Read in October 2007.

This is a book about India’s problems as they relate to the world.  The position that Kamdar writes from is that India is a microcosm of the world’s problems - and if India can solve them - so can the world.  She writes about the problems that most people who know anything about developing countries already know, but makes the problems seem more concrete with numbers and some historical insights.  She also helps the reader to see the rate of the problems’ escalation, making the need for improvement more immediate.

About half the book is about India’s problems and successes in becoming a world-force, and the rest is about people who are trying to solve them.  She interviews people from India or that have Indian origins and details exactly what they are doing to address the problems.  These interviews and the stories of these people is inspiring and shows how ordinary people can make a difference - with the right attitude and the intention to improve one small thing.

This book is worth reading on many levels, it isn’t dense or textbook deep but still packed with information.  India’s problems are not unique to the world and like it or not, the world will have to solve them in the next two generations.  Kamdar’s book is a great primer on the problems India faces today and some of the ways it can improve itself in the coming years.

Read in September 2007.

I read this book after watching the movie with my parents in a Portland OR theater.  It was the first time all three of us left the theater with our eyes swelled up.  The story resonated so perfectly with my parents’ generation as first generation Indians coming to this country and trying to raise a family.  The story resonated equally well with my upbringing as a second generation Indian being raised here.  The choices in my life where I had to choose how Indian I wanted to be are echoed by Gogol’s choices in the story.

The book is very similar to the movie, with only two notable exceptions.  The book is based in Boston where as the movie is based in and around New York City.  This makes more sense for the movie but is a notable change.  The other notable change is that in the book there are two white girlfriends in Gogol’s life.  In the movie they sort of merge the two of them into one.  Though the storyline doesn’t change it gives the book a little more depth.

This is a book that I will keep on my bookshelf and I will encourage all Indian Americans who are being raised in this country by first-generation Indians to read.  The story is simple and the choices are real and anyone who has wanted to know the decisions necessary for someone who is trying to integrate two cultures into one while fitting in and growing up and still maintaining an individual identity - this is one great story to read.

The Namesake was my first Jhumpa Lahiri book, though I am convinced I will have to read all of her short stories and future writings now.

Read more about it and purchase it from here.

Read in July - August 2007

A sweet story by Hosseini about two female characters and their lives/hardships through war-torn Afghanistan.  I found his character development and story development to be less cheesy than "The Kite Runner" and quite enjoyable.  This story does not pull at the emotional heartstrings like his first novel.  This could be due to his style of description subduing the reader so when bad news needs to be told the reader is not shocked by it.

The story has many sad points, but the inner strength and resilience of the two women stuck in a terrible marriage is admirable.  Though this story has a slightly happier ending, it still has the character I was most attached to abandoning the reader - which I think is part of Hoesseini’s point - that in all the violence and turmoil of Afghanistan at the time of the story it is impossible to think any story can fully escape the surroundings and remain authentic.

Read more about it and purchase it here.

Read in June 2007.

Short book on how innovation can come from many different places.  Good to keep around and read whenever you feel your creative juices are stifled.  Consider it a feel good / self-help book for the entrepreneur.

Read more about it and buy it here.

Read from April to May 2007.

This is a collection of 32 interviews with founders from recent technology startups.  The book is well written and Livingston speaks enough of the technical language to ask the right questions.  This book fules the entrepreneurial spirit of the reader and makes clear that startups have their ups and downs - even though this particular story is about 32 startups that were successful, at least for a while.

The most engaging part of the story for me was how patterns emerged between the founders and common experiences they all shared.  It became clear that tech startups have to be ready for anything and be willing to alter the original plan again and again as development continues.  This flexibility plus a commitment to the customer regardless of the circumstances was also novel to me.  Often times you think of a startup running as fast as it can without regard for the customer, hoping the customer will understand the product.  The people interviewed in this book were the opposite - they only cared about the customer and constantly made changes accordingly.

It was also really interesting that many (of those interviewed over half) were established engineers with families and prior careers.  These interviews were particularly insightful to me, since the media glamorizes the phenomenon of a college drop-out success story.  For example, can you name the founder of Tivo?  Turns out they all were established middle-aged engineers.  That doesn’t make for a great scoup but certainly makes for more interesting reading.  The perspective these seasoned engineers provide on their experiences in leaving a steady job, steady salary, and steady lifestyle for the 24-hour pace of a startup fills the reader with confidence that he too can be successful in the startup.  And, even if not successful, that the experience was worth the effort.

I highly recommend this book if you have the desire to enter the tech industry at any level.  The interviews are short and sweet and you get a sense of each of the founders from their own words.  I hope Jessica Livingston continues to write about tech startups - I will keep reading what she writes.

Read more about it and buy it here.

Read from February to March 2007.

This self-help book on relationships is interesting, but many of the things discussed have proliferated into common society now.  There still are techniques mentioned that I found somewhat helpful.  As an engagement present this is a good book to read.  It is a good skimming book because Gray repeats himself over and over again - something common in self-help books.  At times I felt the entire book could be condensed into a 30 page pamphlet.

But the wisdom is useful, especially if you are in a relationship and going through a difficult period.

I would recommend this book if you have not read any other books in the last 15 years on relationships - I am assuming that most of the book cover the same material.

Read more about it and purchase it from here.

Read in February 2007 (actually on the flight home from India on February 24, 2007).

This is a fast-paced modern technologically savvy story about how we are all connected, whether we like it or not. Kunzru writes authoritatively enough to be a certified geek; nothing even remotely evident to that in his first novel - The Impressionist (see my post about that here). His use of technical terms and connecting complex technical concepts leave the reader questioning how much of his knowledge is research and how much is a hidden geek coming out.

The story also captures a modern view of Bollywood cinema, with one of the three storylines being an up-and-coming Bollywood star. There is a reasonable amount of hinglish thrown into the story as the Indian characters in the story communicate to themselves.

The story has an Indian hacker software getting outsourced into the US as a consultant, the modern-day, financial equivalent of colonialism. As he struggles to make any money at all (between his contract employer taking its large cut of his earnings) he works as a tester at a virus protection company. In company downsizing, he fights hard to keep his job.

The final character is a slick 33 year old London marketeer who lives his life on the edge - whether between his girlfriend, his work, his company, or himself. He is about face adversity from all angles, and is spurned into sinking or swimming - quite literally.

Kunzru’s writing stlye is impeccably youth-oriented and fast-paced. Each major and minor character is described in a way that makes him/her seem realistic and tangible. The story unfolds reasonably quickly, and none of the characters are prone to emotions so Kunzru doesn’t spend a great deal of time talking about feelings - which keeps the story moving. The ending is somewhat unexpected, but the build up to it is quite a treat. Three stories getting cris-crossed and eventually colliding in every reasonable way.

Read The Impressionist first for a high quality historical fictional story. Read this afterwards for an equally high-quality modern-day story. Highly recommended.

Read more about it on Amazon.com.

Read from Janauary to February 2007. This is a sweet and emotionally charged story of a man coming to terms with mistakes in his youth while describing Kabul pre Russian invasion. This story has several themes that are wound together through the fabric of a man reflrecting on his youth. Each theme is completed in one way or another, even if some cheesiness ensues in the process. Hosseini uses a clever technique of writing as a child when flashing back to his the main character’s childhood.

The story itself takes one too many familiar twists, and leaves the reader feeling like he is reading the story to an upcoming Bollywood film (though not nearly as over-acted). The ending can be predicted about 100 pages from the ending, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but makes it clear that the predictable becomes reality in the story.

The story also describes the Russian invasion through the eyes of the main character, as a child. As the main character goes back to Kabul in the early 1990s and witnesses the Taliban’s effect on his childhood home, the story describes the Taliban in a very real and terrifying way.

I would recommend this if you are interested in having a story with anecdotal knowledge about an Afghani immigrant to San Francisco in the early 1990s.

Read more about it from Amazon.com.

Read in December 2006 to January 2007.This is the story of a woman who lived in an Iraqi village for just about two years in the 1950s. She was accompanying her husband who was a sociologist. The story goes from the initial arrival to eventual deep and meaningful friendship between the women in the village and Fornea.

The book is well written with each chapter discussing an event during the two years. Fornea does a good job of describing what she sees around her without passing judgment on its foreign nature. The detail is appropriately provided and never repeated - to keep from making the similar seem mundane.

I would like to think this book was eye-opening, and I think it would be if it was about modern times. It is interesting to read about how tribal/rural/simple the life was in parts of Iraq in the 1950s, but it hardly makes things eye-opening. I think about what life in the US was like back then (what I’ve read about it).

The most fascinating part of this book is regarding the supposed lack of power in the family that the women possess. In reality, the women use crafty techniquest to manipulate their husbands. Reading the book for these subtle but effective ways to get what you want in an unbalanced relationship is worth it.

I recommend this book if you are interested in finding out what life in a southern Iraqi village was like in the 1950s.

Read more about it from Amazon.com.

(Note: I decided, though grammatically incorrect, to no longer italicize the title of each book. I was doing this manually by inserting HTML tags into the page, which caused the W3C to complain. I have finally decided that I will give up on this, for now. Instead I will use quotations for the title.)

Read in December 2006.

In the same vein as The Tipping Point Levitt and Dubner ask interesting questions to explain socio-economic phenomenon. What makes the approach particularly engaging is how the questions are posed and how they are answered. Each chapter in the book is a set of questions, that relate to an socio-economic phenomenon - but he doesn’t get into the phenomenon until partway into the text.

Each chapter’s question is answered using raw data that is analyzed in a novel way. This makes the data come to life and amazes the reader into realizing that data can be exciting. Of all the praise for Levitt, this is what sings most clearly with me - his creativity in using mundane data to prove what did not seem provable makes anything he touches worth reading.

Highly recommend reading this book. Period.

Read more about it from Amazon.com.