Bring Your Own Book (BYOB) Party

Poetry, Migration and Andaman @ BYOB Party in April 2017 (Part 4)

Sreeraj also mentioned two poetry books by contemporary British poets. Answering Back: Living poets reply to the poetry of the past by Carol Ann Duffy is a compilation of poet responses to poems of the past. Poets of the now speak to poets of then and the ensuing conversation is a beautiful one.

Another poetry book Sreeraj mentioned was The Mara Crossing by Ruth Padel, great granddaughter of Charles Darwin. The book contains ninety richly textured poems on the broad theme of migration.  ‘We’re all from somewhere else,’ she begins, tracing the journeys of cells, trees, birds and beasts. “This is why I think that the idea of nationalism is weak,” Sreeraj said, “We emerge from somewhere and go elsewhere. Life is all about journeys, all about migration.”

I remember reading this wondrous book a while ago- you can go through the review here.

Apurba read The Last Wave, an Island Novel by Pankaj Sekhsaria, a journalist who has reported extensively on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The story is about how the protagonist Harish who has taken up a research job in Port Blair meets Seema, a native of the islands who studied in JNU and has returned home. The novel deals with many themes including the conflict that globalization poses in the islands, illegal immigration from Bangladesh and the Jarawa tribal community.

“The reason this book spoke to me was the setting,” Apurba said. “Most Indian English literature today is about the cities- Mumbai, Delhi, South Delhi…very few books are set in remote places and now particularly because we don’t read as much vernacular literature anymore, these kind of books are very refreshing. Take the books by Mahasweta Devi, for instance,” Apurba said.

Jaya also seconded Apurba about the thirst that the present generation has for books replete with remote geography. “If you want to know about Sikkim, Chetan Raj Shrestha’s is a fantastic author to consider.” The discussion went on to the importance of reading serialized versions of translated vernacular literature in Malayalam and the states in India where the literary scene is particularly vibrant.

If you want to get a flavor of Pankaj Sekhsaria’s prose, read this.

Cyber Psyche and Bureaucratic Algorithms @ BYOB Party in April 2017 (Part 3)

In today’s screen age, the book that Sreeraj talked about is pertinent. The Cyber Effect: A Pioneering Cyberpsychologist Explains How Human Behavior Changes Online by Mary Aiken, the world’s leading expert in forensic cyberpsychology, talks about how the cyber world is intruding on our way of life, the minds of our children and the way people interact or not with each other. From the madness of trolling to excessive sexting, Aiken navigates the corridors of cyber crime and addictive behavior. The book is not academic in flavor but goes on a case by case basis, providing stats and trends that may want us to shut down our laptops for a while and rethink appeasing our children with digital tablets.

Ralph mentioned a companion book to this called Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy by Cathy O’Neil. The book talks about how algorithms that are making life simpler by helping make decisions about whom to give a loan or a scholarship to are as biased as people. On one hand, there’s the view that engineers need to be empathetic as their biases rub off in the algorithms they create. But the problem is not so clear cut. Data-driven decisions are based on what the mathematical models are learning continuously. While biases are inevitable, algorithms end up being the new bureaucracy.

“Be afraid,” Jaya said.

More books in Part 4.

Seeds of Disaster and Lords of Finance @ BYOB Party in April 2017 (Part 2)

Ralph found yet another academic book called Seeds of Disaster, Roots of Response: How Private Action Can Reduce Public Vulnerability edited by Philip E. Auerswald. The book is the first systematic attempt to make sense of how private leadership can provide critical services during bad times. The book stresses the importance of both the public and private sectors joining hands as a prerequisite to accountability in society. The book presents multiple perspectives and draws on experts from various disciplines. Ralph drew on his observations of crises in India and the fallacy of resilience as a tool to mitigate disaster.

One book Mandar was particularly inspired by was Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed, a writer of Pakistani origin. The book was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2009. The book delves into the economic recession of the 1930s that led to WWII. He speaks of the four central bankers of the premier banks of the world who mismanaged the crises since the 1920s which ultimately led to the Great Depression. He also mentions how John Maynard Keynes’ economic predictions were conveniently ignored for the sake of short-term interests. Mandar mused about how there are many lessons in this book for dealing with the current economic crises, though as is usually the case, history tends to repeat itself. Mandar read out an interesting passage from the book about remonetization:

“The task of keeping Germany adequately supplied with currency notes became a major logistical operation involving ‘133 printing works with 1783 machines . . . and more than 30 paper mills.’  By 1923, the inflation had acquired a momentum of its own, creating an ever-accelerating appetite for currency that the Reichsbank, even after conscripting private printers, could not meet. In a country already flooded with paper, there were even complaints of a shortage of money in municipalities, so towns and private companies began to print their own notes. Over the next few months, Germany ex-perienced the single greatest destruction of monetary value in human history. By August 1923, a dollar was worth 620,000 marks and by early November 1923, 630 billion.

Basic necessities were now priced in the billions—a kilo of butter cost 250 billion; a kilo of bacon 180 billion; a simple ride on a Berlin street car, which had cost 1 mark before the war, was now set at 15 billion. Even though currency notes were available in denominations of up to 100 billion marks, it took whole sheaves to pay for anything. The country was awash with currency notes, carried around in bags, in wheelbarrows, in laundry baskets and hampers, even in baby carriages.”

Ralph mentioned another financial story called Fault Line: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy by Raghuram Rajan (Governor of the Reserve Bank of India between September 2013 and September 2016) who warned about the impending financial crises before it occurred. Raghuram exposed not just the central bankers but the chinks in the economy and spending habits that could lead to such crises. This is the first time that we have had such an extensive discussion of financial books at the BYOB Party and it opened up the need to understand the economy better. A sick economy once nurtured Nazism and could only be cured by the ensuing destruction of a World War and now the financial crises that plague the world reflect directly in a realpolitik and the rise of populism world over. Food for thought.

More books in Part 3.

Hindi Poetry and Dialogs with God @ BYOB Party in April 2017 (Part 1)

The session kicked off with a Hindi poetry book, Kuchh Ishq Kiya Kuchh Kaam Kiya, by Piyush Mishra, an Indian film and theater actor, music director, lyricist, singer, scriptwriter. Being a part of Bollywood, his writing is popular, Jay observed. It is very difficult otherwise for an unknown writer of poetry to be read and enjoyed. Since Mishra is one who has seen life in all its facets, his writing is informed by experience and the contemporary life. His style is to the point and devoid of unnecessary frills. Ari read out a couple of poems and the BYOB party took on an air of lyricism.

Archana spoke about a series that she was impressed by for its therapeutic and cathartic value- Conversations with God, a sequence of books, running up to three-thousand pages, written by Neale Donald Walsch where Walsch asks questions and God answers. Walsch wrote the book during a low period in his life when he was looking for answers.The first book published in 1995 became a publishing phenomenon, staying on the New York Times Best-Sellers List for 135 weeks.

Here is an interview with the author in case you want to listen to some words of wisdom from a spiritual messenger, where he talks about fundamental spiritual questions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwH8LOkugzE.

Abhaya mentioned that Muhammad Iqbal, a celebrated Urdu poet, has written two controversial books in a similar vein (this is much earlier, some time before the 1920s) called Shikwa and Jawab-e-Shikwa. While the first part of the book addresses questions to God and attracted much ire from Muslim scholars, the second part was welcomed and praised.

More books in Part 2.

Bring Your Own Book (BYOB) Party on June 11, 2017 (Sunday)

RSVP on Meetup OR RSVP on Explara

RSVP on Meetup OR RSVP on Explara

 

This time the BYOB Party is on a Sunday. We also have a new venue in Uttarahalli, Bangalore, thanks to our co-host Meera.

Have you read a book and are craving to chitchat about it with someone? Have a favorite book that you think everyone would love, if only they knew about it? Want to see what others are reading and have interesting conversations beyond weather, traffic, and real estate?

Then come to the BYOB party and talk away! Try to avoid a bestseller and if you have a copy, bring it along and read us a passage. All languages are welcome.

There will be refreshments and swags courtesy Worth A Read.

Venue:

Meera Iyer’s Residence
D-804 Chartered Beverly Hills
Gubbalala
Uttarahalli
Bangalore 560 061

FAQs

So, what really happens at a BYOB Party?

Everyone brings a book and talks about it. Conversations follow and they are good. So are the refreshments!

You can take a look at what happened in some of our earlier parties here:

Do I have to be there for the entire duration of four hours?

We aren’t closing doors or locking you in. But the party is best enjoyed if you are there for the entire duration and listen to people talk about a variety of books. Trust us, you won’t know how time flew.

Do I have to bring anything?

Nothing really. But if you have a copy of the book you want to talk about, you might want to bring it in. Other attendees might want to have a look, or you might want to read a paragraph from it.

I am an author. Can I bring a book written by me?

A good writer should be a voracious reader. It would be preferable if you brought a book you really like written by someone else.

Who are the organizers?

Worth a Read

I have more questions. Who do I contact?

Shoot an e-mail to jayajha@instascribe.com.

Okay! I am ready to come. What do I do?

Join our meetup group, RSVP, and come over!

If you are not on meetup, you can also RSVP on Explara.

Bring Your Own Book (BYOB) Party on April 22, 2017 (Saturday)

RSVP on Meetup OR RSVP on Explara

BYOBApril2017(800x800)

RSVP on Meetup OR RSVP on Explara

Have you read a book and are craving to chitchat about it with someone? Have a favorite book that you think everyone would love, if only they knew about it? Want to see what others are reading and have interesting conversations beyond weather, traffic, and real estate?

Then come to the BYOB party and talk away! Try to avoid a bestseller and if you have a copy, bring it along and read us a passage. All languages are welcome.

There will be refreshments and swags courtesy Worth A Read.

Venue: Pothi.com, #634 (Ground Floor), 5th Main, Indiranagar 2nd Stage, Bangalore – 560038

FAQs

So, what really happens at a BYOB Party?

Everyone brings a book and talks about it. Conversations follow and they are good. So are the refreshments!

You can take a look at what happened in some of our earlier parties here:

Do I have to be there for the entire duration of four hours?

We aren’t closing doors or locking you in. But the party is best enjoyed if you are there for the entire duration and listen to people talk about a variety of books. Trust us, you won’t know how time flew.

Do I have to bring anything?

Nothing really. But if you have a copy of the book you want to talk about, you might want to bring it in. Other attendees might want to have a look, or you might want to read a paragraph from it.

I am an author. Can I bring a book written by me?

A good writer should be a voracious reader. It would be preferable if you brought a book you really like written by someone else.

Who are the organizers?

Worth a Read

I have more questions. Who do I contact?

Shoot an e-mail to jayajha@instascribe.com.

Okay! I am ready to come. What do I do?

Join our meetup group, RSVP, and come over!

If you are not on meetup, you can also RSVP on Explara.

Grief, Holmes and Randomness @ BYOB Party in December 2016 (Part 6)

A random set of readings in this blog post…

something-rich-and-strangeAmshuman read Something Rich and Strange by Ron Rash, an esteemed author and poet and winner of many awards. His writing is evocative of the gloomy Virginia landscape and his short stories chronicling the grief of an illiterate state rife with meth- addiction assume a universal aspect. The landscape permeates the population of Rash’s stories and defines the nature of their lives. The grief Rash describes illuminates the soul, rather than bringing it down “It’s not the grief of a death in a Harry Potter novel, It is a beautiful sadness. Kind of like the sadness you feel when you watched the series True Detective,” Amshuman said.

A discussion ensued on the question of the necessity of grief in literature. Be it ‘Sadness’ as a crucial character in the movie ‘Inside Out’ or how grief can be plotted in an unappealing way as it seemed for Apurba when she read The Lowlands by Jhumpa Lahiri, grief is an essential component of the cathartic aspect of art and writing. Grief can also be featured in a graphic novel as is the case in the book Safe Area Goražde by Joe Zacco, which is an account of the Bosnian War. Another book that carries grief in a way that is not overbearing is The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

sherlock-holmesSunny preferred to get away from the sadness of it all and spoke about The Complete Sherlock Holmes:All 56 Stories And 4 Novels by Arthur Conana Doyle. The novels in this collection are The Valley of Fear, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Sign of Four and A Study in Scarlet. The 56 stories have been divided into five books: the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the Return of Sherlock Holmes, the Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes and His Last Bow.

Everyone knows about Sherlock Holmes and his adventures. Sunny spoke about how Holmes managed to solve mysteries with his remarkable observational skills in spite of being a victim of addiction (can’t help comparing the idea of addiction as reason for grief in Ron Rash’s novel and the way addiction is not viewed as a hindrance by Doyle). It is simply impossible to judge Sherlock Holmes and the reader is left to let him be Holmes with his own ‘Holmish’ skills, inimitable and capable of making the whodunit aspect of Doyle’s work take a backseat. Conversation veered to who the better Sherlock Holmes was- Robert Downey Junior or Benedict Cumberbatch? Incidentally read this about the Cumberbach-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle connection.

fooled-by-randomnessAnurag spoke about a book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb called Fooled by Randomness, a standalone book from his Incerto series. The book talks about his favorite subjects-chance and human error, and demystifies the idea of luck. Success, for instance, is greatly over-rated, and patterns are often gleaned where there really none. Randomness, of course, leads you to think about what makes a Youtube video go viral. The book is a find if you are inclined towards understand economics in a day to day set-up. Anurag also mentioned how he benefited from the book Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt.

More books in Part 7.

Princesses, Friendship and Democracy @ BYOB Party in December 2016 (Part 7)

The party ended with conversation about women in books, and democracy.

princessRenu spoke about a book called Princess: A True Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia. The story revolves around Sultana, a Saudi Arabian princess, who is immensely wealthy but is a prisoner in a gilded cage. The story has been told anonymously and recorded by Jean Sasson. For Renu, the trilogy is not as heart wrenching as A Thousand Splendid Suns but she still thinks that the book has great aspirations and talks about some very important issues like women’s rights. Where Sultana lives, young girls are forced to marry men five times their age and victims of unreasonable punishments. Baraa believes that while the discriminatory practices of Saudi Arabia are well-known, not all Arabic speaking nations are the same and Arabian history has been forgotten too easily. Anurag mentioned how the ideas that people have about anything, including women’s rights, is governed by the society we live in. In China, for instance, it is not surprising when women technicians come home to fix the air-conditioning. In India, this would still raise eyebrows.

my-brilliant-friendKeeping with the woman-inspired book series theme, I’ve been reading one of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels, the first one of the series My Brilliant Friend.  The story is a translation and focuses on the friendship of two women spanning four books. It is hard for you not to order the subsequent parts of the series as the friendship between Elena Greco and Lila is absorbing, filled with the conflicts and rivalries of any close friendship. Simultaneously, Elena’s circle of friends reveal the socio-political milieu of Italy during the 1950s.

democracyAbhaya spoke about Democracy: A Very Short Introduction, a short account of democracy published by Oxford University Press. The book speaks about the origins of democracy from ancient Greece and Rome. While democracy entails the concept of liberty, there are no specific duties associated with it, except or jury duty in the US. So participation, which is a defining feature of democracy, is not an absolute necessity. Another contradiction is how in some situations human rights limit democratic claims. It is a good idea to understand democracy, Abhaya said and he quoted: “Man’s inclination to justice makes democracy possible, but it is our capacity for injustice that makes it necessary.”

And with that we wound up the BYOB Party. The next stop was the food.

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Balance, Altruism and the Bystander Effect @ BYOB Party in December 2016 (Part 4)

being-in-balanceBaraa spoke about a book called Being in Balance: 9 Principles for Creating Habits to Match Your Desires by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer. The book is an inspirational one that offers nine principles to realign your thoughts so that you can achieve your goals. Baraa liked the way the author stressed on not even ‘being’. Just be, he says. The idea sounds very Buddhist, Jaya said.

Baraa emphasized how a language like English is far too dry to express the myriad emotions that languages like Arabic could express. This conversation on languages led to the understanding that language can influence the way people think.

the-price-of-altruismPratyush got a book called The Price of Altruism by Oren Harman. The book is steeped in the idea of Hamilton’s law of Kin selection. Is altruism or kindness part of evolution? Harman examines the lives of insect societies to understand altruism as it exists in other species. He then talks about the eccentric genius George Price who solves the mystery of altruism.  If you think that altruism is reserved for living things, you may want to read about Altruism and Robots here.

There was a counter-view that altruism does not exist at all. Adi spoke of the strange case of the Murder of Kitty Genovese and what is now known as Genovese syndrome or the bystander effect, where each witness of a crime assumes that someone else will take responsibility, thereby resulting in no one helping at all. Baraa found the idea of behavioral altruism dry but as Jaya pointed out science and morality rarely meet and though Genovese could have been helped, the fact remains that she was not and this was why such studies of behavioral altruism or the lack of it are so important. Studies prove that pointing to a specific person while asking for help is a better alternative to calling for help.

On a lighter note, the idea of diminished responsibility exists in corporate offices where each one thinks the other will do a task and also in politics when in a democracy shared responsibility leads more to negligence than shared action.

More books in Part 5.

Unstuck Time and Ender @ BYOB Party in December 2016 (Part 5)

There was a dash of sci-fi at the BYOB Party this time.

slaughterhouse-5Adi read the famous satirical novel Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut. The protagonist Billy Pilgrim is the ultimate time traveler. Vonnegut himself was part of the military at Dresden during WWII and the book focuses on the fire bombing there, only to have the protagonist abducted by aliens. The prisoner of war enters another dimension where ‘all moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.’ Time is unstuck and the narrative is fluid moving through different moments in time in no particular order. In the world Pilgrim inhabits free will is a myth. The idea of the fourth dimension is a well spring for fiction, philosophy, sci-fi and mathematics. It’s the blind spot that can’t be seen and so from a void comes interpretation.

The idea of aliens led to a discussion on the Sapir Whorf Hypothesis (The hypothesis states that the way people think is strongly affected by their native languages. It is a controversial theory championed by linguist Edward Sapir and his student Benjamin Whorf), the movie Arrival, the reasons behind the ancient Aboriginal individual’s innate sense of direction, Richard Feynman’s experiments, an app for the hearing impaired and language as a means to lie and obfuscate.

Speaking of dimensions, Akshay spoke about a book available online, one called Flatland by Edwin A. Abott. Check out the movie trailer here.

speaker-for-the-deadDinesh got a sci-fi book by Orson Scott Card called Speaker for the Dead. This is the sequel to the famed Ender’s Game, a book that attained cult status in the US (take the song: Ender will save us all) and was even studied to understand classic military strategy. In the second installment, a second alien race has been discovered and only Ender remains to confront the truth. This book is the winner of the 1986 Nebula Award for Best Novel and won the 1987 Hugo Award for Best Novel. But it hasn’t been all rosy for Orson Scott Card. Read more about the controversy he has been mired in here.

More books in Part 6.