Strangers On a Train
The world of Patricia Highsmith has always been filled with ordinary people, all of whom are capable of very ordinary crimes. This theme was present from the beginning, when her debut, Strangers on a Train, galvanized the reading public. Here we encounter Guy Haines and Charles Anthony Bruno, passengers on the same train. But while Guy is a successful architect in the midst of a divorce, Bruno turns out to be a sadistic psychopath who manipulates Guy into swapping murders with him. "Some people are better off dead," Bruno remarks, "like your wife and my father, for instance." As Bruno carries out his twisted plan, Guy is trapped in Highsmith's perilous world, where, under the right circumstances, anybody is capable of murder.
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What Hacker News says
- I feel like the SEC must have already taken into account the possibility of a "Strangers on a Train" situation where an insider tracks down an anonymous third party to commit the crime with the expectation of being paid back a percentage at some later date.
- The article mentions "Strangers on a Train" which I've never seen or read but I've had a number of really interesting encounters from train talk. It's a natural place to end up in a scenario where you could chat with someone for a decently long time if you both choose to do so. A takeaway I always remind myself is that you never know what's right next to you.
Last month someone asked me which track the train leaves from. I answered and that turned into chatting with someone from Lebanon visiting the US who was nearing the completion of their PhD in theoretical physics mixed with quantum computing. Out of no where a 90 minute conversation ensued around programming, life in different countries and a bunch of other assorted topics.
- > I don't think she actually did any female protagonists at all.
Of course there's Therese, the well-developed protagonist of The Price of Salt (aka Carol), a lesbian romance. This work and its movie adaptation are the reason she's a gay icon - both are popular and well-loved.
Highsmith published The Price of Salt under a pseudonym after her success with "Strangers on a Train", which is driven by the masculine characters you mention. From what I can tell, The Price of Salt is more directly based on her personal life, or rather her fantasies, and part of the reason she used a pseudonym is that her agent warned her that writing a lesbian novel would be career suicide. Wikipedia has more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Price_of_Salt "Highsmith described the character of Therese as having come "from my own bones"."
- Currently Reading : Goldfinch!
Best Book I read this year : Deep Work by Cal Newport and One World Education by Sal Khan.
Best fiction : Laughter in the Dark by Nabokov.
## Deep Work by Cal Newport
## The life changing magic of tidying up by Marie Kondo
## So good they can’t ignore you by Cal Newport
## Serious men by Manu Joseph
## Strangers on a train
## One world education by Sal Khan (Highly recommend it)
There are several wonderful takeaways from the book which I will try to list :
- The current model of education is broken. The Prussian system was designed to isolate workers from thinkers and factory laborers from office bearers. In an era where we need lots of original and creative minds to solve problems, it just doesn’t work.
- Conventional education system leads to a lot of gaps in learning, which are not addressed. For example, in spite of scoring 90% in math, you might have missed out on a key concept which will come back to haunt you later on.
- The system of homework is broken. It prioritizes quantity over quality and is meaningless.
- The testing system is just a snapshot of the student’s learning and does not says nothing about a student’s potential to learn a subject.
Sal goes on to propose a futuristic schooling system where students would use Khan Academy or an equivalent medium to progress at their own pace and use their classrooms for pursuing creative activities and enhancing his/her learning. Another interesting idea which he proposes is to dismantle age-wise segregation and group them based on the levels they are at in terms of progress made.
I think Sal Khan is a fantastic role model for kids and adults alike. A former hedge fund analyst turned educator is shaking up the fundamentals of our education system and tackling problems which are deeply rooted and slowly turning political as well. Here’s to a bright Sal-led future for education!
Overall, I would give the book 4.5/5. Visionary. Excellent. Ambitious!
## The Invisible Hand
## Disgraced by Ayad Akthar
## Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
## Laugher in the Dark by Vladimir Nabokov
