rajatarya.com – a portal to me
Read in September and October 2006.
These are a collection of short non-fictional stories Chuck Palahniuk encountered when traveling around the country during his book tour for Fight Club. The stories themselves are entertaining and interesting, and as always, his style is a fun read.
This is a great book to read in between other “heavier” novels. I enjoyed it and it reads very quickly.
You can read more about it and purchase it from here.
Read in July and August 2006.
This is the story of Malika Oufkir. Her childhood was overly privileged as she was adopted by the king of Morocco. There was the troubles with being separated from her family and not being allowed to spend time with her mother.
After turning sixteen, she moved back home with her family. Her father’s relationship with the king soured, and after a failed coup that was organized by her father, Malika was imprisoned with her entire family, including her 3yr old brother.
This imprisonment lasted for twenty years, and considering this occurred during the 1970s, it is even more amazing.
The story moves freely and Malika doesn’t spend too much time dwelling on the horrific events her family endured. She keeps from showing too much contempt from her captors, and talks openly about the internal conflict she dealt with a father-figure as her capture. Overall a very interesting read, and cool.
Read more about it, and buy it from here.
Read from July 2006 to August 2006.
Thought provoking work on the power of the subconscious and the power of making snap-decisions. Using “thin-slicing” as the primary technique, we can effectively make many decisions using our subconscious. Unfortunately, many people are not tapped into their subconscious in this way and so cannot take advantage of this power to “mind read”.
Gladwell attempts to open the reader’s eyes and mind to the concept of subconscious power. The book is interesting in the examples and the many studies referenced. It reads like a long essay, instead of an academic paper (which makes it significantly more readable).
Many times when working on a hard (or at least, hard for me) problem at work going home and letting my subconscious churn on the problem overnight helps open my eyes. It has worked for me several times, and though I have a hard time relying on it, it is always pleasantly surprising when it works.
You can read more about Blink and potentially purchase it here.
Listened to eAudioBook in July 2006.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that my local library now offers audio books for download that can be transferred to a portable media player. I downloaded this book and listened to it on my way to Portland this past weekend.
This is the story of an educated woman that tries to live on minimum wage alone. She hides/lies about her credentials and does her best to live within the means of a service-class person. Her jobs vary and her locations vary, but overall she finds it very difficult to make ends meet.
The book is well written, and doesn’t make any judgments on the service class, but rather makes many comments on the educated class and how the service class are often forgotten. The author does take some time to discuss her life at Walmart, which is highly entertaining. The author also makes several attempts to articulate the limitations of the welfare reform that has been passed in recent years – specifically that the calculations minimum wage and poverty rate do not include the cost of housing in a particular locality.
I found the book reminded me of my time working at Staples and Redner’s when I was in high school. This further encourages my philosophy that all young people should have service-oriented jobs when growing up so they can be introduced to this lifestyle. The author was often shocked at learning the lifestyle many of the full-time service workers experienced (no health insurance, living in cars/vans, no work = no food next day). This was less surprising to me since at Staples and Redner’s I was exposed to the full-timers at the job and got to hear about their lifestyle.
Read more about the book from Amazon.
Read from April 2006 to July 2006.
This is the story of the Oakland Athletics‘ manager Billy Beane, and how by using certain statistics ignored by Major League Baseball he was able to take one of the cheapest teams in baseball to the playoffs consistently. His approach to using these statistics to manage players points out the deficiency in management of major league teams, and snubs the “old school” thinking of baseball scouts.
This book was given to my entire team by our product unit manager, Hillel. Oddly enough, though none of us are baseball fans, Billy Beane’s actions epitomize some of the goals of my team – to constantly re-evaluate the metrics on which we measure our success, and work to improve the metrics to improve our performance.
Michael Lewis writes casually (at times too casually for my taste) but keeps the story lively and entertaining. He does not require the reader to know about baseball, as he himself writes mostly as a novice. The book has a couple chapters about the history of baseball statistics that are somewhat dull, but they provide the context for the rest of the book.
Overall this book was entertaining (even for someone like me who finds baseball in all forms to be boring) and insightful on how every organization can take a lesson is improving its metrics for evaluating success. You can buy it or read more about it from Amazon.
This is an in-depth look from Rolling Stone on what happened to Larry Wachowski. If you are a Matrix fan and have wondered what happened to the brothers, check out the article.
The article also lends some insights on themes the Wachowski brothers have made popular in their movies.
Read in October 2005.
This is the latest book by Michael Crichton – he finally got back to doing proper Science Fiction – with the emphasis on the science. The story is about global warming, and the premise is that terrorists may be the environmentalists trying to validate the causes they support.
The story is littered with references as if it is an academic paper, but it has very similar character development as Timeline. The hero is presented as a wimpy anti-hero (and he’s a lawyer this time) but over the course of events (where there isn’t much of an explanation why he’s on the adventure) he becomes tougher and more like the real hero.
The story is quick moving and fun to read. It has parts that read like a movie, but it is much much much better than Prey.
Read in October 2005.
This is the story of the first Macintosh, and how it sent ripples through the industry. Steven Levy is not an objective writer, and does not pretend to be. He states clearly that he loves his Mac, and every Mac he has ever owned. It is a very interesting story because it is written from the voice of an enthusiast who has had access to the inner-sanctum of Apple from day one. Lots of insight on the beginnings of the industry, where the personal computer’s roots truly lie, with plenty of poignant interviews.
Read in September 2005.
This is a biography of Steve Jobs mixed with the history of Apple – but more focused on Steve then on Apple. It is a reasonably good biography, but I am hard-pressed to find some of the conclusions drawn by the authors to be based in enough facts – or at least – they don’t seem to present enough facts to justify some of their conclusions. Good story in that it is current until January 2005.
Read from March 2005 to August 2005.
This is about the early years at Microsoft, and more directly, about Bill Gates. His early years prior to the company, in NM, and finally until 1991 in WA. The authors talk a lot about the early employees, which sheds some keen insights on how things are done now. There are a fair number of interviews from semi-superstars at Microsoft (people that were considered superstars at that time, but who’s stars have faded). If you want to know how it all started, this book is pretty interesting to read.
