The Owl of Minerva

27aug2023

The famous final Sunday strip, “Let’s Go Exploring” is dominated by a massive white space in the center of the page, spreading outward toward the margins. It is often said that “Let’s Go Exploring” ends Calvin and Hobbes on an upbeat note, exhorting readers to remember that life, after all, is a tabula rasa, and you can make it whatever you wish. But this gets it backward. The end of Calvin and Hobbes is not about filling a blank sheet. It is about taking a colored sheet and making it blank again.
Why Bill Watterson Vanished, Nic Rowan

“I was laying in bed one night and I thought, ‘I’ll just quit. To hell with it.’ And another little voice inside me said ‘Don’t quit. Save that tiny little ember of spark. And never give them that spark because as long as you have that spark, you can start the greatest fire again.’”
Charles Bukowski

05aug2023

Some summer reads:

Sharvay by Mansi – 3.5/5. Interesting premise. Drags at several places. Writing and plot development are far from best but not too bad either.

The Origins and Development of Classical Hinduism by A. L. Basham – 4/5. Compact summary of the author’s thoughts on his matter as a distillation of his other works. Not a review/comparison of other theories on this subject.

A Certain Ambiguity by Gaurav Suri, Hartosh Singh Bal – 4/5. The introduction to some of the concepts in mathematics is beautifully executed in the context of a ‘novel’, making up for most of the shortcomings in terms of story development and the idotic premise that Stanford undergrads not knowing some of the concepts being discussed.

No One Writes to the Colonel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez – 5/5. “We are the orhpans of our son.” Beautiful. One of the best last lines of any book I have read as well :)

Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez – 5/5. Relished every sentence and page of this book. “Fatality makes you invisible.”

The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi – 5/5. Edgy, candid, enlightening.

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