Ideas & Views

A must read for the gadget-addictive and often-internet-browsing folks. The book might seem too preaching for the know-all but it's not. A read through at the least wakes up (should wake up) the consciousness of people to set priorities right in life and spend the most time at them. Though much hyped, it's worth a read and worth reflecting on our awareness of time and priorities. An essential read for some.   http://gregmckeown.com/essentialism-the-disciplined-pursuit-of-less/

                                                              I have read quite a few books of Paulo Coelho and "The Alchemist" is the only fiction that I have read twice. I had developed enormous respect for the author over the years. His writing style is simple with no complicated vocabulary and lucid. That does not mean the content matter is frivolous. Very deeply reflected thoughts about life - self and relations, emotions carefully analyzed and solidified into words of wisdom. I have also read and come to know that Coelho writes from his own experience and not entirely fictitious. Once I started reading the Manuscript, I couldn't keep the book down. I stopped to reread and reflect many of the sentences and passages. Most of them struck me as wise sayings. I started reading it loud and discussing...

I read in a trust worthy source that Mahabharata has more versions than Ramayana. Mahabharata, as weaved by the greatest author of all times - Veda Vyasa, is such a grand theme of numerous smaller grand themes. It is a wonder to find writers of today attempting their retelling of this masterpiece. The uniqueness of this book, though, are the illustrations. Illustrations do not refer to cartoon sketches depicting events, but author's analysis and description of what a certain dialogue or incident tells about life in that time period, people, their morals, values and culture. These illustrations are provided as footnote at the bottom of each page wherever they are required.  My ideas about Hinduism, its two biggest epics and its practice has changed over time with constant enquiry, reference and understanding.  Wouldn't like to elaborate it here. BUT..... I read the book more than a year ago.  "Mahabharata is a story of all illegitimate sons", said a c...

There are many a reviews and even previews before the book was released, probably, to make people want to read. Such publicity announced the arrival of the new book to me, but is not what made me read it. Malcolm Gladwell has a powerful and entertaining narration with a twist in the tale of human thinking. Having raised in a middle income family and strict societal structure in India, adversity has been the best teacher. The adversity could be in any form - monetary, intellectual, emotional and physical challenges. Some of us realize it early in our teenage, and some in adult life.This book highlights some with examples from history. There was quite a ga-ga about the book. Once the author becomes popular, the readers and media build huge expectations. It is no fault of his if he does not live up. He likes writing  and he writes. I wouldn't rate this the best of his works. I like reading his works and sure enough will read another of his book too. The ideas presented in...

A brilliant Economics 101 for the engineer. World makes sense now. Need I elaborate? Must read. http://www.nakedeconomics.com/

I have lost touch and taste for fiction. Harry Potter was the only interesting read I spent hours before. Picked up this book of Chetan's from the local lending library while searching for some interesting read to keep me sane from the boredom of Trichy.  Trichy is a unique city (like any other). There are plenty of rural areas around it where you can actually spend quality time with people and farms. Mukombu and Kallanai dam are attractions to some extent too.    I did my high school at Trichy . All my friends and I have moved out to wherever our jobs took us. Trichy  was boring to me because I didn't have a circle in which I can socialize for long hours. More so because  I had to stay home most of the time with my toddler and the elderly group. We didn't  have  much conveniences and entertainment media at home to beat the heat either.  Coming to Revolution 2020 , I found the title to be really odd for the plot. It just doesn't su...

I have not written about two books that touched me very deeply and dearly. I have read them years ago but the essence of the book flows in my veins. I prefer and make a personal choice on it everyday. 'The Zahir' by Paulo Coelho and 'From Science to God' by Dr.Peter Russell. 'The Zahir' (along with another book of Osho, forgot the name) opened my mind to appreciate people, places, culture and life in its broad sense; that love is not a structured element, it plays a bigger role than what I had thought; that every person has different colors and shades and to accept a person as is means accepting all aspects of his/her personality. Life is not a hard and fast set of rules or procedures. It truly made me appreciate and respect all thought systems. Life is a whole lot of possibilities, all permutation-combinations of ways of life exist. The book invoked a giant leap in my thought process. Life can be possible in very many ways. A broader-minded person I am after t...

The book is a collage of microeconomic reasoning behind, well, (writing in their own style), very many things in life. For an engineer (that is, to me), it is simply a common sense analysis, a down to the scratch practical and logical way of thinking for why things are the way they are. This book is a continuation of Freakonomics. Freakonomics being new in the author's style of writing was an instant hit. the first book's success has prompted the authors to write one more after few years of gathering new ideas to analyze. Anyone who has been closely reading everything that Malcolm Gladwell writes would notice some of the thoughts and points in Superfreakonomics coincide. The authors have mentioned this too and given due credits to Outliers. The chapters could have been titled better or simply numbered. Definitely the read is better than watching some imbecile video in Youtube simply for the sake of entertainment. There is nothing more to review. If you have the time, read it....

Was quite enthralled by Malcolm Gladwell at the very review of this book's ideas, need not even read the book entirely. Such is the power of thoughts and ideas. Can influence people and sweep them off their feet. Its an extraordinary book explaining the reality behind commonly held myths about success. I have had conversations with Jay on some of the facts explained in this book at different points of time earlier. Stats, stats, stats. When statistics support the theory currently in vogue or unfold new theories, it makes a convincing read to a scientific mind. That's what Outliers does. Gladwell religiously has collected data to this extent. Fascinated by some of the ideas that Gladwell throws and found the comfort of a home in others. For few days after completing the read, I was in a discontented, restless mood. These questions were written all over my face - "Am I going to achieve anything now that I haven't put that precious 10,000 hours into anything so far?...

Don't remember how I came across this book 'The Palace of Illusions' but after reading the review (from source I don't recollect ), I caught hold of it from the library. Usually, books in English by Indian authors are not available in our local public library - the Prince William County Public Library. My sincere searchers for Tagore, Nehru, Rajaji , R.K.Narayan had only proved futile. Repeated requests with the chief librarian didn't change things much. Not even the award winning Jhumpa Lahiri or the titles 'English August', or 'God of small things'. Nay. But, Palace of Illusions was right there and also on 'available' status after being 'on hold' many times. The description " Draupadi's narration of Mahabarata " was enough to captivate me, not because of the feminist title, but simply its different. The same story told from a different angle, from another's perspective, viewed from a different frame of refe...

A dying man's diary of childhood dreams and how to live. Read it again with no negative connotations. I read the column on Wall Street Journal (paper edition, not online) by the journalist who attended Randy's last lecture at Carnegie Mellon and who had co-authored this book with Randy's narration. That made me curious to want to read the book. Randy sounded very similar to my personality, a person with a balance of optimism and realism, focused and slightly geeky! (Pardon me if I sounded presumptuous, that's not the idea) Hence I could give it a normal reading, not allowing the words and incidences to move me. Except at one point , I did feel this. Life after having lost my father in my early twenties is tough enough. Growing up without even a concept of Father is going to be miserable for Randy's one year old daughter. My sincere prayers for the family of Randy. Not the kind that cud take too much preachy stuff, few pieces of advice that I wud definitely carry ...

Old man and his God & Wise and Otherwise: Sudha Murty, who is Mrs. Narayana Murty, is also the Chairman of Infosys Foundation, the charity wing of the mega software firm. The two books she has authored are a collection of narrations from real life experiences of Sudhaji. She comes across a wide spectrum of people during her numerous field trips. Field work refers to the trips she makes to remote rural villages including tribal regions deep inside Karnataka forests when she ventures to make sure the Foundation's funds reach the right person for the right reason. Her contemplations and reflections observed during these and other day-to-day social activities in Bangalore has turned into two touching volumes of valuable reading. Few of her encounters and lessons learned were very elevating to the mundane mind. Thanks to Sudhaji for taking time to write her invaluable experiences in a simple and lucid style.

Book Title: Argumentative Indian - Writings On Indian History, Culture and Identity by Professor Amartya Sen I have heard and read a lot about Prof Amartya Sen but have not read any works of him. This book was on my must-read list for some years now after I had read a review in The Hindu. The idea of a book on Indian history and social topics from an Economics Nobel Laureate intrigued me. When I found the book in our public library, I wanted to read at least few pages ,just to know the author. The book is actually a compendium of essays. For more details, please read here . One particular essay was more fulfilling read than others. This was the essay on 'Reason'. Every essay is rich not just with historical facts but the author's views and interpretations . I was simply humbled by how much he knew and how much time and effort he must have spent on learning about our country. My generation hardly does this. I felt a compulsion to study and derive lessons from our country...

I have read quite a few books in the last quarter of 2007 but could not manage to write about them. So, here is a quick and short overview or rather just my views. Note: How do I choose the books that I read? I read reviews and also an excerpt of each book from popular websites like NDTV Books , NY Times and also from book sellers and library listings if time permits. Freakonomics : A light-hearted book from an economist and a journalist but with deep in-sights. This book was like Econ 101 for me, an electronics engineer. I started liking and appreciating economics and its effects on societal behavior (or is it the other way?). Crazily drawn discussion and analyzes from two enthusiastic guys. Informative and enlightening. Must read. Blink-The power of thinking without thinking : A much hyped and popular book. I read this because of the hype without reading any review or excerpt. Not a satisfying read for me. I tend to think differently when it comes to matters of Mind and how it...

a quite exhausting read on how geneticists and biotechnology companies function both in the past and present. exhausting because of too many characters and incidences (or it could be that i have lost the taste and patience to read fiction anymore). 'Next' is an eye opener to the non-biology herd. Crichton has painted a picture of the real life events...how biotech companies steal data, report results that are totally made up and what goes behind the screen in the case of banned research. till now, i was not even aware that genes could be patented!!! it came as a shock to me. how can this be true??? totally unreasonable and absurd. imagine Newton patenting Gravity or Einstein patenting Time and Space !!!!! gene, that forms the fundamental constituent of every life form has been patented and still being patented by companies that discover an attribute of a gene(something like this). hence, no research could be carried out by anyone else on that gene without paying heavy royalti...

The Bachelor of Arts by R.K.Narayan ------------------------------------------------------ i have been wanting to read this book from my school days but somehow or the other never had a chance to get a hold on this very first book of R.K.Narayan. There is a place called Book Chowk (both in Trichy and Coimbatore) where they sell and buy all sorts of used books. Chowk is any narrow laned street full of roadside book vendors in the heart of the City.you will get anything from IAS preparatory materials of Brilliant Tutorials to last month's ananda vikatan. It will be a surprise to any first time visitors that people who have not even gone to school for namesake surround themselves with books of all sizes and shapes, pounce and grab customers to have a look at what they have got to sell. more surprisingly the sellers also have some kinda knowledge about what they dusted just yesterday. these self taught small scale business men are such skilled master sellers that only strategic haggl...

a Pulitzer prize winning book (1985) by Tracy Kidder on how a small company and a small team made it big in building computers.............. some notes scribbled down hurriedly while reading the book....... "Mushroom theory of management" ?? Put them in the dark, feed them shit and watch them grow !!! not everything worth doing is worth doing well...meaning...if you can do a quick-and-dirty job, and it works, do it. in computer making industry, there is no such thing as a perfect design. this lesson is the first step in learning how to get the machines out the door. an engineer should know when to stop striving for perfection. about engineers in page 146: engineers do have a professional code;among its tenets is the general idea that the engineer's right environment is a highly structured one, in which only right and wrong answers exist. its a binary world; the computer might be its paradigm. and many engineers aspire to be binary people within it. no wonder. the prospe...

review of "God's Debris" authored by Scott Adams a brilliant thought experiment, brilliant because this thought experiment occurred in an American. this is Vedanta blossoming from its early inquisitive stage, the notable change being its from a westerner and not restricted to western audience alone. i was tempted to read the freely distributed PDF available in the Internet, mainly because it is free and was suggested by a close friend. i could not resist taking notes while reading the PDF then and there. so i took a printout of the complete set and started scribbling all over the empty space on the top, bottom and on the sides of the pages. a friend of mine suspected that i am reading research papers for my work related project in the bus as she saw me reading this material with a pencil in hand. let me see if i can make sense out of what i scribbled on those pages. i have tried to copy them here and add some sensible explanations (for my own reference and record). .......

a review of " iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business " i was about 50 pages into the book. i could not take anymore of praise for Steve Jobs. it also made me feel so small that i stopped reading the book and worked 14 hours everyday for 3 weeks at my office. it took me a while for me to come out of the "you are nothing" feeling. soon, i started reading the book with fresh enthusiasm, just for the pleasure of reading. within the next few pages, the tone of the book changed dramatically. in history, if there was one biography that points out all the mistakes of the person being biographed and the flaws in his very personality, this is it. its a blasphemy of biographies!!!! may be that's all there is to it. but wait. the biographers covered the length and breadth of Steve's temper and how it reflected in every action of his. as a biography, it neatly portrays his ups and downs in both professional and personal life. how did the a...

a review of " Bookless in Baghdad" authored by Shashi Tharoor i am an admirer of this United Nations' Under-Secretary General and a regular reader of his columns in various magazines and newspapers. (he writes a column for Sunday Magazine of The Hindu). i am also a regular visitor to his website , crazily reading every word he has to say there. but, here is a book from him that would have made a rather good blog. a book on books and authors !!!!! (and here is a review for that too!!!!) tharoor probably has a compulsive desire to publish every piece of paper he writes!!! may be there are publishers out there in NYC who will do anything for his name and fame. you still didn't buy one ardent fan of yours, Mr. UN. i am yet to read his other (more meaningful and accolades winning) works like 'the riot', ' the great indian novel', 'show business'. i am sure they will buy me. i have read about them and are in my must-read list of books. i am boun...