On Breaking Spines | BOOK RIOT
I know booklovers like that
“It turns out that people are more important than books. Sometimes anthropomorphising goes too far. Breaking a book’s spine does not disable the book. Books have no feelings. Who knew?
I’m getting better. Admittedly my bookshelves are pristine and most of the books appear unread. But my girlfriend is trying to encourage me to open the pages wider when I read, to just let go. Don’t fear the white lines, she says. It’s the sign of a book that’s been enjoyed, she adds. Or pillaged, I think.”

tags: book culture reading wp

• Sleepwalkers’ Glory: The Write Stuff: Roll the Dice
  isolation is the gift,
  all the others are a test of your endurance, of
  how much you really want to do it.
  and you’ll do it
  despite rejection and the worst odds
  and it will be better than
  anything else
  you can imagine.if you’re going to try,
  go all the way.
  there is no other feeling like that.
  you will be alone with the gods
  and the nights will flame with fire
  tags: poetry effort glory poem bukowski wp

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• The Hindu : Opinion / Lead : Salman Rushdie & India’s new theocracy
  the word of god grows best in fields watered by the state’s pelf, and ploughed by the state’s swords.
  Salman Rushdie’s censoring-out from the ongoing literary festival in Jaipur will be remembered as a milestone that marked the slow motion disintegration of India’s secular state…
  Few Indians understand the extent to which the state underwrites the practice of their faith. The case of the Maha Kumbh Mela, held every 12 years at Haridwar, Allahabad, Ujjain and Nashik, is a case in point…
  Last year, the Uttar Pradesh police sought a staggering Rs.2.66 billion to pay for the swathe of electronic technologies, helicopters and 30,000 personnel which will be needed to guard the next Mela in 2013. There are no publicly available figures on precisely how much the government will spend on other infrastructure — but it is instructive to note that an encephalitis epidemic that has claimed over 500 children’s lives this winter drew a Central aid of just Rs.0.28 billion.
  The State’s subsidies to the Kumbh Mela, sadly, aren’t an exception. Muslims wishing to make the Haj pilgrimage receive state support; so, too, do Sikhs travelling to Gurdwaras of historic importance in Pakistan. Hindus receive identical kinds of largesse, in larger amounts. The state helps underwrite dozens of pilgrimages, from Amarnath to Kailash Mansarovar. Early in the last decade, higher education funds were committed to teaching pseudo-sciences like astrology; in 2001, the Gujarat government even began paying salaries to temple priests…
  It doesn’t end there: the state regulates, on god’s behalf, what we may eat or drink — witness the proliferation of bans on beef, and proscriptions on alcohol use in so-called holy cities. It ensures children pray in morning assemblies funded by public taxes, provides endowments for denomination schools and funds religious functions. It pays for prayers before state functions, and promotes pseudo-sciences like astrology. And, yes: it censors heretics, like M.F. Husain or Mr. Rushdie…
  the real costs of India’s failure to secularise: among them, the perpetuation of caste and gender inequities, the stunting of reason and critical facilities needed for economic and social progress; the corrosive growth of religious nationalism.
  India cannot undo this harm until god and god’s will are ejected from our public life…
  In a 1927 essay, philosopher Bertrand Russell observed that theist arguments boiled down to a single, vain claim: “Look at me: I am such a splendid product that there must be design in the universe.”
  The time has come for Indian secular-democrats to assert the case for a better universe: a universe built around citizenship and rights, not the pernicious identity politics the state and its holy allies encourage.tags: india censorship religion faith atheism secularism salman_rushdie JLF wp

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Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Our Scissorland – Indian Express Mobile
  This backdrop explains the fear over the government’s attempts to censor various new mediums like social networking sites. These mediums pose new challenges for the ethics of expression. Many states are trying to use these mediums as tools of discipline rather than platforms of expression. But remove the fig leaf of technicalities. Holding them pre-emptively responsible for offensive speech is like requiring a profit-making road operator liable for every crime committed on the road because they did not pre-screen every car and driver and let potential murderers drive. But the issue is not technology. Given the Indian state’s record, it is but natural that any whiff of regulatory control is seen as threatening. A measure of this is the fact that a platitude like “no freedom is absolute” sounds more like a threat when the state utters it…
  Enlightenment was not spread only by sober, non-offensive philosophers. It was created by the most scurrilous lampooning of religious authority, often debasing it. A liberal democratic society can allow us to do that peacefully. But what creates conflict is not offensive speech; it is those using it as a pretext to exercise power over others.

tags: free_speech freedom india religion pratap_bhanu_mehta pbmehta wp

• An excuse called Rushdie – Views – livemint.com
  With politicians offering questionable placebos which have expired use-by dates, and clerics misdiagnosing the disease, is it any wonder that the patient’s condition remains grave?
  In Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Iff tells Haroun how certain things are P2C2E, (process-too-complicated-to-explain). But this process is simple: politicians and clerics gain by keeping the population uninformed. They fight chimeric battles and offer illusory benefits to Muslims, who want education and jobs. Instead they get quotas, and not skills, with the added bonus: to protest Rushdie.

tags: free_speech freedom india protest communalism religion friends salil_tripathi wp

• Disturbing the universe – Books – livemint.com
  Faith provides simplicity and certainty; reason questions those certainties. Rushdie wants to imagine that which has not yet been imagined, even if it is that which should not be imagined. Shoulds and oughts limit an artist’s freedom to take wing. And Rushdie wants to fly.
  With The Satanic Verses, he soars, and offers a glimpse of a universe that’s bewildering and ennobling; and as we go on that journey, we learn more about ourselves.

tags: booksfaithdoubtimaginationfictionsalil_tripathiwritersfreedomsalman_rushdiewp

• Views | The right to disturb the peace – Views – livemint.com“In all the arguments made against Salman Rushdie’s attendance at the Jaipur Literature Festival this week, the gist of them is just this: he disturbs the peace.” But all great literature (or work of art) disturbs the peace in its own way—by questioning tradition, urging us to see in new and different ways, even by being a call to arms. At its core is the concept of “doubt”, without which there can be no progress, no equity, and above all, nothing at all that is new. A world without doubt is a world of endless recapitulation. There can be no freedom of anything, at any level, if doubt is stamped upon. The Deoband clerics have every right to protest peacefully, and Rushdie has every right to seed doubt. It will be truly sad for Indian democracy if Rushdie is barred from coming to India.

tags: views right censorship free_speech freedom wp india

• Can’t take Bombay out of the boy – Books – livemint.com
  Intolerance has grown exponentially in India. Words like “blasphemy” are tossed around as though they were part of Indian culture, tradition and discourse: Most recently, cabinet minister Kapil Sibal called Web pages about his party leader Sonia Gandhi that he found insulting, blasphemous, unconsciously giving her the halo of divinity. India’s greatest painter, Maqbool Fida Husain, had to die in exile, because the state refused to protect his right of free expression when vigilantes threatened him and cases continued to be filed against him even after courts had ruled in his favour, dismissing similar cases. Earlier this month in Delhi, another artist, Balbir Krishan, who happens to be gay, and whose art deals with homosexuality, was attacked. The impulse to take offence runs everywhere…
  Delivering the keynote address at the India Today Conclave in 2010, Rushdie noted with alarm the “culture of complaint” that had come to dominate the Indian discourse. He chided India for not defending Husain: “He is even being jeered at for being old. This is the proud face of a philistine India. There is nothing wrong in not liking his art. You can easily opt out. A painting is a finite space of art. If it offends, don’t enter that space. The best way to avoid getting offended is to shut a book… The worst thing is that artists are soft targets… We do not have armies protecting us.”
  Writers should not need armies to protect them in a free society. That Rushdie might need protection in India reflects poorly—not on him, but on India.

tags: book books culture reading writing offense free_speech freedom salman_rushdie salil_tripathi wp

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• Don’t make me put it up on eBay | Domain Maximus
  But what bothers me is this: what next? What happens when the country goes to polls again? Who do you vote for? Who do I vote for? Why do I vote for them?… Growing up, sporadically, in this politically charged, fairly well-informed environment means that I like to think before voting.
  And the more I think about the next Lok Sabha polls the more… I am left thinking…
  if I had to make a decision, I am going to do it on the basis of a wishlist. So here I am going to put out a list of things I’d like to see the next government do. Some of them may be impossible due to constitutional process. And some of them may seem irrelevant to the vast majority of readers. But it is my wishlist. And these are issues that I care about. I am pretty sure not one politician will read this blogpost. But at least the process of writing it down will help me as we get closer to the ballot box. It will help me take a call.

tags: politics india sidin friends wp

• Three Star Leadership Blog: Fundamental Advice for a Young Leader
  Make a deliberate, concentrated effort to get better…
  Most great leaders are also good managers and supervisors. All three kinds of work come with the job. Master them all.
  This is a people game. People with their knowledge and relationships are the only source of sustainable competitive advantage. Master the arts of relationships and communication. Learn to help others develop their knowledge and relationships…
  You are more likely to regret the things you failed to try than the things that didn’t turn out as you expected. So try stuff.
  You are less likely to remember the details of your triumphs than the people who were with you at the time. So work on relationships. You are more likely to measure the impact of your life by its affect on other people’s lives than by counting the trophies in your trophy case. So concentrate on contribution.

tags: leadership advice leader management people wp

• Schlep Blindness
  I soon learned from experience that schleps are not merely inevitable, but pretty much what business consists of. A company is defined by the schleps it will undertake. And schleps should be dealt with the same way you’d deal with a cold swimming pool: just jump in. Which is not to say you should seek out unpleasant work per se, but that you should never shrink from it if it’s on the path to something great.
  The most dangerous thing about our dislike of schleps is that much of it is unconscious. Your unconscious won’t even let you see ideas that involve painful schleps. That’s schlep blindness.
  The phenomenon isn’t limited to startups. Most people don’t consciously decide not to be in as good physical shape as Olympic athletes, for example. Their unconscious mind decides for them, shrinking from the work involved…
  How do you overcome schlep blindness? Frankly, the most valuable antidote to schlep blindness is probably ignorance.
  Ignorance can’t solve everything though. Some ideas so obviously entail alarming schleps that anyone can see them. How do you see ideas like that? The trick I recommend is to take yourself out of the picture. Instead of asking “what problem should I solve?” ask “what problem do I wish someone else would solve for me?”

tags: technology Startups business ideas wp

• This Is Generation Flux: Meet The Pioneers Of The New (And Chaotic) Frontier Of Business | Fast Company
  Any business that ignores these transformations does so at its own peril. Despite recession, currency crises, and tremors of financial instability, the pace of disruption is roaring ahead. The frictionless spread of information and the expansion of personal, corporate, and global networks have plenty of room to run. And here’s the conundrum: When businesspeople search for the right forecast–the road map and model that will define the next era–no credible long-term picture emerges. There is one certainty, however. The next decade or two will be defined more by fluidity than by any new, settled paradigm; if there is a pattern to all this, it is that there is no pattern. The most valuable insight is that we are, in a critical sense, in a time of chaos.
  To thrive in this climate requires a whole new approach…a mind-set that embraces instability, that tolerates–and even enjoys–recalibrating careers, business models, and assumptions…
  The pragmatic course is not to hide from the change, but to approach it head-on. Thurston offers this vision: “Imagine a future where people are resistant to stasis, where they’re used to speed. A world that slows down if there are fewer options–that’s old thinking and frustrating. Stimulus becomes the new normal.”
  To flourish requires a new kind of openness. More than 150 years ago, Charles Darwin foreshadowed this era in his description of natural selection: “It is not the strongest of the species that survives; nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.” As we traverse this treacherous, exciting bridge to tomorrow, there is no clearer message than that.

tags: technology generation flux Change learning inspiration wp

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Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• How Trello is different – Joel on Software

  The great horizontal killer applications are actually just fancy data structures.
  Spreadsheets are not just tools for doing “what-if” analysis. They provide a specific data structure: a table. Most Excel users never enter a formula. They use Excel when they need a table. The gridlines are the most important feature of Excel, not recalc.
  Word processors are not just tools for writing books, reports, and letters. They provide a specific data structure: lines of text which automatically wrap and split into pages.
  PowerPoint is not just a tool for making boring meetings. It provides a specific data structure: an array of full-screen images.

  tags: joelonsoftware productivity joel software collaboration wp

• Three Star Leadership Blog: Moral FogEveryone gets caught in the fog during their life. That’s when you need something to help you get your bearings, the way instruments work for a pilot.
  You can shore up your moral sense in lots of ways. Reading, reflection, and prayer work for me. But when the fog is dense and you’re totally turned around or flipped over you need something more, something outside yourself.
  When you’re in the fog you need people who love you enough to help you get right.

  tags: leadership moral_fog compass love wp

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• Psychology: 53 Mind-Blowing Things You Should Know About YourselfSusan Weinschenk’s series, 100 Things You Should Know about People.
  They include fascinating facts like:
  Aoccdrnig to reserach at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, the oredr of lteetrs in a wrod is nto vrey iprmoetnt.
  Here are the last 53…

  tags: brain wp psychology

• 47 Mind-Blowing Psychology-Proven Facts You Should Know About Yourself100 Things You Should Know about People. As in: 100 things you should know if you are going to design an effective and persuasive website, web application or software application.
  Or maybe just 100 things that everyone should know about humans!
  The order that I’ll present these 100 things is going to be pretty random. So the fact that this first one is first doesn’t mean that’s it’s the most important.. just that it came to mind first.
  Here are the first 47.

  tags: Psychology brain wp

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Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Anyway, below is the list of the books I read, in the order of reading:

Author – Book – Genre – My Review
1. Chuck Palahniuk – Fight Club – Fiction – Some parts of this novel work, but on the whole I wasn’t sure why it was so popular; maybe because it meandered so much!
2. Neil Gaiman – Anansi Boys – Fiction – Most definitely Gaiman’s best work; the concept is pure Gaiman, but the true magic was in the execution which left me breathless.
3. Neil Gaiman – Coraline – Fiction – A chilling tale, which the kids are sure to love!
4. Cali Ressler, Jody Thompson – Why Work Sucks And How To Fix It: The Results-Only Revolution – Business – Interesting premise, and since Ressler & Thompson are coming from their experience at Best Buy, this makes it all the more worthwhile. Wish it read less like a marketing brochure though.
5. Alberto Manguel – A Reader on Reading – Essays – For any reader, or anyone interested in reading as a process, or curious about why we read, this is an invaluable study. And it’s bloody interesting to boot.
6. Various – Batman R.I.P – Fiction – I don’t really think I’m cut out to appreciate graphic novels; this left me strangely unmoved.
7. John Grisham – The Confession – Fiction – Grisham rediscovers *some* of his old story-telling magic; still nowhere as good as his best
8. Neil Degrasse Tyson – Death by Black Hole – Essays – Tyson takes you on a journey of the universe, as befits his stature as one of the leading cosmologists of the world. What was surprising was the wit & humor with which he presents arcane & difficult scientific concepts, making them accessible to the layperson-reader.
9. Tom Holt – Wish You Were Here – Fiction – Not as laugh-out-loud funny as the other works of Holt, but much deeper in parts; what happens when the deepest dreams of a set of people comes true!
10. Dave Barry – Dave Barry’s complete guide to guys – Fiction – If you don’t want to be shunned from all polite company for all time to come, please refrain from reading this book in presence of anyone else, including your dog! You will have tears running down your face, and your uncontrollable laughter will mark you as a degenerate maniac.
11. Shel Silverstein – Where the sidewalk ends – Fiction – Super-awesome poems & amazing sketches!
12. Robert Sutton – Good Boss, Bad Boss – Business – Sutton has been spying on my corporate life, and my many bosses -  this book proves it!
13. Various – My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me – Fiction – New fairy tales; some of them are fairly captivating, but not all of them work.
14. Goscinny & Uderzo  – Asterix in Spain – Fiction – Still trying to absorb all the jokes
15. Nassim Nicholas Taleb – The Bed of Procrustes – Essays – Short, witty aphorisms, which will challenge all that you hold to be true & dear
16. Nora Ephron – I Feel Bad About My Neck – Essays – Ephron, the writer of “When Harry Met Sally” shows it’s possible to write a memoir consisting entirely of short essays, that make a reader laugh with you, while going, “hold on, that happens to me!”
17. Tom Holt – Djinn Rummy – Fiction – Nothing to say, except he is the master of absurd humor writing!
18. Terry Pratchett – Color of Magic – Fiction – The first discworld book I read; I’m sorry I discovered Pratchett so late in life
19. Joe Hill – Heart-shaped Box – Fiction – Horror with very interesting twists; although not comparable to his stories!
20. Terry Pratchett – The Light Fantastic – Fiction – Even better than Color of Magic, this second book in the series rocks!
21. John Constantine Hellblazer – The Fear Machine – Fiction – Discovered Constantine graphic novels at a late stage in life; highly recommended for those into this sort of thing. I wish I were.
22. John Constantine Hellblazer – The Family Man – Fiction – Discovered Constantine graphic novels at a late stage in life; highly recommended for those into this sort of thing. I wish I were.
23. Batman & Robin – Batman Reborn – Fiction – Much better than Batman R.I.P.
24. Terry Pratchett – Wyrd Sisters – Fiction – Laugh out loud funny; but also makes you think. The literary asides & allusions are a treat.
25. Lucy Kellaway – Martin Lukes: Who Moved My Blackberry – Fiction – Strongly reminiscent of Sidin Vadukut’s Dork, this is one rollicking journey through an year of a clueless manager’s life!
26. Jeffrey Deaver – More Twisted – Fiction – Even more twisted than the original Twisted, these stories should come with a statutory warning! Lovely!!
27. Jeremy Clarkson – The World According to Clarkson – Essays – Irreverent, opinionated, and laugh-out-loud funny! Although I did wish I had read it in 3 parts
28. Neil Gaiman – Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader – Fiction – Gaiman has his own perspective on how the death of Batman would play out; could have been fleshed out a bit more though.
29. Terry Pratchett – Mort – Fiction – If you have ever wondered what it would be like to have some really awesome powers, how about being an apprentice to Death! Beware: it might be disastrous for your love life though.
30. Tom Holt – You Don’t have to be evil to work here, but it helps – Fiction – Tom Holt! FTW!!! (Super-awesome, and every office-goer will relate to it)
31. Rob Parsons – Teenagers – Parenting – A timely & valuable guide to raising teenagers: the lessons might be obvious, but they can always do with a repetition
32. Jai Arjun Singh – Popcorn Essayists – Essays – I really didn’t think film-writing was for me, till I discovered Jai Arjun’s blog. In this collection, he introduces us to the musings on this genre by a series of well-known non-film writers.
33. Devdutt Patnaik – Jaya – Fiction – An informed & balanced re-telling of Mahabharata, which draws from various sources, highlights them, and provides a commentary on the much-loved text.
34. Kabir – Ghat Ghat Kabir – Poetry – An impressive effort by “The Kabir Project”. Wish they had included some of the more accessible/popular works as well.
35. Linda Hess – Singing Emptiness: Kumar Gandharva Performs the Poetry of Kabir – Poetry – Some great couplets with good translations; but one wishes Hess wasn’t so hagiographically madly in love with Kumar Gandharva’s singing
36. Marcus Aurelius – Meditations – Essays – Aurelius was wise; and this book full of nuggets of his wisdom is exactly what I needed.
37. Gever Tulley & Julie Spiegler – 50 Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do) – Parenting – Interesting, nostalgia-inducing & at times, plain scary! Must read, and must-do
36. Jawed Akhtar – Tarkash – Poetry – There are couplets here, which will pierce your heart!
37. Jason Fried – Rework: Change The Way You Work Forever – Business – Whether you are a business executive, entrepreneur or just starting out in your corporate career, read this book! A much-required manifesto of corporate change!
38. Gautam Adhikari – The Intolerant Indian: Why We Must Rediscover A Liberal Space – Essays – While Adhikari’s heart is in the right place, this ponderous rant makes for heavy reading.
39. Steven E Landsburg – More Sex Is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics – Essays – Starts out slow, but picks up steam; irreverent, unconventional & fun!
40. Rob Parsons – The Heart of Success – Essays – Simple lessons, which bear reminding.
41. Stephen King – Everything’s Eventual – Fiction – These are dark tales. King proves yet again that he is a master story-teller. LT’s Theory of Pets hits you with a bang!
42. Kamleshwar – Hindustani Ghazalein – Poetry – Not all of them worked for me, and maybe that’s to be expected of any anthology; I wish Kamleshwar had selected more representative ghazals by these shayars.
43. Kaifi Azmi – Chuni Hui Shayari – Poetry – Read Azmi, and discover that a romantic idealist can also be a militant, standing up & speaking out for the things he believes in.
44. Vinay Dharwadker – Kabir: The Weaver’s Songs (Penguin Classics) – Poetry – Not as good as the other Kabir books I read this year; too academic & stilted.
45. Scott Adams – What Would Wally Do? – Business – Read & weep…Scott Adams has spies in your office!
46. Vijayendra Mohanty, Vivek Goel – Ravanayan – I – Fiction – Mohanty & Goel take a fresh look at Ramayan, from the perspective of the arch-villain; brilliantly drawn, although the writing could be better. Waiting for part 2 of the 10-part series now.
47. Sarah Herman – I Like My Job – Fiction – A scathing look at life in an office; this isn’t Dilbert. This is the true story of your life – stark, bleak & dystopic!
48. Scott Adams – Don’t stand where the comet is assumed to strike oil – Business – The 23rd book in the ever-popular Dilbert series strikes home with painful certainty. While you may laugh at the antics of Dilbert, his PHB, and his co-workers, you know it’s very close to the cubicle realities.
49. Robert Rankin – Necrophenia – Fiction – Rankin is a true master of cyberpunk. Laced with bitter ironies, and sly humor, this is a look at 60′s as you don’t know it!
50. Ahmad Faraz – Ye Meri Ghazalein, ye meri nazmein – Poetry – Faraz wrote some really romantic stuff; and some really revolutionary stuff!
51. Ashwin Sanghi – Chanakya’s Chant – Fiction – Good story, historical narrative interspersed with contemporary political story, to display relevance. But really needed a better editor!
52. Sri Kant, Shahroz – Pakistan ki Shayari – Poetry – The first 20-odd were good; after that it seems as though they were trying to get to 50 shayars!
53. Nagarjun – Pratinidhi Kavitayein – Poetry – Nagarjun rocks! Such rage, such simplicity, such beautiful turn of simple phrases!
54. Judy Blume – Tales of a fourth-grade nothing – Fiction – Totally empathised with Peter Hatcher; having a brother like Fudge (so cute!) would drive anyone nuts!
55. Anthony Horowitz – Stormbreaker – Fiction – Alex Rider was a refreshing change from the usual spy thrillers; significantly better than the “Young James Bond” thrillers!
56. Judy Blume – Superfudge – Fiction – Fudge is growing up…into an ever-worseing bundle of hassles for Peter Hatcher!
57. Anthony Horowitz – Point Blanc – Fiction – The second Alex Rider has a cool new plot, but the ending does leave a lot to be desired.
58. Olen Steinhauer – Bridge Of Sighs – Fiction – Bleak, unforgiving portrayal of life as a policeman in a post-WWII communist state. If you thought Stieg Larsson rocked, you’ll be blown over by Steinhauer.
59. Amish Tripathi – The Secret of the Nagas – Fiction – A worthy sequel to Immortals of Meluha
60. Scott Adams – I’m not Anti-Business, I’m anti-idiot – Business – Dilbert has spies in my office…and yours!
61. Roger Lewis – Seasonal Suicide Notes: My Life As It Is Lived – Fiction – Lewis’s biting wit & satirical put-downs of the things he finds irritating, and there are so many of them, is hilarious!
62. Rick Riordan – Percy Jackson And The Lightning Thief – Fiction – Unputdownable saga of Gods come to life in modern world.
63. Rainer Maria Rilke – Letters to a Young Poet – Essays – Rilke’s best work, far more powerful than his poems, urges us to look within & embrace the world.
64. Eric Van Lustbader – The Bourne Dominion – Fiction – Lustbader finally writes something worthy of Ludlum mantle!
65. Bobby Henderson – The Gospel Of The Flying Spaghetti Monster – Essays – A rollicking one time read; too snarky & not funny enough to be read again!
66. Simon Sinek – Start with Why – Business – Too preachy & long; could be condensed into a 12-page article.
67. Louis L’Amour – Taggart – Fiction – L’amour spends too much time describing the desert, and not enough on developing his characters; strictly for his fans.
68. Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Andrew Ward – Firing Back: How Great Leaders Rebound After Career Disasters – Business – Only relevant for CEOs, those fired with generous severance packages!
69. James Thurber – Collecting Himself – Fiction – These pieces are fun, but definitely don’t justify Thurber’s reputation as the greatest humorist of all time!
70. Jasper Fforde – Lost in a Good Book – Fiction – Hilarious, but works only for those who have more than a passing acquaintance with a large body of literature.
71. Robert Arthur – The Secret of the Terror Castle – Fiction – The first Three Investigators mystery rocks; just as it did more than 25 years ago, when I first read it!
72. Louis L’Amour – From the Listening Hills – Fiction – Good stories, though not as captivating as the westerns L’Amour is known for!
73. Jonathan Stroud – The Golem’s Eye – Fiction – Engaging & witty, Stroud’s djinni, Bartimaeus is possibly the most interesting creature from the Other World you will ever come across!
74. PG Wodehouse – Ukridge – Fiction – Wodehouse creates another sterling character, with his unique quirks & foibles. Ukridge is a perpetually upbeat gentleman, full of ideas which will make him rich “soon”. Poor Corky, his friend, has to suffer through his schemes & shenanigans.
75. Louis L’Amour – West of Dodge – Fiction – Classic western fiction; L’Amour makes the West come alive like none else!
76. Jeffrey Young, William Simon – iCon: Steve Jobs – The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business – Business – Young & Simon present a eulogy to one of the greatest businessmen of the last 50 years, but succeed in making him out to be not such a nice man to know, or to work for.
77. Sidin Vadukut – God Save the Dork – Fiction – Sidin displays his Robingenuity in this book, with Robin “Einstein” Verghese blundering into one disaster after another, largely of his own making, and barely surviving on his luck alone. Hilarious!
78. Suhel Seth – Get To The Top: The Ten Rules For Social Success – Essays – Seth writes for the social climbers – a banal, cliché-ridden book, which tells you how to throw parties & make friends with important people! Quite a few examples in the book contradict the so-called “Rules”. A total bloody waste of time!
79. John Grisham – The Litigators – Fiction – Grisham returns to his familiar haunts, the world of the lawyers, and delivers a smashing read.
80. Julian Barnes – The Sense of an Ending – Fiction – Barnes won a well-deserved Man Booker Prize for this novel, about ageing, and memories, and our forgotten, or rather selectively remembered past. This is the novel I wanted to write!
81. Michael Robotham – The Suspect – Fiction – The best thriller I’ve read in a really long time, packed with some really good dialogues & one-liners. Robotham is the find of 2011 for me!
82. Tom Holt – Falling Sideways – Fiction – Perhaps fitting that I should close the year reading this. After a really awful week, spent caring for a sick kid in hospital, I needed Holt’s intelligent humor to remind me of the good things in life!