Category: books

  • The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner

    I finished this book last year in the summer and liked it a lot.  The author described it as a “philosophical self-help humorous travel memoir.” Weiner was a veteran foreign correspondent for National Public Radio and traveled the world in search of the happiest places. This is how the book was described on his web site:…

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  • Pattern Recognition recognized

    I finished reading “Pattern Recognition” by William Gibson (first published 2003) – thoroughly enjoyable and highly recommended. It is less sci-fi furturistic than his early works. The story revolves around a quest to find the maker of a series of enigmatic online videos that rocked a certain corner of the cyberspace inhabited by otakus, industrial…

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  • Jet Lag / Lost In A Moment

    Jet Lag / Lost In A Moment

    I am reading “Pattern Recognition” –  a sci-fi-ish fiction by William Gibson.  His style in describing all things near-futuristic can sometimes be abstract, to say the least. But it surely beats something that reads like a fanboy’s wish lists of next-generation gadgets.  The main character is a media consultant who is psychologically “allergic” to certain…

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  • Haute Cuisine without Mao Zedong

    For the trip to Mexico, I picked up Fuchsia Dunlop’s sweet-sour memoir – “Shark’s fin and Sichuan pepper” at JFK.  I have read her article(s) in some travel/food magazines before, but did not realize the full extent of her immersion in Chinese food culture.  I will post more about her book here. When I saw…

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