Letters of a French Soldier by Reymond Molle – Book Review

Backround: Peace Palace, The Hague - where the letters are stored today

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Note: I read this book in French

In the Champs Elysées in Paris, at Arc de Triomphe, you have the eternal flame commemorating the ‘unknown soldier’ who lost their lives during the several wars (mainly the First and the Second World wars). However, the term ‘unknown’ might be pejorative as each of them had their own story, their own emotions during those darks times which we have unfortunately not yet uncovered. Reymond Molle is one such ‘unknown’ soldier, whom we get to know through the letters he wrote to his wife during the war.

Reymond’s family comprised him, his wife Emma and their son Georges who was three years old when the war had started. In this anthology, we have letters starting from November 1914, when he was posted in Villefranche-sur-Mer next to the border of Italy in the south of France till he was moved to the trenches in the north of France. He wrote several times during the war to his wife and most of them were regarding his concern over the health of his wife and son.

Several films and books have romanticised war and the heroism of the soldiers to the extent that we have developed an image where soldiers have been trained to lose all their emotions, develop a hatred towards the enemy and are ready to die for their country. However, the reality of a frontline soldier is very different and most of them are merely longing for the day when the war is over, and they could return to their families.

In the letters in this book, Reymond wrote more about farming and was giving advice on how to go about the job as his wife was now managing their farm alone, than about the war and the politics surrounding it. He never expressed any hatred towards Germans in these letters and in fact, prayed for the dead of both the sides. While writing about villages occupied by German forces, he did not write on how he was longing to take it back for France but wrote more about his concern for the families that were split by this and had no news of their members in the occupied villages.

This is a sad story – Reymond had a young doting family and at the start, he was expressing hope for the day when the devastation would be over and could return to normalcy but as it progressed, he lost hope and I could sense that he was beginning to foresee his own death.

Wars achieve nothing, for example, this particular war started with a political conflict between Austria and Serbia but then, more Germans, Russians and the French died than Austrians and Serbians put together (not that a statistic otherwise would have given a meaning to the war). It is a cliché but true – that war is a game played by old politicians where the young lose their lives. And in the end, what did this war achieve? Another war, a bigger one where there was more loss of life.

This book gives a personal angle of a soldier during a war and gives us a new perspective of wars different from what we might have had based on what we have seen and read in popular culture. Sometimes, it feels like invading a personal space while reading these letters, but the stories of war are best told through personal stories, like the diary of Anne Frank.

It would be a good experience if we are able to collect all the stories of unknown soldiers around the world to understand the redundancy of war. For this experience, I give this book a rating of eight on ten.

Rating – 8/10

Have a nice day,
Andy

How to do Nothing by Jenny Odell – Book Review

Publisher’s write-up:

‘Nothing is harder to do these days than nothing. But in a world where our value is determined by our 24/7 data productivity . . . doing nothing may be our most important form of resistance.

So argues artist and critic Jenny Odell in this field guide to doing nothing (at least as capitalism defines it). Odell sees our attention as the most precious—and overdrawn—resource we have. Once we can start paying a new kind of attention, she writes, we can undertake bolder forms of political action, reimagine humankind’s role in the environment, and arrive at more meaningful understandings of happiness and progress.

Far from the simple anti-technology screed, or the back-to-nature meditation we read so often, How to do Nothing is an action plan for thinking outside of capitalist narratives of efficiency and techno-determinism. Provocative, timely, and utterly persuasive, this book is a four-course meal in the age of Soylent.’

How to do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy is a book by the artist Jenny Odell – where she focuses on how to do ‘nothing’, and avoiding the aspects of the modern world that highly demand your attention such as the social media apps and the corporate world that we have built.

She starts with describing her neighbourhood in Oakland, California and her visits to the rose garden to observe the nature around her and watch the birds. She goes on to describe the joy of eventually beginning to identify different kinds of birds in her neighbourhood by the sounds that they make. However, volunteering in the rose garden or admiring the nature in today’s world would be considered as ‘doing nothing’ as it does not generate any value to the economy.

From thereon, she moves on to explaining the manner in which social media applications work – that their primary measure is user engagement and thus, do everything possible to grab your attention. She also has segments on social and political movements of the past, ranging from Thoreau to the workers movement in San Francisco in 1940s. There are also a lot of anecdotes to works of art throughout the book.

As you can observe from above, in a 200 page book, she talks about social media, nature and bird watching, building neighbourhood networks, political movements of the past and also works of art – most of it with a fair amount of detail. This is the reason why I felt the book was lacking focus – where her broad message was conveyed– which is to engage more with the local community and enjoy small things around you rather than being stuck in the ‘attention economy’; but her anecdotes seemed unnecessary.

The title was misleading too, to add a bit of context, I read this book during the lockdown enforced by the coronavirus pandemic. Therefore, the title seemed rather intriguing and even useful during this period. However, this book was far from a ‘how to do’ than presenting her own opinions and her very definition of negative was vague. To quote her:

‘For me, doing nothing means disengaging from one framework (the attention economy) not only to give myself time to think, but to do something else in another framework.’ – page 179

To her, nothing merely means what is not deemed ‘productive’ by the capitalist society such as bird watching or enjoying the rose garden. She goes on to urge us to come out of such perceptions to avoid the attention economy and enjoy the nature around us. While that is a very good suggestion, investigating the varieties of plants and birds in a locality is unlikely to be the interest of every person; for instance, my very act of reading her book was not ‘productive’ because that does not contribute to the economy in anyway (yes, I did pay for the book but then, that is where the ‘economic value’ of the transaction ended). Thus, her definition of the word nothing was vague and what she largely seems to mean is doing something not deemed productive (which frankly should cover even watching a free to air television channel).

To conclude, I appreciate the broad message of the book and based on my discussions on the book with local book clubs around (by video!), a lot of us agree that we may have a new perspective while meeting neighbours or looking at birds in the sky. That small change in our lives could be attributed as a success of the writer. However, presentation is very important in a non-fiction work and this book was neither easy to read nor was it worth the arduous reading effort.

On that note, I would award the book a rating four on ten.

Rating – 4/10

Have a nice day,
Andy

Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell – Book Review

Publisher’s write-up:

‘The routine traffic stop that ends in tragedy. The spy who spends years undetected at the highest levels of the Pentagon. The false conviction of Amanda Knox. Why do we so often get other people wrong? Why is it so hard to detect a lie, read a face or judge a stranger's motives?

Through a series of encounters and misunderstandings - from history, psychology and infamous legal cases - Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual adventure into the darker side of human nature, where strangers are never simple and misreading them can have disastrous consequences.

No one challenges our shared assumptions like Malcolm Gladwell. Here he uses stories of deceit and fatal errors to cast doubt on our strategies for dealing with the unknown, inviting us to rethink our thinking in these troubled times.’

Talking to Strangers: What Should We Know About the People We Don’t Know is where the journalist Malcolm Gladwell builds the case on how we inherently lack skills to judge strangers and makes historical references, experiments and steps implemented by the police in US (and it’s success or otherwise) and legal proceedings – some of them that garnered a lot of media attention and others, not so much.

The book begins and ends with the same case of Sandra Bland – a researcher from Illinois, where a conversation with a police officer in rural Texas, with her committing suicide in custody later. It then proceeds, like a thriller novel – dealing with politicians, spies and espionage cases of the past. The author then goes on to explain our tendency to ‘default to the truth’, wherein, we have preconceived notions which we presume is true and we constantly try to fit the stranger in front of us to this truth (the author took the case of the Cuban spy in CIA – Ana Montes and the architect of one of the largest Ponzi schemes – Bernie Madoff), often blinding us on every other indicator that would have proven this truth. The other issues that the author investigates in this book are the effects of alcohol and suicides.

The book is very well presented and considering I read it in the year 2020, almost every example in this book is within the last 20 years or at least, within the last 80 years – making it very relatable and many of these are stories we have followed in the media ourselves. At every point, the author narrates the case, then explains the concept that we have when it comes to judging strangers and what happened in the case taken up by the author. It was very interesting when the author brought out as to how many expressions we believe as universal are not quite so, and with cultural differences, it could often lead to wrong conclusions, which sometimes turns fatal. It was very informative how he had explained the ‘coupling effect’ in suicide and many other decisions (that these do not occur independently).

The two issues that bothered me in the book was repetition and the very title of the book. The author, especially with it came to explaining ‘default to the truth’, was citing several examples to build the same case; much as it was an important concept in the book as a whole, the book would not have been any less rich if the author had skipped a few of these repetitions. Coming to the title, it gives the impression of a self-help book, whereas it is far from it. The author merely builds the case about our limitations in assessing strangers and is intending us to be informed of these limitations so that we do not make these errors. A similar book I could think of that I read, The Power of Habit (click here for review), was also taking real life examples and building a case but later on, had a chapter on how to incorporate it into our personal lives to conclude the book. Hence, I felt the title was misleading.

I have started reading Gladwell with the most recent of his releases and this book has certainly enthused me enough to try his earlier books. It is highly recommended if you are interested in reading about perceiving strangers and how it could go right or wrong – with real examples on where they got it wrong or right.

On that note, I give the book a rating of seven on ten.

Rating – 7/10

Have a nice day,
Andy

God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens – Book Review

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Publisher’s write-up:

‘In god is Not Great Hitchens turned his formidable eloquence and rhetorical energy to the most controversial issue in the world: God and religion. The result is a devastating critique of religious faith.

god Is Not Great is the ultimate case against religion. In a series of acute readings of the major religious texts, Christopher Hitchens demonstrates the ways in which religion is man-made, dangerously sexually repressive and distorts the very origins of the cosmos. Above all, Hitchens argues that the concept of an omniscient God has profoundly damaged humanity and proposes that the world might be a great deal better off without 'him'.’

For far too long, this book was in my ‘to read’ list. I had always enjoyed reading columns, speeches and debates of Christopher Hitchens and had actively followed his works even when he was alive and I find it hard to believe that it has been ten years since his death; such is the power of his rhetoric and writing considering the impact he has to this day. It was a matter of time before I started reading this book and would assess whether it was worth my wait.

The earlier UK publication had a caption attached to the title – a case against religion; and that is exactly what Hitchens builds during the course of this book, a case against organised religion. It is an indiscreet take on the role religion has historically had on the society and continues to have to this date, which in the author’s opinion is an influence that does more harm than good. A usual criticism of a fellow lead figure in the new atheism sphere, Richard Dawkins, is that most of his books focus on the Abrahamic religions (which is a criticism that I do not accept – to read why, click here to read my review on The god delusion by Richard Dawkins). However, Hitchens cannot be accused of that in this book as he has elaborate sections for Asian and native American religions – often with interesting personal anecdotes (from India, Iraq, etc.).

Hitchens’ primary arguments are as follows: how religion is a root for many obnoxious but normalised practices across the world, how there is no connection between morality and religion, how there is nothing to suggest that these books written centuries ago are not human inventions, and even if we take the books as is – there is very little morality to derive out of it unless you consciously exclude certain portions out of it (which most religious people do) and finally, debunking questions often posed to atheists (like Pascal’s wager).

The author played to his strengths in this book; he is known to be excellent at debates (having watched so many, I can vouch for that) and thus, he was effective in building this case. The other strength of his that was apparent was his ability with the words and how, a subject that could be considered boring and sometimes having to discuss very uncomfortable events / practices was put forth well. At first, I felt that the author was quoting multiple people and books without a footnote but towards the end, I found a very elaborate section for ‘References’; and in my Kindle edition, they were all hyperlinked and thus, if anyone wants to factcheck his claims made during the book, that is simple.  

There was a good contrast between reading Dawkins and Hitchens, where the former is a scientist – a lot of his arguments were centred around science and with the latter being a journalist, it had many anecdotes from history, news (much of it would seem like history now, but those are issues he actively reported on) and also references from his extensive travelling around the world. Hitchens’ arguments are quite powerful and as an atheist myself, I have often used arguments inspired from him – but that was sometimes the downside of the book for me personally because I had already read a lot his essays and listened to his speeches and debates; thus, a lot of contents here, seemed like a repetition to me (and could be true for anyone who has followed Hitchens before reading this book).

Of course, someone would always say that Hitchens has misinterpreted the scriptures and he is presenting a one-sided picture – but that is precisely the point; that you cannot be the absolute truth and be subject to interpretation at the same time. That is without mentioning the multiple contradictions within organised religions and how, their organisations have often justified and abetted the worst crimes against humanity. Even a single exception collapses the argument for religion being the source of morality and knowledge though in reality, there are multiple contradictions as elucidated by the author in this book.

One could always say that my endorsement of this book is arising out of a confirmation bias, but I would still be bold enough to hazard a guess that people with an open mind regardless of their religious affiliation will enjoy this book. It is a well written case against religion made by the author. While I do not believe in an afterlife, the closest we have to one has been enabled by great human inventions (writing, printing, internet, etc.) owing to which, thoughts of Hitchens resonate to this day. On that note, I would award the book a rating of nine on ten. Thus, it was certainly worth the wait.

Rating – 9/10

Have a nice day,
Andy

No One is too Small to Make a Difference by Greta Thunberg – Book Review +

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Publisher’s write-up:

'No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference is Greta’s first book in English, collecting her speeches from climate rallies across Europe to audiences at UN, the World Economic Forum, and the British Parliament.’

Note: My book is the May 2019 edition, and thus, I shall not refer to the speeches added in the expanded edition published in November 2019

Regardless of our position on her activism, most of us have an opinion on Greta Thunberg. Before I get into the review, I shall make it clear that considering the size of the book, this review would also be a mix of my views on the book and her activism (hence, the + on the title). For starters, she is another teenage activist who garners unusual amount of hate to be merely dismissed as media hype and followed up with endless conspiracy theories. All I saw was a repeat of what happened with another teenage activist during the decade, being Malala Yousafzai, the girl who was supposedly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize just for getting shot, completely ignoring the fact that she was shot because of her activism (click here to read the review of I am Malala).

This is a small book and takes less than an hour to read – it contains eleven of her speeches, delivered before May 2019. The central theme of her speeches is that we are running out of time in taking action against climate change to keep global warming below acceptable levels, how the politicians are not doing enough and an urge to listen to the scientists. There is also emphasis on how the current societal model which measures success by economic growth is not sustainable, much as sustainable development has been a term for years, they have just been empty words with very little intent to act on those plans.

It is a matter of surprise that in countries like the US (and several others, unfair to single out one), the debate is not over how to handle climate change but rather, on existence of climate change. Much as the consensus among scientists is well known, the lobbyists have been strong enough to propagate climate change, like ExxonMobil; a champion of climate change denial up until recent times, despite their own research suggesting otherwise (precisely the reason why they needed the propaganda).

The book contains her famous speeches such as ‘Our House is on Fire’ delivered at the World Economic Forum in Davos and ‘Can You Hear Me?’; where she emphasises how it is time the world recognises the problem as a crisis and treats it as one and the speech in House of Commons (being Can You Hear Me?), she brings up the creative accounting used by UK to show dramatic steps and achievements (having read several accounts about the Civil Service, I can easily imagine that coming from Whitehall).

She also explains much of the hate that she receives – as to how she is politically motivated, does not offer any solutions, etc. Especially regarding that latter, I have always felt that she never claimed that she had solutions and the crux of her speeches is urging politicians to listen to scientists. Much as she denies that she has any backing, it is very much possible that she does but I am not bothered by that so long as I am convinced about the cause that is being backed even if she is merely being used as a tool. I am satisfied that her activism regardless of our beliefs have got us to talk on this topic, across countries and that is what I consider as her success.

Of course, there are points I don’t agree with – where she points out that it is a black and white issue and there is no room for grey; while I agree with her on the issue part of it (need to reiterate my surprise at people still debating over the existence of climate change), it is not the same for solution and it is difficult to overhaul the system overnight. It is impossible to be completely in agreement with any person and Greta is no exception. The point that if the current rules do not permit the change, it is the rules that need a change, is a point that I agree with and has been emphasised well in all of her speeches.

My suggestion to the reader would be to not read all speeches at once as it might seem repetitive.

There were around a ten blank pages in my edition after the end of the book and it would have been much better if sources to the facts mentioned in her speeches were given; I do not challenge the factual accuracy as even her staunchest haters do not accuse her of factual inaccuracies, nonetheless, it would have been better to have the sources.

The book as such, I award it a rating of seven on ten.

Rating – 7/10

Have a nice day,
Andy

The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam by Chris Ewan – Book Review

Publisher’s write-up:

‘In Amsterdam working on his latest novel, Charlie is approached by a mysterious American who asks him to steal two apparently worthless monkey figurines from two separate addresses on the same night. At first he says no. Then he changes his mind. Only later, kidnapped and bound to a chair, the American very dead and a spell in police custody behind him, does Charlie begin to realise how costly a mistake he might have made.

The police think he killed the American. Others think he knows the whereabouts of the elusive third monkey. But for Charlie only three things matter: Can he clear his name? Can he get away with the haul of a lifetime? And can he solve the briefcase-shaped plot-hole in his latest novel?’

In crime fiction, the protagonist is usually a detective (police or private) or a journalist, but this book features the lead character Charlie Howard who is a crime fiction writer and a part time thief. Charlie is from the UK and is currently living in Amsterdam, in the process of completing his next novel.

Charlie is approached by an American, Michael Park, who has a job for him – to steal two monkey figurines made of plaster for a fee of € 20,000. While Charlie has exact instructions on how to carry out the mission, the plan falls apart and Michael is fatally injured. It does not take long for the police to find Charlie and is a suspect for the attack on the American; while Charlie is no way an honourable character, this is certainly a crime that he did not commit. The rest of the plot revolves around his own investigations on why he was approached for the job and the importance of the seemingly worthless monkey figurines.

The author got into the plot immediately and the city of Amsterdam was used well – be it the description of the canals, the cafes and the seventeenth century houses. It was interesting to read crime fiction from the perspective of a thief and why Charlie became a burglar also had a good background story. Apart from Charlie, I was also satisfied with the supporting characters, the barmaid Marieke who is acquainted to both Michael and Charlie and has a critical role throughout the plot, the investigating officer Buggrave; all of these characters have a past which becomes an important part of the plot and the way the past unfolded and connected to the present kept me gripped. The book had a good start, and I was satisfied with the conclusion and the way it unfolded as aforementioned, but the book seemed a drag in between (especially the segments where Charlie was trying to fix plot holes in his own upcoming book), which had significantly reduced my pace in reading the book.

Much as Charlie was interesting – a famous writer cum thief, I also found him to be vain, who is too proud of his achievements as a writer and also, his prowess in burglary (and his actions in the book made me seriously doubt both). There were aspects about his character that was not convincing, wherein, he is a famous writer, but nobody knows the real Charlie Howard to the extent that he does not use his own picture in his book cover, which neither the public nor anyone in the general public know about (hard to believe). There were times where I felt it was very evident that it was the author’s first novel – wherein, Charlie was surprised to learn that the monkey figurines probably had more value than being merely intrinsic to Michael; which was obvious to the reader from the very beginning (I am not revealing any more on their significance).

To be honest, I started reading this book with no expectations. The only reason I had this book in my Kindle was because, sometime around the end of 2017, the book was available for free. I did not bother reading the book till I had planned an Amsterdam trip myself (which is forthcoming on a date after the publishing of this review) and I do not regret the decision, the book has laid a good foundation, there were shortcomings like how I felt the narration and dialogues were a little too flat but I hope it improves in the series (the next book happens to be Charlie’s adventures in the city I live in at present, so, should be interesting for me).

To conclude, I would say that the book convinced me enough to continue with the series and I would award the book a rating of six on ten.

Rating – 6/10

Have a nice day,
Andy

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari – Book Review

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Publisher’s write-up:

‘Sapiens shows us where we came from. Homo Deus shows us where we’re going.

Yuval Noah Harari envisions a near future in which we face a new set of challenges. Homo Deus explores the projects, dreams and nightmares that will shape the twenty-first century and beyond – from overcoming death to creating artificial life.

It asks the fundamental questions: how can we protect this fragile world from our own destructive power? And what does our future hold?’

Homo Deus is the sequel to Sapiens:A Brief History of Humankind (click for reading the review of Sapiens) from Professor Yuval Noah Harari. While Sapiens explains the events in human history up to the 21^st century, the author presents his prognosis on the future of the species – how are we going to deal with changing technology and artificial intelligence? Would we remain the same or would there be a fundamental change – the principal case the author built in the previous book was how our species managed to overcome several constraints without a fundamental change in the structure of our DNA. The author answers these questions in his book Homo Deus.

His coining of the term Homo Deus represents the species that would replace Homo Sapiens and the impact that genetic engineering and artificial intelligence is going to have. The author starts very well, explaining how we are living in the best time humanity has ever witnessed, that for the first time more people die of obesity related diseases than malnutrition, more people die of suicides than war and plague, inter alia. The book is split into three parts – the first explaining how homo sapiens conquered the world, moving on to explain how homo sapiens gave meaning to ‘their world’, and the final part explaining how we are losing control and the author’s prognosis on the future.

As mentioned earlier, the book started very well, giving out interesting facts and explaining how every human emotion is mere biochemical reactions; what if they could be recreated? That was a very good way to start the book which got us immediately into the book. Like his previous book, it dealt with a scientific topic and the author used layman’s language throughout the book. Owing to the similarity of the topic, this did not feel like a book different from Sapiens and in fact, in a lot of cases, it felt like the author was repeating the same contents as his previous book – during the second part, as to how humans rely on myth, how we need them for cooperation, etc. It seemed to me as a means to write a book very similar to the previous book including the size, whereas what the author wished to convey could have been done so in half the number of pages if we remove the redundancies.

I also observed the same flaws that I noticed in Sapiens, where the author seems to misunderstand the word 'religion' – going on to explain how ‘humanism’ and ‘liberalism’ are religions and what would be the religion of the future. Sure, there are some similarities between religion and the above-mentioned ideologies; to start with, they are ideologies, and both are myths that a lot of humans believe in, to create a stable society. But the similarities end there – religion is associated with the divine and there is usually a creator (which is the reason why theologians debate whether Buddhism could be considered a religion) and pretends to hold answers for every question and surely, the above mentioned laws do not (nobody would ask a humanist philosopher to explain how the universe came into being). This logic is the same as 'My dog has a tail. A cat also has a tail. Therefore, my dog is a cat'. These aspects of the book made me cringe.

It also needs to be mentioned as to how the author mentioned certain obvious facts as findings; to quote an example, tried to prove how human beings are not different from any other animals and there is no proof over existence of a soul. I have never come across even the staunchest users and believers in the concept argue that it is a scientific / medical concept. There was a similar argument over mind. Much as it was surprising and thus interesting to note that scientists conducted experiments to confirm the lack of it, it did not add any value to the book, nor add any knowledge to the reader.

To conclude, I would say that this book may be read for the sake of continuity and it has its high points and some interesting facts, but certainly not as informative as Sapiens. A relatively minor issue that kept bothering me is that the very title ‘history of tomorrow’ is a contradiction in terms. This book is a classic case of ruining a good start – the book dealt very little with the author’s prognosis. However, I would admit that if I evaluate the content ignoring all the redundant parts of the book, I would say it was fairly informative. That saves the author’s reputation in my books to read his next work, but not the rating of this book, I award the book a rating of four on ten.

Rating – 4/10

Have a nice day,
Andy