I do not watch Oscar winning movies. This is not a rule that I have made but a statistic that has come out from the short research that I did before writing this post. As it turns out I have watched only 3 out of the last 20 Oscar winners for “Best Movie”. Gladiator, Slumdog Millionaire, and Parasite. The very simple reason for this is that I prefer watching movies in 2 genres only - comedy and action. I can still watch thrillers but I actively avoid drama. I realize that I am missing a lot of good cinema by following this stupid rule but then I do not watch movies for “good cinema”.

So it was a pleasant surprise that Parasite was the winner this year. This movie had been on my radar for a pretty long time already but the Oscar win gave me the final push to finally make time to watch it. And it was worth it.

I finished reading ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ by Viktor Frankl today. It is one of those books that make you feel bad for not having picked them earlier. Well, better late than never. Actually I might actually read this book once every few years. This is how much I have been impacted by this book. The author was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist who survived 4 concentration camps during the Holocaust. He is also the founder of logotherapy, which assumes the primary motivational force of an individual is to find a meaning in life. I will not try to explain this here because I don’t want to misrepresent anything about it due to my new and basic understanding of it. But the concept of ‘meaning of life’ makes sense to me. A book reads (listens, in my case) like an autobiographical essay where the author uses his own experiences at the concentration camps and other examples to drive home the idea that the ultimate goal of a man is to find meaning in life which he can live for.

I don’t know Trump. Let me rephrase this. As an Indian, my knowledge of the American President is rather limited. Primarily because since he is not my president I don’t need to necessarily stay informed about him. And whatever news about him that trickles down to me via media, mainstream or social, is not very positive towards him. It also does not help that I am a fan of Stephen Colbert and his disapproval of Trump is world famous. The point I am trying to make by all these words is that very little positive is known to me and people like me about Trump. This has always caused me to pause and wonder that it cannot be an accident that this man has become the leader of the free world without having any redeeming positive qualities. He has got to be good, and rather brilliantly, at something which helped him defeat someone like Hillary. Hillary, who everyone thought was the only “logical” choice of the two.

Scroll to bottom to see the video version of this post

Lets do on thing. Lets take a break from the genre of dystopian novels and discuss something else this time. I recently finished watching Master of None, highly recommended by the way and that gave me an idea that we can in todays video discuss Modern Romance. A book written by Aziz Ansari the protagonist in Master of None and a well know comic. Most of you might have seen him in Parks and Recreations and his own standup specials. I read this book very recently and saying that this is an enjoyable book would be an understatement. Now one would assume that a book written by a comic would be humour only with very little meat. One would be wrong for assuming that. How do I put it. This book is freakonomics with humour on steroids if that means any thing.

Scroll to bottom to see the video version of this post

So there is a famous quote by George RR Martin, the author of the Game of Thrones books - A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one. I like reading a lot. Now I could go on a hyperbolic monolog professing my love for books and how i could eat and breathe them but then that would be tangential to the point. I don’t get to read as much as I want to or even as much as I used to. This situation I have remedied by taking 2 steps

Scroll to bottom to see the video version of this post

The first quarter of 2017 was mostly dedicated to dystopian novels. One book that belongs to this genre, which I mentioned in the last 5-minute review which you can find here, is Fahrenheit 451. It is one of the most recommended books of this genre and it sits in the league of 1984 and Brave New World. Fahrenheit 451 was written by Ray Bradbury in 1953 and is considered one of his best books and I definitely agree with that. This book won Bradbury many awards including a Retro Hugo award and a Grammy Nomination for the audiobook which was narrated by Bradbury himself. I had listened to this version of audiobook only which I am sure must have added a lot of extra value to the text.