Wednesday, September 30, 2009

The Argumentative Indian


When it come to arguments Indians are well known, these essay or monologs talks about historic references, statistical data, philosophical journey of Indian thoughts from Geeta to India-china relationships, culture, politics and so many aspects of life with reasons.

I liked the name welfare economics derived from the central theme of Geeta “faire and forward” to current requirement of “welfare and forward”. I always feel that books like these make our understanding about our country more accurate, transparent, and make us proud about our country. Sometime I amazed first university of international education was In India called Nalanda with so many foreign students who shaped the history of world.

“Just consider how terrible the day of your death will be, others will go on speaking, and you not be able to ague back.” Ram Mohun Roy

Persepolis


This book remind me of Anne Frank’s diary, an innocent account on the dark side of war history, and story-line quite similar to movie/novel Forest Gump, linking the biography with historic events…

This graphic novel is full of humor and sadness in the life of narrator Marjane Satrapi. First part talk about her childhood and second part talk about her school days or latter adulthood… This graphic novel is something you feel like witnessing Iran as Marjane’s family member. Quite honest and neutral opinion about situations in Iran and facts about life… This book also talks about culture, traditions, social structure of Iran…

Graphics are in black and white, very effective and to-the-detail required. Sometime we can see very good compositions, and brilliant usage of positive negative spaces.

The Barn Owl’s Wondrous Caper


This graphic novel is sort of mystery story where central character/narrator is in the search of precious book of scandals. Story presentation style is disorienting not a linear, but happens in different cities and at different time zones.

Graphic style is very interesting, some time usage of original photographs with mix media illustration is good. Sarnath Banerjee has very interesting visualization and he portrayed Calcutta city and culture nicely. Illustration style is similar to Writers & Readers Publishing beginner series graphic novel.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

The Romantic Manifesto


After reading some of Ayn Rand’s book like Atlas shrugged and Fountain head I always have a fascination about her books and philosophy. This specific book I started reading when I was working on the creative process, or design process to look for philosophical thought to start with it; and exactly this book answers these questions.
I started reading this book with the story provided in the last chapter “The simplest thing in the world” it illustrates the nature of creative process of writer writing about his story/book and what goes through his mind which could be similar to painter who starts painting. How artist’s sense of life directs the integrating functions of his subconscious and controls his creative imagination.

There are various interesting scenario of mental models like: In order to live, man must act; in order to act, he must make choices; in order to make choices, he must define values; in order to define values, he must know what he is and where he is i.e. he should have knowledge about his own nature and nature of universe around, which means he need philosophy (metaphysics, epistemology, ethics). Art is selective recreation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgment. Because of this of all the human products, art is perhaps the most personally important and least understood in human kind.

In any kind of art subject and style defines the nature of art. Subject defines the view of man’s existence (metaphysics) while style expresses the view of man’s consciousness (psyco-epistomology)

I understood appreciating abstract art through reading of G.A. Kulkarni; famous Marathi story wrier, whose stories are mystic in nature and most of the time talks about subconscious minds of characters. His visualization helped me to understand the nature of artist’s subconscious mind, which provocates (Is it a write word?) him to create…

This book talks about what is good painting and bad painting; it also narrates writer’s own experience of experiencing the art. There are good amount of western painting styles and painter’s famous paintings are discussed as a case study which I think will help individual to appreciate art more correctly…

Games Indians play: Why we are the way we are


This is one of the most satisfying rather study made on Indian behavior. It talks about the Indianess or indian’s nature and provides explanation with the help of game theory and behavioral economics by prof. V. Raghunathan sir. I find same nature in Amartya Sen’s book “The Argumentative Indian” but it talks more historic evidences whether this book provide regular life problem like why Indian city looks so dirty and shabby where as historically we are the people of very high aesthetic sense. How Indian perceive problem individually and socially and solve it with “chalta hai” attitude… I think one of best work in behavioral economic I came across…

Imperium


This is the classical book of historian fiction about ancient Rome politics. The title itself is very powerful so I feel the need to understand the ancient political, socio-economical system, trumps and losses in Rome which will help me to understand current political scenario in our country (Which hardly changed). This is the story of Marcus Cicero written by household slave Tiro; his struggle to attain supreme power of Rome Imperium nearest thing below the heaven to immortality. It has quite interesting plots which proved the brilliancy/political supremacy of Cicero. Orator ship was the key of success at that time so how Cicero prepared it although he had ill health and physic, the training and practices he went through is an amazing account. The way court cases handled by him to the gaining the favors or votes in aristocrat elections. It is also an account of social structure; slavery, economical condition; bribes, aristocracy; power games, architectural development of Rome society; I think it is very brilliant effort and very difficult task Robert Harris has made successfully, but I found personally very difficult so many time to track the different character names and scenarios considering the complexity of story and difficult names.

“The art of life is to deal with the problems as they arise, rather than destroy ones’s spirit by worrying about themtoo far from advance”

“Words, words, words. Is there no end to the tricks you can make them perform?”

Fashion Babylon


This book is an accidental finding to me. After working with more than decade in the design (Industrial/interaction) industry I still wonder, what is the difference between style and substance…
As a sincere effort I thought to work on specific design field to get reasonable answer if not the absolute, and chose fashion design since it involve lot of style, glamour…and some time substance…

This book helped me to understand the fashion industry setup, what is the social-economical structure of it, limitations, drawbacks and success stories…

Imogen Edward-Jones’s effort is more like a research project. She wrote this book along with anonymous person from industry and tried to find out fashion industry details like how money flows in the industry, how models maintain there physic, what is the difference between London fashion show to Milan, how big brands are made and does the business, how important it is to make dresses for celebrity, to all other fashion gossips to reality…

Fashion shows are vital tool to recognize the future trend, colors and material per say which influence industry and most of the time production, but more than substance it talks about setup… doest answer the questions of underline meaning within it…

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

V for Vendetta



After long time I read graphic novel, as a kid we used to read about Phantom, batman, superman and chaha-chaudhari :) but this is quite different experience, it is serious in nature and discusses about the philosophical quest like for social welfare what is good governance?

There are lots of books and thoughts which advocate democracy, monarchy, aristocracy, this specific book talks about anarchy…

The most interesting thing about this graphical novel is the usage of metaphors, scenario buildings with the help of strong visual language used by Alan Moore and David Lloyd.

Reading this novel is an experience in itself, but so many times I felt characters are confusing and difficult to recognize through visual depiction. The usage of negative space in illustration style is amazing!

Thursday, September 17, 2009

The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse


This week end I finished reading The Glass Bead Game book, by Hermannn Hesse.I found this is very interesting and highly recommended to read. After almost 7 years I found a book comparable with Atlas Shrugged in terms of context. Hermannn Hesse got Nobel prize for literature and this book was one of main consideration.

Story is fiction futuristic 23rd century; but it is not sify type… infact it is very philosophical in nature, it talks about Order and disorder in life, how to earn faith (quite new to me) by doubts and clarifying the doubt. All the characters are fictious but more or less developed on real time persons like philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche, historians Jakob Burckhardt.

One need to constantly refer wikipedia since it talks about art movements, music masters, styles, meditation I ching, Hinduism, church…

If u think to read the book skip introduction at beginning, its quite confusing.. but make sense after u read it.
Narration style is very different, and difficult, since writer wrote this book as a researcher historian finding life and detail about Joseph Knecht through interview of peoples, his books, poetry and other references… end is bit disturbing.. but who cares it? Over all very nice experience to read…

Through out the book writer developed interest by making the conceptual game "glass bead game" its rules and history of its champions...

In Atlas shrugged John Galt makes one ideal world, here is starts with ideal world and then goes back to normal world of disorder… with respect for it...

Its plot is based on Plato’s philosophy of education where he feels that kids are the future of society so they need to be educated in isolation than normal family life, (Indian guru-shishya pranali is also the same) in protected environment, he goes in detail in extend that what subjects at what age should be taught. Once they are ready to serve society can go out from protected educational society… its bit radical at first, but it make sense...

My Book Shelf

I would like to share my books with all my friends, some time my opinion, comments, reviews and learning. I would also like to listen your view on books.