Recently in Books Category

In the last few months I would have spent atleast a few thousands on books for S. Most of the books she was reading were all pulp fiction. I decided that it was no longer fun coughing up money for books which would never be touched after they are read once. This was the same time when I stumbled upon Just Books.

A couple of weeks back we walked up to their branch and figured they have an impressive collection of books. The library is well lit, and well maintained. The different plans that they had to offer were also attractive. They have a section of books for children with small chairs neatly arranged to encourage reading habit.

They have also put technology to good use. Books are tagged with RFID and each member is issued an RFID card for issue / return of books. We signed up immediately and the experience so far has been fantastic. If you have branch around your area, do check it out.

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Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
    -- Mark Twain.

Why does drug dealers still live with their moms? What makes a perfect parent? With data and analysis, this book tries to answer some unrelated random questions.

Freakonomics is divided into six chapters, each starting off with a question. On initial thoughts, the answers look obvious. Using tools to reliably asses tonnes of data, this books comes with interesting and often surprising answers. Rather than being a dull subject, economics here is applied to a variety of common topics with amusing results.

The book drives on a set of fundamental ideas:

• Incentives are the cornerstone of modern life.
• Conventional wisdom is often wrong
• Dramatic effects often have distant, even subtle causes.
• Experts use their informational advantage to serve their own agenda.
• Knowing what to measure and how to measure it makes a complicated world much less so.

A must read if you are a curious cat and interested in knowing where have all the criminals gone.

The title looked interesting and I picked this book from the library. Idli - okay, but what has orchid and will power got to do with it?

The book is an English translation of the autobiography by Vithal Venkatesh Kamat. It is about taking an idea, a dream to fruition. No matter what obstacles comes, what ever be the struggle, use them as stepping stones and move forward. The book is bubbling with his drive and energy to get things done. His presence of mind seems to have bailed him out more than once. He has also used his networking skills effectively to generate more business.

The book is not without its pitfall. The size of the book is awkward and I did not find it comfortable holding it. The language is not all that great. This could have been because of the translation from Marathi to English. There is no clear flow in the book. I felt as if I was jumping back and forth with little coherence. But those few points should not take away some of the great learnings from the book.

Interestingly this book was published by a so called "Orchid publications" and I could not find any information about this book online. I stumbled across Swaroop's post about this book and he also indicates the same. I am not sure if it is a marketing gimmick to garner attention.

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Where there's a will, there's a way.

I first heard about this book when a note appeared in Hindu more than an year ago. Ever since then, I have been thinking about buying this book. Once when I went to a shop to buy this, they did not have a copy. The other time I found this at a bookstore in Chennai but the copy was damaged. Yesterday I was pleasantly surprised when someone special gifted me this book. She has been planning to buy a copy for herself but I felt so nice when she gifted this to me. I am very happy to have this one in my bookshelf.

I finished reading Chetan Bhagat's "The 3 Mistakes of My Life" over the weekend. I was looking for some books to read while browsing through at Sapna Book house in Indiranagar and I picked this one. This is Chetan's 3rd book and I did not find it very different from his first two books. The story line is the same. Friendship, Love and then a happy ending. The only thing I liked in this book is some of his witty / funny statements. Other than that there is nothing much in this book. I will not recommend this book and would think twice before buying his next book. :-(

Just finished reading "The Firm" by John Grisham. A fantastic thriller. Couldn't put it down once i crossed 200 pages odd. Glad that its over, i can go and get some sleep.