Reviews on books

Alchemist and 11 minutes are good. I liked Veronica decides to die......

Try reading Love in the time of cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez....very good book.....

One of my fav books is Jonathan livingston Seagull by Richard bach.....

antil-sunpatiya said:
Very Good Idea Amit.

Let me start:

Last books I read was by Paulo Coelho ---> The Alchemist and 11 minutes - The Alchemist was Brilliant...11 minutes very good.

I have just started reading Gabriel Garcia Marcquez --->> One Hundred Years of Solitude...Apparently one of his master piece...Will let you know how it fared.
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vinodks said:
Do you mean The Art of War by Machiavelli or that old famous japanese book?... I heard The Prince is better...

-vinod
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yes but it is written by Sun Tzo and its really worth reading :):)
 
well i have been waiting long...besides reading all those PAULO Coelho, Mario Puzo, Dan brown... what is being discussed already are nice boks to read...
try the classy JAMES HARIOTT.......basically humorous.....:D;):p
 
Freakonomics

Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
by Levitt and Dubner
I recommend this book to anyone and everone who likes to look at things and issues from a different point of view. The book is full of interesting findings and is worth a read.
 
i agree, lots has been discussed about application of ayn rand's ohilosophy to real life....very difficult to implement.

i even heard that it was on the verge of becoming a religion at one time....



vinodks said:
Alice's adventure and Through the looking glass still most lovable children book... and Carroll's poems are good too...

At one time I used to love Ayn Rand(I mean not in that way)... found Atlas Shrugged better than Fountainhead and Anthem... but her books are certainly not among best realistic novels... even though her philosophy is great.

-vinod
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the only science fiction i've read is contact (which was later turned into a movie) and jurassic park :D

but i did see 2001 space odyssey....loved it...I like kubrick's movies in general but this one was particulalry good...didn't know it was a book by asimov...maybe that woudl get me into sci-fi.

amitdabas said:
any science fiction fans here? I started on this genre a year back..and haven't looked back since! favs include the foundation series by asimov and arthur c clarke's 2001 & Rendezvous with Rama. last read the player of games by iain m banks, it's about average.

i have also recently started reading books on real life adventures. The ones i like include into thin air (an account of the everest climb in 1996 when some 7-8 climbers died) and into the wild

I found angels & demons to be better than da vinci code - maybe bcoz that was his first novel i read. deception point got boring after a while.

i also like short stories - esp those of o henry, oscar wilde and saki. One of my all time fav short stories is the happy prince. You can read it here:
http://eserver.org/fiction/oscar-prince.html

Any mba grad wanting to go into investment banking (m&a/advisory) should definitely read Monkey Business !!
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Review !

Dear all,

It would be a better idea to post a brief Review( may be 50/100 words, more the merrier....with rating on a scale of 5), one book at a time.

Regards,
 
sansanwalamit said:
Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
by Levitt and Dubner
I recommend this book to anyone and everone who likes to look at things and issues from a different point of view. The book is full of interesting findings and is worth a read.
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The book is called Freakonomics because unlike most other economics books there is no underlying theme in the book. The author follows all the freakish ideas he gets and tries to explore the truth behind them, and thus the name Freakonomics. Also, if it was called micro conomics , i am sure I wouldnt have read it and you wouldnt be interested in knowing about it either.

The book is so interesting because of the questions the author asks and on investigating the answers which come up are equally amazing.

Some of the interesting facts he brings out are simple things based on that data which are astonishing for us.

E.g. swimming pools are more dangerous than the guns for children. The numbers prove it, if you compare the number of deaths of infants caused by swimming pool with those caused by guns you would get the answer.

It is also surprising to see how a law of abortion which was passed 20 years back had an effect on the crime rate in the country and left people confused as to what caused the dip in crime when everyone was predicting real bad days ahead.

Would you not be surprised that sumo wrestlers and teachers are similar in a way, that both of them would cheat ??? Well he does prove this with numbers too :)

he talks about why do drug sellers still stay with their moms ? Numbers tell simply because they do not make enough money to live on their own. Then why do they risk their lives and indulge in drugs ?? well the incentive is there for that :)

The most interesting one is about the real estate agents and ku klux clan , and how they were takig advantage of the information to which only they had an access, and how the access to the same information can defeat them at their own game.

Well these are just a few of the examples and there are many more interesting questions he aska and the answers to them are equally interesting.

This is one book which you would surely find very stimulating and interesting !!!

Go grab a copy and you would be happy you read it :)
 
anuj_kadyan said:
The book is called Freakonomics because unlike most other economics books there is no underlying theme in the book. The author follows all the freakish ideas he gets and tries to explore the truth behind them, and thus the name Freakonomics. Also, if it was called micro conomics , i am sure I wouldnt have read it and you wouldnt be interested in knowing about it either.

The book is so interesting because of the questions the author asks and on investigating the answers which come up are equally amazing.

Some of the interesting facts he brings out are simple things based on that data which are astonishing for us.

E.g. swimming pools are more dangerous than the guns for children. The numbers prove it, if you compare the number of deaths of infants caused by swimming pool with those caused by guns you would get the answer.

It is also surprising to see how a law of abortion which was passed 20 years back had an effect on the crime rate in the country and left people confused as to what caused the dip in crime when everyone was predicting real bad days ahead.

Would you not be surprised that sumo wrestlers and teachers are similar in a way, that both of them would cheat ??? Well he does prove this with numbers too :)

he talks about why do drug sellers still stay with their moms ? Numbers tell simply because they do not make enough money to live on their own. Then why do they risk their lives and indulge in drugs ?? well the incentive is there for that :)

The most interesting one is about the real estate agents and ku klux clan , and how they were takig advantage of the information to which only they had an access, and how the access to the same information can defeat them at their own game.

Well these are just a few of the examples and there are many more interesting questions he aska and the answers to them are equally interesting.

This is one book which you would surely find very stimulating and interesting !!!

Go grab a copy and you would be happy you read it :)
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Thanks Anuj for making my job easier. Just a caveat (talking about economics here so caveat is a must)-All these interesting findings, results and conclusions are result of many previous researches. Many people think that economics is just related to money and markets , but simply put economics is a study of human behaviour and how certain things interact or react in given situations pretty much like pure sciences. I still wonder why it is still conisdered a social science.:)

Cheers,
 
Hi Amit

Do you mean to say that social sciences are less rigorous and cannot predict behaviour?



sansanwalamit said:
Thanks Anuj for making my job easier. Just a caveat (talking about economics here so caveat is a must)-All these interesting findings, results and conclusions are result of many previous researches. Many people think that economics is just related to money and markets , but simply put economics is a study of human behaviour and how certain things interact or react in given situations pretty much like pure sciences. I still wonder why it is still conisdered a social science.:)

Cheers,
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priti said:
Hi Amit

Do you mean to say that social sciences are less rigorous and cannot predict behaviour?
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Pardon me for giving such an impression, my intention was not comparison of sciences. I simply thought of this because of used methodolgies in most of the economics research. In one aspect economics is indeed the science of learning techniques and methodologies to predict behaviour, infact there is a branch of economics called behavioural economics. Economics equips its learners with knowledge and techniques to predict the outcomes of certain circumstances and situations. To support their results and findings an economist heavily relies upon date and mathematics. Model development is the main pillar of economics, infact applied economics is used in every science be it Biology, Zoology or Sociology.
I am sure I have little knowldge of other social sciences but I believe they are more to do with existing situations and the reasonings behind them. For e.g. Political Science, Philosophy and History.
The beauty of Econnomics lies in the fact that only in this science one can find correlation between abortion and crime rate or even revelations such as hunting of animals will result in more animal conservation.
And if someone wants to enjoy this beauty and is interested in thinking out of the box then please read FREAKONOMICS :)
 
A good and positive thread after a long time, well anyway here are some of the books I really liked and are definitely worth reading.

An Equal Music : by Vikram Seth. Set in Vienna this is a beautiful novel and by that I mean literally beautiful. As it goes down explaining the details of sculputures in vienna and rome. It moves around some of the beautiful places in europe and then there is an amzingly refreshing romantic story. It talks about how the protagonist meets his love , looses it and finds it again and beautifully describes some of the finer points about music. It culminates so nicely and the pain and irony are just to be felt when it approaches the climax. It also explains a lot about string instruments and is amazingly simple to understand even for someone uninitiated in this field (like myself). Must read.....


God of small things: This was my first novel , when I started reading it I felt like its rambling here and there and took me a lot of patience to go through the first 50 pages or so. But then it all started to make sense. It all came together so nicely and subtly that you simply appreciate it. It explains the ironies of the world we are living in and the best thing I liked about it is that the author does it in such a subtle manner. She never went blasting everyone and everything rather takes a look at relationships on a one to one basis which make the whole picture. It really moves you when you are done reading. Amazing... simply amazing...

well the list goes on but i will be doing injustice to many other books if I keep writing about everyone in a single reply...

waiting to hear about more books that you guys have read...

Cheers
Ashok
 
Thanks for the reply Amit, if you are interested in research methodologies and correlations between social issues, a better place would be sociology, which uses not only quanlitative (as people usually perceive) but also highly evolved quantitative methods to find correlations and causation (rarely) between social variables.

As with a lot of other disciplines, the boundaries of economics are not limited to explaining demand and supply and increasingly it is delving into other non-economic aspects of society, which is good, gives rise to a lot of inter-disciplinary stuff which i feel explains more about any given phenomenon...

That reminds me, sorry for taking the thread on a tangent...back to the topic, famous indian economist Amartya Sen wrote a book called 'Development as Freedom' in which he focused on the objective of economic development as seen in the freedom/liberty or choices it provides people as opposed to the narrower view of economic development as measured in terms of GDP, income etc....a good read for people interested in social and economic development.



sansanwalamit said:
Pardon me for giving such an impression, my intention was not comparison of sciences. I simply thought of this because of used methodolgies in most of the economics research. In one aspect economics is indeed the science of learning techniques and methodologies to predict behaviour, infact there is a branch of economics called behavioural economics. Economics equips its learners with knowledge and techniques to predict the outcomes of certain circumstances and situations. To support their results and findings an economist heavily relies upon date and mathematics. Model development is the main pillar of economics, infact applied economics is used in every science be it Biology, Zoology or Sociology.
I am sure I have little knowldge of other social sciences but I believe they are more to do with existing situations and the reasonings behind them. For e.g. Political Science, Philosophy and History.
The beauty of Econnomics lies in the fact that only in this science one can find correlation between abortion and crime rate or even revelations such as hunting of animals will result in more animal conservation.
And if someone wants to enjoy this beauty and is interested in thinking out of the box then please read FREAKONOMICS :)
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Freakonomics

sansanwalamit said:
Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
by Levitt and Dubner
I recommend this book to anyone and everone who likes to look at things and issues from a different point of view. The book is full of interesting findings and is worth a read.
Click to expand...

Let me have the book this weekend if you are done!!!
 
priti said:
at reminds me, sorry for taking the thread on a tangent...back to the topic, famous indian economist Amartya Sen wrote a book called 'Development as Freedom' in which he focused on the objective of economic development as seen in the freedom/liberty or choices it provides people as opposed to the narrower view of economic development as measured in terms of GDP, income etc....a good read for people interested in social and economic development.
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that a good book!!!
 
chhillar said:
Let me have the book this weekend if you are done!!!
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Sure its just lying around and honestly catching dust as I had finished quite a while back, this weekend it is. Knowing you I am sure you will love it. :)
 
Lance Armstrong's Biography.. Its not about my bike, My journey back to life

And his post cancer life : Every second counts

Both os these are amazing and the guy is really inspiring.. I would highly reccomend this book !!!
 
Priti, '2001' is by Arthur C Clark not Asimov.
Kubrick was good in adapting books like "Clockwork Orange"(great book by Burgess), "Lolita"(one of my favorites by Nabokov, though people have unjustified views of the book without reading it)...

One of the best sci-fi movie I liked is 'Bladerunner'. If anybody has seen it I would suggest to read the critical analysis of movie.

-vinod
priti said:
the only science fiction i've read is contact (which was later turned into a movie) and jurassic park :D

but i did see 2001 space odyssey....loved it...I like kubrick's movies in general but this one was particulalry good...didn't know it was a book by asimov...maybe that woudl get me into sci-fi.
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