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I was floored by the trailer for the movie Watchmen, slated to release in 2009. Intrigued by the weird superheroes and their predicament shown in the trailer, I decided to check out the graphic novel it's based on. Watchmen, a graphic novel (and not a mere comic) written by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons deals with the life of retired superheroes living in the USA of 1980s. Most of them have hung up their costumes after the Keene Act was passed banning vigilantism and they're now trying to get back to living within society. The book starts off with the murder of Edward Blake aka The Comedian. Walter Kovacs aka Rorschach thinks that this is no ordinary murder, but the first among a string intended to wipe off all the retired superheroes. He tries to find out who and why and this leads him to meet all his old superhero buddies. This also leads the reader through the rest of the novel, to discover the stories of all these heroes (in flashback) and how they're leaving mundane lives among society.

At 436 pages, complete with artwork, Watchmen is a heavy read. The story is complex, deep and hugely introspective. It has a sombre mood all through, being set in a crumbling USA of the 1980s when Russia is waiting to unleash its nukes on their enemy. Alan Moore not only excels in the details of his characters, but the intricate way in which he reveals their arcs is just brilliant. Interspersed with the novel's timeline and its flashbacks are (fictional) excerpts from books, diaries, reports, all of which totally immerse the reader in the alternate world that Moore has wrought. There are also tons of quotes and art references as the book progresses. (For example, every chapter ends with a progressing blood spill onto a clock that is edging closer and closer to 12 midnight. The reader only discovers in the last chapter where this image actually fits in.) I will easily admit that this is nothing like any comic I've ever read, it's a totally new experience! As it says on the cover, this is definitely a book only for mature readers. It will forever change the way you look at comics/graphic novels/superheroes. A highly recommended read.

This is a book aimed mainly at the beginner-intermediate photographer. I simply loved the book and learnt a ton from it. Why? The book is focussed on explaining the 3 elements of the photographic triangle: aperture, shutter speed and light (ISO) and how they're related. This was perfect for me because I'm now at a stage where I can kind of compose photos, but have no idea what combination of the 3 photographic triangle settings will give the most creative exposure.

The book is just 160 pages and is composed of short chapters (each of just a couple of paragraphs) each dealing with specific details about the above. Every page is full of Peterson's photos which illustrate what he's trying to explain in that page. Also interesting is how Peterson gives the settings for that photo and even the backstory of how he did it. I loved everything -- the writing style of Peterson, his examples and explanations. I highly recommend this book. I know I'll be rereading this book soon.

The story is about a mysterious spacecraft found at the bottom of the Pacific. The Navy flies in a psychologist (Norman) and a team he has recommended (which includes a biologist, a physicist and a brilliant mathematician) to investigate it. They go down to the depths to live in a specially pressurized habitat. The spacecraft is indeed fabulous once they discover that is was built for space-time travel. Inside this craft they find a large sphere. They can't figure out what this sphere is meant for or its contents. They can't return to the surface too since a Pacific storm has now left them stranded with no surface support. As they race to find out the secret of the sphere, strange things start happening in the deep ocean around their habitat.

The Sphere is not a sci-fi novel, it is a psychological thriller. The mind games are real neat. There is lot of trivia bits about science which are interesting. The best is Ted's explanation of how gravity connects space and time together. He does it using a bowl of fruit! Sphere is a good read.

The book which shares authoring credits of Linus Torvalds and reporter David Diamond is about the life of Linus and Linux. The writing is mostly by Linus in first person with some intermediate chapters by David Diamond to give sort of an outsider's view of Linus' life.

The book is mainly in 3 parts: Birth of a nerd, Birth of an operating system and King of the ball. I loved reading the first two parts where Linus talks about Finland, early life with his family, introduction to computers, birth of Linux at university, his lovelife(!), move to Transmeta and growth in popularity of Linux upto the time of the book's writing. The third part is where he gives his opinions about more serious stuff like IP, open source software and even delivers the Meaning Of Life! These are the chapters where he appears confused and ambiguous, almost like he was asked by the publishers to write something serious since he has really fooled around in the former parts.

Like the title, the book was fun to read. Linus's writing is full of analogies and many times self-deprecating. Thankfully for the non-tech readers he stops at the right point when delving into the technical details of operating systems, kernels etc. He comes across as someone who does something firstly because it is fun. Everything else is secondary. This applies to Linux too. That is the reason why he stays away from the GNU/Stallman/OSS politics. The book was written at the end of 2000, so not everything about Linux is right now as rosy at it is in the book (like Linux IPOs). After having read about the OS and the hacker behind it from a gazillion outside sources, it was still fun to get it all from the man himself.

Take a sane US Air Force bombardier named Yossarian and put him into the middle of World War 2 in a base at a tiny island called Pianosa in Italy. Surround him with people who are almost insane and trash up his life with inane bureaucratic hurdles. You've got Joseph Heller's Catch-22, a book which is both maddening and brilliant at the same time. This is a book which I can't even describe 'cause there are no words for it. It is a comical insane trip for the mind, at the same time being fodder on the current state of the world.

Catch-22 was not an easy read. I almost gave up after the first 100 or so pages, not being able to see where the story was going. Infact what I had to really do was to just keep reading and let the extreme sarcasm and insanity of the book to sink in. The book is too long for its subject and the circular logic of Catch-22 in the dialogues are just too many and I felt that it spoils the reading. The last few chapters (starting with The Eternal City) get pretty serious and culminate with a happy ending for Yossarian. An escape for him from it all.

Since I've read more recent books in the same vein, most of the advice from this book seemed dated. Having said that, I must comment that the authors don't waste words in making up mindless blather (like other books). The book propounds its 3 simple rules for managing people using a story device---a young man who is out to discover the management secrets of a good manager.

The book is really short---more like a long essay. It can be finished within 2 hours.

"If ten people can complete a project in ten days, then one person can complete the project in one day."

That's just one of the hundreds of tips and techniques for would-be managers in the book Dogbert's Top Secret Management Handbook. This book by Scott Adams is smaller than The Dilbert Principle and concentrates on grooming the would-be manager for a Dilbertian workplace. Interspersed in the guidelines for becoming a good manager are loads of strips from the comic. The strips are concentrated mostly on the Pointy-Haired Boss and Dilbert. A recommended fun read for the weekend when you're missing the workplace.

I came across this book while I was looking for Searching For Bobby Fischer. That book+movie is about chess whizkid Josh Waitzkin who went on to be the US Chess Champion many times. This book The Art Of Learning: An Inner Journey To Optimal Performance is written by the subject of that book Josh Waitzkin, who's now much older. That book and the popular movie which was made after that brought a lot of fame to Waitzkin and (according to him) destroyed his chess game. Looking for something peaceful after that, he learnt Tai Chi. His Tai Chi master invited him to learn Tai Chi Push Hands, the martial art style of Tai Chi. Using the experiences from his chess career, Waitzkin was able to hone his Push Hands skills well enough to win the Tai Chi World Championship.

This book is part (auto)biography and part philosophical. Using his life's ups and downs as the analogy, Waitzkin tries to distill the elements which help in learning (anything). Themes touched upon include how to start learning something new, improve in it, enjoy it, increase the performance in it and finally excel in it. All through the book this discourse uses chess and martial arts metaphors from his own life for achieving this. I found the book quite useful and might read it again in a few years.

I seem to be inadvertently reading only Booker winners, like Disgrace, which I borrowed from my friend. I hadn't heard of the author J.M. Coetzee and didn't know that he had won a Nobel for Literature. The book deals with the disgrace of a man and the daughter he loves very much, set in post-Apartheid South Africa.

David Lurie is an old white man, a professor of English poetry and working on a book on Lord Byron. He has been divorced twice and is casual with satiating his sexual desires. He is thrown out of his university on charges of sexual harassment of one of his students who had consensual sex with him. Disgraced like this, he leaves town to live with his daughter Lucy who runs a dog kennel alone on a remote farm. David is a man of arrogance and ego, but he adjusts to the rural life helping Lucy and her friends with their dogs. But even his daughter's idyllic life falls apart when some locals rape her and set him on fire. Father and daughter are left to workout their relationship and find their place in the changing humanscape of Africa.

This is a tragic book where slowly, subtly and surely everyone's life goes to hell. Coetzee's prose is simple and interesting and kept me engaged even though I knew that the characters were in for a world of pain. Coetzee downplays the color of his characters, but most of their troubles stem from they being white in a post-Apartheid South Africa, a place where the natives seem to want payback for the misery they endured in the past. The lives of the characters aren't settled even when the book ends. A lot of stuff in the book is left to the interpretation of the reader. For example, I'm pretty sure the dog with a limp at the end of the book which David agrees to kill is surely a metaphor for his own ego. If you've read this book, please do share your interpretations.

At 219 pages, this is a breezy read. A movie based on this book is now in the works. While the Observer calls this the best novel of the last 25 years, I don't think so. But a haunting good tale, it is.

When my eyes fell on this book in the library, I just had to pick it up. Though I had seen the movie Psycho, I wanted to see how the author had created the original story. Psycho is written by a guy named Robert Bloch. The well known story goes like this - Norman Bates and his mother leave alone beside a desolate highway. They run a motel. When a pretty girl turns up, his mother murders her. When the guy investigating into the murder comes, Bates' mother again kills him. Why is she doing this? Why cannot Bates stop her? What are the secrets Bates is hiding?

The book is very thin, barely 125 pages. It's a real thriller and a very fast read. One advantage of the book over the movie is that the reader can look into the mind of Bates here, whereas in the movie it is not possible this well. You might really relish the book if you have not seen the movie. I recommend the book to everyone since it is such a short read, anybody should be able to find enough time to read it.