Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – John Le Carre

John Le Carre was a name I had heard often. In quizzes, in articles, and occasionally mentioned by a friend or two, specifically those who loved to read spy thrillers. And almost always I had heard in the context of a story called Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. It had also surfaced a few years ago when the Gary Oldman movie of the same name had released with much acclaim. I had almost watched it then but somehow checked myself to fall in line with the habit of, as much as I could control it, always reading the text first. 

So it was no surprise when, after the death and subsequent eulogies of John Le Carre in the press, I used it as an excuse to go to my local book-store and buy a copy. Given that I am a sucker for good thriller novels and had always heard about the story in extremely positive overtones, I had great expectations from it. And the book more than met them.

RETHINC – T.T. Ram Mohan

I have always been a fan of Prof. T.T. Ram Mohan’s crisp and clear communication, whether it was him teaching economics back in college, his lucid and insightful op-eds in newspapers, his chronicle of institution building in Brick by Red Brick and now, his take on the broken system of corporate governance and the cult of the CEO in RETHINC.

The book broadly covers themes of the undemocratic nature of modern-day institutions, centralization of authority, bloated CEO-pay, conflict of interest in the CEO-Board / dominant investor-Board relationship, and corporate governance. Prof. Ram Mohan, himself having served on the board of several institutions draws richly from his experience. The perspectives from academia peppered with case examples from the practical world make for interesting reading. The book is also replete with extensive quotes from Peter Drucker, Warren Buffet, Thomas Piketty, Joseph Stiglitz, among others, which are enjoyable and add depth to the arguments.

RETHINC packs a lot and Prof. Ram Mohan, in his characteristic style, does not mince words. The only thing I wish was better is that the book does entail some repetition and occasionally ventures into technicalities that may be slightly difficult for a layman to grasp. Other than that, it makes up for an interesting learning experience and helps bring to light aspects of corporations that we would ordinarily miss.

Live a Little – Howard Jacobson

Every year when I travel all the way to Jaipur for the Literature Festival, I travel with no expectations but one – by some stroke of perchance or serendipity – to discover a new author. And, in the process of that discovery, if my past experience was to bear any witness, you not only come back with a new name, you also inherit a new person, a new idea, a new way of looking at the world. I can’t thank the festival enough for introducing me to Jhumpa Lahiri, Andre Aciman, and now, Howard Jacobson.

Howard Jacobson took my fancy when he was a part of a larger panel on fiction (as told by my friends) and later on travel (which I personally bore witness to). Every time the mic was handed over to him, he was very funny, or very deep and, more often than not, both. Off I rushed to the book stall and to my dismay, neither ended up finding his Booker prize winning work ‘The Finkler Question’ nor the 2014 shortlist ‘J’ there. Apparently, everything had been sold out the previous day. As a drifted across the book stall, heartbroken, I chanced upon a slightly torn copy of his latest book – ‘Live a Little’ on a random aisle. With a cover like that and the lovely premise, my joy knew no bounds.

Live a Little is a story of two individuals falling in love in the absolute twilight of their lives. Beryl Dusinberry is 99, Shimi Carmelli is 91. And yet, here they are on Finchley Road, falling in love, slowly, but surely. To be honest, I didn’t enjoy the book so much when I started with it. Jacobson’s language initially reminded me of Joseph Conrad in its complexity and vocabulary, in that I had to look at the thesaurus often which broke my chain of thought. But once you are drawn into the story, it makes for a wonderful reading.

I found Shimi’s character much more layered and interesting, and Jacobson’s writing does carry that wit, if only in a darkly comic way. Sometimes you would chuckle to yourself, and often you would be moved. I can’t quite say I could feel for Shimi or Beryl, or completely connect to them, but the way Jacobson builds his characters, there was definitely this neutral space in which I felt I knew them closely.

My only grouse with the story is that it builds up slowly and then moves too fast. I just couldn’t help but compare it to ‘A Man Called Ove’ (due to the similarity of premise), and anything, when compared to A Man Called Ove is bound to end up falling short of your expectations at some level of the other.

To be fair, Howard Jacobson as an author grows on you. I wasn’t quite sure of him when I started, but by the time I finished this book, I fell in love with his writing. I think Live a Little shows the promise of his writing that may have once blossomed in A Finkler Question or J. That being said Live a Little shines in its own light in reminding us that love finds a way if we are open enough to embrace it, irrespective who or where we are.

Being Mortal – Atul Gawande

This is one of those rare times when I have started writing about a book without having completed it. I began typing this out on a busy Friday afternoon sitting in my seventh floor office cubicle watching the first proper rains of this monsoon splatter against tall glass windows. And before I go into the details, writing paragraph after paragraph on my experience of reading this book, let me put up a disclaimer upfront. This is not your light bedtime reading, this is not your vacation companion and this is definitely not your idealistic, over-simplified and romantic notion of life. This is not a book to be read at leisure because it demands every ounce of attention and every last bit of your empathy. If anything, this is a much-needed reality check about pain and suffering, about the end of the stories of our lives.

The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro

The Remains of the Day is a hauntingly beautiful account of life between the two world wars as told from the point of view of an ageing butler named Stevens. After over fifty years of faithful service, Stevens decides to go on a road trip across England in his master’s Ford. Stevens’ ruminations and perspectives, as he travels the roads of England, offer extraordinarily unique insights to several facets of life.

For an anglophile like me, the British backdrop and tone of the book was quite delightful to say the very least. The Remains of the Day slowly grows on you, and once you allow yourself to be immersed in Stevens’ world, it takes you places where you long to remain for eternity. It is a story of unrequited love told in the most subtly beautiful way. It is also a story of acceptance, and making peace with one’s past. Certain parts in the latter half of the book are so overwhelming that one feels fortunate have been able to come across something so beautiful.

It is not a book for everybody as it unravels very slowly, but if your tastes are anything like mine, you’re up for a journey like no other.