The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

Written by a former IT consultant, his screen adaptation of The Rosie Project won several Australian awards including best romantic comedy script. From my perspective this is well deserved because this is a great book. I'm not a fan of romantic novels or movies but this one pulled me IN. Don Tillman, a slightly middle aged, well educated professor embarks on a journey to find a life partner using scientific methods of selections eg interviews. This was after a series of bad dates including my FAVORITE, the ICE CREAM INCIDENT. He called this the WIFE PROJECT. His project went sideways when he is introduced to a young, beautiful and adventurous lady named Rosie. Rosie went against everything Don believed in, she was a smoker and unable to cook. She was completely unsuitable to Don as a life partner according to his questionnaires.

Don eventually finds himself breaking each and every rule of his including drinking on a Tuesday and dumping the standardized meal system. He finds himself feeling strange feelings he never knew existed when he volunteers on a adventurous task to find Rosie's unknown father. He oftenly found himself questioning his rationality of decisions he made just for the sake of Rosie. He eventually discovers that he designed his questionnaire to find someone who would accept him not someone he would accept. After a serious evaluation of a series of events he eventually decides that he was in love with Rosie. This is a must read that I would definitely recommend. You won't regret it.

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

This is great book for the readers particularly interested in History and Science as a whole. It gives an insight on the history of our species Homo Sapiens as well as a peak behind the curtain into the future. Yuval through hard evidence describes how humans went from bieng an animal of no significance to become gods answerable to no one not even to natural selection itself. It begins to explain events from the Big Bang theory 13.5 billion years ago up to the Cognitive revolution that occurred approximately 70 000 years ago. This revolution was particularly fueled by the emergence of the fictive language which allowed humans to participate in large numbers. The ability to imagine things that do not exist led to the emergence of imagined realities such as religion and cultural hierarchies which further strengthened the corporative abilities of our ancestors. The cognitive revolution was succeeded by the Agricultural revolution which foresaw the emergence of permanent settlements, domestication of plants and animals appropriately 12 000 years ago.

Universal money was popularized about 2 500 years ago which later soon was followed by the formation of popular religions like Buddhism 2 000 years ago. The scientific revolution emerged approximately 500 years ago when humans admitted ignorance and began to acquire unimaginable power. This was around the time European nations started to map the world and capitalism was on the rise. The replacement of family and and community by states and market led to the rise of the Industrial Revolution and a lot of other idealogies like individualism and communism. It also foresaw a massive extinction of plants and animals that humans did not deem beneficiary. Professor Yuval in the end speculates a future dominated by bioengineering and cybernetic organisms that may possibly replace our species as we know it. It is impossible to summarize this book in a few paragraphs and one needs only to read for themselves. It is loaded with lots of history events that shape our today as we know it. I would definitely recommend this book to my fellow book absorbers.