Surprising sources for songs. I found this via the economics blog Marginal Revolution, where they had a link about Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu meeting President Obama. Even though I don’t know a single word in this song, it is so beautiful.
Book Review — The ABC Murders, by Agatha Christie
Rating: ***** (5 stars out of 5)
This is one of my most favorite Agatha Christie novels. It starts with a surprising twist as a serial murderer taunts Hercule Poirot by sending him letters of his upcoming murders before they happen and challenges him and the police to stop him from getting to his next victim. The victims are chosen using their names that start with the next letter of the English alphabet in a town that matches the same criteria. The result: A massive manhunt followed by a mind-blowing conclusion.
What is particular brilliant about this novel is that while red herrings abound, the reader is left wondering at the end how they could have missed the obvious solution. There is a key question that is asked and left improperly answered at the start of the story. And it is only when Poirot asks that question again do we understand how we are led astray by emotional thinking. Everything falls into place perfectly at the end, even a minor lie by Poirot. The story-writing is excellent: fast-paced but engaging.
Book Review — The Creative Habit, by Twyla Tharp
Rating: ** (2 stars out of 5)
Creativity, like many other business concepts, is an elusive idea, even for those who are creative. What works for some may not work for others. You cannot teach people to be creative, but you can provide ideas for creative people to improve themselves and be more productive.
In that sense, Tharp’s book provides some useful insights into activities and behaviors that can produce ideas and reduce dead time. However, it is surrounded by a lot of fluffy stories that turn this book into more of an auto-biography than a self-help book. Which would have been okay, if the author was something other than a Broadway choreographer. I suppose it is a worth a quick browse, but nothing more than that.
Book Review — 30 Years of Laughs and Lasanga, by Jim Davis
Rating: ***** (5 stars out of 5)
Perhaps the most famous cat in the world, Garfield delivers in this book. This is a collection of past Garfield comic strips with the cartoonist Jim Davis explaining some of his decision making process. Davis has a different idea about commercialization than Watterson (of Calvin and Hobbes) and he makes a compelling argument.
Garfield, as usual, torments his owner and everyone who comes in his path. There is lovable Odie. There is the gluttony and mad rushes at lasagna. There is Garfield’s laziness which results in the audacity of the mice in the house. And finally Garfield’s terrible singing on the fence in the wee hours of the night.
Warren Buffet and The Interpretation of Financial Statements, by Mary Buffett and David Clark
Rating: *** (3 stars out of 5)
A dry, short book that explains which elements of financial statements does Warren Buffet pay attention to when he estimates the value of a company. In a typical company’s annual statements, there are many different figures. It is a mistake to focus on each of those figures because they can obscure the real truth of what is going on. This book provides insight into which numbers are more meaningful than others.
The book does more or less what it claims to do. The authors use a point-by-point analysis of each financial figure, but I expected a more comprehensive analysis. There is no summary that allows the reader to understand the relative importance of the various criteria, or the special circumstances under which they change. You can find bits and pieces scattered throughout the book, but it is not consolidated properly.
Book Review — The Girl in Blue, by P G Wodehouse
Rating: ** (2 stars out of 5)
The title refers to a miniature painting that is the center of focus of activities of the chief protagonists. The action quickly moves from New York to London to country houses. Although it has the customary Wodehouse mix-up plots, there are a few disappointments. Primarily, it does not contain any of the regular Wodehouse characters. Plot points with tension are resolved rather quickly, instead of prolonging them to create more suspense. There are very few twists in the tale, or at least which cannot be predicted easily. The start of one of the story lines (where a donation is made to the church) is rather unbelievable and spoils that part of the book until its unsatisfactory explanation. I did like the final comeuppance of the bad character, though the rushed-through ending of the book prevented me from enjoying the moment to the full.
Book Review — Bit Literacy, by Mark Hurst
Rating: *** (3 out of 5)
This book is meant for people who are struggling with the impact of technology on their lives and cannot handle the constant stream of bits (in the form of email, documents, photos, etc.) into their lives. The author does a good job of listing some tactics that will help people manage their lives better. He talks about the necessity of clearing out inboxes and using a good to-do manager to keep track of events.
The author seems to take a logical step by providing the names of some useful applications and it is here where I think the book fails. Many people, for a variety of reasons, cannot easily change their tools (such as email application or task management software). A better strategy would be to help people understand how to use their existing tools. I also see a conflict of interest in the author promoting his own to-do application suggesting that it has the right amount of features. The author, clearly suffering from a Mac bias, accuses people of using PCs because of an anti-Mac bias and that clearly stretches his credibility.
Book Review — Why We Make Mistakes?, by Joseph Hallinan
Rating: **** (4 stars out of 5)
Hallinan has written a smart book on how human beings keep making mistakes in our day-to-day lives even though we should know better. Many of these mistakes are because of deeply embedded behaviors in human beings.
For example, we are more likely to think we are above average and over-estimate our capabilities, thus taking on something that we cannot handle. We are not very capable of multi-tasking, but we don’t realize it, as evidenced by the many cell phone car accidents. There are differences between the way men and women approach a particular problem. Understanding these shortcomings can help us avoid problems and also understand why people behave the way they do.
Book Review — ENIAC, by Scott McCartney
Rating: ** (2 stars out of 5)
This is supposed to be the story of Presper Ekert and John Mauchly, the inventors of ENIAC, the first electronic computer. Actually, it is more about the politics and intrigue surrounding the invention and the various claims to fame by the people who were involved in the invention and the aftermath. The author is of the opinion that Ekert and Mauchly deserved more acclaim than they received, because others including John von Neumann received the credit because of their higher/better positions in the establishment.
It depends on what you are looking for in a book such as this. If you are mostly interested in the development of the technology, this book will be unsatisfying. It concentrates more on the personalities and the political games they played, instead of providing us with a deeper understanding of the invention and its challenges. I suppose that may be okay for many non-technical readers, but it was not for me.
Book Review — Survival is not Enough, by Seth Godin
Rating: *** (3 stars out of 5)
Using the concept of evolution, Seth Godin explains how companies, by expanding their vision and ability to change, can evolve to survive and beat market conditions. Companies can learn to “zoom” and not have to fight with change management. It is a well-meaning book, but it has a few problems. It is more directed to companies with dysfunctional and rigid environments. However, such companies need a serious overhaul of their corporate culture, leadership and policies to become more dynamic, which is usually possible only when the company is undergoing significant growth or losses.
A growing company usually is willing to experiment and adopt strategies and tactics that have potential. The problem is that only some potential ideas can be exploited successfully to provide adequate returns within a reasonable time frame, and the others will be discarded. This provides the opening for startups to take discarded ideas that may be profitable for them (but not profitable to the growing company) and attempt to create a growing market. This problem is explained in “The Innovator’s Dilemma” and although Seth Godin has tried to explain it away through his evolution concept, he has only given it a superficial treatment.
The general failure of the book is that it attempts to run an entire discussion using a single metaphor and sometimes it stretches it too far.