http://www.mutanteggplant.com/agog walkabout the library Fri, 05 Mar 2010 17:12:09 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The Museum of Innocence, Orhan Pamuk, 2009 This is a love story set in Istanbul in 1975. The main character, Kemal has just entered his rich father's business after having earned a business degree at an American University and served his military duty. Kemal is 30 and has chosen the girl ... http://www.mutanteggplant.com/agog/2010/03/05/obsession/ The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga, 2008 A young Bangalore entrepreneur, Balram, learns that the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao plans a trip to Bangalore to learn about the envied Indian talent for entrepreneurship. Balram feels that he is in a unique position to educate the Premier from his own experience. He writes ... http://www.mutanteggplant.com/agog/2010/02/28/real-bangalore/ Cosmicomics, Italo Calvino, 1968 Cosmos A short marvelously written novel follows the evolution of the universe from the big bang through the eyes of seemingly immortal Qfwfq who thinks in time frames of 200 million years. As a child he plays a form of marbles with Hydrogen atoms. We follow the formation ... http://www.mutanteggplant.com/agog/2010/02/28/cosmology/ In The Kitchen, Monica Ali, 2009 The latest novel by the author of Brick Lane (and movie of the same name) has an English chef, Gabriel, as its main character. Gabriel grew up in a Northern mill town where his father introduced him to the latest technology and techniques in ... http://www.mutanteggplant.com/agog/2010/02/28/the-madness-of-chef-gabriel/ I.O.U. John Lanchester, 2009 Here is a concise attempt to explain in layman's terms what went wrong in the financial crisis. It is particularly interesting since the author lives in London and can give us a view from the global epicenter complete with British wit. Unfortunately dry British humor sometimes doesn't ... http://www.mutanteggplant.com/agog/2010/02/25/piggy-banks/ The Lacuna, Barbara Kingsolver, 2009 The latest from Kingsolver (The Poisonwood Bible, Pigs in Heaven) is a strange one and has been met with mixed reviews. This reader liked it. It is set in the time period from 1929 to 1951 and Kingsolver's primary objective seems to have been to focus on ... http://www.mutanteggplant.com/agog/2010/02/04/odd-tale/ How Markets Fail, John Cassidy, 2009 This book is a devastating indictment of Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and of economics and economists generally. When academic economics should have been focused on Cassidy's title question: How do Markets Fail? Instead in a blog entitled "The Unfortunate Uselessness of Most State of the ... http://www.mutanteggplant.com/agog/2010/01/25/the-failure-of-economics/ Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel, 2009 This novel, winner of the Man Booker Prize, is set in the era of Henry VIII from 1527 to 1535 and is told from the perspective of Thomas Cromwell. For the English, the story and cast of characters is probably familiar from childhood, but for this ... http://www.mutanteggplant.com/agog/2010/01/20/a-useful-man/ Where Men Win Glory; The Odyssey of Pat Tillman, Jon Krakauer, 2009 Previously read books by Krakauer include Into Thin Air, the account of the 1996 climbing disaster on Everest; Into the Wild, which was adapted for a movie by Sean Penn; and Under the Banner of Heaven, a story of ... http://www.mutanteggplant.com/agog/2010/01/01/friendly-fire/ Googled, The End of the World as We Know It, Ken Auletta, 2009 This book, while still worth reading, is a big disappointment. The reader was expecting something akin to the remarkable 1981 The Soul of a New Machine by non engineer Tracy Kidder, that follows Data General as it designs ... http://www.mutanteggplant.com/agog/2009/12/29/googlemania/