The Disappearing Spoon

What a fascinating and enjoyable book this is! The periodic table is something that we all learn about first in school and then for most of us, its relegated to a corner of the brain hardly ever figuring in our daily lives.
We know the table exists but it barely registers on the surface. In this brilliant book, Sam Kean brings it back with a bang and takes us on a journey across the rows and down the columns of the table, giving us a view of its history, how the table got its present shape and the elements that make it up. In the process, we are re-introduced to the elements, their characteristics & general properties, how they relate & intermingle with other elements, what makes them interesting or unique, etc. The chapters in the book group elements by properties that we can relate to, for instance their use in money or in medicine. The author has also avoided repeating the same elements in chapters, so each chapter presents a new set of stories & incidents around a fresh set of elements. Sam Kean’s writing style is light, easy & witty and he avoids getting into too much technical detail, so the lay person who last came across the periodic table in school can still enjoy this book and share the thrill of the early chemists & scientists in their discoveries & inventions.

This book deservedly made it to the shortlist for the Royal Society’s award for Science books in 2011.

A Murder of Quality

John Le Carre’s likeable and intelligent detective George Smiley is requested to investigate a murder in one of England’s leading schools. The victim seems to have foreseen her own murder but as Smiley finds out when he gets there, everything is not as straightforward as it seems. The police are unable to penetrate the upperclass snobbishness of Carne’s masters to conduct a regular investigation and it requires Smiley’s ingenuity & easy charm to get to the bottom of the puzzle. The quality of writing is excellent and the atmosphere of a leading public school is captured brilliantly in this relatively slim work.

 

My Friend Maigret (Mon Ami Maigret)

The Maigret series had been a conspicuous omission from both my collection and the list of books that I have read, so when I came across this English translation of Mon Ami Maigret, I couldn’t wait to start on it and judge for myself how good this much-written about French detective is. I enjoyed the book. Maigret is a little similar in his style and approach to the Colin Dexter creation Inspector Morse. He’s easy-going, not too particular about procedures and sharp but without giving the impression of smartness. This particular story is about the death of a trampish character in a sunny French island. The evening before his death, he announces to all that he is a friend of Maigret’s and that night he is killed. Maigret is called in because of this connection and he’s only too happy to escape from a rain-drenched Paris to sunny Porqueroles. He is accompanied by a Scotland Yard inspector who has come over to study Maigret’s methods. The location is exotic with a good mix of colourful characters. Simenon conveys the atmosphere of the place very well. The mystery itself is light but its enjoyable to keep company with Maigret as he progresses it at a steady pace to a satisfactory conclusion.

Good, light, enjoyable read.

 

Crime

This is a very good collection of short stories by some well-known authors, including Graham Green & Robert Barr. I feel short crime stories are a difficult genre. In this collection, we have such gems as The Case For the Defence by Graham Greene, which is a powerfully written tale that ends with what seems to be a case of divine justice being enacted but still leaving a loose end open. A Retrieved Reformation by O Henry is a popular heartwarming crime story – the day I read it in this collection, I also happened to spot it in my nephew’s school text book. There’s The Lost Special by Arthur Conan Doyle which refers in a roundabout way to his famous creation Mr Holmes without directly naming him, but which in itself is a very good tale of a locomotive that mysteriously vanishes. Finally, I liked An Alpine Divorce by Robert Barr where a wife pays the ultimate price to get one-up over the husband she hates. There are other stories too and by not naming them I don’t imply they are any less effective in presenting the thrill of the chase.

 

An Unsuitable Job For a Woman

This novel introduces P D James’ other detective creation – the young Cordelia Gray, who becomes the sole owner of the Pryde Detective Agency after the suicide at the start of her partner. Even as she is just getting to grips with the changed scenario, she has a case thrust on her which takes her away to Cambridge to find out why young Mark Callender committed suicide. Armed with her wits and an unlicensed gun left to her by her late partner and aided by his plentiful advice, she sets about getting to the bottom of the mystery. As she starts unravelling the threads, she finds out the hard way that it will take all her wits & ingenuity to solve the puzzle.

This is a light easy detective story. It has none of the heavy atmosphere that P D James creates very effectively in her Adam Dalgliesh mysteries. Incidentally Mr Dalgliesh makes an appearance in this book too, at the end for a couple of pages. The action is much faster and the mystery quotient a little less. Cordelia Gray comes across as an intelligent & likeable person, closer to normal than the very perceptive Adam Dalgliesh. However, its hard to reconcile with her quickly-developed affection for the subject of her investigation.

Overall this book is a passable read. The detection levels are sub-par for P D James and all the threads tie up too nicely at the end. For Adam Dalgliesh fans, this book is best avoided or to be read at a reduced expectation level.

 

Happy New Year, Herbie and other stories

Evan Hunter who wrote this collection is perhaps better known by his pseudonym Ed McBain. I have enjoyed many of the books from the 87th Precinct series, so I am guilty of over-expectations from this collection of short stories. The first thing I realised was that hardly any of these stories have anything to do with crime, indeed in this collection of 12 stories, only one – or two – has – or have – a (tenuous) link with crime. This is a collection of, to put it simply, stories. Don’t expect a twist at the end or a problem to be solved or even a clean ending. Instead what we have here is a set of tales – simple and complex – written by a master of the art. Some are moving, some simply make you smile. Most of them touch a nerve somewhere. My personal favourites were Million Dollar Maybe, The Fallen Angel, The Innocent One, Alive Again and Pretty Eyes. Maybe that just betrays my prejudice towards clean endings or a closure of some sort in any tale. What is however evident in every one of these stories is the clarity of thought and the ability of a writer to convey the essence of any situation through mere words. Enjoy this book just for that experience.

God Save The Mark (Donald Westlake)

This is a delightful comedy crime-caper from one of the masters of humourous crime. Fred Fitch is a mark, someone who believes he has been at the receiving end of every one of the seventeen thousand con men operating in New York at any time. But then comes the turnaround. Fred is suddenly left a huge legacy by an uncle he didn’t even know existed and suddenly Fred is the most popular man around, as he is chased, hounded, shot at and led on a merry run around New York in this wild caper that will have the reader laughing at every page. It takes all of Fred’s ingenuity, unwilling bravado and con experience to piece the jigsaw together, and as with all good, nay, neat endings, he gets the money and the girl.

God Save The Mark won Donald Westlake the Edgar Award for Best Novel in 1968.

The Edgar Award Book

This is a collection of winners and runner-ups in the Best Short Story category of the Edgar awards, awarded annually by the Mystery Writers of America. The editor’s note at the start says that it is often the mere whim of a few individuals that separates an award winner from the runner-up and while everyone remembers the winner, the runner-up is quietly forgotten. This collection brings selections from both categories. It has such gems as Forsyth’s There Are No Snakes in Ireland (winner, 1983), Donald Westlake’s hilarious 1990 winner Too Many Crooks and Wendy Hornsby’s 1992 soulful winner Nine Sons. But the book also brings together some forgotten nominees such as P D James’ Moment of Power, Evan Hunter’s The Last Spin and Clark Howard’s Challenge The Widow-Maker. Many of the stories make an enjoyable read though there are a few tiresome ones too – I’ll let you decide for yourself which are the ones that stretch both the definition of an award nominee and your patience. Still, let the presence of a few bad eggs not deter lovers of the short mystery story genre, for this is one book that will be hard to put down.

Alex’s Adventures in Numberland

Mathematics is either something you hate or something you love – there’s no middle ground about it. Alex Bellos takes us on a fascinating journey to explore the mathematics behind everyday phenomena and things we take for granted. He travels around the world to meet people who are still pushing the boundaries of our understanding of the subject. Along the way he serves us forgotten stories & anecdotes from the world of maths and shares his trove of mathematical treasures for us to enjoy. This book will not make you count any faster – though there are some tips for those too – but it will surely make you sit up and approach with renewed understanding some of the things that we know subconsciously but never bubble up to the conscious surface.

Alex writes very well too, with the right reverance for the topic yet keeping the chapters – which incidentally start from zero – light & entertaining. If you are a maths wizard or someone who routinely cringes at anything more complex than an addition, this book will have some eye-openers for you.

Very good read and must-have in any decent collection.

 

Life on Air

I am not a fan of biographies but this was one autobiography that I was looking forward to for a long time and it didn’t disappoint. On the contrary, this lifestory by one of the most respected people on television read every bit like a thriller. The locations are far more exotic than a James Bond movie. The cast, thankfully lacking in much human presence, is varied and colourful.

David Attenborough writes even better than he presents. The book is essentially his journey in television and how the ideas for his documentaries evolved and were brought to the small screen. Its filled with witty anecdotes on every page, nuggets of information on tribes in far-flung lands and almost magical descriptions of places that’ll never be on a regular tourist itinerary.

If you love the nature and the outdoors, this book is a must-read for the sheer sense of adventure & enthusiasm that spring out from every page. We can only envy Sir David for the very lucky set of opportunities he has had and this book gives a small sense of the sheer fun he must’ve had on them.

If you are buying this book, I’d recommend the hard-cover version with a good print. I bought the paperback edition with rather fine print – for reasons for economy (!), only to realise later that such books should be a keepsake for life.