charade of Changing The World - Anand
> > > Giridharadas
> > > The RTI Story : Power To The People - Aruna Roy
> > > Everything I Never Told You - Celeste Ng
> > > Partitions Of The Heart - Harsh Mander
> > > Bombay Balchao - Jane Borges
> > > Twitter and Tear Gas : The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest -
> > > Zeynep Tufekci
> > >
> > >
> > > Ingrid Srinath
> > > @ingridsrinath
> > >
> > >
> > > > On 26-Dec-2019, at 9:15 AM, Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay <
> > > sankarshan.mukhopadh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > The books I liked are:
> > > >
> > > > * Bottle of Lies (Katherine Eban) - from having a very scattered
> > > > awareness of the underbelly of generics, the book was useful to
> > > > understand what goes on.
> > > > * Coming Out As Dalit (Yashica Dutt) - aside from the topical nature
> > > > of the memoir, the writing/prose has strength which is both authentic
> > > > and makes one pause
> > > > * Assam - The Accord, The Discord (Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty) - have
> > > > always had fragmented understanding of the accords and this provided
> > > > an opportunity to seek to know more and have better understanding of
> > > > the troubles.
> > > >
> > > > full list of books I read are at
> > > > 
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >> On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 9:04 AM Thaths  wrote:
> > > >>
> > > >> On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 7:49 AM Anil Kumar <
> > anilkumar.naga...@gmail.com
> > > >
> > > >> wrote:
> > > >>
> > > >>> Any takers for a book recommendation thread this year?
> > > >>>
> > > >>> Two books I enjoyed reading are:
> > > >>>
> > > >>> 1. This Divided Island - Samanth Subramaniam.
> > > >>
> > > >> 2. A Beginner's Guide to Japan - Pico Iyer.
> > > >>>
> > > >>
> > > >> I also enjoyed 'Autumn Light' by Pico Iyer.
> > > >>
> > > >> Other books that I read and enjoyed in 2019:
> > > >>
> > > >> * We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our
> > > Families
> > > >> (Gourevitch, Philip) : Excellent book about the Rwandan genocide,
> and
> > > the
> > > >> aftermath
> > > >>
> > > >> * The Fat Years (Koonchung, Chan): Sometime after the 2008 Great
> > > Financial
> > > >> Crisis, China becomes the dominant world superpower following the
> > > collapse
> > > >> of the Western economies. But there seems to be a collective amnesia
> > in
> > > >> China. People don't seem to remember what happened during some
> crucial
> > > >> months. Only a handful seem to be immune from this amnesia.
> > > >>
> > > >> * A Fish Caught in Time: The Search for the Coelacanth (Weinberg,
> > > Samantha)
> > > >> : The story of the discovery of the Coelacanth.
> > > >>
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> > --
> > Alok Prasanna Kumar
> > Advocate
> > Ph: +919560065577
> >
>

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[harry]

1. Who we are and how we got here by David Reich
2. Genghis Khan and the making of the modern world by Jack Weatherford
3. Blueprint by Nicholas Christakis
4. The secret history of the mongol queens by jack weatherford
5. Panthers in Parliament: Dalits, Caste, and Political Power in South
India by Hugo gorringe
6. The Warren Commission report (not a new book by any measure)


On Thu, 26 Dec 2019 at 11:17, Alok Prasanna Kumar 
wrote:

> To add to the already fantastic books on this list (in no particular order)
>
> 1. Caste Matters by Suraj Yengde
> 2. India Moving: A History of Migration by Chinmay Tumbe
> 3. Interrogating My Chandal Life by Manoranjan Byapari
> 4. Mohanaswamy by Vasudhendra (older but read this year)
> 5. The Flaming Feet by DS Nagaraj (older but read this year)
> 6. There's Gunpowder in the Air by Manoranjan Byapari (older but read this
> year)
> 7. Nightmarch by Alpa Shah
> 8. Early Indians by Tony Joseph
> 9. The Curse of Bigness by Tim Wu
> 10. Single by Choice edited by Kalpana Sharma
>
> On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 10:32 AM Ingrid  wrote:
>
> > My top 10 (no ranks) this year:
> > A Horse Walked Into A Bar - David Grossman
> > Milkman - Anna Burns
> > Less - Andrew Sean Greer
> > Not Quite Not White : Losing and Finding Race in America - Sharmila Sen
> > Winners Take All : The Elite Charade of Changing The World - Anand
> > Giridharadas
> > The RTI Story : Power To The People - Aruna Roy
> > Everything I Never Told You - Celeste Ng
> > Partitions Of The Heart - Harsh Mander
> > Bombay Balchao - Jane Borges
> > Twitter and Tear Gas : The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest -
> > Zeynep Tufekci
> >
> >
> > Ingrid Srinath
> > @ingridsrinath
> >
> >
> > > On 26-Dec-2019, at 9:15 AM, Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay <
> > sankarshan.mukhopadh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > The books I liked are:
> > >
> > > * Bottle of Lies (Katherine Eban) - from having a very scattered
> > > awareness of the underbelly of generics, the book was useful to
> > > understand what goes on.
> > > * Coming Out As Dalit (Yashica Dutt) - aside from the topical nature
> > > of the memoir, the writing/prose has strength which is both authentic
> > > and makes one pause
> > > * Assam - The Accord, The Discord (Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty) - have
> > > always had fragmented understanding of the accords and this provided
> > > an opportunity to seek to know more and have better understanding of
> > > the troubles.
> > >
> > > full list of books I read are at
> > > 
> > >
> > >
> > >> On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 9:04 AM Thaths  wrote:
> > >>
> > >> On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 7:49 AM Anil Kumar <
> anilkumar.naga...@gmail.com
> > >
> > >> wrote:
> > >>
> > >>> Any takers for a book recommendation thread this year?
> > >>>
> > >>> Two books I enjoyed reading are:
> > >>>
> > >>> 1. This Divided Island - Samanth Subramaniam.
> > >>
> > >> 2. A Beginner's Guide to Japan - Pico Iyer.
> > >>>
> > >>
> > >> I also enjoyed 'Autumn Light' by Pico Iyer.
> > >>
> > >> Other books that I read and enjoyed in 2019:
> > >>
> > >> * We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our
> > Families
> > >> (Gourevitch, Philip) : Excellent book about the Rwandan genocide, and
> > the
> > >> aftermath
> > >>
> > >> * The Fat Years (Koonchung, Chan): Sometime after the 2008 Great
> > Financial
> > >> Crisis, China becomes the dominant world superpower following the
> > collapse
> > >> of the Western economies. But there seems to be a collective amnesia
> in
> > >> China. People don't seem to remember what happened during some crucial
> > >> months. Only a handful seem to be immune from this amnesia.
> > >>
> > >> * A Fish Caught in Time: The Search for the Coelacanth (Weinberg,
> > Samantha)
> > >> : The story of the discovery of the Coelacanth.
> > >>
> > >
> >
> >
>
> --
> Alok Prasanna Kumar
> Advocate
> Ph: +919560065577
>

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Ingrid Srinath]


>> On 31 Dec 2019, at 05:26, Thaths  wrote:
>> 
>> On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 10:32 AM Ingrid  wrote:
>> 
>> My top 10 (no ranks) this year:
>> Not Quite Not White : Losing and Finding Race in America - Sharmila Sen
> 
> I read a sample chapter of this book as part of longreads and
> really enjoyed it. I bought the book, but have not gotten to it yet.

I too stumbled upon it and am glad I did.
> 
> 
>> Winners Take All : The Elite Charade of Changing The World - Anand
>> Giridharadas
> 
> While there is valid stuff in what Giridharadas says, I feel that he
> (intentionally) ignores the nuances.

Yep. The problem with polemics. 
A counter perspective: 
https://www.philanthropy.com/article/Critiques-of-Philanthropy-Are/246338

Ingrid Srinath

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Thaths]

On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 10:32 AM Ingrid  wrote:

> My top 10 (no ranks) this year:
> Not Quite Not White : Losing and Finding Race in America - Sharmila Sen
>

I read a sample chapter of this book as part of longreads and
really enjoyed it. I bought the book, but have not gotten to it yet.


> Winners Take All : The Elite Charade of Changing The World - Anand
> Giridharadas
>

While there is valid stuff in what Giridharadas says, I feel that he
(intentionally) ignores the nuances.

Thaths
-- 
Homer: Hey, what does this job pay?
Carl:  Nuthin'.
Homer: D'oh!
Carl:  Unless you're crooked.
Homer: Woo-hoo!

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Udhay Shankar N]

This looks like it belongs in this thread:

https://www.livemint.com/mint-lounge/features/rooms-of-their-own-11577444090874.html

Udhay

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Ashwin Nanjappa]

This year I discovered Keigo Higashino, a Japanese mystery author. Devoured
2 of his books: The Devotion of Suspect X

and The Name of the Game is a Kidnapping
.
Highly recommended author for folks who love mystery.

Other books I read this year:
https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2019/1145513


On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 10:47 AM Kiran Jonnalagadda  wrote:

> I just finished Antigod's Own Country by A. V. Sakthidaran and it may be
> the most enlightening book I've read in years.
>
> Kiran
>
> --
> Kiran Jonnalagadda
> https://hasgeek.com
>
>
>
> On Thu, 26 Dec 2019 at 12:23, Ashim D'Silva 
> wrote:
>
> > Loving all these recommendations…
> > My book of the year is a collection of lectures by Ursula Franklin, The
> > Real World Of Technology, which considers technology to be any I system
> or
> > methods used to organise humans thought. It has me thinking a lot about
> my
> > role as a creator of applications in how people solve problems, and I
> think
> > I will be repeatedly reading this for many years to come.
> >
> > On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 9:32 AM, Thaths  wrote:
> >
> > > On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 11:17 AM Alok Prasanna Kumar <
> > > kautilya...@gmail.com>
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > > To add to the already fantastic books on this list (in no particular
> > > order)
> > > >
> > > > 2. India Moving: A History of Migration by Chinmay Tumbe
> > > >
> > >
> > > This reminded me of another excellent book I read in 2019 that was a
> good
> > > introduction to the ANI/ASI hypothesis:
> > >
> > > Early Indians : The Story of Our Ancestors and Where We Came From (Tony
> > > Joseph)
> > >
> > > S.
> > > --
> > > Homer: Hey, what does this job pay?
> > > Carl:  Nuthin'.
> > > Homer: D'oh!
> > > Carl:  Unless you're crooked.
> > > Homer: Woo-hoo!
> > >
> > --
> > Cheerio,
> >
> > Ashim
> > Design & Build
> >
> > The Random Lines
> > www.therandomlines.com
> >
>

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Kiran Jonnalagadda]

I just finished Antigod's Own Country by A. V. Sakthidaran and it may be
the most enlightening book I've read in years.

Kiran

-- 
Kiran Jonnalagadda
https://hasgeek.com



On Thu, 26 Dec 2019 at 12:23, Ashim D'Silva 
wrote:

> Loving all these recommendations…
> My book of the year is a collection of lectures by Ursula Franklin, The
> Real World Of Technology, which considers technology to be any I system or
> methods used to organise humans thought. It has me thinking a lot about my
> role as a creator of applications in how people solve problems, and I think
> I will be repeatedly reading this for many years to come.
>
> On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 9:32 AM, Thaths  wrote:
>
> > On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 11:17 AM Alok Prasanna Kumar <
> > kautilya...@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > To add to the already fantastic books on this list (in no particular
> > order)
> > >
> > > 2. India Moving: A History of Migration by Chinmay Tumbe
> > >
> >
> > This reminded me of another excellent book I read in 2019 that was a good
> > introduction to the ANI/ASI hypothesis:
> >
> > Early Indians : The Story of Our Ancestors and Where We Came From (Tony
> > Joseph)
> >
> > S.
> > --
> > Homer: Hey, what does this job pay?
> > Carl:  Nuthin'.
> > Homer: D'oh!
> > Carl:  Unless you're crooked.
> > Homer: Woo-hoo!
> >
> --
> Cheerio,
>
> Ashim
> Design & Build
>
> The Random Lines
> www.therandomlines.com
>

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Ashim D'Silva]

Loving all these recommendations…
My book of the year is a collection of lectures by Ursula Franklin, The
Real World Of Technology, which considers technology to be any I system or
methods used to organise humans thought. It has me thinking a lot about my
role as a creator of applications in how people solve problems, and I think
I will be repeatedly reading this for many years to come.

On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 9:32 AM, Thaths  wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 11:17 AM Alok Prasanna Kumar <
> kautilya...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > To add to the already fantastic books on this list (in no particular
> order)
> >
> > 2. India Moving: A History of Migration by Chinmay Tumbe
> >
>
> This reminded me of another excellent book I read in 2019 that was a good
> introduction to the ANI/ASI hypothesis:
>
> Early Indians : The Story of Our Ancestors and Where We Came From (Tony
> Joseph)
>
> S.
> --
> Homer: Hey, what does this job pay?
> Carl:  Nuthin'.
> Homer: D'oh!
> Carl:  Unless you're crooked.
> Homer: Woo-hoo!
>
-- 
Cheerio,

Ashim
Design & Build

The Random Lines
www.therandomlines.com

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Thaths]

On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 11:17 AM Alok Prasanna Kumar 
wrote:

> To add to the already fantastic books on this list (in no particular order)
>
> 2. India Moving: A History of Migration by Chinmay Tumbe
>

This reminded me of another excellent book I read in 2019 that was a good
introduction to the ANI/ASI hypothesis:

Early Indians : The Story of Our Ancestors and Where We Came From (Tony
Joseph)

S.
-- 
Homer: Hey, what does this job pay?
Carl:  Nuthin'.
Homer: D'oh!
Carl:  Unless you're crooked.
Homer: Woo-hoo!

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Venkatesh H R]

My top reads by genre this year. In a departure for me, there was hardly
anything related to identity, rights or history, still a rich harvest!

Literary fiction: A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towler (it gave me joy)

Crime/Thriller: The Power of the Dog by Don Winslow, the first of his
acclaimed trilogy which was completed this year. Prose like gunfire.

Comic: The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the media

Nonfiction: The Journalist and the Murderer by Janel Malcolm (an old
classic, which asks uncomfortable questions of journalism)

Memoir: Paper Route: Finding my way to Precision Journalism by Philip Meyer
(by the man who ‘invented’ data-driven, computational journalism)

Craft: Draft No. 4: on the writing process by John McPhee
(On that note, this was also the year that I finished Draft No. 1 of my
nonfiction book on journalism. At the very least, three more drafts to go!)


On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 11:17 AM Alok Prasanna Kumar 
wrote:

> To add to the already fantastic books on this list (in no particular order)
>
> 1. Caste Matters by Suraj Yengde
> 2. India Moving: A History of Migration by Chinmay Tumbe
> 3. Interrogating My Chandal Life by Manoranjan Byapari
> 4. Mohanaswamy by Vasudhendra (older but read this year)
> 5. The Flaming Feet by DS Nagaraj (older but read this year)
> 6. There's Gunpowder in the Air by Manoranjan Byapari (older but read this
> year)
> 7. Nightmarch by Alpa Shah
> 8. Early Indians by Tony Joseph
> 9. The Curse of Bigness by Tim Wu
> 10. Single by Choice edited by Kalpana Sharma
>
> On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 10:32 AM Ingrid  wrote:
>
> > My top 10 (no ranks) this year:
> > A Horse Walked Into A Bar - David Grossman
> > Milkman - Anna Burns
> > Less - Andrew Sean Greer
> > Not Quite Not White : Losing and Finding Race in America - Sharmila Sen
> > Winners Take All : The Elite Charade of Changing The World - Anand
> > Giridharadas
> > The RTI Story : Power To The People - Aruna Roy
> > Everything I Never Told You - Celeste Ng
> > Partitions Of The Heart - Harsh Mander
> > Bombay Balchao - Jane Borges
> > Twitter and Tear Gas : The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest -
> > Zeynep Tufekci
> >
> >
> > Ingrid Srinath
> > @ingridsrinath
> >
> >
> > > On 26-Dec-2019, at 9:15 AM, Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay <
> > sankarshan.mukhopadh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > The books I liked are:
> > >
> > > * Bottle of Lies (Katherine Eban) - from having a very scattered
> > > awareness of the underbelly of generics, the book was useful to
> > > understand what goes on.
> > > * Coming Out As Dalit (Yashica Dutt) - aside from the topical nature
> > > of the memoir, the writing/prose has strength which is both authentic
> > > and makes one pause
> > > * Assam - The Accord, The Discord (Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty) - have
> > > always had fragmented understanding of the accords and this provided
> > > an opportunity to seek to know more and have better understanding of
> > > the troubles.
> > >
> > > full list of books I read are at
> > > 
> > >
> > >
> > >> On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 9:04 AM Thaths  wrote:
> > >>
> > >> On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 7:49 AM Anil Kumar <
> anilkumar.naga...@gmail.com
> > >
> > >> wrote:
> > >>
> > >>> Any takers for a book recommendation thread this year?
> > >>>
> > >>> Two books I enjoyed reading are:
> > >>>
> > >>> 1. This Divided Island - Samanth Subramaniam.
> > >>
> > >> 2. A Beginner's Guide to Japan - Pico Iyer.
> > >>>
> > >>
> > >> I also enjoyed 'Autumn Light' by Pico Iyer.
> > >>
> > >> Other books that I read and enjoyed in 2019:
> > >>
> > >> * We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our
> > Families
> > >> (Gourevitch, Philip) : Excellent book about the Rwandan genocide, and
> > the
> > >> aftermath
> > >>
> > >> * The Fat Years (Koonchung, Chan): Sometime after the 2008 Great
> > Financial
> > >> Crisis, China becomes the dominant world superpower following the
> > collapse
> > >> of the Western economies. But there seems to be a collective amnesia
> in
> > >> China. People don't seem to remember what happened during some crucial
> > >> months. Only a handful seem to be immune from this amnesia.
> > >>
> > >> * A Fish Caught in Time: The Search for the Coelacanth (Weinberg,
> > Samantha)
> > >> : The story of the discovery of the Coelacanth.
> > >>
> > >
> >
> >
>
> --
> Alok Prasanna Kumar
> Advocate
> Ph: +919560065577
>
-- 
H R Venkatesh
John S. Knight Journalism Fellow 2019
, Stanford
University
Twitter: @hrvenkatesh

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Alok Prasanna Kumar]

To add to the already fantastic books on this list (in no particular order)

1. Caste Matters by Suraj Yengde
2. India Moving: A History of Migration by Chinmay Tumbe
3. Interrogating My Chandal Life by Manoranjan Byapari
4. Mohanaswamy by Vasudhendra (older but read this year)
5. The Flaming Feet by DS Nagaraj (older but read this year)
6. There's Gunpowder in the Air by Manoranjan Byapari (older but read this
year)
7. Nightmarch by Alpa Shah
8. Early Indians by Tony Joseph
9. The Curse of Bigness by Tim Wu
10. Single by Choice edited by Kalpana Sharma

On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 10:32 AM Ingrid  wrote:

> My top 10 (no ranks) this year:
> A Horse Walked Into A Bar - David Grossman
> Milkman - Anna Burns
> Less - Andrew Sean Greer
> Not Quite Not White : Losing and Finding Race in America - Sharmila Sen
> Winners Take All : The Elite Charade of Changing The World - Anand
> Giridharadas
> The RTI Story : Power To The People - Aruna Roy
> Everything I Never Told You - Celeste Ng
> Partitions Of The Heart - Harsh Mander
> Bombay Balchao - Jane Borges
> Twitter and Tear Gas : The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest -
> Zeynep Tufekci
>
>
> Ingrid Srinath
> @ingridsrinath
>
>
> > On 26-Dec-2019, at 9:15 AM, Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay <
> sankarshan.mukhopadh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > The books I liked are:
> >
> > * Bottle of Lies (Katherine Eban) - from having a very scattered
> > awareness of the underbelly of generics, the book was useful to
> > understand what goes on.
> > * Coming Out As Dalit (Yashica Dutt) - aside from the topical nature
> > of the memoir, the writing/prose has strength which is both authentic
> > and makes one pause
> > * Assam - The Accord, The Discord (Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty) - have
> > always had fragmented understanding of the accords and this provided
> > an opportunity to seek to know more and have better understanding of
> > the troubles.
> >
> > full list of books I read are at
> > 
> >
> >
> >> On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 9:04 AM Thaths  wrote:
> >>
> >> On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 7:49 AM Anil Kumar  >
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Any takers for a book recommendation thread this year?
> >>>
> >>> Two books I enjoyed reading are:
> >>>
> >>> 1. This Divided Island - Samanth Subramaniam.
> >>
> >> 2. A Beginner's Guide to Japan - Pico Iyer.
> >>>
> >>
> >> I also enjoyed 'Autumn Light' by Pico Iyer.
> >>
> >> Other books that I read and enjoyed in 2019:
> >>
> >> * We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our
> Families
> >> (Gourevitch, Philip) : Excellent book about the Rwandan genocide, and
> the
> >> aftermath
> >>
> >> * The Fat Years (Koonchung, Chan): Sometime after the 2008 Great
> Financial
> >> Crisis, China becomes the dominant world superpower following the
> collapse
> >> of the Western economies. But there seems to be a collective amnesia in
> >> China. People don't seem to remember what happened during some crucial
> >> months. Only a handful seem to be immune from this amnesia.
> >>
> >> * A Fish Caught in Time: The Search for the Coelacanth (Weinberg,
> Samantha)
> >> : The story of the discovery of the Coelacanth.
> >>
> >
>
>

-- 
Alok Prasanna Kumar
Advocate
Ph: +919560065577

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Ingrid]

My top 10 (no ranks) this year:
A Horse Walked Into A Bar - David Grossman
Milkman - Anna Burns
Less - Andrew Sean Greer
Not Quite Not White : Losing and Finding Race in America - Sharmila Sen
Winners Take All : The Elite Charade of Changing The World - Anand Giridharadas
The RTI Story : Power To The People - Aruna Roy
Everything I Never Told You - Celeste Ng
Partitions Of The Heart - Harsh Mander
Bombay Balchao - Jane Borges 
Twitter and Tear Gas : The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest - Zeynep 
Tufekci


Ingrid Srinath
@ingridsrinath


> On 26-Dec-2019, at 9:15 AM, Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay 
>  wrote:
> 
> The books I liked are:
> 
> * Bottle of Lies (Katherine Eban) - from having a very scattered
> awareness of the underbelly of generics, the book was useful to
> understand what goes on.
> * Coming Out As Dalit (Yashica Dutt) - aside from the topical nature
> of the memoir, the writing/prose has strength which is both authentic
> and makes one pause
> * Assam - The Accord, The Discord (Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty) - have
> always had fragmented understanding of the accords and this provided
> an opportunity to seek to know more and have better understanding of
> the troubles.
> 
> full list of books I read are at
> 
> 
> 
>> On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 9:04 AM Thaths  wrote:
>> 
>> On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 7:49 AM Anil Kumar 
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> Any takers for a book recommendation thread this year?
>>> 
>>> Two books I enjoyed reading are:
>>> 
>>> 1. This Divided Island - Samanth Subramaniam.
>> 
>> 2. A Beginner's Guide to Japan - Pico Iyer.
>>> 
>> 
>> I also enjoyed 'Autumn Light' by Pico Iyer.
>> 
>> Other books that I read and enjoyed in 2019:
>> 
>> * We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families
>> (Gourevitch, Philip) : Excellent book about the Rwandan genocide, and the
>> aftermath
>> 
>> * The Fat Years (Koonchung, Chan): Sometime after the 2008 Great Financial
>> Crisis, China becomes the dominant world superpower following the collapse
>> of the Western economies. But there seems to be a collective amnesia in
>> China. People don't seem to remember what happened during some crucial
>> months. Only a handful seem to be immune from this amnesia.
>> 
>> * A Fish Caught in Time: The Search for the Coelacanth (Weinberg, Samantha)
>> : The story of the discovery of the Coelacanth.
>> 
> 

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay]

The books I liked are:

* Bottle of Lies (Katherine Eban) - from having a very scattered
awareness of the underbelly of generics, the book was useful to
understand what goes on.
* Coming Out As Dalit (Yashica Dutt) - aside from the topical nature
of the memoir, the writing/prose has strength which is both authentic
and makes one pause
* Assam - The Accord, The Discord (Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty) - have
always had fragmented understanding of the accords and this provided
an opportunity to seek to know more and have better understanding of
the troubles.

full list of books I read are at



On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 9:04 AM Thaths  wrote:
>
> On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 7:49 AM Anil Kumar 
> wrote:
>
> > Any takers for a book recommendation thread this year?
> >
> > Two books I enjoyed reading are:
> >
> > 1. This Divided Island - Samanth Subramaniam.
>
> 2. A Beginner's Guide to Japan - Pico Iyer.
> >
>
> I also enjoyed 'Autumn Light' by Pico Iyer.
>
> Other books that I read and enjoyed in 2019:
>
> * We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families
> (Gourevitch, Philip) : Excellent book about the Rwandan genocide, and the
> aftermath
>
> * The Fat Years (Koonchung, Chan): Sometime after the 2008 Great Financial
> Crisis, China becomes the dominant world superpower following the collapse
> of the Western economies. But there seems to be a collective amnesia in
> China. People don't seem to remember what happened during some crucial
> months. Only a handful seem to be immune from this amnesia.
>
> * A Fish Caught in Time: The Search for the Coelacanth (Weinberg, Samantha)
> : The story of the discovery of the Coelacanth.
>

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Thaths]

On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 7:49 AM Anil Kumar 
wrote:

> Any takers for a book recommendation thread this year?
>
> Two books I enjoyed reading are:
>
> 1. This Divided Island - Samanth Subramaniam.

2. A Beginner's Guide to Japan - Pico Iyer.
>

I also enjoyed 'Autumn Light' by Pico Iyer.

Other books that I read and enjoyed in 2019:

* We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families
(Gourevitch, Philip) : Excellent book about the Rwandan genocide, and the
aftermath

* The Fat Years (Koonchung, Chan): Sometime after the 2008 Great Financial
Crisis, China becomes the dominant world superpower following the collapse
of the Western economies. But there seems to be a collective amnesia in
China. People don't seem to remember what happened during some crucial
months. Only a handful seem to be immune from this amnesia.

* A Fish Caught in Time: The Search for the Coelacanth (Weinberg, Samantha)
: The story of the discovery of the Coelacanth.

Thaths


>
> - Anil Kumar
>
>
> >
> > Thaths
> > --
> > Homer: Hey, what does this job pay?
> > Carl:  Nuthin'.
> > Homer: D'oh!
> > Carl:  Unless you're crooked.
> > Homer: Woo-hoo!
> >
>


-- 
Homer: Hey, what does this job pay?
Carl:  Nuthin'.
Homer: D'oh!
Carl:  Unless you're crooked.
Homer: Woo-hoo!

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Venkatesh Hariharan]

I found "The Dreamers" by Snigdha Poonam to be an enlightening story of
India's descent into an amoral, "every man for himself" society.

Venky

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Anil Kumar]

On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 6:58 AM Thaths  wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 25, 2019 at 4:35 AM Anil Kumar 
> wrote:
>
> > On Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 8:35 AM Thaths  wrote:
> >
> > > For the seventh year in a row, I am turning to silk listers for book
> > > recommendation this holiday season.
> > >
> > > What have you read over the last year that has left a mark on you? What
> > > are you eagerly looking forward to reading over the Christmas/NewYear's
> > > holidays?
> > >
> >
> > I miss Thath's requests for the yearly book recommendations and the mails
> > in response to the requests.
> >
>
> I stopped sending them because the last couple of times I did, there were
> no responses.
>

Any takers for a book recommendation thread this year?

Two books I enjoyed reading are:

1. This Divided Island - Samanth Subramaniam.
2. A Beginner's Guide to Japan - Pico Iyer.

- Anil Kumar


>
> Thaths
> --
> Homer: Hey, what does this job pay?
> Carl:  Nuthin'.
> Homer: D'oh!
> Carl:  Unless you're crooked.
> Homer: Woo-hoo!
>

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Thaths]

On Wed, Dec 25, 2019 at 4:35 AM Anil Kumar 
wrote:

> On Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 8:35 AM Thaths  wrote:
>
> > For the seventh year in a row, I am turning to silk listers for book
> > recommendation this holiday season.
> >
> > What have you read over the last year that has left a mark on you? What
> > are you eagerly looking forward to reading over the Christmas/NewYear's
> > holidays?
> >
>
> I miss Thath's requests for the yearly book recommendations and the mails
> in response to the requests.
>

I stopped sending them because the last couple of times I did, there were
no responses.

Thaths
-- 
Homer: Hey, what does this job pay?
Carl:  Nuthin'.
Homer: D'oh!
Carl:  Unless you're crooked.
Homer: Woo-hoo!

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Anil Kumar]

On Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 8:35 AM Thaths  wrote:

> For the seventh year in a row, I am turning to silk listers for book
> recommendation this holiday season.
>
> What have you read over the last year that has left a mark on you? What
> are you eagerly looking forward to reading over the Christmas/NewYear's
> holidays?
>

I miss Thath's requests for the yearly book recommendations and the mails
in response to the requests.

- Anil Kumar



>
> Past silk list recommendations have included such gems as:
>
> * Alice Albina's Empires of the Indus
> * Samanth Subramaniam's Following Fish
> * Sarnath Bannerjee's Barn Owl's Wondrous Capers
> * Devdutt Pattanaik's Myth=Mithya.
> * Nilanjana Roy's Wildings
> * Aman Sethi's A Free Man
>
> The books that I enjoyed reading
>  the most this
> year:
>
> * Between the Wold and Me  by
> Ta-Nehisi Coates. Searing.
>
> * The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto
>  by Pico Iyer. A book published many
> years ago that I finally got to reading after a wonderful week in Kyoto
> during Sakura season.
>
> * Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
>  by Barbara Demnick. Books about
> North Korea tend to paint a portrait of the other. Amidst the usual line up
> horror stories it is difficult to understand or imagine what the lives of
> ordinary people is like in that county (I am looking at you, *Orphan
> Master's Son*, as an egregious example). This book does a beautiful job of
> showing the lives of ordinary people and how they get by.
>
> * The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
>  by Siddhartha Mukherjee. An
> excellent exploration of the history of cancer treatments and mankind's
> experience with the malady.
>
> * The Origins and Development of Classical Hinduism
>  by A.L. Basham. A short work that
> provides an excellent introduction to how Classical Hinduism evolved.
>
> * Delhi: Adventures in a Megacity 
> by
> Sam Miller. Miller explores the past and the present of Delhi as he walks
> round and round the city in a somewhat spiral route.
>
> * A Short walk in the Hindu Kush  by
> Eric Newby. Another classic that I did not get to reading till 2015.
>
>
> Thaths
>

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Thaths]

On Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 2:04 PM Thaths  wrote:

> The books that I enjoyed reading
>  the most this
> year:
>
> * The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
>  by Siddhartha Mukherjee. An
> excellent exploration of the history of cancer treatments and mankind's
> experience with the malady.
>

Mukerjee was just on the New Yorker radio hour talking about a new book of
his that is coming out soon:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1476733503/

The Gene: An Intimate History

"Mukherjee opens with a survey of how the gene first came to be
conceptualized and understood, taking us through the thoughts of Aristotle,
Darwin, Mendel, Thomas Morgan, and others; he finishes the section with a
look at the case of Carrie Buck (to whom the book is dedicated), who
eventually was sterilized in 1927 in a famous American eugenics case.
Carrie Buck’s sterilization comes as a warning that informs the rest of the
book. This is what can happen when we start tinkering with this most
personal science and misunderstand the ethical implications of those
tinkerings. Through the rest of The Gene, Mukherjee clearly and skillfully
illustrates how the science has grown so much more advanced and complicated
since the 1920s—we are developing the capacity to directly manipulate the
human genome—and how the ethical questions have also grown much more
complicated. We could ask for no wiser, more fascinating and talented
writer to guide us into the future of our human heredity than Siddhartha
Mukherjee"

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Aadisht Khanna]

>
> That's Constance Garnett, the great populariser of Russian novels in the
> West. She's still very widely read. But can I put in a word for Pevear and
> Volokhonsky? I finally finished War and Peace this year and I can't praise
> their translation enough -- it's clearly meticulous and well
> thought-through, but awe-inspiringly crisp and lucid.
>
> Noted, thank you, but the same penny pinching that drove most of my 2015
reading to free longreads will probably also keep me on free Gutenberg
translations in 2016.

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Aadisht Khanna]

On Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 8:35 AM, Thaths  wrote:

> For the seventh year in a row, I am turning to silk listers for book
> recommendation
> this holiday season.
>
> What have you read over the last year that has left a mark on you? What are
> you eagerly looking forward to reading over the Christmas/NewYear's
> holidays?
>
>
>
Books enjoyed in 2015:

Ali and Nino by Kurban Said - the great Azerbaijani novel, may not actually
have been written by an Azerbaijani. You can never really tell if it's
sincerely describing life in WW1 Baku or just dramatising the worst
stereotypes about the period. Tremendous fun to read.

Perdido Street Station by China Mieville - because I started China Mieville
with The Scar, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Perdido Street
Station actually has a plot.

Seveneves by Neal Stephenson - after the disappointment of Reamde and and
the Mongoliad, I thought Stephenson was back to doing what he does best ie
sweeping and maximalist epics.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy - I took two years to finish this, but enjoyed
it far more in 2015 than 2014. Tolstoy has this under-the-surface mild
sarcasm that suddenly leaps out, bites, and then goes back to rest.

The House that BJ Built by Anuja Chauhan - I don't know if I am overly
biased towards this because of my own
Delhi-family-with-scheming-relatives-background, but I hugely enjoyed this.

Royal Wedding by Meg Cabot - the happiest and funniest book I read in all
2015.


Attempting frugality, most of my reading this year was free longform
writing from www.longform.org instead of books. The few nonfiction books I
did read this year (two on the history of European Christianity and one
which was a public transport design handbook) did not impress me very much.

What I'm hoping to read in 2016:

Beowulf (after hearing an impressive BBC In Our Time podcast about it)
Fanny Burney (same reason)
catching up with my scifi reading queue/ stack, especially the
climate-scifi ones
Michael Chabon

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Supriya Nair]

>
> > On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 2:01 PM, Aadisht Khanna 
> wrote:
> > > Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy - I took two years to finish this, but
> > enjoyed
> > > it far more in 2015 than 2014. Tolstoy has this under-the-surface mild
> > > sarcasm that suddenly leaps out, bites, and then goes back to rest.
> >
> > Do you recall which translation you read? I see 6+ different
> > translations of Anna Karenina on Amazon with wildly varying reviews
> > from readers.
> >
> > I read the one on Gutenberg. Don't remember who the translator is.
>

That's Constance Garnett, the great populariser of Russian novels in the
West. She's still very widely read. But can I put in a word for Pevear and
Volokhonsky? I finally finished War and Peace this year and I can't praise
their translation enough -- it's clearly meticulous and well
thought-through, but awe-inspiringly crisp and lucid.

Also, reading the book on Kindle greatly enhanced my experience. A
persistent problem with W for translators is that nearly 2% of the book
is in French -- there's a bit of German in there, too. P left the French
alone, and footnoted the translations, which, of course, you can read with
a click on an e-reader.

Supriya

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Ashwin Nanjappa]

On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 2:01 PM, Aadisht Khanna  wrote:
> Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy - I took two years to finish this, but enjoyed
> it far more in 2015 than 2014. Tolstoy has this under-the-surface mild
> sarcasm that suddenly leaps out, bites, and then goes back to rest.

Do you recall which translation you read? I see 6+ different
translations of Anna Karenina on Amazon with wildly varying reviews
from readers.

Besides the translations, another problem is that publishers put out
edited/abridged versions of classics with cover material that doesn't
mention this. I had a great time this year chomping through ~1500
pages of the original anonymous English translation of Count of Monte
Cristo. But before I settled on that I had been misled by a
"shortened" ~800 page edition, which definitely did not read well.
Investigating this issue, I found other ~200 and ~400 page versions
too!

~ash

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Supriya Nair]

>
>
> Besides the translations, another problem is that publishers put out
> edited/abridged versions of classics with cover material that doesn't
> mention this. I had a great time this year chomping through ~1500
> pages of the original anonymous English translation of Count of Monte
> Cristo. But before I settled on that I had been misled by a
> "shortened" ~800 page edition, which definitely did not read well.
> Investigating this issue, I found other ~200 and ~400 page versions
> too!
>

Anonymity for the > 1000-page edition seems puzzling -- if it was the
Penguin black classics edition, it's by Robin Buss. Well worth reading. The
novel form was invented for Dumas to have fun with.

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Suresh Ramasubramanian]

On 14-Dec-2015, at 12:19 PM, Supriya Nair  wrote:
> 
> Anonymity for the > 1000-page edition seems puzzling -- if it was the
> Penguin black classics edition, it's by Robin Buss. Well worth reading. The
> novel form was invented for Dumas to have fun with.

Buss is canonical - and a lot of the other translations redact large parts of 
the novel, either for convenience to chop out side stories, or due to victorian 
prudery / to make it family friendly (Eugenie Danglars = hinted at as being a 
lesbian) etc.

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Ashwin Nanjappa]

On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 2:49 PM, Supriya Nair  wrote:
> Anonymity for the > 1000-page edition seems puzzling -- if it was the
> Penguin black classics edition, it's by Robin Buss. Well worth reading. The
> novel form was invented for Dumas to have fun with.

There are 2 English translations of Monte Cristo. From my Googling, I
found that no one knows who did the first translation, it is
anonymous. The legality of translating and selling an unauthorized
version across the channel in England at that time may have been a
factor. IAC this is the translation you will find on Project Gutenberg
too. Its language is flowery and archaic, but I actually like that
since it immerses me in that period of time. All the shortened
versions derive from this anonymous translation, since it is copyright
free.

The second and modern translation, as you mentioned, is by Buss for
Penguin. It has got good reviews. I plan to read it sometime to see
the difference :-)

~ash

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Suresh Ramasubramanian]

OUP and some others have excellent translations from the Russian - which is an 
extremely difficult language to translate.

A lot of the humor doesn’t even translate well to English (especially in the 
case of Gogol, who used deliberately funny names for his characters to add to 
the humor, for example in ‘The Government Inspector’)

Anna Karenina is horribly difficult and complex to translate because even 
native russian speakers appear to have different reactions to the same scene, 
depending on their age, background etc.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/28/books/review/new-translations-of-tolstoys-anna-karenina.html?_r=0


> On 14-Dec-2015, at 12:12 PM, Ashwin Nanjappa  wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 2:01 PM, Aadisht Khanna  wrote:
>> Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy - I took two years to finish this, but enjoyed
>> it far more in 2015 than 2014. Tolstoy has this under-the-surface mild
>> sarcasm that suddenly leaps out, bites, and then goes back to rest.
> 
> Do you recall which translation you read? I see 6+ different
> translations of Anna Karenina on Amazon with wildly varying reviews
> from readers.
> 
> Besides the translations, another problem is that publishers put out
> edited/abridged versions of classics with cover material that doesn't
> mention this. I had a great time this year chomping through ~1500
> pages of the original anonymous English translation of Count of Monte
> Cristo. But before I settled on that I had been misled by a
> "shortened" ~800 page edition, which definitely did not read well.
> Investigating this issue, I found other ~200 and ~400 page versions
> too!
> 
> ~ash
> 

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Ashwin Nanjappa]

On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 2:54 PM, Suresh Ramasubramanian
 wrote:
> Buss is canonical - and a lot of the other translations redact large parts of 
> the novel, either for convenience to chop out side stories, or due to 
> victorian prudery

I find such "snipping" of content from the original quite irritating.
The English translation of Murakami's Wind-up Bird Chronicle is by Jay
Rubin. To my surprise I discovered later that entire chapters in the
Japanese original do not appear in Rubin's work! I'm guessing this
translation is "blessed" by Murakami, which makes the situation all
the more puzzling.

> to make it family friendly (Eugenie Danglars = hinted at as being a lesbian) 
> etc.

Not just hinting, it was pretty obvious in the version I read :-)

~ash

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Suresh Ramasubramanian]

The archive.org site has this text from the same edition gutenberg has - 
published by 

GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS 

LONDON AND NEW-YORK 
1888 


This adds the additional information ..

Copyright, 1887. 
By JOSEPH L. BLAMIRB. 

There’s a Joseph L Blamire who is credited with some other works from the 1860s 
onwards.

—srs

> On 14-Dec-2015, at 12:34 PM, Ashwin Nanjappa  wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 2:49 PM, Supriya Nair  wrote:
>> Anonymity for the > 1000-page edition seems puzzling -- if it was the
>> Penguin black classics edition, it's by Robin Buss. Well worth reading. The
>> novel form was invented for Dumas to have fun with.
> 
> There are 2 English translations of Monte Cristo. From my Googling, I
> found that no one knows who did the first translation, it is
> anonymous. The legality of translating and selling an unauthorized
> version across the channel in England at that time may have been a
> factor. IAC this is the translation you will find on Project Gutenberg
> too. Its language is flowery and archaic, but I actually like that
> since it immerses me in that period of time. All the shortened
> versions derive from this anonymous translation, since it is copyright
> free.
> 
> The second and modern translation, as you mentioned, is by Buss for
> Penguin. It has got good reviews. I plan to read it sometime to see
> the difference :-)
> 
> ~ash
> 

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Thaths]

On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 6:14 PM Ashwin Nanjappa  wrote:

> The English translation of Murakami's Wind-up Bird Chronicle is by Jay
> Rubin. To my surprise I discovered later that entire chapters in the
> Japanese original do not appear in Rubin's work! I'm guessing this
> translation is "blessed" by Murakami, which makes the situation all
> the more puzzling.
>

Murakami is fluent in English. If he thinks Rubin's translation was in the
spirit of the original, I'd trust his (Murakami's) judgement.

Thaths

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Ashwin Nanjappa]

On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 3:15 PM, Suresh Ramasubramanian
 wrote:
>
> Copyright, 1887.
> By JOSEPH L. BLAMIRB.
>
> There’s a Joseph L Blamire who is credited with some other works from the 
> 1860s onwards.

He may not be the translator. Googling with his name does not throw up
anything in that direction.

Wikipedia says translation is anonymous:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo


The most common English translation is an anonymous one originally
published in 1846 by Chapman and Hall. This was originally released in
ten weekly installments from March 1846 with six pages of letterpress
and two illustrations by M Valentin.[11] The translation was released
in book form with all twenty illustrations in two volumes in May 1846,
a month after the release of the first part of the above-mentioned
translation by Emma Hardy.[12] The translation follows the revised
French edition of 1846, with the correct spelling of "Cristo" and the
extra chapter The House on the Allées de Meilhan.

Most English editions of the novel follow the anonymous translation.
In 1889 two of the major American publishers Little Brown and T.Y
Crowell updated the translation, correcting mistakes and revising the
text to reflect the original serialised version. This resulted in the
removal of the chapter The House on the Allées de Meilhan, with the
text restored to the end of the chapter called The Departure.[13][14]

In 1955 Collins published an updated version of the anonymous
translation which cut several passages including a whole chapter
entitled The Past and renamed others.[15] This abridgement was
republished by many Collins imprints and other publishers including
the Modern Library, Vintage, the 1998 Oxford World's Classics edition
(later editions restored the text) and the 2009 Everyman's Library
edition.

In 1996 Penguin Classics published a new translation by Robin Buss.
Buss's translation updated the language, making the text more
accessible to modern readers, and restored content that was modified
in the 1846 translation because of Victorian English social
restrictions (for example, references to Eugénie's lesbian traits and
behaviour) to reflect Dumas' original version.


~ash

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Aadisht Khanna]

On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 12:12 PM, Ashwin Nanjappa 
wrote:

> On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 2:01 PM, Aadisht Khanna  wrote:
> > Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy - I took two years to finish this, but
> enjoyed
> > it far more in 2015 than 2014. Tolstoy has this under-the-surface mild
> > sarcasm that suddenly leaps out, bites, and then goes back to rest.
>
> Do you recall which translation you read? I see 6+ different
> translations of Anna Karenina on Amazon with wildly varying reviews
> from readers.
>
> I read the one on Gutenberg. Don't remember who the translator is.

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Venkatesh Hariharan]

I read Jared Diamond's Collapse, and I felt its message that the so-called
conflict between "development" and the environment is a false one, so
relevant to our times. Diamond gives examples of socities that have lived
next to each other and shows how the ones that respected nature were the
ones that prospered. A poignant question he asks about the environment
disaster in Easter Island is, "What was the man who cut down the last tree
on Easter Island thinking?" I am afraid we are not too far away from asking
that question ourselves.

Venky

On Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 1:37 PM, Srini RamaKrishnan 
wrote:

> Some books I enjoyed:
>
> - Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison - Michel Foucault
> - The Perennial Philosophy: An Interpretation of the Great Mystics,
> East and West by Aldous Huxley
> - Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
> - Saint Francis by Nikos Kazantzakis
>
>

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Srini RamaKrishnan]

Some books I enjoyed:

- Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison - Michel Foucault
- The Perennial Philosophy: An Interpretation of the Great Mystics,
East and West by Aldous Huxley
- Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
- Saint Francis by Nikos Kazantzakis

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Ashwin Nanjappa]

Books I loved this year ...

Fiction:

The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Richard Flanagan)
https://daariga.wordpress.com/2015/11/15/the-narrow-road-to-the-deep-north/

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Haruki Murakami)
https://daariga.wordpress.com/2015/04/12/the-wind-up-bird-chronicle/

On The Beach (Nevil Shute)
https://daariga.wordpress.com/2015/01/11/on-the-beach/

Sci-fi:

I, Robot (Isaac Asimov)
https://daariga.wordpress.com/2015/08/23/i-robot/

Against The Fall of Night (Arthur C. Clarke)
https://daariga.wordpress.com/2015/05/24/against-the-fall-of-night/

Graphic novels:

Seconds (Bryan Lee O'Malley)
https://daariga.wordpress.com/2015/07/19/seconds/

Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? (Roz Chast)
https://daariga.wordpress.com/2015/07/12/cant-we-talk-about-something-more-pleasant/

The Party After You Left (Roz Chast)
https://daariga.wordpress.com/2015/07/12/the-party-after-you-left/

Humour:

Dave Barry Talks Back (Dave Barry)
https://daariga.wordpress.com/2015/12/07/dave-barry-talks-back/

Classics:

The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
https://daariga.wordpress.com/2015/06/28/the-count-of-monte-cristo/

The Hound of the Baskervilles (Arthur Conan Doyle)
https://daariga.wordpress.com/2015/03/15/the-hound-of-the-baskervilles/

~ash

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Radhika, Y.]

Children of Air India by Reneé Saklikar (poetry)
The Jaguar's Children and The Tiger by John Vaillant
The Illegal by Lawrence Hill
Don't Tell me you are afraid by Guiseppe Catozzella (english version soon
in 2016)
The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
That Lonely Section of Hell by Lori Shehner (Cop's real life account of the
botched investigation of murdered aboriginal women in Vancouver's Downtown
Eastside)

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Rajesh Mehar]

I've enjoyed reading:

Deep Green Resistance by Authors: Aric McBay, Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith

and

Seasons of Trouble by Rohini Mohan (winner of the Shakti Bhat first book
prize)

On Fri, Dec 11, 2015, 08:43 Radhika, Y.  wrote:

> Children of Air India by Reneé Saklikar (poetry)
> The Jaguar's Children and The Tiger by John Vaillant
> The Illegal by Lawrence Hill
> Don't Tell me you are afraid by Guiseppe Catozzella (english version soon
> in 2016)
> The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
> That Lonely Section of Hell by Lori Shehner (Cop's real life account of the
> botched investigation of murdered aboriginal women in Vancouver's Downtown
> Eastside)
>

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Ashwin Nanjappa]

On Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 11:05 AM, Thaths  wrote:
[...]
> * Alice Albina's Empires of the Indus

I've just started on this one, it is just amazing!

> * The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
>  by Siddhartha Mukherjee. An
> excellent exploration of the history of cancer treatments and mankind's
> experience with the malady.

I read this tome this year. Not impressed due to some reasons:
* 200+ pages spent on just cutting out breast tissue (breast cancer).
No one in the world needs to know this much details :-)
* Descriptions of doctors and their new procedures is way too flowery.
It's the literary equivalent of a person prostrating to the feet of a
doctor :-D
* Too focused on the hospitals in Boston and the celebrities and their
endorsements for cancer and such.
* This book is too long. It could be easily sliced in half while
retaining all the content and energy.

~ash

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Amit Varma]

Superforecasting by Phlip Tetlock:

http://www.amazon.in/gp/product/B00Y78X7HY?keywords=superforecasting=1449804795_=sr_1_1=digital-text=1-1

The Evolution of Everything by Matt Ridley:

http://www.amazon.in/Evolution-Everything-How-Ideas-Emerge-ebook/dp/B00S5LDWII/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text=UTF8=1449804848=1-1=ridley

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari:

http://www.amazon.in/Sapiens-Humankind-Yuval-Noah-Harari-ebook/dp/B00K7ED54M/ref=sr_1_1?s=books=UTF8=1449805178=1-1=sapiens

Government's End by Jonathan Rauch:

http://www.amazon.in/Governments-End-Washington-Stopped-Working/dp/1458716554/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps=UTF8=1449804993=1-1-catcorr=government%27s+end+jonathan+rauch

Nothing is True and Everything is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev:

http://www.amazon.in/Nothing-True-Everything-Possible-Surreal/dp/1610396006/ref=sr_1_1?s=books=UTF8=1449805133=1-1=peter+pomerantsev

And this is an absolute masterpiece, my desert island book:

Collected Poems by Mark Strand:

http://www.amazon.in/Collected-Poems-Mark-Strand/dp/0385352514/ref=sr_1_1?s=books=UTF8=1449805308=1-1=mark+strand








-- 
Amit Varma
http://www.indiauncut.com
http://www.twitter.com/amitvarma

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Thaths]

On Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 2:42 PM Amit Varma  wrote:

> Superforecasting by Phlip Tetlock:
>
>
> http://www.amazon.in/gp/product/B00Y78X7HY?keywords=superforecasting=1449804795_=sr_1_1=digital-text=1-1


Tetlock did a SALT talk about this recently
 that I
listened to. It was quite interesting.


> Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari:
>
>
> http://www.amazon.in/Sapiens-Humankind-Yuval-Noah-Harari-ebook/dp/B00K7ED54M/ref=sr_1_1?s=books=UTF8=1449805178=1-1=sapiens


Really? I was really looking forward to this book, but was disappointed.
Didn't finish the damn thing. I was expecting a lot more science and
evolution and less political screed.

Thaths

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Abhineeta Raghunath]

This isn't a book, exactly. But it's a web series that's taking shape while
touching upon history, mythology, warfare, feminism, and fantasy. It's
called the #KProject, and is available in little doses here:

http://urbangirldom.com/wp/category/k-project/

But if it interests you very much, read bottom-up :)

On Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 8:35 AM, Thaths  wrote:

> For the seventh year in a row, I am turning to silk listers for book
> recommendation
> this holiday season.
>
> What have you read over the last year that has left a mark on you? What are
> you eagerly looking forward to reading over the Christmas/NewYear's
> holidays?
>
> Past silk list recommendations have included such gems as:
>
> * Alice Albina's Empires of the Indus
> * Samanth Subramaniam's Following Fish
> * Sarnath Bannerjee's Barn Owl's Wondrous Capers
> * Devdutt Pattanaik's Myth=Mithya.
> * Nilanjana Roy's Wildings
> * Aman Sethi's A Free Man
>
> The books that I enjoyed reading
>  the most this
> year:
>
> * Between the Wold and Me  by
> Ta-Nehisi Coates. Searing.
>
> * The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto
>  by Pico Iyer. A book published many
> years ago that I finally got to reading after a wonderful week in Kyoto
> during Sakura season.
>
> * Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
>  by Barbara Demnick. Books about
> North Korea tend to paint a portrait of the other. Amidst the usual line up
> horror stories it is difficult to understand or imagine what the lives of
> ordinary people is like in that county (I am looking at you, *Orphan
> Master's Son*, as an egregious example). This book does a beautiful job of
> showing the lives of ordinary people and how they get by.
>
> * The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
>  by Siddhartha Mukherjee. An
> excellent exploration of the history of cancer treatments and mankind's
> experience with the malady.
>
> * The Origins and Development of Classical Hinduism
>  by A.L. Basham. A short work that
> provides an excellent introduction to how Classical Hinduism evolved.
>
> * Delhi: Adventures in a Megacity 
> by
> Sam Miller. Miller explores the past and the present of Delhi as he walks
> round and round the city in a somewhat spiral route.
>
> * A Short walk in the Hindu Kush  by
> Eric Newby. Another classic that I did not get to reading till 2015.
>
>
> Thaths
>

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay]

On Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 8:35 AM, Thaths  wrote:
> What have you read over the last year that has left a mark on you? What are
> you eagerly looking forward to reading over the Christmas/NewYear's
> holidays?







-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Thaths]

On Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 2:13 PM Radhika, Y.  wrote:

> That Lonely Section of Hell by Lori Shehner (Cop's real life account of the
> botched investigation of murdered aboriginal women in Vancouver's Downtown
> Eastside)
>

Are these same murders that Justin Trudeau ordered an investigation about?

Thaths

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Thaths]

On Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 2:43 PM Ashwin Nanjappa  wrote:

> On Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 11:05 AM, Thaths  wrote:
> [...]
> > * Alice Albina's Empires of the Indus
>
> I've just started on this one, it is just amazing!
>

Indeed. BTW, Albina wrote a fiction book after this. Don't even try it.
Simply awful.



>
> > * The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
> >  by Siddhartha Mukherjee. An
> > excellent exploration of the history of cancer treatments and mankind's
> > experience with the malady.
>
> I read this tome this year. Not impressed due to some reasons:
> * 200+ pages spent on just cutting out breast tissue (breast cancer).
>

To be honest, I didn't really read it either. Listened to the audiobook (at
1.25x speed). Much more doable that way.

Thaths

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2015

[Ingrid]

On 11 December 2015 at 08:35, Thaths  wrote:

> For the seventh year in a row, I am turning to silk listers for book
> recommendation
> this holiday season.
>
> What have you read over the last year that has left a mark on you? What are
> you eagerly looking forward to reading over the Christmas/NewYear's
> holidays?
>
> Past silk list recommendations have included such gems as:
>
> * Alice Albina's Empires of the Indus
> * Samanth Subramaniam's Following Fish
> * Sarnath Bannerjee's Barn Owl's Wondrous Capers
> * Devdutt Pattanaik's Myth=Mithya.
> * Nilanjana Roy's Wildings
> * Aman Sethi's A Free Man
>
> The books that I enjoyed reading
>  the most this
> year:
>
> * Between the Wold and Me  by
> Ta-Nehisi Coates. Searing.
>
> * The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto
>  by Pico Iyer. A book published many
> years ago that I finally got to reading after a wonderful week in Kyoto
> during Sakura season.
>
> * Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
>  by Barbara Demnick. Books about
> North Korea tend to paint a portrait of the other. Amidst the usual line up
> horror stories it is difficult to understand or imagine what the lives of
> ordinary people is like in that county (I am looking at you, *Orphan
> Master's Son*, as an egregious example). This book does a beautiful job of
> showing the lives of ordinary people and how they get by.
>
> * The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
>  by Siddhartha Mukherjee. An
> excellent exploration of the history of cancer treatments and mankind's
> experience with the malady.
>
> * The Origins and Development of Classical Hinduism
>  by A.L. Basham. A short work that
> provides an excellent introduction to how Classical Hinduism evolved.
>
> * Delhi: Adventures in a Megacity 
> by
> Sam Miller. Miller explores the past and the present of Delhi as he walks
> round and round the city in a somewhat spiral route.
>
> * A Short walk in the Hindu Kush  by
> Eric Newby. Another classic that I did not get to reading till 2015.
>
>
> Thaths
>

Strongly second Ta Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me. Others I
enjoyed or found illuminating in 2015:

Discontent and Its Civilizations - Mohsin Hamid
Being Mortal - Atul Gawande
The Colonel Who Would Not Repent - Salil Tripathi
Ahmedabad - Amrita Shah


 Ingrid Srinath
@ingridsrinath