2 States

'2 States - the story of my marriage' - Chetan Bhagat's latest book.

This is the best of CB's four novels so far. Better than his earlier best work 'Five Point Someone'.

What's with the numbers and Chetan, why does he always give title with numbers? The other two are 'The 3 mistakes of my life' and 'One night @ the call center'. I guess probably his next book will have 'four' in its title!

Coming back to '2 States'. A simple love story written in a very very funny way. I am sure someone will make this a movie. A tamilian girl and a punjabi boy fall in love. The struggle they go thru to get married is the story. There are only a few books that you can't wait to finish and once you reached the last page you still don't want to put down wanting to continue to read more. This is one of those books. I am sure you will enjoy. Do read it.

Are you waiting?

Anyone waiting for this?

That one skill - Continued

Follow up on my earlier post

I have just started reading "Leading with Questions: How Leaders Find the Right Solutions By Knowing What To Ask"

Excerpt of description from here goes like this:

In Leading with Questions, internationally acclaimed management consultant Michael Marquardt shows how you can learn to ask the powerful questions that will generate short-term results and long-term learning and success. Throughout the book, he demonstrates how effective leaders use questions to encourage participation and teamwork, foster outside-the-box thinking, empower others, build relationships with customers, solve problems, and much more. Based on interviews with twenty-two successful leaders who “lead with questions,” this important book reveals how to determine which questions will lead to solutions in today’s complicated business world.

I think this book will help me to educate myself to solve my problem. Will share the outcome later.

jack welch to JACK WELCH

Wouldn't it be nice to read a book that analyzes the commonalities of successful CEOs and what made them really tick. "What Made jack welch JACK WELCH" by Stephen Baum does that. Does that very nicely. With lots of stories from CEOs succeeded and failed it was an interesting read.

Bottomline is that only the 'shaping experiences' made the ordinary people to become extra-ordinary legends. Almost all the great CEOs had a very ordinary childhood and normal brought up. Small leadership responsibilities that they took up during their school and college days did really shape them up well. Learnings that they got out of those small responsibilities did play a major role in their career indirectly later. Very inspirational. I did reminisce my good old school & college days.

Strongly recommended for reading. (At least the stories would help you to make a great conversation in a gathering).

McDonalds and War

"No two countries that both had McDonald's had fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald's" -

Golden Arches Theory by Thomas L.Friedman in his book 'The Lexus and The Olive Tree'

P.S: This has been proved wrong later. One example is India-Pakistan. Still I felt this theory interesting.

The Goal

I read the book 'The Goal' by Eliyahu M.Goldratt. This is one of the greatest books that I have read. I recommend this book strongly to all the managers who are worried about productivity improvement. This is a management book written in fiction style. The story is set up in manufacturing industry and it talks about productivity improvement in a manufacturing plant. With a little bit of thinking the concepts explained in this book can be applied to service industries as well.

Surprisingly this book was written 23 years ago. When it comes to management books I would always go for the books published in the recent years for very obvious reasons. But this one seems to be applicable even these days.

I bought the part 2 of this book 'The Goal - It's Not Luck' as well. Waiting eagerly to read the second one as well.

Merlin's Beard! Potter at Infy!

Another post on Potter. Got it as a forward mail. Not sure about the real source. I will leave it to readers to comment on what they think. (Click on the image to enlarge).

(For those who don't know - 'Merlin's Beard!' is exclamation of surprise. Read Harry Potter Lexicon for more such Potter slangs)

Pottermania

I visited Odyssey last weekend just to check on the Pottermaniacs. By calling maniacs I don't mean any disgrace. Just that it sounds good. All pottermaniacs please take this as a compliment. We owe a lot to J.K.Rowling for making many of the kids these days to get the habit of reading. I could see lot of teen-agers and even smaller ones in the book shop buying the book or turning the pages curiously at the bookstore itself.

I have not read any of the Harry Potter books. I am planning to read along with my kid when he is ready to read that series. I read in some articles that there are people who locked themselves in a room with no water and food (of course strictly no cell phone) to complete reading the last version at a stretch. There was a huge hype around this release as it was the final one and Rowling had announced that an important character is murdered at the end. By the way who is that one?

Somehow the Potter movies did not interest me.

The Code (that I liked most)

Long awaited movie version of 'The Da Vinci Code' is opening on 19-May worldwide. I am eagerly waiting to watch the movie. Even thinking of (re)reading the book before watching the movie. If just the readers of this novel watch the movie at least once, the movie will be a huge box office hit. This novel is not an easy one to make it as a movie. Fulfilling millions of readers' imaginations is a real challenge. Lets see how the movie has been filmed.

This is the first time ever that I am going to see a hollywood movie that's made out of a novel, which I had already read. Generally the readers who see the movie version of novels don't appreciate the movie much. Their usual comment is that the novel was better than the movie. I guess, somehow the movie versions fail to meet the readers' expectation or imagination. God Father is one great movie & still in number one of top 100 hollywood movies made so far. I know people who claim that the novel is much better than movie. One very common thing that I never heard of is movie version being better than the novel. If you know any such movie/novel do share it with me. I would love evaluate it myself.

Making of a Bibliophile

Did a recap of the books that I read in the recent past (last 2 to 3 months). That, quite a list....

Books that I read in the recent past:
The Rage of Angels (translated to tamil)
Snapshots From hell
Bel Canto
One Night at the Call Center
The Alchemist
The Detective

Books that I am reading now:
The World is Flat
Freakonomics

Books in pipeline for immediate read:
Management 21C
In Search of Excellence
The Airport

30 days & 3 books

Been pre-occupied with my new job & new environment for a long time. Too busy to find time to read and write now-a-days.Between my busy schedules and lot of commuting between home & work, I managed to squeeze my time to read three novels. (took a lot of time to complete though).

All three were written by first time authors. Their work were too good for the first-timers.

Both Five Point Someone & Mediocre But Arrogant were written by MBAs. That's the first inclination that I had to buy these books. Both the books deal with a student's life from start to end of his college-hood.

Five Point Someone has a unique style. Language of the book was pretty good and the standard is international. Reason for talking about the language here is that I usually think twice before buying English novels written by Indian authors. This novel took me to my good old college days. Anyone who stayed in hostel during college life would immediately fall in love with this book. It's very funny. And yeah, this book is being made into a movie in Bollywood.

Mediocre But Arrogant, shortly MBA, was not very enjoyable to me. But heard people saying that this is a very good read. Reason why it was not very enjoyable was that I read this book immediately after reading Five Point Someone. Both the plots were very similar. Both dealt with a guy's college life - joining till leaving. A few characters in the movie remainded me few of my friends. That made me to get closer with the novel.

Kite Runner is setup in Afghanistan. I have never read much about Afghan. From this book I learnt a good amount about Afghan and her trouble. This book is a New York Times Bestseller. This book is one of the very good books that I have read ever. This books deals with human relationships in a very fantastic manner. Author has succeeded in delivering very complex inner feelings of individuals without distorting them. 'Guilt' is worst of all feelings. 'Guilt' is the main drive in the story. I do not want to give out spoilers here. This is a "must read".

unclassical CLASSICs

Hithhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Catch-22
Gone With the Wind
David Copperfield
Midnight's Children

Above is a list of classic books, which made it to the top 100 great books in English. I bought these books with a curiosity to enjoy the literary values of these classics and to have a satisfactory feeling of classical readings. But my tiny brain is not yet tuned to enjoy the literary values or the classical contents of these books.

Review said H2G2 (Hithhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) as the funniest novel of the century. I read that book, it was funny, a non-sensical funny. I was not able to enjoy the non-sensical funny. It's true that I laughed out loud many times while reading. And the story was very creative too.
But I wouldn't put it at 4th place among top 100. Recently Hollywood made a movie based on this book, with same title. I think the movie did not go well in box office.

'Catch-22' is at 11th position in top 100. This is also one of the "funniest" novel of the century, as per the reviews. I am half way through reading this book. I am reading this book just because I started reading. I have to admit that this book has a unique way of story telling. Again my tiny brain is too tiny to appreciate and enjoy that style.
(Story runs during the Second World War time, and it goes to Bologna, Italy.....hmm?).

Remaining three books are at the 21,34 & 100th positions respectively. I have read at least 2 chapters from these three books and kept aside before continuing further. It was too difficult to toil over the pages. But still I have not given in yet. Waiting for a good moment to go back and enjoy the 'literary values' of these books.

Recently I saw a classic film 'Taxi Driver' (1976) directed by the great Martin Scorsese and acted (lead role) by Robert De Niro. I did not have patience to watch the movie without Fast FWDing it. Same with another classic 'Ben Hur' (1950's), which won 11 academy awards.

What is a classic? Generally anything's very old seems to be called as Classics. Books & movies, which were made long long ago were made for the target audiences of that period. Over the period definitely the taste have changed a lot. That is the reason why it was so difficult for me to read/watch those classics. I was wondering whether was it only me or other people also have the same kinda difficulties. I checked with two of my friends who, unlike me, are voracious readers. They also have similar opinion as me.

Let me wait till my tiny brain grows up some what big enough to enjoy those classics and come back again.

The 'thing' with Italy and the 'thing' with 3 major American Cities

I am reading 'The Broker' by John Grisham, got that from my friend's collection. I am glad that I did not buy. The novel is not so great to talk about.
Subject matter is the place where the major part of the story is running. It is Bologna, Italy. When the main character of the story lands in Italy, my eyebrows raised automatically.

In my recent reads 'The Da Vinci Code' and 'The Angels & Demons' of Dan Brown, the characters go to Italy at least for sometime. I remember vaguely that small part of the storyline of Sidney Sheldon's 'The Sands of Time' runs in Sicily, Italy.

What's the 'thing' with American authors and Italy?

Similary Hollywood movies, most of them have a thing for Los Angeles. If not Los Angeles it would be New York. If the story is a family drama, plot moves to San Fransisco at the maximum.
Poor Los Angeles; when aliens attack, they attack Los Angeles first, during natural calamity Los Angeles becomes an island ("Escape from L.A" - the stupidest movie I have ever seen).
Most of the movies have their plot only in these cities. If you have not observed this before start observing now, your eyebrows will also raise when you watch movies.

When America is so big with lot of big and interesting cities, what's the 'thing' with Hollywood movies and these cities?

Interesting Phrase...

An interesting phrase from the novel 'The Evening News' of Arthur Hailey...
...he is affected by nostalgic constipation, he needs a mental enema....

Obsession....

"Biblioorphans" - a word invented by my friend to refer to the books sitting idle on the shelf, left unread.

I have a plethora of biblioorphans at home.

Yesterday, I went out with my wife for shopping dresses. My wife purchased a few dresses. I also had a plan to buy a cargo pant. But on a street with lots of clothing shops only an old book shop attracted me. I stopped at book shop...I badly wanted to buy books. I had decided to put a 'stop sign' myself for buying new books. I had decided to give a life to the '(biblio)orphans' sleeping at my house only then to buy new books to read.

I am becoming more and more obsessed with Books & Movies. Good or Bad?

Had a feeling that my writing skills are poor and have a lot of room for improvement.
Result: A New Beginning.