Recently completed this book by Kazuo Ishiguro, a Japanese-English author. An elderly butler takes a road trip through a part of England and simultaneously reminisces about his past, his thirst to be the ideal butler and finally confronts the cost he paid to achieve that nebulous standard: in effect, he contemplates the remains of the day. The book is thoroughly enjoyable for its excellent prose and its lovable and well crafted central character. Definitely worth a read- a modern classic!
The book won a Booker prize and was later made into a movie by the same name with Anthony Hopkins cast as the butler.
4 comments:
Anna, oh how I envy you!!!!
It has been close to 2 years since I read any new book beyond my text books, not that "The art of Strategy" and "Working Globesmart" are not nice bed time stories, much like "Maanavude Mahaneeyudu" (I would always fall asleep by the time I read 5 pages of that book) :-)
Well I am sure you are enjoying your studies, even if there is no time for fiction :) As for MBA books, they sure are the pinnacle of vapidity...beats me how I made it through 2 years of that.
All business is midhya, centered around the fact of "how to sell?" with no scruples. truth is a big casualty. So, do not expect truth or interest from the books that teach. But they should be good windows into human emotional stuff?
Not all companies are that bad, perhaps. Mostly, the rulebooks are ethical enough- it is the culture of the company that determines how people interpret the rules, for good or bad.
But the books commit a worse crime: they lack brevity. And they try to act wise after the fact- Management gurus are masters of hindsight.
Economics is good though.
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