Genre:
Non-Fiction
Description:
“This
is another collection of Hubpages that deals with a wide-ranging
variety of subjects. The opening Hub explores author's claim to
writing, and further Hubs discuss presence of mind, the meaning of
life, future of politics in general, democracy in particular and
human life, in its end. How appropriate is our system of governance,
and why we have chosen it, and what benefit we stand to gain from our
party system, are some of the other ones. What is behind our
predilection with the prohibition of alcohol, the popularity of
natural things, and a proposition for a government for the future,
are few more of these. In each, he offers his own take on the origin,
uses, and benefits of each. He also presents his view how these
phenomena as something that have more than one side, and from which
we can benefit.”
Author:
After
retiring from the Indian Navy in 2013, Roy T James has taken up
writing, thus far writing and publishing four books in addition to
this one, all non-fiction.
Appraisal:
Hubpages
is a website that provides a venue where people can write short
articles about whatever they want. You could view it as a blog
covering an almost infinite number of subjects with an infinite
number of authors contributing. Okay, maybe not infinite, but a lot
of both. This book is a collection of 17 of the posts the author
originally wrote for this site and while they cover multiple
subjects, each aims to “provoke” in some way. In this context
I've interpreted provoke as meaning to get the reader thinking in
different ways, challenge what might be viewed as common sense or
consensus opinion.
Given
that introduction my thoughts on these 17 articles were mixed.
On the
negative side I sometimes had a hard time understanding what the
author was trying to say, the words not quite making sense to me.
Sometimes the problem, in whole or in part, was due to missing words
or grammatical errors. For example, what would you make of this
sentence?
“In the early society, where neither there was the need nor the people had the intent, or the opportunities, of gainful occupation, activities of governance were welcome effort for the society.”
“In the early society, where neither there was the need nor the people had the intent, or the opportunities, of gainful occupation, activities of governance were welcome effort for the society.”
On the
positive side, the ultimate goal of these pieces was to provoke,
whether to challenge my current thinking or look at a subject from a
different perspective. Most of these pieces did that. Whether I
agreed, vehemently disagreed, or my thoughts fell somewhere in the
middle, I was provoked.
Format/Typo
Issues:
A
large number of typos, grammar problems, and other copy editing and
proofreading misses for a book of this size.
Rating:
*** Three Stars
Reviewed
by: BigAl
Approximate word count:
14-15,000 words
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