From 'Friends, lovers and the big terrible thing' by Matthew Perry to 'The Woman In Me' by Britney Spears, here are some of the favourite reads of the Forbes India team in 2023
I've read my share of memoirs, and when they're the celebrity kind, there's usually a predictable flow:
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida single-handedly saved me from becoming one of those grown-ups who no longer read. I interviewed Karunatilaka in January, a few months after he won the Booker Prize 2022 for this book, which pushes you into its world from the get-go with the sheer smartness and wit of the narrative. It compares the afterlife to a hospital waiting room, for one. The novel starts with a dead person addressing himself in the second person, which lasts throughout the novel. It's centred around Maali Almeida, "photographer, gambler, slut"—and now ghost—who has seven days to find out who killed him. Set in Sri Lanka during the civil war in the late 1980s, it is a thriller, a satire, a gay love story, and a heartwarming narrative about friendship, politics and betrayal, all rolled into one. This is a book you shouldn't miss.
This book was a Reese's Book Club recommendation, and it is a story about Cassandra, a neurodivergent woman in London who discovers that she can travel back in time and uses that ability to get back with her boyfriend. As she keeps going back in time to fix every tiny thing that goes wrong, she realizes that it was not the events of her life that she was trying to correct, but herself. Smale's writing does a good job of keeping you hooked to the story, helping us get into Cassandra's head and look at the world the way she would. Although it drags a wee bit midway, the narrative soon picks up pace and becomes a story of warmth, sisterhood and self-acceptance.
From a childhood shaped by tough love to the pinnacle of fame and success in Hollywood, Academy Award-winning actor Mathew McConaughey chronicles his unconventional life journey within the pages of his autobiography Greenlights, published in 2020. McConaughey shares personal anecdotes and pivotal moments guided by the metaphorical "green lights" illuminating his path. By sharing his experiences and reflective insights, McConaughey invites readers to find meaning in the journey for those seeking to navigate their own path.
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The name Yanis Varoufakis and the phrase 'technofeudalism' made me pick up this book in the first place. I was not familiar with the word 'technofeudalism', but I was familiar with Varoufakis's general thinking ever since he became Greece's finance minister in 2015. And therefore, I was curious.
What he says in the book is—if you have read, even on and off, all that has been written about how the nation-state has become increasingly irrelevant with the rise of Big Business and Big Tech—is not entirely new. It mostly summarises global-scale events, decisions and actions over many decades. But what he does so brilliantly is join the dots, apart from explaining some of those dots in ways that you might not have considered earlier. Given my own personal political and ideological leanings, it made my hackles rise in rage now and then. Yes, you can argue it is confirmation bias. But he presents facts, not opinions. And facts are very difficult to deny. And given the gargantuan rise of Big Tech in the recent past and its stranglehold on every waking (and sleeping) moment of our lives, these facts are even more difficult to ignore.