A Fine Balance & Tales from Firozsha Baag (Fiction 874pg)

A Fine Balance (624 pg)
Tales from Firozsha Baag (250 pg)
      - Rohinton Mistry (A Fine Balance was in the running for Bookers Prize)
(Score: 9/10 for first and 8.5/10 for later books. Finely captured threads of life and amazing description. Lovely reads. Personally, I liked A Fine Balance better).

Here, I have listed words that are at the edge of my conscious vocabulary. My attempt below is to cement the place of these words in mainstream speech.

Obdurate - adjective - adamant, heartless, stubborn
      And if he doesn't regret it, and remains obdurate, we shall just have to kill him.
      The chairman said ' you're a very obdurate young man ' .

Sumptuary -adjective - Relating to expense; regulating expense or expenditure; sumptuary laws or regulations, are those intended to restrain or limit the expenditure of citizens in apparel, food, furniture, etc.; laws which regulate the prices of commodities and the wages of labor; laws which forbid or restrict the use of certain articles, as of luxurious apparel.
      Sumptuary law
      Sumptuary regulation issued by the government.

Desultariness -
Resplendence
Mein
Vituperation
Stolidity
Melancholy
Awning
Curmudgeon
Regurgitate
Tenacious
Sobriquet
Fecund
Squalid
Inured
Melancholy
Incipient
Prim
Dour (faced)
Eschew
Stoically
Repudiate
Cherubic (features)
Stolidly
Coign of vantage
Prance
Bounden (responsibility)
Vituperation
Stridulent paean
(Divine) Afflatus
Insouciantly
Cloistered (life)
Partirution
Precocious
Bulbous
Facetiously
Incommodious
Tremelous
Hackneyed
Genuflect
Pariah
Taciturnity
Bristled
Flopped
Craw
Sere
Pocked
Hoeful
Indignantly
Transmuted
Forage
Supplication
Scrawny
Peplum
Simian
Scourge
Salve
Lacerations
Suppurating
Glabrous
Figurines
Loquacious
Avuncular
Burlesque
Levity
Pullate
Rancid
Timorous
Masticating
Peregrination
Burlap
Swagger
Languidly
Deign
Snicker
Lesions
Wistful
Coped
Bier
Surreptitious
Veneration
Cadevars
Reverie
Morose
Morbid
Temerity
Fetor
Cudgel
Coiffures
Abnegation
Mirthlessly
Daub
Rind
Regurgitate
Gaunt
Languidly
Flotsam
Putrid
Scrimmage
Rancour
Manacled
Trite
Saurian
Obsequious
Panegyric

What should I do with my life?

What should I do with my life?

- Po Bronson (490 pages, read in Nov 2005)

(Score: 8/10)

·         A calling is not something you know. It’s something you grow into, through trials and mistakes. Work shouldn’t just be fun. Work should be like life – sometimes fun, sometimes moving and defined by meaningful events. Attack your fears rather than shy away from them. Bring what you do in alignment with who you are. Freedom is the confidence that you can live within the means of something you are passionate about. Failure’s hard, but success at the wrong thing can lock you forever. Don’t be seduced by artificial love. Be open to defining experiences. Don’t mistake intensity for passion. You don’t find your purpose above the neck, you find it below the neck, when you are transformed by what you have witnessed. You can get good at what you need to serve, what you believe in. get your mind 80% of the way there, then go looking for the catalyst. Look backward as much as forward, inward as much as outward. Nothing helps like knowing you are not alone. There’s a powerful transformative effect when you surround yourself with like minded people. Create an environment where the truth is invited into your life. If you develop the character, the odds are pretty good you can succeed. Success is defined as when you are no longer held back by your heart, your character blossoms and the gifts you have to offer to the world are apparent. Don’t cling to a single scenario, allow yourself many paths to the same destination. Give it a lifetime to pay off. Things you work hardest for are the things you treasure the most.  

The Lexus and the Olive Tree

The Lexus and the Olive Tree

- Thomas L Friedman (490 pages)

·         Where did globalization come from? The cold war world (~1944 to 1987) was a world divided by fences, walls, ditches and dead ends. It was impossible to go very fast or very far in the world without running into a Berlin Wall or Iron Curtain or protective tariff or capital controls. And behind these fences and walls, countries could preserve their own unique forms of life, politics, economics and culture. Differences could remain sharp because there were walls aplenty to protect them and they were not easily penetrated. What blew away all these walls were three fundamental changes – changes in how we communicate (democratization of technology), how we invest (democratization of finance) and how we learn about the world (democratization of information). These changes came together into a whirlwind strong enough to blow off all walls of cold war and enable the world to come together as a single integrated, open plain.

·         Democratization of technology – information storage, digitization (freeze dried information)

·         Democratization of finance – Smallest investors being able to invest in markets around the world (though fund managers) and move money at will and to more efficient markets.

·         Democratization of information – www, which has made us from passive listeners (radio) or passive watchers (TV) to active participants and broadcasters (the web). No government can now deny information to people. It only has a choice to ACT on that information. Government cannot thrash life outside and make it look worse that it is. And life inside cannot be propagandized to make it look better than it is. Today everyone knows about everyone else and can ask the government why should they not be able to enjoy the life of their counterparts in other countries.

·         The internet offers the closet thing to a perfectly competitive market. In the model of perfect communication, there are no barriers to entry, no protection from failure for unprofitable firms and everyone (consumers and producers) has easy and free access to all information. Every company now needs to use the internet not just to improves its own business operations as an end in itself, but so that it will have more time, money and energy to tailor more products to more customers, because it is the tailored product and personal touch that can never be commoditized.

·         Rules of e-business:

·         1) To be successful in e-business, you have to be an e-business. You don’t just attach the internet to a wall somewhere. You have to absorb it into everything you do. Start by getting rid of all paper. No more paper. Sorry. You want to talk to me, you cant do it on paper. You have to it via email and the internet.

·         2) Make your CEO your internet Evangelist. People don’t listen to anyone but the boss.

·         3) Give everyone access to everything all the time. Let people serve themselves. Because when they can serve themselves, they will

·         4) Train and motivate your customers and employees to always go to the web.

·         In the era of globalization, it is the quality of state that matters. You need a smaller state because you want to free market to allocate capital, not the slow bloated government, but you need a faster state with bureaucrats that can regulate the free market, without either choking it or letting it get out of control. The size of the government needs to go down and the quality of government needs to go up. Because less government without better government is dangerous. You need a balance. You need a state that is strong enough and involved enough to maintain a fair playing field, to ensure that the best innovators and entrepreneurs win, but not one that is so strong and so involved that it is either picking winners or protecting losers from winners or protecting losers from external or internal competition.

The Tipping Point – How little things can make a big difference

The Tipping Point – How little things can make a big difference (International Bestseller)

- Malcolm Gladwell ($ 5.00, 300 odd pages)

(Score 9/10: Pretty radical book that explains everyday phenomenon differently)

·         Three characteristics – contagiousness, little causes can have big effects and change happens not gradually, but in one dramatic movement – this is how epidemics happen. The name given to the last of the three – that change happens in one dramatic movement – is called the TIPPING POINT.

·         If I give you a piece of paper and I ask you to fold it over once and then over and over again, until you have re-folded the original paper 50 times, how tall will the final stack be? (The height of the stack will be approximately the distance to the sun)

·         Example of Tipping Point: When the number of incoming African Americans in a particular neighborhood reached 20%, the community would tip – most of the remaining whites would leave almost immediately. There is no significant migration from 0% to 19%, but then suddenly, the community will tip – thus change happens in one dramatic movement.

·         In general, people choose friends of similar age and race. But if a friend lived down the hall, then age and race become a lot less important. Proximity overpowers similarity. If you ask someone why he is friendly with someone else, he’ll say its because he and his friends share similar attitudes. In actuality, what they share is similar activities.

·         Connectors: These are a handful of people with a truly extraordinary knack of making friends and acquaintances. Hese are people whose connections span many worlds – they may be lawyers who head the local municipal body with an active diamond business – that makes it 3 different worlds.

·         Power/ strength of weak ties – studies show that a majority of people find new jobs through weak ties (acquaintances or people you see rarely). You friends, after all, occupy the same world that you do. They live near you, go to same church, school or parties. How much then, would they know that you wouldn’t know? Your acquaintances, opn the other hand, occupy a very different world than you and are more likely to know something you don’t. Acquaintances, in short, represent a source of social power – the more acquaintances you have, the more powerful you are.

·         Mavens – these people are information specialists. They may not have the social network of connectors, but they sure are active collectors of information – they know the inside out of market place and know things that the rest of us don’t. Plus, they are socially includes to help others selflessly.

·         In a social epidemic, Mavens are data banks – they provide the message. Connectors are the social glue – they spread it. Salesmen have the skills to persuade us when we are unconvinced of what we are hearing. What separates a great salesman from an average on is the number and quality of answers they have to objections commonly raised by potential clients.

·         We normally think of expressions on our face as the reflection of an inner state. I feel happy, so I smile. I feel sad, so I frown. We think emotion goes inside out. But is equally true that emotion is contagious – that it goes outside in. This would mean that we have our spirits picked up by being around someone in a good mood. If you think about it, this is quite a radical notion. Therefore, smile before picking up the phone. It will liven up the caller.

·         Power of context: “Whether a person is honest or not depends on the situation he is in”. But this is NOT how we look at people. When it comes to interpreting other people’s behavior, we make the mistake of overestimating the importance of situation and context. This means that we don’t say “My friend Alice is wonderfully honest when it comes to her personal life, but at work, she can be very slippery”. You would say instead that your friend is honest. Put a person in an environment of graffiti and broken glass and he is much more likely to do a criminal act than if placed in a better social environment.

·         Groups – Neocortex is the region of brain that deals with complex thought and reasoning. To handle complexities of large social group, the neocortex needs to be bigger. Complexities here are keeping track of your relationship with others in the group and relationship between others in the group. Size of Human neocortex gives a group estimate of roughly 150 people. That is why army units are no bigger than 150 – below this number, men are sufficiently familiar with each other so that they can work together as functional unit. With a bigger size, you have to  impose complex hierarchies, rules and regulations to command and control. Thus, as the number of people goes up from 100 to 150, no change in group behavior is observed. When the number goes from 150 to 200, suddenly, there is a huge problem. The magic number 150 is the tipping point for groups. This gives an important idea about how to organize organizations. Possibly if the organizations are of size greater than 150, informal knowledge sharing slowly dies off and any work takes longer time to accomplish, since informal channels suddenly seem to break down.

High Five – The Magic of Working Together

High Five – The Magic of Working Together

- Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles

(Score 9/10: Quick reader, entertaining and informative)

PUCK – The key to building high performance teams.

P: Providing clear purpose and values. A compelling reason for being.

·         Create a challenge – a reason for being that commits and motivates people to work together.

·         Set clear and compelling goals, both for individual and team

·         Create a team charter that formalizes commitments to each other and clearly states what the team wants to accomplish, why it is important.

U: Unleashing and developing skills.

·         Start with the basics. Provide feedback to build skills, confidence and accountability.

·         Learn each others roles

C: Creating Team Power – none of us is as smart as all of us.

·         Share leadership, reward team work.

·         For example, Make 6 sets of cards, each set containing numerals 0 to 9. The conductor will call out a number between 0 and 27. Each side has to hold up three cards and the cards have to add up to whatever number is called out (obviously, there will be at least 3 members on each side – the more the better!)

·         Trick – If the number called out is above 18, member 3 holds up 9, else holds up 0. If the number is between 10 and 18, member 2 holds up 9, else holds up 0. Member 3 will hold out the number equal to the sum of digits of the number called out.

K: Keeping the accent on the positive. 3Rs – Repeated Reward and Recognition.

·         Look for behaviors that reflect the purpose and values., skill development and teamwork and reward, reward, reward those behaviors.

·         Catch people doing things right or approximately right

·         Re-direct towards goal, do not punish

·         Link all recognition and reward back to purpose and goals.

The "Wannabes" that passed by ...

The Zombie Survival Guide

- Max Brooks

(Score 5/10: A elaborately woven fiction about somabula virus which causes a person to become a Zombie, how to recognize one, what to do to run, to defend, to attack, what weapons, means of transport, accommodation - the book goes on and on in such a serious tone and such detail and completeness, that you would almost wonder for a while if Zombies exist after all. The last 75 pages, in which the author documents Zombie attacks right from 2000 B.C., is particularly entertaining. Around 250 pages. Read Jan 2013)


Diary of a Wimpy Kid

- Jeff Kinney

(Score 7.5/10: This is the first in a series of books about Greg Heffley and his high school dramas. It is a story told in cartoons. Though the recommended reading age is 9+, it is equally enjoyable light reading for adults. Can be enjoyed in under an hour in a train or a bus stop. Around 200 pages. Read Jan 2013)

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

- Stephen Chbosky

(Score 8/10: An easy read book around the everyday life of a teenager growing up. This book is not about verbosity or flowery language; it is about honestly narrating the everyday happenings through a series of letters. Charlie, the main character, is a wallflower, i.e. he goes where the wind takes him - not in a carefree kind of sense, but in the sense that he looks for inclusion by going along with where others choose to take him. Right until the end, where he realizes because of his friends - Patrick and Same - that things could be different. These lines in the epilogue summarizes it all - "So, I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we’ll never know most of them. But even if we don’t have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there.". Another epic line - "We accept the love we think we deserve". Around 220 pages. Read Dec 2012)

The Engagement

- Chloe Hooper

(Score 6/10: This is almost as if it were written for a mini-series. Quite a dark underlying plot with enough twists to keep engaged. The story is about a real estate agent in Melbourne who shows a wealthy client various properties and they make out. This, until she gets a proposal from her client to join him at his rural mansion for 3 days before she leaves the country. What is supposed to be a play-act turns out to be quite intense and right until the very last line, the reader keeps guessing about whether the characters are play acting or has the plot leapt into reality. Around 200 pages. Read Dec 2012)

A Short History Of Australia

- Manning Clark

(Score 7.5/10: If there is one book you should be reading to understand the twists and turns of what shaped Australia, this is it. Consider these facts - The declaration of independence of USA caused the birth of Australia. Why is Canberra situated around mid-way between Melbourne and Sydney. What causes Australia's close ties with Indonesia and Sri Lanka (other than geographical proximity). How did the various Governors of Australia shape the history. Admittedly, the style is completely dry and it takes a little bit of an understanding of a few terms that are not completely or clearly explained in the book. But overall, a good job explaining the history in a concise fashion. Around 400 pages. Read Mar-May 2012)

Best Practices: Building your business with customer focused solutions

- Anderson Consulting: Rober Heibeler, Thomas B Kelly, Charles Ketteman

(Score 6/10: This book reinforces, through real life examples, that great companies go to great lengths to serve their customers. Read sometime in 2005)

101 Good Ideas: How to improve just about any process

            - Edited by Karen Bemowski, Brand Stratton

(Score 6/10: Only few good ideas amongst the 101. Read sometime in 2005)

• Buzzer Technique: In any classroom session, have a buzzer that people will hit in case they do not understand anything. But remember - the novelty of the buzzer will quickly wear off OR people will start using it indiscriminately. A physiological analysis will make it clear why a buzzer is good - 1) Novelty 2) Good for senior people who are sitting in the classroom after a long time. This is because raising hands does not guarantee immediate attention, which can sometimes inhibit questions from flowing. 
• Catchball: In this method, only the guy with the ball can speak in the call. If another person wants to speak, he has to acquire the ball first. On the upside, this is a good way to let people express their ideas fully without being cut by anyone else. This is a very useful way of controlling a class when the topic is exciting and a lot of people want to contribute simultaneously. But, on the downside, people may start focusing more on getting the ball and stop listening to what the person is contributing, so ideas would not be built on. Also, this will inhibit a few persons to present their views, because they will simply give up trying to get the ball.

Harvard Business Review on Change

- Harvard Business School Press

(Score 7/10: This book deals with, as is obvious, change. The reading doesn’t impress much when read as a general reading. However, it will make good sense for change leaders to read this before a change program, hence the high score. Read sometime in 2005)

• Whenever the status quo seems more dangerous than launching into the unknown, that is when you go for change.
• "Pity City" is a powerful technique about knowing what employees feel about the organization, and at the same time, make employees feel good about their work. It goes like this - Every Friday afternoons, the team meets up and for the first 15 minutes, makes a visit to Pity City. People start talking about how horrible things are around out here, and how difficult a time they have. Then, for the next 15 minutes, they go to "Brag City", where they showcase all their little victories - the things that had worked, how problems turned into success. This builds up camaraderie amongst the employees.

Who moved my cheese

- Dr. Spencer Johson (Rupa Book House, Rs. 90)

(Score 9/10: This book talks about a way that you can cope up with change. An inspirational book that urges all people affected by change to get up and move on, rather than sulk and fret. Book contents have been internalized. Read sometime in 2005)

• Whenever in doubt about what to do, ask yourself only one question - What will you do if you weren't afraid?
• When you move beyond fear, you feel free

Emotional Intelligence

            - Daniel Goleman (Banter Books, $5.75)

(Score – To be read later)

30 minutes … to make the right decision

            - Jane Smith (Koran Page, Rs. 45, 54 pages)

(Score 3/10: Not quite worth reading. Read somewhere in 2005)

The Suitable Boy

- Vikram Seth (1474 pages, 1994 Bookers Prize Winner)

(Score 7/10: Drags in between – perhaps too long. Read somewhere in 2005)

The power of SIX SIGMA

- Subir Chowdhury (160 pages)

(Score: 8/10. Explains the fundamental concepts of 6 sigma through a simple story. Entertaining and informative. Read somewhere in 2005)