Atomic Habit by James Clear

Atomic Habit by James Clear

Kristopia
Non Fiction

The Atomic Habit is not a book consists of revolutionary ideas, but James Clear took the already known insights and developed actionable plans for readers to create their system. It is the proposed system that really brings value to this book. Positive/Negative Habit tracking method, Habit forming system, step-by-step guide on making unwanted habits less attractive etc…these are some simple yet effective systems that readers can implement. After all, we do not rise to the level of our goals. We fall to the level of our systems.

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff

Kristopia
Non Fiction

Shoshana Zuboff provides a shockingly harrowing glimpse into the surveillance economy we are in, how surveillance capitalism and its rapidly accumulating power exceed the historical norms of capitalist ambitions, claiming dominion over human, societal, and political territories that range far beyond the conventional institutional terrain of the private firm or market; and how we the people can reverse this course, first by identifying the unprecedented, then by mobilizing new forms of collaborative action.

Rome by Robert Hughes

Rome by Robert Hughes

Kristopia
Non Fiction

Hughes succeeded magnificently in cramming in 2500 years of history from the early Etruscans and aqueducts to the Caesars to shift from Paganism to Christianity to the Papal States to the Middle Ages, Renaissance, to Baroque and Classicism to Modernity and Mussolini into this book

Seven Sixes Are Forty Three by Kiran Nagarkar

Seven Sixes Are Forty Three by Kiran Nagarkar

Kristopia
Fiction

Seven Sixes Are Forty Three is a series of fragments of the life of Kushank Purandare, a writer living off the kindness of people in this big bad world. Disillusioned with the lack of certainty and empathy in a world that is largely incoherent and unsalvageable, Kushank drifts about wallowing in his past and doing bizzare jobs.

The Rebel by Albert Camus

The Rebel by Albert Camus

Kristopia
Non Fiction

One may be surprised that Albert Camus, a known existentialist philosopher, was quite familiar with anarchism, and he not only openly supported anarchist-syndicalist organizing, but also was excommunicated by the existentialists for criticizing their Marxist tendencies. Soon after reading The Stranger, I gladly discovered that Camus had in fact, already dealt thoroughly with the questions of nihilism, rebellion, revolutionary politics, and anarchism.

The English and Their History by Robert Tombs

The English and Their History by Robert Tombs

Kristopia
Non Fiction

This is an analysis not of Britain, or the British Isles—but purely of the English. Tombs reviewed conventional beliefs about the past such as the Anglo-Saxon liberties, the common law, the influence of Magna Carta, and the cause and effect of the Industrial Revolution. Tombs also examined the ambiguities and aftermath of the Victorian age at the reasons for participating in the First World War, and the divided memories of that calamity.

Immortality by Milan Kundera

Immortality by Milan Kundera

Kristopia
Fiction, No Spoiler

Kundera has long explored themes of impermanence and fluctuating identity--often to memorable effect, particularly in The Unbearable Lightness of Being and now even more so in Immortality. People believe that they can achieve immortality to a smaller or greater degree by maintaining an identity of themselves in people’s minds up until they die. In other words, death and immortality, ironically, is an inseparable pair more perfect than milk and cookies. When death approaches, so as immortality.

The Euro by Joseph E. Stiglitz

The Euro by Joseph E. Stiglitz

Kristopia
Non Fiction

This book carried out a cogent and fervent analysis claiming that the euro is flawed at birth and bound for failure. An immediate reform is required to prevent further devastation. In the absence of reform, an amicable divorce would be far preferable to the current approach of muddling through…

Against Method by Paul Feyerabend

Against Method by Paul Feyerabend

Kristopia
Non Fiction

In a science dominated society, it is easy to forget that science and their methods are not inherently objective. Science is a tradition, with its own method of conceptualizing problems and deriving conclusions. Science is hypothetico-deductive. Scientists frame conjectures and test their logical consequences. A proposition is scientific if only it is falsifiable, otherwise it is metaphysical. However, there is no perfect method. The concept that a single method contains firm, unchangeable and binding principles in all situations is perilous.

The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka

The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka

Kristopia
Fiction, Author

The century since Franz Kafka was born has been marked by the concept of modernism— a self-consciousness new among centuries, a consciousness of being new. After his death, Kafka epitomizes one aspect of this modern mind-set: a sensation of anxiety and shame whose center cannot be located and therefore cannot be placated; a sense of an infinite difficulty within things, impeding every step; a sensitivity acute beyond usefulness, as if the nervous system, flayed of its old hide of social usage and religious belief, must record every stroke as pain.

Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea by Mark Blyth

Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea by Mark Blyth

Kristopia
Non Fiction

Today, the European financial-cum-debt crisis rolls on from summit meeting to summit meeting, where German ideals of fiscal prudence clash with Spanish unemployment at 25 percent and a Greek state is slashing itself to insolvency and mass poverty while being given ever-more loans to do so. In the US, those problems take the form of sclerotic private sector growth, persistent unemployment, a hollowing out of middle-class opportunities, and a gridlocked state. What they have in common is their supposed cure: austerity.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

Kristopia
Fiction

Published in Kundera’s exile in 1984, and without betraying the title, there is certainly a fundamental weightlessness to this book. Even after the third read, I can only recall fragments about the characters. A tangible milieu, a well-paced plot, and the extended passages of straightforward philosophical and political speculation, made it clear that this is not for readers who prefer the conventional storytelling.

The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan

The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan

Kristopia
Non Fiction

The present washed away the past. We forgot the yesterday where the Silk Roads is the bridges between the East and West where great centres of civilisation rose.  Ancient civilisation such as Babylon, Nineveh, Uruk and Akkad in Mesopotamia were famed for their grandeur and architectural innovation. The yesterday where the Silk Roads is where the world’s great religions burst into life, where Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism jostled with each other. The yesterday where the Silk Roads is the cauldron where language groups competed, where Indo-European, Semitic and Sino-Tibetan tongues wagged along side those speaking Altaic, Turkic and Caucasian. The yesterday where the Silk Roads is where great empires rose and fell, where the after-effects of clashes between cultures and rivals were felt thousands of miles away.

The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham

The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham

Kristopia
Fiction

The Moon and Sixpence is a book about the life of an unassuming British stockbroker, with a secret unquenchable thirst for art that he is willing to abandon the trivial pleasures of bourgeois life for the penury and hard life of an aspiring painter without considering himself ridiculous or vain. He is cold, selfish and uncompromising in this quest for beauty. 

The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus

The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus

Kristopia
Non Fiction

Brooding rumination. That’s what people usually get into when they were awakened by absurdity. Once we cross that invisible line in front of our unwary feet, the world falls on its stunned head, and orientation is anyone’s guess. Just as Roquentin said, where truth lies now is in unending aporia. Yet, Camus posits a way out of despair by objectively exploring the Absurd, the topic of suicide, and the dilemma of living or not living in a universe devoid of order or meaning.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Kristopia
Fiction

When the outbreak of a pandemic swine-flu wiped out 99% of humanity, what will happen to the survivors? This book is not so much about apocalypse as about memory and loss, nostalgia and yearning, and the attempt of art to deepen our ephemeral impressions of the world. Whereas most apocalypse stories push harshly forward into terror or dystopia, this novel moves back and forth in time, illustrating the pre-apocalyptic world and twenty years after civilization has collapsed, when the worst is over and survivors have grouped themselves into isolated settlements.

L’Étranger by Albert Camus.

L’Étranger by Albert Camus.

Kristopia
Fiction, Character Analysis

My favorite novel about Absurdism.

Just like his existentialist comrades, Mersault is buffeted like wreckage in the indifferent waves of the ocean. He is neither cynical nor optimistic. He demands nothing from life or people, and cultivates nothing. His indifference is not stoicism, for he buys into to no larger sense of nature. Nor is he a recalcitrant Diogenes, sneering at convention with derision…….

They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera

They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera

Kristopia
Fiction

This is a world where an institution has perfected the ability to predict when someone is going to die. This same world has a call center named Death-Cast, that’s responsible for phoning individuals during midnight to let them know they are dying in the next 24 hours. Furthermore, this cruel world has an app, Last Friend, much like a dating service, that allows people to find other to-be-dead people to spend their End Day together.

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