Reading beyond recipe books

Betrand and Cary were to wed in Bournemouth but his boss had other plans for the big day.  So boss Dreuther got the couple to marry in Monte Carlo but for 9 days, he forgot his combined holiday. The couple were left high and dry with limited funds in Monte Carlo but Bertrand managed to have a windfall in the casino just when they were down and out. Cary was the romantic kind and didn't care for riches, though she was 21 years younger than Bertrand. In a fit of anger, she left him for another man, because her husband was spending too much time at the casino. Bertrand wanted to exact revenge on his boss who caused his misery and imminent divorce. With his winnings, he plotted to take over Dreuther's company. Boss Dreuther arrived 9 days later. He had completely forgotten his pact to witness the couple's wedding in Monte Carlo. To make amends, he taught Bertrand how to win his wife back. Cary went back to Bertrand and wanted Bertrand to reveal that Dreuther has been bought out

Elizabeth Holmes is a Stanford Engineering dropout with a hare brain idea of a product that was touted to save the world. Though the theory of the blood test machine was flimsy, Theranos and the mini blood tester ignited the imagination of venture capitalists. Together with Balawi, her partner, she  cheated billions of dollars off billions in the product that was not. Theranos, the unicorn and Apple in healthcare, could neither take off and was rotten in business practices to the core. Holmes promise of many tests based on a pin prick sized blood did not materialized and she used commercial testers to do the job. The results were   passed   off as results from her miniLab. Many false positives in many diseases caused much harm to patients and Walmart's venture into healthcare a pipedream.  Why would a company whose board of directors are not from the industry or discipline able to be the unicorn in Simi Valley? The rich and powerful executive board attracted the VCs like bees to ho

Brian Regan grew up in a underprivileged family. He did not do well in school due to his dyslexia and struggled with low self esteem. The only way out of his situation was to sign up for the military. There he found his strength in cybercrime related espionage support work. From it, he gained the respect from those who used to step on him, including his family. But his autism issues caught up with him at work and he no longer was respected among younger colleagues. He was forced to change his posting at NRO and eventual retirement which he opted. Unhappy with his lot and mounting debts due to his mismanagement of his money, he did what would be considered treason. Regan began a long period of collating the information that was freely available to him in the NRO for the purpose of selling them to the enemies of the country so that he could resolve his financial problems. However because of his lack of spy experience and poorly spelt extortion letter (due to dyslexia), he was never taken

Mrs Osmond is a sequel to Henry James' Portrait of a Lady. Portrait was written in the late 1800s with a cliff hanger to the fate of the female protagonist, Isabel. Banville takes off from there, adopting the voice of James. The pace is languid, if one can even recall one. Right towards the end of the story, the reader is still clueless as to what Isabel's plot towards her cheating ex-husband, Gilbert Osmond, is. Isabel Archer, heiress to her cousin's fortune, is American. Her life in Europe spans from Italy where married life is based, to London where her dying cousin bids her. In between are her encounter with friends in London and high society contacts in Paris that has scant bearing to the direction of the plot. Despite the different locations where the story moves, the pace is glacial.  The reader enters Isabel's world in the first half of the story to see her world where she battles against vultures as a rich heiress. In the second half, 

This book is a short read. Murata did a good job maintaining the tempo of the story, mostly in the form of the thoughts of store worker, Keiko. Keiko does not think like the typical Japanese person and has her own interpretation of her role in society. But to fit in the mould of a rigid society, she found that she conformed best as a store worker in a convenience store. For 18 years, she was a cog in the human network and blended in. But when Shiraha, a good for nothing male, joins the store with his useless lofty ideas and Keiko's self worth is questioned, she made a decision to change so that she can be accepted by all. When she make the decision to 'house' the bum like a pet and quit her job, it was accepted by family and friends, thinking that she is finally 'one' of them. Life lost meaning and direction as she grapples with too much free time after she quit so that she could look for a 'proper' job. Meanwhile, Shiraha pressured her to l

Ok, this is not another of Atwood's dystopic fiction. Rather, it is a book on debts, its meaning and famous examples of debts. Peppered throughout the book are references on the historical facts of famous debts and creditors, the Christian take on debts. Of note and special mention is Faustus and Scrooge,  each an anti example of each other. Millers, mills and miller's daughters mentioned in the Canterbury tales, Don Quixote and many other classics opens our eyes in how society sees industrialists as conniving thieves. One thing that keeps coming up,"Without memory, there is no debt" and so a clean slate with outstanding debts is forgotten. Most uprising will include the burning of the accounts book so that debts need not be repaid. Payback simply opens up into another world of classics. A good read!