Yakety Yak: Bombay to Beijing by Bicycle

By McGilton Russell

Russell McGilton, You are bound to like this man by the end of the book, I have been searching the net for ages looking for ways to contact Russell to thank him for writing such a hilarious travelogue. As usual it got to my reading shelf being a travelogue with a difference, Bombay to Beijing on a bicycle, well technically speaking he did not do the complete trip on a bicycle, but frankly speaking I don't think it would matter unless you are one of those who go back an verify every little thing that they read.


Read the initial introductory pages of this book which explain why Russell started on this trip here.

From there on the books gets even more interesting as he actually sets on his trip and arrives in Bombay. On the flight sitting next to him is an inquisitive Indian who doesn't understand why must one cycle when there are trains, while Russell learns that the local politicians had just changed the name of the city from "Bombay" to "Mumbai" and along with the old name plates go his dreams of the title of his planned Book, "Bombay to Beijing". Once in India just like all foreigners he is dismayed by the poverty and difference in classes, the crazy honking traffic, pollution and the general hustle bustle of Bombay.

Hailing from India it makes it all the more interesting for me to read about my home town when viewed from a different perspective. Especially when no matter where he goes he is pestered with a single question " Hello Sir , Which country?"

The book then moves on a swiftly , with Russell's experiences as he meets another cyclist and they join to cover the route till Kathmandu together. In Kathmandu he is joined by his beautiful blonde girlfriend with whom he then cycles to Ladakh. On the way things don't quite well and the stress of the journey and the pressure of Indian pestering takes its toll, with Russell breaking up with his Girlfriend. Then he moves on by flight to Hongkong and from there rides on to Beijing.
In between these pages are hilarious accounts of his experiences with villagers, bad hotels with peeping toms, cycle breakdowns, friendly people to assist in roadsides, frustration over his inability to find a single private moment in a country crowded with a billion people, fighting freezing cold and snowfall on roads in China. In China is when Russell gets lucky again and hooks up with another petite babe who takes his nude picture on the great wall of China.

This is a very fast moving humorous book , especially when coming from a horny and pervert author:) He paints a factual not so pretty picture of India as it really is, I recommended it to another cyclist and he got through it in less than a week and came back with genuine compliments for the book . In all an excellent, hilarious, must read book !

Spotted in France
by Gregory Edmont

I just finished one book on France, and this is the next in line. Picked it from the France section in the library mainly because it is a Moto-Travelogue with a difference, The cover showed that Gregory on a Vespa Scooter with a Dalmatian and I could make out that this was an on road journey through France. If you don't know the French just Love DOGS and this books makes it all the more evident. The book is filled with hints on how much the French love their dogs, Did you know that the French have mating shops or to put it more crudely animal brothels where one can take his pet to be "trained" just in case if breeding does not come naturally to his pet. Did you know that French dogs eat out at restaurants with their owners and are often given their own chair at the restaurant table, with their own dish.

Having just finished an Excellent book on the French last week I was hoping this one to be just as good and it was. The book starts with "I knew my life was missing something . . . I just didn’t know what, ...." I always wanted to have a pet dog and this book just gave me a hundred more reasons why I should hurry up. You can read a brief outline of the story in one of the reviews here which broadly give you an idea of the story.

Gregory's life truly changes for the better with the dog, everywhere he goes people are more friendly , strangers come and talk to him and compliment him about the dog. He is invited into homes, fed and treated well , offered assistance , showered with innumerable smiles and the like just because he and his dog strike a gentle chord in people's hearts wherever they go.

In the 2 years Gregory also gets too attached to JP as he calls his dalmatian, and they share a lovely relationship. The book is filled with cute one page hand sketches of JP and the environment of the chapter which are sort of a prelude to what's in the chapter and really add a sort of a suspense and good feel to the book. This book is very well written in a simple and lucid manner, and can be easily read in a few hours. Apparently there is a movie in the making on the book, I'm looking forward to the movie now.

A Short History of Nearly Everything
by Bill Bryson


This is one of those books that deliver, on what it promises on the cover page. A Short history of EVERYTHING. "Everything" is highlighted in the last sentence for a reason, because the book is indeed so exhaustive that there is hardly any area in the Physical sciences whose history and present state is not quite touched by Bryson.

From cosmology, physics, oceanography, chemistry, biology, geology, anthropology, paleontology, climatology, botany, and evolution he covers all of these and much more.

I would not attempt to write a complete review of this book as I don't quite think I can better the one written here.

You can also have a look here for a transcript of good Q & A interview with Bill Bryson on this book.

One repetitive comment that you would see in all these reviews is on the ease and manner in which Bryson conveys SCALE, be it the scale of time /life of the earth, or interplanetary distances, or intermolecular/atomic distances. Some of these examples of scale can be seen here.

As usual this book again follows the Bill Bryson standard of not using any pictures at all, I guess when If you as as comfortable using text, you don't need to use pictures to illustrate what you mean. Words themselves crystallize into pictures. Amazon has some 45 overwhelmingly positive reviews of this book, by far the most I have ever seen and its not as though he is writing about some more interesting topics like "Sex".

This is a book with ENDURING VALUE, meaning there is so much interesting and relevant info in it that it can be read over and over again.

To put it in one sentence, If textbook writers could write science as well as Bill Bryson, I would have become a scientist!

Notes from a Small Island
By Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson is what I was looking for , I am smitten after reading his excellent travelogue about Australia and was looking for more of his books. The fact that he is a very popular writer is clear from the fact that this book has 256 reviews on Amazon.com and believe me that is something !

If you have read any of his travelogues before you would know he has his own distinct style of humor and that is visible in every page in the book. It is his interactions with strangers and his descriptions of people that I like the most. He has the ability to bring out laugh out loud jokes in seemingly mundane everyday encounters.

Also he has a penchant for picking up details about history that you would not normally hear of from other sources or read in typical travelogues, stories like the a psycho duke who had a fear of people so severe that his servants would communicate with him in letters. Or the Crazy man on the train who bored him to death with details about Engines used in trains, their piston sizes , manufacturing sites, model year details and stuff like that. I especially loved a sentence where he says "and then the man took off to count rivets on trains". Another exceedingly humorous passage is when he describes in not so polite words the "Vodafone man" who makes pointless calls to tell people he’s on the mobile, on the train and will be home in so many minutes (1995: 187). There are many such funny / witty instances in the book like the time when Bryson was a journalist when Rupert Murdoch buys the company and the printers and typesetters go on strike. There are picketers everywhere blocking roads and terrorizing people and how Bryson barely manages to escape from being kicked in the ass by some picketers.

He did this journey throughout England primarily on public transport going to places with strange names that I have never heard of, most of which (place names) I managed to forget before turning the page. Well I must admit I know very little about places in England and of all he describes except for a few city names, Stonehenge was the only tourist place I was quite familiar with.

It is his idiosyncrasies that make the book interesting , this book does not have as much factual information or a lot of lasting value as a guide book but it is just one of those Non Fiction books that can be read once for a decent laugh. To say it shortly he sums it up as "British towns are a deck of cards that have been shuffled and endlessly redealt--same cards, different order." Throughout the book he complains consistently about bad architecture ruining the Victorian or traditional look and feel of the cities and when he complains he does not restrict himself to architecture, very often in a timely manner he has enough disdain for everyone right from public transport authorities, fast-food check out clerks, Ticketing clerks, to poor old men with hard hearing.

Overall I would read this book once and that would be it. It did fall short of my expectations in the sense that I am not a lot more knowledgeable about England having read this book unlike what happened before when I was enlightened with information about Australia last time. On the back cover of this book was a one line review that said "This book has as much Bill Bryson in it as much as it has England." I could not agree more.

A Year in the Merde
by Stephen Clarke

I found this book about a Brit's impressions on life in Paris, very very entertaining, Its a genuinely laugh out loud kind of a book with written in style by Stephen Clarke under the pseudo narration by a character Paul West. For those who don't know Merde is not the name of some posh suburb but actually is the french translation for "Shit"

I picked it up because it promised humour starting from its cover, the back cover said "A Year in the Merde is an almost-true account of things that may or may not have happened to him in the ten years he has lived in France, depending on who is asking the question. He originally published the book in an edition of 200 copies, with the intention of selling them through his website, giving them away to friends or offering them as fuel for his neighbour's Bastille Day barbecue."

Well I can't really write anything better than what has been written about this book in so many places, to get the hang of the storyline see this or go here to read a better informed review on the book.

For my part I just enjoyed the book thoroughly, the way he takes potshots at the French and their language , work(or actually Strike) culture and their little idiosyncrasies. For someone like me whose idea of night life is a good book or some good company , he paints a good picture of the hot an happening night clubs in Paris and his sexual misadventures. In all I found it immensely entertaining and can be a good read if all you are looking for is a hearty laugh.

The Street 2 : Confessions of an Undercover cop

Lachlan McCulloch

Lachlan McCulloch was an officer with the Victorian (A state in Australia) For all those crime thrillers and detective serial addicts, this is a book that you have been waiting for. The author Lachlan McCulloch is a copper. The Good guy fighting and bad guys on the relatively peaceful streets of Melbourne. Frankly speaking I am amazed at the peace and absence of crime in this city. Perhaps the credit goes to officers like Mr McCulloch.

This is a fairly small book less than 250 pages, and is very fast paced, with every chapter denoting one particular case in his life as a police officer. These are real accounts of his experiences, each different and captivating. Sometimes you can have the best of experiences but that does not necessarily translate into excellent writing. Bad writing can convert even the best of experiences / subjects in to clumsy, dull & bland monotones. For example Indian writers writing about sex. For an example of how good writing can convert simple and mundane into really interesting, have a look here where Waiter writes about a simple bus trip and moves you.

In these terms I would say the book is very well written since the author writes about a live experience and gets life into the words so well that we can see what's happening. Also each story/case is normally only a few pages long so you can start and end a story relatively in a short time, very useful when you read the book in bits and parts.

Googling around you can see that the Author has had his fair share of accolades for the work done, and the book has some very good examples of the creative strategies used by the author to combat crime.

He used to roam on the streets as a vagabond homeless hanging around typical street corners, staying close to where the real action was. And this according to him was the most effective way to get information on what was happening on the crime scene, and do some real time espionage.

Another example of his creative skills was when a few areas are troubled by a spate of break-ins and burglaries. On investigation they found that the method used by the burglar/s was to climb on to vacant apartments on the 2nd and 3rd floors through the drainage pipes on the outside and enter the houses breaking windows. Most Melbournian houses generally do not have grilled windows / rods to prevent burglaries.

The complete police department is pissed off at this, but is unable to identify or catch the culprit. When Lalan's boss offers every one 1 week to vacation to catch this criminal. Lallan gets serious about this particular guy and starts working on this case, instead of other officers who work at night scrounging the streets looking for him. Lallan gets a ladder and works only at day time. 2 days later he leaves a message for the ambulance service to alert him whenever there are any emergency calls in a particular area.

True to his prediction there is an emergency call 2 nights later and the man admitted to the hospital is arrested by Lallan as the criminal, and all the stolen stuff so far is later recovered from his house. If you are wondering what was all this about, here is the clincher, When Lallan starts working on this case he is sure that it would be fairly impossible to catch this guy dressed in black in action in the darkness of the night. So he does what only someone like him could think of .

He buys 2 big can's of Vaseline and takes a big ladder, working in day time, single handedly goes around applying Vaseline to all the drainage pipes in the area. Then he waits for the thief to slip from one of his Vaseline'd pipes and call the ambulance, which is just what happened.

I hope you are convinced about the quality of the experiences he has mentioned about in this book by this example. I'm convinced it’s a good read.

Real Estate Mistakes :
Neil Jenman

Excellent book that I have referred to many others before. And not only me those whom I referred it to liked this as well. The book is fairly anti real estate agents and well as it should be, Real estate agents and lawyers are very few of those universally hated professions where mistrust and acrimony runs deep till the bone. And the author takes a good stab at both.

He describes the malpractices used by real estate agents in fairly good detail and suggests steps and ways for house sellers and buyers to avoid these mistakes that agents do. He has compiled an amazing list of statistics in which he convincingly argues his case against the agents, and of course the agents hate his book. For example one of the statistic he gives is that more than 80% of the people are so stressed out and disappointed by selling a house through their agents that they say they would never use the same agent again to sell a house.

For example according to the book, one of the biggest malpractices that agents use is selling houses by Auctions! Here again contrary to popular belief he argues that auctions are a harrowing experience for the buyer and seller alike. The only person who gains in these is the Agent. Which if you think of it is reasonably true. Also have a read through his very informative website and see a snippet of what he has to say.

A typical scenario described in the book goes like this, lets say you put up your house for sale and there are 2 buyers, Your agent's job should be to get you the maximum price that the buyers are willing to pay, but this is not actually what happens at the auctions. Lets say you decide to go for an auction and on auction day in the final moments you have 2 possible serious buyers who are bidding against each other.

Now consider this for a moment, every buyer when he has inspected the house has a certain set price in mind that is the maximum he might be willing to pay for the house. Lets say for the sake of the argument that the the two buyers have their maximum price 50,000 $ apart, meaning for your house the Buyer 1 is willing to pay 300,000 whereas buyer 2 is willing to pay 350,000.

This is what will happen on the Auction day, when the Bid reaches 300,000 , Buyer 1 will stop bidding and Buyer 2 will bid for 301,000 $ and buy the house. So that is effectively a waste of 49,000 $ for the seller. This he says is the biggest problem with the auctions. Now instead of an Auction , if the agent had negotiated individually and got their maximum buyer's price without revealing what other parties are willing to offer. The seller would not have lost such a big sum. Have a read in the author's own words here.

There is a caveat in this that the author comfortably ignores that at many times in Auctions , the heat of the competition encourages people to bid against each other and over shoot their budgets, and they end up paying more than what they would if they had thought with cool heads in the comforts of a negotiating table or on telephone.

The book is also gives some good tips on selection of good agents, tips on how not to advertise your house and stuff like that. He tells you the questions a buyer should ask, some basic checks to be performed, why not to do open inspections and stuff like that. In all I would say its a very good book and a must read for people planning to buy / sell their home. The book is definitely worth its ~ 20 $ price and if applied correctly can end up saving hundreds of dollars. If nothing else I am wiser for having read it , and perhaps better prepared for when I have to buy a house.

This is what a friend (who is about to buy a house) had to say after I had recommended this book " I just started reading it this morning and am already impressed. Its the sort of book I need to read at this point. Cheers for the recommendation."
You can perhaps guess how good the book is if some one is impressed in less than 1 or 2 hours.