2007

The Inheritance of Loss
A nice book from Kiran Desai which won the Booker in '06. I think the central message in this novel is the transformation which people undergo as a result of cultural shifts from staying away from one's own homeland. Set part in the illegal immigrant lifestyle of New York and part in the restlessness of the Kalimpong/Darjeeling hills during the Gorkha agitation, the story revolves around a retired judge, his cook, his grand daughter, and the cook's son. I felt, as a novel, none of the characters were very well developed. But more than the characters themselves, this book is about how coming back to home from abroad reshape people -- a permanent sense of disillusionment in the case of the judge, and a discovery of one's identity and roots in the case of the cook's son. And while the small circle of the rich in the hills portray the aptly named ``inheritance of loss'', it is with the cook and his son where we see the hope for the future despite their poverty.

Snow
My first Orhan Pamuk (Nobel '06),this is a bold book which deals with the very political issue of head scarves in Islamic society. It portrays the clash of the Ataturk principles of Turkey with pro-Islamic idealism in a remote Kurdish village cut off from the rest of the country for a few days due to snow. Caught up in the midst of all these upheavals is Ka, a poet and the central character, and his feelings for Ipek. The book describes Ka, with his naivete, getting involved in this heady cauldron and politics inexorably influencing his relationship with Ipek.

2006

Winning
A much better Jack Welch book than his autobiography. His previous book, Straight from the Gut, was low on substance and high on his achievments. Winning, on the other hand, probably does not provide a formula to win (!) but does outline some sensible guidelines relevant to understanding one's career, company, and competition. This book is as good as Andy Grove's Only the Paranoid Survive.

It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life
These are Lance Armstrong's words on how he successfully fought cancer and, amazingly, won a record number of Tour De France (professional cycling's toughest event). The book traces his early career, the cancer, and stops at his first Tour win. While not everybody gets the kind of medical treatment which he received and despite a chaotic personal life and unconfirmed drug abuse allegations which might not make him a role model for all, his willpower and hunger to win the fight, be it against cancer or on the Tour, has to be admired and respected. The book is peppered with lots of interesting anecdotes on cycling which I found interesting having known nothing of the sport before.

Thousand Cranes
This is my second Kawabata and sometimes, while reading his books, it feels like poetry in motion such is the visual depth of his narration. As in Snow Country, the central character seems to be a rich and listless man and the stories usually draw the effects on him of the different women he comes across. Rather than painstakingly building their characters, Kawabata narrates the interaction among them down to the extreme minutae and leaves us to interpret. It is a very different style of prose compared to most Western novelists and one which definitely should not be missed.

Midnight's Children
Another long flight, this time a India trip, and another reading spree during sleepless hours. This book should be rightly considered a classic among modern Indian English literature and, in my opinion, surely holds its own against Gunter Grass's Tin Drum. Salman Rushdie has given an unique subcontinental spin to the Tin Drum concept of blending fantasy with recording the history of turbulent times. It is a tough read, and there are occasions where it becomes a bit melodramatic and digresses too much, but on the whole this is still a great story. I think the story of the midnight's children -- those born during the first hour of India's independence and had special powers -- represents the story of India itself. The children represent the promise and the talent of the new nation and their subsequent loss of direction coinciding with the problems the country faced over the decades culminating in Indira Gandhi's tyranny. In the end, a generation which could have given so much but got deluded by naivete and perhaps a false sense of optimism.

SPIN Selling
I became interested in this book to look more closely into the techniques for the high-value sale, the sort of sale of a product or a service which is characterized by an extended length of selling cycle and requires a bigger committment from the customer, often developing into a relationship, than a small value sale. While most of the observations made by Neil Rackham sound common-sense, it is precisely in formulating such sense and differentiating them from the typical selling that I think the book makes a contribution. A selling process is decomposed into the 4 major stages of preliminaries -- where one opens the sales call, investigations -- where the customer needs are uncovered and developed, capability demonstration -- the satisfaction of the customer needs by the product or service, and finally the closing which in successful sales should end in a committment. In contrast to the emphasis on closing tricks in small value sales, high volume sales depend more on the investigation and capability demonstration phases. The SPIN model, a sequence of situational, problem, implication and need-payoff questions, provides a framework for better understanding the customer's explicit needs and relating them to one's own capabilities.

The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty through Profits
The main message of CK Prahlad in this book is that there is indeed a market which can me made out of the billions of poor which can help companies profit as well as give the poor a better life. Organizations need to bring forward innovative business models and technological solutions to address this market. He reinforces this primary argument with clear examples of companies and countries drawn across the spectrum. I like this message -- because I do not believe pure charity by itself is either sustainable nor does it really solve any core problem. And more than charity the poor probably needs products and services which suit their requirements and finances. The part which could have been better addressed in the book was the section on governance where examples could have been drawn from a more diverse set rather than only from Chandrababu Naidu's government.

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
I have always been fascinated by the Mongols and especially how they managed to conquer territories thousands of miles from their homeland. This book by Jack WeatherFord does a great job in tracing the truly amazing history of the rise of the Mongols from warring steppe tribes to one of the most powerful empires and civilizations of all times. And it all began with Genghis Khan. The great Mongol rules and generals had military acumen, organizational abilities, and political skills way above that of contemporary Western, Arab, and Chinese civilizations. Their tolerance of religious beliefs, status of women, and openness to incorporate the best of every conquered land into their civilization stood in stark contrast to feudal Europe and the Arab empires of those times. In fact, trade with the Mongols and the consequent influx of knowledge/ideas from Asia was a very important catalyst for the European renaissance. It's a pity that subsequent Western scholars of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries failed to grasp the enormous positive impact the Mongols had in shaping civilizaiton.

Does IT Matter?
One of the most debated books in recent times, I found quite some truth in what Nicholas Carr lays out. His main argument is that information technology is inevitably going down the route of commoditization and so would cease to be a source of strategic advantage to business. He illustrates this with trends in hardware, with commoditization moving from PCs to servers to networking to storage, and software where in-house developement has been replaced with software vendors who increasingly project themselves as utility providers (on-demand computing). There is also quite a bit of resemblance between IT and other infrastructural technologies, such as railroads and electricity, especially in their similar explosive growth, widespread adoption, and subsequent standardization. I think the ultimate vision of IT being a commodity, when both software and hardware could be accessed from a grid, is still far away. In the meantime, the proper use of IT along with business processes could yet provide value. Regardless, I am glad I am in research and not in core IT!

Only the Paranoid Survive
In contrast to typical autobiographical books from business leaders, Any Grove (Intel) focuses on different aspects of strategic inflection points -- which are significant changes which can potentially disrupt the whole business. I particularly liked his analysis of the Internet and it's remarkable how most of what he wrote in mid nineties has turned out to be true today. Overall a much better and more useful book than usual self-promoting autobiographies.

Snow Country
Probably one of the most poignant books I have read. Yasunori Kawabata (Nobel '68) paints a vivid picture of northern Japan, covered in snow for most parts of the year, and the relationship that develops between Shimamura and the geisha Komako. A man who escapes Tokyo and his family to seek the pleasures of the hotsprings and a woman who gives herself to him untroubled by the consequenes. The description is almost lyrical. I have to read more of Kawabata!

2005

Jack: Straight from the Gut
Since Lou Gerstner's book, I seem to have discovered a sudden liking for business autobiographies! And you cannot ignore getting it straight from Jack Welch, chairman of General Electric for 21 years, if you are into such books. I enjoyed the numerous small stories throughout the book but specially interesting were the chapters on NBC and globalization where he talks a bit about India.

The Sound and the Fury
This was my first Faulkner and, as expected, it turned out to be a difficult read but worth the struggle at the end. The book describes the decay of an old southern family - a common enough storyline which has been depicted in countless other novels. However, what sets this one apart is the art of narration with chapters being recorded by a different individuals from the family. Even more fascinating was that while the narrators themselves were the sons of the family, the common thread throughout the book revolved around the daughter Caddy (a memorable character). Prepare youself for a tough read though - for one narrator is a man-child, another a neurotic, and the third a ruthless miser!

The Tin Drum
A book heavy on imagination and certainly a must-read. Most war stories inevitably become biased since the stories are told by people on one or the other side of the war. Gunter Grass resorts to this unique strategy of fixing his narrator's physical, but not mental, development at three years to achieve a sense of impartiality - a character who perceives the world through the eyes of an adult and yet is treated in turn as a child. And what follows is an unique description of the journey of Oskar Matzerath - the protagonist.

Fateless
No matter how many Holocaust films one has seen, reading a personal account is an entirely different ballgame. And specially if the book is as well written as Fateless is (by Imre Kertesz, Nobel' 02). A striking aspect of the book is the absence of bitterness and malice towards the people and circumstances responsible for the suffering. It reads like a description of experiences looked from the eyes of a fifteen year old and his loss of innocence with the realization of his circumstances. As the author says, experiences which will always be a part of him.

Angels and Demons
I was on one of those red-eyes from coast-coast and picked up this Dan Brown thriller from the airport since I just cannot sleep in a flight. There's no point dissecting this book. Imagination run amok is all I can say. Anyway, it taught me to be better prepared for future flights!

The Plague
This Albert Camus novel looked apparently similar to Saramago's Blindness but there are differences. While both adopted an epidemic in a quarantined location as a setting to explore human society, Saramago's was about the evils of civilization in contrast to Camus questioning the way we live and how it serves as a basis for possible catastrophes. Both are immensely enjoyable and very provocative.

Life of Pi
I believe the main point Yann Martel was trying to make is the importance of spiritualism in life. But what with so many animals and so much high drama on the seas, somehow I had a hard time grasping it. Besides the story itself seemed too incredible to me! I liked the beginning before intense melodrama with the sinking of the ship killed my interest.

Life and Times of Michael K
I didn't find anything new in this John Coetzee (Nobel'03) book. The essence behind the whole story is the message that simplicity in life, to literally a back-to-earth basics, is probably an important concept in the lives and times of people in today's society. In that sense, Michael K is just a symbolic figure which brings out this essence. Somehow I have come across so much stuff on this idea that it has kind of lost it's novelty on me. And it's a different question altogether whether one agrees with the viewpoint or not. But the writing is very good.

2004

Siddhartha
I have read this book almost twice and still haven't been able to form an opinion of it! Did Hermann Hesse write it to question some tenets in Indian philosophy? By the time I come to the end of the book, I get confused :-) Have to revisit it at a later time.

A House for Mr. Biswas
In this extremely well written Naipaul masterpiece, it's hard not to empathise with the pricipal character Mr. Biswas at some point during the reading. More than buying a house, this book is about Mr. Biswas's epic struggle to provide a better life for himself and his family. His efforts to improve his conditions is a testament to what an average human being can achieve against seemingly insurmountable adversities. A must-read!

The Blindness
Nobel Laureate Jose Saramago's blindness is definitely one of the best books I have read in recent times. His imagination is as powerful as Garcia-Marquez. While the book was a tough read, specially during the middle parts, in the end it was worth it. The onset of a sudden epidemic, which makes the population of an entire city blind, is used to telling effect to portray the collapse of order and organization and the consequent rise of the evil in human beings. And yet how the human spirit survives the ravages.

A Passage to India
A sincere portrayal of the British Raj and the attitude of the educated Indians, cutting across communal lines, to it by E.M. Forster. The story and vivid descriptions of Chandrapore are also quite compelling. My only grouse is somehow I found the third section (the temple) not quite in sync with the rest of the story. Ideally, I would have liked the book to end with the court case. The reunion of old friends seemed an unnecessary drag.

The Da Vinci Code
Beats me how this Dan Brown "thriller" became such a bestseller. The entire point of the story was that Christianity, like any other religion and any other product, has been nicely marketed by the Church over the centuries to take it to where it is today. Not an earth-shattering observation and definitely not a novel one. And after all the song and dance, at the end, the story succumbs to religious pressures when somehow everyone associated with the current Church turned out to be holier-than-thou people incapable of committing any wrongdoing.

Who Says Elephants Can't Dance
In his words, Loius Gerstner (Chairman of IBM from 1993-2002) describes how he turned an IBM from the throes of decay and breakup back into a behemoth. Interesting insights into the culture of IBM in the early nineties. Some chapters towards the end sound a bit pontificating and more of a business almanac. But overall, time well spent.