Book review: Disappearence Diary

Title: Disappearence Diary
Author: Hideo Azuma
Pages: 194

Disappearence Diary is a manga (a type of Japanese comic) that tells the true story of Hideo Azuma’s disappearences from his home. Azuma is a manga artist who could never handle the stress of drawing unique, interesting and high-quality comics week after week. When the stress got too much he just walked away from his life and became a bum.

While the story is essentially one of cowardice its value lies in the fact that it has a positive outlook: the art is deliberately made as far from reality as possible and Azuma focuses on the funny parts of his life as a bum.

Azuma eventually returned to his wife after the police picked him up but he ran away several times after that too, eventually landing up in the alcoholic ward of a hospital.

This would have been an excellent graphic novel if Azuma had given some sort of explanation before each chapter like “This was my 3rd time running away, I moved to a different town”. That would have made the story much more lucid.

Also, Azuma spends way too much time babbling on and on about his work like “I did Hideo’s fairytale collection in Manga Action Special Edition”. I found the details of his work to be too much to bear and skipped over 2-3 pages.

Overall, its an interesting graphic novel. Not very lucid but still quite good.

Book review: The Brethren

Title: The Brethren
Author: John Grisham
Pages: 441

I’ve always struggled with reviews of thrillers; how does one avoid giving away too much of the plot? So, for this book, i’ll restrict myself to paraphrasing the back cover and saying that is a good thriller. Trust me, good novels in the thriller genre are few and far between.

The Brethren tells the story of three ex-judges in a minimum-security prison. They get together to blackmail wealthy gay men who are still in the closet. They put ads in the classifields of a gay magazine claiming to be a young man soon to come out of drug rehab and looking for the companionship of a mature man.

The men who reply to the advertisement end up becoming pen-pals with who they think is a handsome young man. They soon start making mistakes and reveal their true identities. That is when the brethren threatens to expose their secret unless they pay up thousands of dollars.

Everything goes well and the judges are starting to making money from their scam until one day they ensnare a powerful man with dangerous friends.

Book review: This is for real

Title: This is for real
Author: James Hadley Chase
Pages: 216

This is for real is a spy novel. The plot wasn’t very satisfying and the grammar was quite bad in places.

To be fair, some of the mistakes could have been the publisher’s fault (my copy is an authorized Indian edition by Master Mind Publishers). The publishers are so bad that they printed the summary of a different novel by the same author on the back cover.

It will entertain you a bit but it is far from being a thriller.

Book review: The World of Malgudi

Title: The World of Malgudi
Author: R. K. Narayan
Pages: 600

You should never leave your husband’s side, whatever happens. Make yourself comfortable. Don’t drive nails into the wall; I don’t like it.

The World of Malgudi is a collection of four novels by R. K. Narayan:

1. Mr. Sampath : The Printer of Malgudi
2. The Financial Expert
3. The Painter of Signs
4. A Tiger for Malgudi

All of the novels are set in the fictional town of Malgudi. The novels are quite different from each other (you’d be surprised how many authors write strikingly similar books) although they all cover simple life in a medium-sized Indian town.

My favourite was The Financial Expert, it tells the story of Margayya, a man who sits under a banyan tree outside a bank and teaches villagers how to extract loans. Margayya’s wife gave birth to a child late in life and their son is pampered until he turns into a spoiled little demon. After being rebuked by the Secretary of the bank Margayya decides that the only way to earn the respect of people is by becoming wealthy. Eventually he becomes an extremely wealthy money-lender/banker. Unfortunately all his money can’t make his son (already irrevocably spoiled) study hard and pass his Xth standard exams. It’s a touching story that has many morals: exploiting people is wrong, don’t pamper your child, etc.

Sadly, I did not find the other three novels as satisfying. However, A tiger for Malgudi was quite interesting; it follows the life of a tiger who is captured and then trained to perform tricks at a circus. The tiger gets frustrated after being ill-treated and runs away after decapitating his trainer. He wanders into Malgudi and causes great panic. A wandering sanyasi (a Hindu religious mendicant) saves the tiger from being shot and gives him the ability to think and reason. Apparently it was inspired by a true story of a sanyasi who roamed with a tiger he treated as a friend.

Book review: The 3 mistakes of my life

Title: The 3 mistakes of my life
Author: Chetan Bhagat
Pages: 257

The 3 mistakes of my life is Chetan’s third novel. I read both of is earlier books and I must say that his writing has come a long way. This book is longer, the plot is more substantial and the english is better too.

I seriously admire Chetan’s courage in covering explosive topics like Hindu-Muslim riots, Ayodhya, etc. These topics are extremely sensitive to us Indians and could have resulted in politicians calling for a ban on his book. It should be noted, however, that Chetan has wisely avoided passing judgement on the Babri Masjid demolition.

The contemporary Indian-english style that Chetan uses, along with an absence of explanations for local words like pol and khakhra, indicates that his primary audience are Indians. Foreigners may find it slightly hard to read but it is still an enjoyable book.

Book review: Absalom, Absalom!

Title: Absalom, Absalom!
Author: William Faulkner
Pages: 316

Absalom, Absalom! is a novel about the rise and fall of the Sutpen dynasty. Thomas Sutpen, the founder of the dynasty, ran away from home at the age of fourteen when he is turned away from the front-door of a rich-man’s mansion by his butler (probably because he was poorly dressed). Sutpen becomes obsessed with starting a plantation and becoming the patriarch of a dynasty.

The novel is meant to serve as an allegory to the rise and fall of Southern plantation culture. It takes place around the time of the American Civil War. The defeat of the Confederate Army (in which all the men of Sutpen’s family were participants) coincides with the downfall of Sutpen’s vision.

Faulkner uses a stream-of-consciousness style of narration often. The story is told by multiple people, who reveal parts of the plot in no chronological order. At times, the characters even interpret and create characters out of thin air.

This was book wasn’t anywhere close to being as difficult to read as I expected it to be. However, at times, Faulkner’s prose is unbeleivably dense and complex, using words most people have not heard of.

Book review: Blankets

Title: Blankets
Author: Craig Thompson
Pages: 582

I decided to read Blankets when I found it on Time magazine’s list of All-TIME Graphic Novels.  It is a semi-autobiographical novel on the author’s childhood and his first love.

Thompson grew up in a fundamentalist Christian family in rural America. His family wasn’t exactly well-off and his father was a very strict man.

The art in this book is black-and-white and is quite detailed in many places. It looks rough and sketchy in many places, which is probably intentional. The story is interesting and the author is open about his weak points, fears and doubts.

At 582 pages, this graphic novel must have taken a monumental effort for the author to complete.  Definitely worth reading.

Book review: The Bourne Supremacy

Title: The Bourne Supremacy
Author: Robert Ludlum
Pages: 679

This is the second book in Robert Ludlum’s trilogy about Jason Bourne, an ex-operative of America’s CIA who lost his memory. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find this books predecessor The Bourne Identity and so had to start reading the trilogy from the middle.

I found the plot a bit confusing at first but Ludlum provides enough background so that it isn’t really necessary to read the first book of the trilogy to understand the story. I had watched the movie and that probably helped.

The plot is mostly based in Asia (Hong Kong, China, etc). A high-ranking Chinese official is planning a hostile takeover and American and British intelligence are concerned that he might throw the whole region into a major war that could escalate into a world war and accordingly decide that he must be killed, or at least quietly warned to desist.

Jason Bourne (or David Webb, which is his real name) has recovered most of his memory although he is still mentally fragile. He lives a quiet life as an Assistant Professor at an American University. Meanwhile, a hired-killer in Asia has been terrorising the region by performing high-profile assassinations and claiming to be Jason Bourne.

The American government decides to use the real Jason Bourne to capture his impostor, who they hope to use to get to the Chinese official. Unfortunately, Bourne is very suspicious of the government and will most likely refuse to come out of retirement and start killing again. Therefore American and British intelligence create an elaborate setup to deceive Bourne and get them to do his bidding.

Like most of Ludlum’s books The Bourne Supremacy was a bit too long. Despite its length it is still better than most of the crap found in the thriller genre these days.

Book review: The Lord of the Rings

Title: The Lord of the Rings
Author: J. R. R. Tolkien
Pages: 1031

The first thing that I noticed about The Lord of the Rings is that it is not  childish like it’s prequel, The Hobbit, was. The second thing I noticed is that the book contains a large number of songs and poetry. I skipped or skimmed over most of it and now I wish I hadn’t. The songs appear to be an integral part of Tolkien’s storytelling and I might have missed out on some imagery.

The Lord of the Rings is an epic fantasy novel based in an imaginary land called Middle-earth which is populated by creatures like Elves, Dwarves, Men, Hobbits, etc. The story is told amost entirely from the perspective of a few Hobbits, a race of diminutive men who prefer to live underground. The book revolves around the battle over a powerful magical ring which gives its wearer invisibility as well as other powers.

The Ring was created by Sauron, the Dark Lord, who stored a signficant part of his power in it.  Sauron wished to control the world using this Ring, which could control other magical rings. However, the Ring was taken from him after a defeat long ago. The Ring ends up in the possession of Frodo Baggins, a Hobbit, who inherited it from his cousin.

After Sauron recovers from his defeat, he seeks to dominate the world again using his Ring. Sauron begins to look for his Ring and sends his servants in search of it. It was decided, by Gandalf the wizard along with others, that Sauron must not be allowed to get hold of the Ring again. The Ring, however cannot be destroyed by fire or any weapon; it can only be destroyed where it was forged – The Cracks of Doom, Sauron’s land of Mordor. It becomes Frodo’s quest to voyage to Mordor and try to destroy the Ring, effectively finishing of Sauron as well.

I did not enjoy The Lord of the Rings as much as I hoped to. I found the first two parts (The fellowship of the ring and The two towers) of this book to be rather dry and boring. Howerver, the final part, The return of the king, more than made up for the other two in terms of excitement and action.

Merge sort (in Haskell)

-- Merge sort
-- Date: Tuesday, March 24, 2009

-- sort a list using merge sort
mergesort [s] =
	[s]
mergesort a =
	let
		mid = ceiling ((fromIntegral (length a))/2)
		(f,s) = splitAt mid a
	in
		merge (mergesort f) (mergesort s)

-- merge two lists
merge :: (Ord t) => [t] -> [t] -> [t]
merge a@(ah:at) b@(bh:bt)
	| ah < bh =
		[ah] ++ merge at b
	| otherwise =
		[bh] ++ merge a bt
-- base case 1: second list empty so we just add everything in a to the end
-- Note: Case [] [] is handled here as well
merge a [] =
	a
-- base case 2: same as above except it is for first list empty
merge [] b =
	b