Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything

Author: Joshua Foer


Before you read this book it is important to understand what it is about, or more importantly, what it is not. I read reviews from many a disappointed reader complaining about the lack of rigorous scientific treatment on how the brain "memorizes" details. There were also many rants about the lack of  a "how to" on improving your memory. After reading the book, it is clear to me that the book is all about Memory  championships and the memory athletes that compete in them. The interesting twist is that the author decides to take up the challenge of entering the US Memory Championship, himself, and the book details his training and the interesting characters he befriends along the way.

The book can be characterized as a memoir, but with a rather narrow scope of a couple of years when Josh trained for the US memory championship. Josh also dabbles with some detail on the history of memory and how it was a proxy for intelligence in the bygone eras. However he is quickly back to reality in observing "what was once a cornerstone of western culture is now at best a curiosity".

Towards the middle of the book, Josh includes a brief summary of some biological aspects of memory. He explains "The brain is a costly organ. Though it accounts for only 2 percent of the body's mass, it uses up a fifth of all the oxygen we breathe, and its where a quarter of all our glucose gets burned."

While the book is well written and easy to read, it is not quite fulfilling. Josh is fairly humble of his success, and you are left with a feeling that all of these techniques are not of much use in our everyday life.

Gone Girl

Author: Gillian Flynn


Every once in a while there's a book that tells a compelling story and is very hard to put down. This is one of those and Ms. Flynn has made it all the more interesting as the story is told by the husband and wife, Nick and Amy in alternating chapters. If you put down the book in the middle of a chapter you are likely to lose the thread of the story when you pick back up from where you left off.

The book starts out as a whodunit but somewhere around the halfway point, it transforms into a legal thriller. The first part is slow and confusing as the timelines for Nick and Amy's story are not synchronized. The pace picks up in the second half and this book is simply a joy to read. I don't want to spoil any of the suspense by revealing more about the book. So, just pick it up and read it. You won't be disappointed.

Wild

Author: Cheryl Strayed


This is my second book of the year (2012)  that is centered around the main character going on a long hike with little (Wild) or no preparation (An unlikely pilgrimage). One of the big attractions of a long hike is that there is lots of time for soul-searching and reminiscing about the past and Cheryl does plenty of that in this book, as she tells her tail of a poor and neglected childhood and early adult years.

Cheryl grew up in rural Minnesota and was brought up by her mother Bobbi, who had a great influence on her. When her mother died of lung cancer at an early age of 45, Cheryl was devastated. She lost all purpose in life, experimented with drugs, had no qualms in having affairs and eventually separated from her husband. During this time she chanced upon a guidebook for hiking the Pacific Crest Trail that spans all of the Western States in the US and before long she was saving up and planning for this hike of a lifetime. It involved hiking 1100 miles in the wilderness, carrying all the supplies she would need for the journey on her back. Add to this the fact that Cheryl had never hiked anything significant before it is an understatement to say that she was ill-prepared for the trip. To make matters worse, she was a young attractive girl, traveling alone and far far away from any civilization.

As with most things in life, her lack of knowing the dangers and hardships of the journey, helped her in achieving what most of us can only read about. It's a great book about the indomitable human spirit and the courage that propels us forward against all odds. It is great to see how Cheryl was not only successful in her quest, but how it also changed her perspective on life and allowed her to raise a nice family of her own.

The books is well written, is a pleasure to to read and comes across as honest and straight from the heart. My one complaint is that there is no detail on her life after the hike, and we are left to connect the dots in concluding that it changed her life for the better,