The Candy House - Jennifer Egan

I recently read this book as part of a reading challenge. The author wrote this book in a peculiar format. A side character from one chapter becomes the narrator in the next chapter and so on. By doing this, the author is able to use different narration techniques in the same book. It also helps us understand a situation from different points of view. She is a real wordsmith. She writes one chapter as a field guide to a spy and another through messages between the characters. 

Bix, the founder of a successful social media company, is looking for new ideas to expand his company. As part of this, he attends a meeting at a college by a professor, Miranda Cline. Bix has used Miranda's original ideas about trust to build his social media company. In this meeting, he learns of a technology to transfer the consciousness of animals to the cloud. Bix takes this idea and creates a new product call Own your Consciousness. With this product you can transfer all your memories to the cloud. You can also change some recent traumatic memories and re-implant them back to your brain. Uploading your memories to the collective, gets you proportional access to others memories. 

This is very enticing and most of the world starts uploading their memories. Most people use this for personal and societal needs - to catch who was the kid that beat me up? What happened to that guy I shared a beer with at the Cafe? Who killed my friend etc. Chris remarks that the problem is that it is so attractive that people will give it everything. And the collective is omniscient. It is a Candy House - giving away your memories has benefits, but it can lead to unintended consequences. In fairy tale Hansel & Gretel, the witch uses the Candy House to lure them into the house. She feeds Hansel in the hopes of eating them. This reminded me of the aphorism in silicon valley, if you are not paying for the product, you are the product. 

Egan doesn't explore all the pros and cons of Own Your Unconscious. She tells us how the lives of different characters and how they live in the world with this tech. Charlene uses it to see her dad smoking pot at a commune when she was waiting for him to come home. Another daughter Roxy tries to relive a London trip with her father. Only it is leaves her with hurt. Later she uploads her memories and dies, finally feeling the connection with her dad. Alfred's character mocks the overperformance in social media. He hates it and takes to screaming in public to get an authentic response from people. 

Not everyone is enthusiasitc about sharing all the memories with the collective. Chris leads the resistance to this collective by building an app called Mondrain. He helps people elude from the collective by using proxies. They use fiction writers work to mimic them using their memories from the collective. 

Lincoln is a counter who helps identify the proxies and cut them. Lulu is a citizen spy with electronics called weevils embedded in her. Even after stint as a spy has ended, she faces trauma. She worries that the government is spying on her husband using the weevil implanted in her. There is Ames Hollander who runs an off the books store to remove weevils from former citizen spies. This helps them relax and not worry anymore about govt. spying. 

Bix's youngest son, Gregory doesn't share his father's interest about Own your unconscious. His father has shown his uploaded memories to the family many times. Those memories start with a blank space where his dad doesn't have any ideas. That interests Gregory. 

Later when he grows up, he comes to know that his father willed a lot of money to the Chris's resistance non-profit. He feels that he didn't know his Dad enough. One snowy day, he realizes that the blank vision his father started with was not blank. It was the human collective with each person doing different things. So it needed him to write his book to makes sense of all that. 

This novel is a huge panomara with lots of characters. There is no overarching narrative to the novel, except exploration of the lives of people around this technology. That is how Egan makes her point - stressing the importance of fiction in making sense of the human stories. 

“Only Gregory Bouton’s machine—this one, fiction—lets us roam with absolute freedom through the human collective. But knowing everything is too much like knowing nothing; without a story, it’s all just information. ” 

And that's why you need a narrator to connect the information into a narrative. 

These are the stories I liked the most - 

• Lincoln's story where he uses maths to understand the elusive thing that can make M fall in love with him. It is a clever expression of a math obsessed kid who loves M but can't express it to her in a way she understands.
• The story of Lulu, Molly, Chris and Colin when they share a close moment together on a pier. The teenage friendship, love and awakening moments was touching. 
• The story of Miles Hollanders' fall and redemption. Miles predicted that no one likes being right the first time. He then goes on to follow the script by falling from grace and then rising to be a state senator. 
• The story written in messages about Lulu's interview plan with Jazz Attenborough. It was clever and shows projects take shape.  

Tuesdays With Morrie Book Review

I read a book called 'Tuesday's with Morrie' a non-fiction book written by Mitch Albom. The book chronicles his meetings with Morrie Schwartz, his favorite professor in Brandeis University, who is battling ALS(amyotrophic lateral scelerosis) and has his days numbered. But rather than wobbling in self-pity and die decides to live each of his day fully.

Morrie is Mitch's favorite prof when in college, and promises to keep in touch with him after leaving college. But he gets caught up in the rat race becoming a sports writer and publisher and never gets a chance to meet Morrie again. He accidentally meets him on a wheelchair while going somewhere and has to visit him but not before completing his work. And he is hooked after the first meeting. He is reminded of the days when he used to study under him, discuss things about life with him. Due to the union strike in his company, Mitch gets a chance to visit his professor every tuesday which is the name of the book.

Mitch who considers Morrie as a coach decides to ask Morrie about the questions vexing him. I felt these questions universal and surely every reader would identify with it. To quote Mitch

On the plane ride home that day, I made a small list on a yellow legal pad, issues and questions that we all grapple with, from happiness to aging to having children to death. Of course, there are a million self-help books.

But there seemed to be no clear answers. Do you take care of others or take care of your "inner child"? Return to the traditional values or reject tradition as useless? Seek succees or seek simplicity? Just say no or Just Do It?

This forms the core of the book as Mitch discusses these things with Morrie every tuesday that he visits him as Morrie tells his thoughts about the world, culture, love, money, marriage and death too. In the context of dealing with emotions, he says that we should let the emotion take over us, experience it completely and after having the knowledge of the emotion, to detach from it. And he makes a profound statement with regard to the impact that culture should have on us.

He says

" I don’t mean you disregard every little rule of your community. I don’t go around naked, for example. I don’t run red lights. The little things, I can obey. But the big things - How we think, what we value - These you must choose yourself. You can’t let anyone- or any society - determine those for you"

The book is very touching and just put the fact that the things which make us happy are the simple joys of sharing and caring.

A must read to see life from the perspective of a dying Morrie who considers himself lucky to have the time to say good bye to his loved ones. And he says 'Everyone is not so lucky'.

Wish we make the best of the short time we have.

#Th!nkTweet - 140 bytes of wisdom in 140 characters - A Review

After reading the book 'Life Beyond Code' written by Rajesh Shetty, I was excited to review his latest book ThinkTweet, which contains 140 tweets on various topics..

I love Rajesh's take on networks, relationships, time and teamwork. I initially thought of selecting the best tweets and writing about them. But I was pleasantly surprised to see that each tweet made me pause, think and have an aha moment.

I just noted down a few tweets which hit me hard.. read them and you can understand the intelligent, witful but insightful message of the author.

One on relationships:

When it comes to
relationships, you hit a home run
when you stop keeping score.

This one makes you think on the direction of your life:

What will be
the title of a book
written about you?
What will be
its subtitle?
Why should
someone read it?

On the importance of journey:

If you are “faking it” so that
one day you can make it, you
are missing the point. It’s the
journey that counts.

Pick up this book for 140 such aha moments... which will leave you lot wiser than before you picked the book.

Its a small book with 140 such tweets on improving your business, relationships, networks, career, teamwork and life and will make for an easy read. Its an ideal gift for your friends. Anyway you will just be marvelled on reading the book. Thanks to @UpbeatNow for giving me an opportunity to read and spread this wisdom.

You can buy the book from here or here @ amazon