Where Whitman was all about enterprise and the pioneer fervour, in Penguin Little Black Classic number 11 we encounter a 13th-14th century Japanese Buddhist monk who says, “Sit around a while. Why the rush?” I knew nothing about Kenko before picking up this little book. I discovered that he became a monk late in…
In my previous Penguin Little Black Classics post, I had mentioned that meeting the author of the tenth classic seems to be destined. I have been a serious reader for about three decades now and Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass has been one of the books that has been recommended to me countless times…
The previous Penguin Little Black Classic – Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal left me shocked. It is one of those books that leaves you admiring the writer while hoping the next book on your shelf inhabits a gentler world. Swift’s satire is so sharp and so relentless that even after the final page, the…
One of the interesting things about writing this series every month is that after a while you stop looking only at the market. You begin noticing how investors behave. This month, I came across several articles discussing whether investors should pause or stop their SIPs because markets have delivered very little over the past…
The LBC number 8 is a satire. Specifically, a collection of satirical essays by Jonathan Swift. The book is called A Modest Proposal – For Preventing the Children of poor People in Ireland, from being a Burden to their Parents or Country; and for making them beneficial to the Publick. I love satire as…
“You’re stalling, ART-drone said. I am not. I can stand here and be useless without any ulterior motives, thanks.” We are back in the original timeline after a switch back in Fugitive Telemetry. System Collapse picks up immediately after Network Effect. And for the first time in the entire series Murderbot is not as…
”What is a random opportunity killing? When a human kills another human just because they can.” After the scale of Network Effect, Fugitive Telemetry felt surprisingly intimate. There were no sprawling rescue missions, no alien contamination threatening entire systems and no crises stretching across large sections of inhabited space. Instead, someone has been murdered…
“Anyone who thinks machine intelligences don’t have emotions needs to be in this very uncomfortable room right now.” After four novellas, Network Effect was the first time I had to settle into a full-length Murderbot story. Until this point, the books moved quickly. Most could be finished in a couple of sittings. This one…
“Sending SecUnits after me was one thing. But they sent SecUnits after my client. No one gets to walk away from that.” By the time I reached Exit Strategy, I had started noticing a pattern in The Murderbot Diaries. The books are often discussed in terms of artificial intelligence, autonomy and personhood, and those…
There are times when the market actually tells you to stop looking at it. There is something that I have noticed over the past month, and the thought came to me while talking with my better half. These days there seems to be a dearth of investing gurus on YouTube. Earlier, a scroll through…