What I Talk ABout When I Talk ABout Running

As someone who has been planning to start jogging since the better part of this year, I had been avoiding to read this book, lest it might bring about some guilt-trips. However, I finally sat with it last weekend, and finished it off in a day: it’s a small book, about 130-pages.

What I Talk ABout When I Talk ABout Running

Author: Haruki Murakami

Translated by:

Murakami is a “running writer”; he has been running at least 5-6 kms a day for more than last two decades. He is typically a long-distance runner and participates in at least one marathon a year.

The book is indeed based on running but goes beyond being limited to a journal where the author meticulously tracks his development from amateur to a pro. As Murakami puts it, it is a memoir centered on running.

He begins from his struggle to make the ends meet, setting up a coffee shop, his first forays into writing, the decision to shut the coffee shop and devote full time to writing. Then he delves into his modus operandi towards running, the preparations required for undertaking long-distance competitions, the fleeting thoughts that pass through a runner’s mind and the transformations that a runner’s body goes through over the period.

He draws some interesting parallels between running and writing. To succeed in writing, just as in running, the author (or the runner) should have clear priorities, focus to drive away distractions, and endurance to keep working at the process. Frankly, as Richard Feynman aptly remarked in Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman: “One can draw such parallels between any two subjects (for example, poetry and theoretical physics) and hence such analogies are not of much use”.

What really make the book worth a read, at least in my opinion, are Murakami’s observations about the nature and the people he comes across as he runs and his narratives of some of his more daring running adventures. It is a pleasure to read his description of his running the course of the actual Marathon (from Athens to Marathon) and it is equally scary to read his torturous journey in the Japan ultramarathon.

Throughout the book, Murakami comes across as an underdog, a tender yet a resolute person, someone with a never-say-die attitude.

The language of the book is ‘pretty simple’ and ‘sort of laid back’. Actually, these are the phrases that repeat themselves a bit too many times, but ‘as I mentioned before’, it is small book and one can put up with such trifles. 

This being the only book of Murakami I have read as yet, it is difficult to know whether he deliberately chose this style or whether it is trademark Murakami.

You should read this book, even though you may not be a runner…. In fact, especially if you are not a runner, because it might just nudge you to shake yourself a bit and move around!

The Checklist Manifesto: Atul Gawande

I first read about Dr Atul Gawande as one of this prominent Thinkers of this decade, as selected by the TIME Magazine. So on coming across a book by him at Crossword, Nagpur, it was hard to resist picking it up.

Leafing through a few pages, the matter seemed interesting, so took it home.

Later that evening, as wife prepared dinner, I began to read; and got so much hooked to it, that only put it down after finishing it around 2 AM... and the next day was a Monday.

Nevertheless, it was worth the time.

In this book, Atul Gawande, a surgeon with specialization in endocrine oncology, talks about checklists. He doesn't tell you how to create one, but why one is needed in the first place. The subject matter may seem mundane, but what makes the book exciting is the way in which the author describes how he arrived at the concept of using checklists in a critical field like surgery.

He begins by sharing with us some hair-raising stories of surgeries, in which the patients had a touch and go with death. He describes how The rising complexity and sophistication has made even the best minds sometimes miss out on critical factors. Surgery has become, in his own words, 'too much of an airplane for a single person to fly'.

In a quest to find a solution for a better success rate in surgeries, he meets people from diverse fields to know the secret of their efficiency: a builder, a master chef, a team of Wal-Mart staff that provided on-time relief to victims of Katrina hurricane, a key technical guy at Boeing.... and he discovers that each one of these uses something as basic as a checklist to ensure that things fall in place when they matter the most.

He learns of Keystone Initiative, a programmer started by Peter Provonost to get doctors and all those involved in health care serious about reducing avoidable errors.

Gawande then sets out to try and test his theory, using support of the World Health Organization (WHO). He and his research team involve hospitals from all over the world, New York, London, Delhi, Nairobi... in which the operating teams are required to adhere to a simple checklist during each surgery.

The results, he says, exceeded his own expectations.

It's a thrilling narrative, one that at once fills your mind with awe about complexity of the human body, and admiration for the people who have mastered at least a significant part of it. Gawande spares no one, including himself when he talks about the mistakes and errors that people make, mostly out of carelessness borne out of routine.

If you think checklists are a bore, then this book should make you re-think your position.

And if you are already a checklist enthusiast (like me!), then this book would give you a sense of having got it right in the first place!

[This article has two companion blog posts. Mind Matters  talks about my personal take on checklists, whereas ByteSpace takes a look at checklists from a technical writer's perspective.]

[Movie] 3 Idiots

Shahrukh Khan may be looking for a blockbuster success in My Name is Khan, Salman Khan may have his hands full of controversies, Hritik may have almost disappeared from the face of Bollywood, but ‘aal is well” with the Ace Khan: Aamir Khan.

3 Idiots, produced by Vidhu Vinod Chopra, directed by Rajkumar Hirani (Munnabhai-fame) and starring Aamir, Kareena, Boman Irani, R Madhavan and Sharman Joshi predictably released on 25-December. This is the third of Aamir’s films (after Taare Zameen Par and Ghajini) to be released on 25-December, and if the signs are anything to go by, is slated to be another blockbuster hit.

If Taare Zameen Par was about mind and its problems (dyslexia), Ghajini was about a split mind and an awesome body, 3 Idiots has lots and lots of the nether part, the butt. In any other film, it would have been gross and awful, but Hirani makes it a focal point of laugh riot that ensues.

3 Idiots is indeed a laugh-riot, except some parts where it tries to appeal to our minds… and our hearts.

There is some talk about the film being based upon “Five Point Someone: What You Shouldn’t Do at IIT” by Chetan Bhagat. The movie does have some resemblance: a premier technical institute and its three whacky protagonists, the gorgeous daughter of principal, and a couple of sequences; but to conclude that the whole plot is based on the book would be going too far.

Of the cast, Aamir steals the show naturally. Be it his impish face or his body language, he looks fresh, every bit a college student. Boman Irani, Madhavan and Sharman Joshi suit their roles nicely. Kareena doesn’t have much to do.

Though the songs haven’t exactly been a rage, the one song that stays with you is “Behti hawa sa tha wo…”. The lyrics of “Give me some sunshine” are fantastic. “Zoobi Doobi” is wonderfully retro.

The movie is a full 3-hr long run, but credit goes to the director for not making it seem lengthy. Still, a couple of sequences could have been completely chopped off, in order to make the product a bit more compact and effective.

But mostly, the movie is full paisa wasool stuff. On a scale of 1-10 (where 10 is the best), I would rate 3 Idiots at 7, plus an extra 0.5 thrown in for some awesome cinematographic shots of Ladakh and Simla.

The Lost Symbol

After the stupendous success of  The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown has again come up trumps with another bestseller in “The Lost Symbol.” The novel broke all the sales records on the day it was published (15th September 2009), and continues to be at the top (or near the top) of bestseller lists.

Robert Langdon features as the male protagonist for the third time ( he was seen earlier in Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code, aided by a researcher in ‘noetic sciences’ (admittedly I heard of this term the first time I read the book), Katherine. Dan Brown’s penchant for power centers and secret societies continues. Angels & Demons had CERN-Vatican and Illuminati; The Da Vinci Code had The Church and Priory of Sion; Deception Point had NASA; and Digital Fortress had NSA. The Lost Symbol features Freemasons and the narrative takes place in the heart of Washington, D.C : the US Capitol Building itself.

Antagonist is a lone figure, but a unique one at that.

So, what works in the novel?

Definitely the trademark Dan Brownian blend of fact and fiction and fast paced plot. At the end of every chapter (they are short and many); you are on the edge to know what happens next. Brown presents the all-so-familiar artifacts (the Capitol building, the Smithsonian Museum) and objects (the dollar currency) in such a startling manner that one keeps on reading out of sheer curiosity and amazement.

What doesn’t work?

The plot, though interesting in specifics, is a bit repetitive overall. Also, dialogs could have been better. At times they seem too artificial and a bit overdramatic.

Overall…

It’s definitely worth a read. The book succeeds in arousing our curiosity about Freemasons and also makes us think about the potential of humand mind and body.

Personally, I enjoyed Angels and Demons the most, closely followed by The Da Vinci Code, with the  Digital Fortress trailing a short distance behind. I would place The Lost Symbol a notch above Digital Fortress, because it ends so beautifully, on a positive note.

The Selfish Gene

I had purchased “The Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins sometime around May-2009, yet never came around to reading for almost 3 to 4 months. Reason: It was hidden out of sight in a drawer full of other papers. One day, while ransacking the drawer for something else, I came across the book… And once I began reading it, could hardly stop cursing myself for not having read it earlier.

The Selfish Gene carries forward Darwin’s theory of evolution. The central idea of the book is: it is the gene -- and not the species -- on which the natural selection works. The author describes at length how the genes ‘try’ their best to propagate themselves through the generations, and how this leads to the ‘survival of the fittest’. He puts forward the concept of an “evolutionary stable strategy’ and introduces quite a few new terms (such as ‘memes’) and phrases (the ‘selfish’ gene, to begin with!)

The book is enlightening in some ways, and disturbing in more than a few ways. It is enlightening, because it tells us a number of fascinating facts about our lives; it is disturbing, because it makes cringe about some of our thoughts and behaviours that seems all too normal so far.

Language is lucid, and author has taken pains to ensure that it doesn’t become boring. Richard Dawkins can be compared to Dan Brown in that he has a superb writing style, one that compels reader to read one chapter after the other.

A note of caution: this is a book that demands your absolute concentration; it is not something you read on a heavy stomach with eyes drooping, on way to an afternoon siesta. To be able to digest this book, it is advisable that you brush up a bit what you learnt about Gregor Mendel’s theory of genetics. It would also help if you know a bit about DNA, and genes.

The book could have done with some illustrations and diagrams. There are almost none. Hence it can be intimidating for a beginner to wade through pages and pages of dense text, which is loaded with terms from biology and genetics that are not exactly a common usage.

If you look forward to reading something that will not only tickle your grey cells, but pinch and prod them to think hard, then this is a book you ought to take up.

After finishing with The Selfish Gene, I have now taken up “The Blind Watchmaker” and look forward to a tryst with “The Extended Phenotype”.