Rating: ***** (5 stars out of 5) I have cried reading books, but this is the first one I can remember shedding tears just three pages in. The story…
Rating: ** (2 stars out of 5) This is a short history of maths. By short, I mean really short. Which is unfortunate, because there can be no justice…
Growing up, I used to watch a lot of dubbed Chinese Kung-Fu movies. Mongoose style against the Snake style and so on. I don’t believe they used to…
Rating: ***** (5 stars out of 5) I have cried reading books, but this is the first one I can remember shedding tears just three pages in. The story of life is about loss and regrets, and “Norwegian Wood” in its opening paragraph breaks through our defenses with its splendid writing that simply envelops us and…
Rating: ** (2 stars out of 5) This is a short history of maths. By short, I mean really short. Which is unfortunate, because there can be no justice done to any topic within the few pages that the author has allocated for each. In some cases, just as the topic gets interesting, the author is…
Rating: **** (4 stars out of 5) Reading a book, especially a classic, after a long time is always a different experience than the first time. One is that obviously you know the story and there are no surprises as to what happens at the end. So you hurry less and spend more time enjoying the…
Rating: **** (4 stars out of 5) Nothing serious here, people, move along! This is a fun book about an interesting story that Benjamin Franklin apparently told Thomas Jefferson when he finished writing the Declaration of Independence and found that the Continental Congress wanted to make several changes to what he thought was a perfect document.…
Rating: ***** (5 stars out of 5) Katherine Boo has written an amazing, heart-breaking novel about the people who inhabit the slums of Mumbai. There are many inter-locking stories of different characters in the novel, all of them existing in precarious, miserable conditions, but trying their best to beat a system that has reduced them to…
More books I will not read again and therefore will not bother to put up a longer review for each. The E-Myth Revisited, by Michael Gerber: The author starts off with a good analysis of the reasons behind the failures of various small businesses. He attributes it to the fact that most people who start small businesses are…
When I took my PMP exams, I used the following books in addition to the material supplied by the PMI. I would rate both of them 3 stars out of 5 as far as helping for the PMP exam preparation, but please note my notes about PMP Exam Prep, by Rita Mulcahy: Definitely, seems to be…
Like everyone working in technology, I love Dilbert, the comic strip by Scott Adams. Dilbert takes us into the world of the horrors of stupid, incompetent management and their evil and brainless schemes to exploit workers. Almost everything that Scott Adams writes can be found in real life — the clueless managers, the cliched mission statements, the…
Rating: ***** (5 stars out of 5) The topic of the book, how local government regulation stifles the construction of new homes in opportunity-rich cities across the United States, is vital and pressing, unfortunately something that has been ignored by most politicians. The rent is too high because supply has not coped up with demand. And…
So I am using a rating system of 1 to 5 stars for book reviews. Therefore (!), there are a few books I have read and rated 1 star (or perhaps even zero stars). I didn’t keep many notes on them and it does not seem worth it to waste time reading them again just…