by Aseem Gupta | Nov 25, 2021 | Book Summaries and Analysis
Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner looks, at first, like a simple supernatural ballad. An old sailor stops a man on his way to a wedding, tells him about a disastrous voyage, confesses that he killed an albatross, describes the terrible...
by Aseem Gupta | Nov 20, 2021 | Book Summaries and Analysis
Bo Burnham’s Egghead: Or, You Can’t Survive on Ideas Alone is easy to misdescribe. Calling it a poetry collection makes it sound more solemn and orderly than it is; calling it a comedy book makes it sound less formally inventive; calling it a collection of jokes...
by Aseem Gupta | Nov 15, 2021 | Book Summaries and Analysis
John Grisham’s The Brethren begins with an almost comic idea: three disgraced former judges, serving federal sentences in a minimum-security prison, create their own unofficial court and spend their days settling disputes among fellow inmates. Their judicial...
by Aseem Gupta | Nov 10, 2021 | Book Summaries and Analysis
John Grisham’s The Testament, originally published in 1999, begins with the ingredients of a classic legal thriller: an eccentric billionaire, a disputed inheritance, a carefully engineered will, and a family of prospective heirs already spending money they have not...
by Aseem Gupta | Oct 30, 2021 | Book Summaries and Analysis
Cities are full of things designed not to attract attention. Paint sprayed onto pavement, oddly placed doors, utility poles, grates, plaques, traffic islands, fake trees, strange rooflines, leftover walls, peculiar street names, and uncomfortable benches all become so...
by Aseem Gupta | Oct 25, 2021 | Book Summaries and Analysis
Some people find the usual career question difficult for reasons that have little to do with laziness, indecision, or lack of ambition. They can imagine themselves doing many things, become genuinely absorbed in several fields, learn quickly when curiosity takes hold,...
