IMPORTANT

I have been very lazy and wrote very little in past several months. That doesn't mean that I am out of inspiration and stories. I have lots of unwritten entries all done in my head waiting to put them on the screen for long, long time.
Now that I write more readily, I have decided not only to write about current stuff, but to honor the "old stories" and write them too. These old, unpublished posts will be "published" on dates when they should have been written, in retrospective.
That is why I encourage a reader that comes here to browse the old posts too, because some of them will be newly published.

Sorry for the confusion & here's the list:

1. The Oxford Murders (May 20, 2008)

You are what you read?

To read or not to read... this particular book?
Indecisive as I sometimes get, it took me a while to answer this question. In the end, it wasn't much of a surprise that I took the book and read it: it was thin, it was talked about, infamous even. Perhaps curiosity got the best of me. OR, perhaps it was a great learning curve.
It took me an hour and a half, and I wasn't reading fast either. Now THAT is a piece of serious reading!
The story is sad. Unfortunately, I don't think that teenagers drowning in hormones will look at it that way. The book is a hit, and I'm sure that too many young readers will regard it as a guidebook rather than as a warning. If even one person takes it this way, it will be too many.
I the world ruled by television that offers half-digested, ready to consume, instant entertainment, I'm am a passionate advocate of books and reading. But sometimes, like now ,after reading this particular book, I have to ask myself whether in some cases is better not to read at all than to read just anything?
From a different prospective, reading this book has been an unexpected reassuring experience for me: I got to realise that not only Dostoevskys get published. Even more so if you live in Serbia.
The recipe for success: simple story, few pages, large font, promiscuity and violence, bad language. Voila! You've got yourself a best seller! Sadly, I'll have to pass on it. If it takes to write at this level to be popular and read, I'd rather be neither.

PS. I still haven't decided whether it would be too embarrassing to write this title in the list of books I've read. I'll have to ponder this some more...

The Oxford Murders

I am not much of a crime novel person, though I've read some Agatha Christie in my time, but what I've read about this novel intrigued me. There was this crime novel that had something to do with mathematics. Mathematics?! This was something to raise one's eyebrows.
It is a common knowledge that the most hated school subject of all times is mathematics. People dread it, want nothing to do with it, scare their preschool children with stories about how difficult and beyond understanding it is for ordinary humans. In my experience, hatred of mathematics is a universal thing that goes through people and nations. The common misconception lead to prejudice, not only about the science itself (OK, we can discuss here how mathematics is not even a science, but let's leave that for some other post), but about scientists that practice it as well. Mathematicians are widely considered as freaks of nature, unpopular and antisocial people living within their own twisted minds.
It is no wonder I was intrigued to read about a novel, translated in my country (meaning that it must be fairly popular somewhere else), with a plot that included something cool like a mystery with something extremely uncool like maths and mathematicians. The intricacy was even greater when one considers my own career choice.
The book is actually not bad for a crime novel (no offence here, I am a fantasy fan): it's light, clever and intriguing. Lots of twists, turns and one very unexpected ending. It was an enjoyable experience for me as, I presume, it has been for many other readers. What makes this book truly great in my eyes is that it managed to make mathematics sound cool. Mathematicians too.
You might have suspected: the writer IS a mathematician!