I am back home from a fruitful trip to Copenhagen (or Hopenhagen or Flopenhagen; depending on your convenience). I didn’t get as close to the action as I would have liked to (accreditation issues) but still managed to meet some pretty interesting people and generate some food for thought.
It also means that I have tons of compiling of stuff to do and rearrange my notes into meaningful blog posts.
But homecoming also means a visit to the local bookstore. However, since I live in a bylane (or gully), the local bookstore has never existed for me. A trip to Odyssey landed me with the following winter reads.
Photo courtesy State Library and Archives of Florida
Maximum City: Bombay lost & found (Suketu Mehta): I have heard so much about this book. It’s one of those books always lying on the bookshelves waiting to be picked by some inquisitive soul. Finally, it was a review by indie musician Uday Benegal and a reading of a paragraph on an age-old Indian cuss word that made me pick up the book. The book is about Bombay, a city living on the edge, filled up to its brim.
Blessed Unrest: How the largest social movement in history is restoring grace, justice and beauty to the world (Paul Hawken): The book is about how the civil society is changing the world as we know it today. From every nook an corner concerned citizens are forming associations to save the planet, to seek justice, to talk about the abuses of free markets fundamentalism. As Hawken puts it, there is no single name to this movement, no unifying ideology, but it’s there and you are probably a part of it.
Welcome to the Urban Revolution: How cities are changing the world (Jeb Brugman): In this book Jeb argues that the greatest challenge for the 21st century involves in improved city building. He says that the productivity, economic prosperity and political stability of the nation depends on how they embrace urbanisation.
The Game: Penetrating the secret society of pickup artists (Neil Strauss): He is the original pickup artist. Nuff said.
Changing my mind (Zadie Smith): My bong friend had recommended Zadie Smith’s White Teeth to me last year. I never really got around to purchasing that novel. What I didn manage to purchase though was Smith’s collection of non fiction essays on writing called Changing my Mind. Smith says “When you are first published at a young age, you’re writing grows with you-and in public. Changing my mind seemed an apt, confessional title to describe this process.”
Free Lunch: Easily Digestible Economics (David Smith): Pop Economics, though hoping to be a better read than Freakonomics.
What we say goes (Noam Chomsky): Disturbing conclusions about US imperialism it seems and what could civil society do about it. Was recommended to me by a close pal.
Liars Poker (Micheal Lewis): This one is supposed to be better than Wall Street. Let’s give it a shot.
India after Gandhi: The history of the world’s largest democracy (Ramachandra Guha): This is one bulky book and I hope to consume it one gulp at a time.
I am also currently about to finish Cleo Paskal‘s Global Warring. The book was gifted to me by Cleo herself (and obviously personally signed) after we got talking at the Fresh Air Center. She was part of a panel discussion in Copenhagen and writes on geopolitics and security. In Global Warring she writes about how environmental concerns will affect global security.
