Sweet Tooth : Ian McEwan (3.5/5.0)

Sweet Tooth is a well written book by Ian McEwan which is about several things all at once.

While not exactly a bildungsroman it is about a young protagonist growing up into adulthood. The protagonist in this case is a slightly precocious bishop's daughter from a quaint cathedral town in England. She enters the world of espionage through her much older lover and in that process gets acquainted with the writer who is her next. While not exactly living in poverty she reminds me of Dulcie - 'the girl who lived on 6 dollars a week' in O Henry's  " An Unfinished Story"

The book is also about how secret services in the west waged the soft cold war with USSR. This was done largely by encouraging and promoting the right kind of writers, painters and other artists. Something tells me this hasn't stopped yet.

I am sure there are some deeper literary allusions that I have missed completely.

Its an enjoyable read  by Ian MacEwan - just like other books by him that I have read such as Amsterdam and Atonement. 

The Honorary Consul : Graham Greene (4.0/5.0)

A caveat before the review - Graham Greene is possibly my favorite writer of the English language. No book of his might be among my top 3 favourite books, but as an author there are very few that I like as much as Greene. There is something simple but beautifully understated in his writings. Some thing authentic, complex and grey about his characters. John Le Carre', another of my favourites, with his morally ambiguous protagonists and causes is also supposed to have been influenced by Greene.

The Honorary consul is a typical Greene novel dealing with expat British protagonists in foreign lands, and one of his eight books set in South America. The setting here is a provincial town in Argentina. Charley Fortrum, is the honorary British consul with dubious authority and a notorious fondness for drink. Dr. Eduardo Parr is a British doctor and second part of the three who make up the British contingent in this town. 

In a case of mistaken identity the eponymous Honorary Consul gets kidnapped by rebels from across the border. The books is largely about Charley's friend Dr. Parr's efforts to have him released. Incidentally Dr. Parr is not only sleeping with Charley's wife but also has inadvertently played a part in the Consul being kidnapped. The result is a complex tale which is somehow not chaotic but beautifully languorous as expected in  Greene novel. Thoroughly enjoyable.       

 

 

Going Infinite : Michael Lewis (3.5/5)

Sam Bankman Fried (SBF) was the precocious child of Stanford professors. He attended a school for gifted children, went to math camp and landed at MIT. There he aced the rigorous recruitment process of the quant hedge fund Jane Street and joined the world of cutting edge finance. When that was not exciting enough he plunged head long into the world of crypto currencies founding the crypto hedge fund Almeida Research and the crypto exchange FTX. In the process and within a few years he became one of the wealthiest men in the world with a net worth in the ball park of $ 30 Bn. He was not only rich but, with his cargo shorts and crumpled T-shirts, gave the impression of being one of those rich people who don't care about money.

Anyway all the money he was earning was in the service of effective altruism - a philosophy which, in a nut shell, dictated that a talented person was better off using their time to make a lot of money and give it off rather than standing in a soup kitchen. Like a real life Sheldon Cooper he was supremely talented and casually irreverent - playing video games as he spoke to powerful people. He gave money not only to worthy causes but also to celebrities and politicians - at one point entertaining the idea of paying Donald Trump $5 bn not to run for the US Presidential elections. At the peak of his powers he was hailed as a modern day J P Morgan - the man who would single handedly save the crypto world.

But when the proverbial tide went out - he was found to be swimming without his shorts. FTX - which was an exchange, was never supposed to take market risk. It was supposed to liquidate the positions of its clients when they made losses ensuring that it took no risk on itself. That is what it always did , except for one client - Almeida research. When the crypto cycle turned Alameda research was out of pockets for $ 8bn , financed by customers of FTX. Within days he and his companies were bankrupt and the dream up in smoke. The book evokes a sense of disbelief in someone like me who is not a crypto buff. It seems miraculous that so much money was being made and lost just a few years back while the rest of us were just about coping with covid. 

In an amazing co-incidence, for nearly 2 years while he was at his peak till and beyond his downfall he allowed himself to be shadowed by Michael Lewis - that veteran chronicler of the excesses of capitalism. This book is the result of those 2 years of access. Like 'Liar's Poker' or 'Big Short' Michael gets us a good sense of what was happening , even more so this time since he has the ring seat.

I recently read the book The Innovators - by Walter Isaacson that covers a whole gamut of , specially American, inventors behind the computer, internet, digital revolution like  J Eckert, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs etc. I was struck by how similar these stories were to that of SBF till things went bad. Its not clear from the book if SBF was like a later day Steve Jobs undone by events or like an Elizabeth Holmes who was knowingly perpetrating a fraud. Michael Lewis, while not stating it, obviously seem to lean towards the former explanation. White stating his flaws - he does seems indulgent of SBF in the book.

How Prime Ministers Decide: Neerja Choudhary ( 3.5/5.0)

Raj Narain is known as the guy who caused Indira Gandhi's downfall. He challenged her election from Rae Bareli - the loss of that case led to Indira declaring emergency and when Indira called for elections in 1977 he was the guy who defeated her. This is fairly well known. What  is not so well known was that Indira then used the same Raj Narain to break up the Janta Party govt. Or how similar was Congress's use of Chandrashekhar to break up the Janta Dal govt almost a decade later.

Such interesting episodes with all the back story and gossip associated with them make for great reading. 

The book covers episodes from the tenures of six Prime Minsters of India. These include emergency and how Indira won back power after her post emergency defeat. The journey of the reluctant Prime Minister that was Rajeev Gandhi, VP Singh's implementation of the Mandal report, Vajpayee's quirky personal life and how he green lit the nuclear tests for India  and finally how the mild mannered Man Mohan Singh staked his prime ministership to  secure the Indo-US nuclear deal.

 

At one level it is a good rough guide to 30 odd years of contemporary Indian history but more importantly, as the title suggests, it is a behind the scenes view of all the deal making and real politic that goes in decision making at the highest level. The  racy style of the book keeps the reader engaged throughout. 

Obviously, since  the book relies  on private conversations and a lot of hearsay the details have to be taken with a pinch of salt. The author could have her own sympathies or the people who told her things could have exaggerated or bent the truth. Even accounting for these its a recommended read for a sense of how India was ( and maybe still is ) run.