Books

Book Review: “The Word for World is Forest” by Ursula K. Le Guin Book Summary This was my first book by Ursula K. Le Guin. She is a very prominent science fiction writer who has written popular books such as the Earthsea series and The Left Hand of Darkness. She was always on my reading list, and I finally got a chance to read one of her books. What attracted me to this book was the unique title: The Word for World Is Forest. This is a poignant title, which is, of course, a phrase from the book. This phrase is spoken by a humanoid species on another planet far from Earth, but in some ways, they are more humane than the actual humans in this story. The humans derogatorily call them “creechies,” a furry, green, little species populating the planet Athshe. Athshe is a world full of trees—a global forest. The Athsheans cohabit the forest and live in harmony with it. On the other hand, humans have come from Earth with the sole objective of clearing the forest and harvesting its lumber. Lumber is a precious resource in the future, as humans have consumed it all on their home world. The story revolves around the conflict over resources: the needs of the local people versus the wants of the outsiders. ...

Book Review: Thinking in Systems by Donella H. Meadows Book Summary Ever since the summer of 2010, I was interested in Systems Thinking. I got the first whiff of the subject in an eye-opener of a course by Prof. L. S. Ganesh. It has been so long that I do not remember the details of that course, but it instilled a curiosity that made me study more, read more, and experiment more. Here is the professor talking about Why Learn Systems Thinking. ...

Book Name: A Canticle for Leibowitz Book Summary The book deals with a journey across time, where the only constants are the Church, war, paranoia, and the disastrous human tendency to make the same mistakes again and again. The book places its emphasis on the challenge of preserving knowledge, understanding it, and repeating the same cycles of history. The scope of the book spans over a thousand years, where human civilization goes from a desolate, religiously oriented, post-nuclear apocalyptic world to a medieval one where tribalism dominates. The world slowly opens its eyes to new avenues of understanding its history from the point of view of science. The ending of the book culminates in a developed world where human civilization has progressed to achieve interstellar travel, yet is still as divided as ever. The book ends with the world wrecked, pushed into apocalypse yet again. How scores of humans navigate this world throughout the eons determines the flow of the story. ...

In the sequence of reading books by writers about writing1 I recently reread the book, “Novelist as a Vocation” by Haruki Murakami. He is one of my favorite writers, and I was fascinated to understand his writing process. This is not the first book where he explains his thoughts about his writing process, his other book “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running” had some brief moments on the topic. ...

I am stickler for reading writing books written by the writers themselves. I have read three of them, On writing by Stephen King, Writing Badly is Easy By Amitava Kumar and Novalist as a Vocation by Haruki Murakami, along with the description of a writer’s day and other related stuff in the books and blogs by Tim Ferris.It’s fascinating to hear writers talk about the gruesome writing rituals they follow, the ways in which they developed their writing skills, and how they overcame numerous hardships to become masters of their craft. Perhaps what resonates with me most is the realization that these superhumans are also mortal, facing the same challenges and struggles that we as humans encounter. ...