Category: book reviews

This one a set of short stories form R. K. Narayan. I love his style no doubt about it.

I had seen the serial – “Malgudi Days” that used to be aired on the DoorDarshan when young. I could recall the different episodes as I read through the book. I would commend the Director of the serial – Late Shankar Nag, for his fantastic picturisation of the stories. A applause is a must for him to get the narration that RK gives, realized.

This book is not a complete collection but a set of selected stories from the different short stories collection that RK has written. There is a hidden pun in some of them, in some there is nothing but a lucid narration of the events…. over all a very nice book to read… Each story different from the other and all narrated so well that it captivates the readers interest. A nice read to enjoy when you feel bored.

I have been motivated by RK and his short story collection, an plan to write some stories…. will put them up some times…

This Mir publication book is one of the first books I read about Quantum Physics outside the curriculum. This book is exactly as I like it… a combination of history and quantum physics.
This book is about the Odyssey of the modern physics. The author starts off with an attempt to obtain as many resources as possible, at a time when most of the torchbearers of modern physics were leaving this each on their heavenly abode. He starts of with visiting archives, meeting the remaining war-lords (I mean those who were the fore runners in making the theory of the sub- atomic world.)
The author of the book has a very different narration style, he starts with the need for a documenting the experiences of the great people who had started this race, and why it was already late for them to start…
The book greets us with a lot of anecdotes from the lives of these great men, making the journey all the more interesting…. The various people who started off this journey, what their individual thoughts were, how the interacted with each other, the various situations that got them to think in the way they thought to make a theory and much more… all these keep the interest on the high throughout.
Its starts of slowly not revealing much in the beginning, but as it goes on the story of the quantum theory’s birth keeps us engaged through out.
If you are a little patient to see through the first part of this book, its a wonderful book to read. Very informative… Go ahead and try out…

This is one of the inspirational books by our president.. APJAK. I have read this book some time back and was impressed by the vision he shares with the younger generation.
He has dedicated this book to a girl – Snehal Thakkar… He has shared his vision so that many more people can share it and work towards achieving it. He gives clear messages to the people though his assertion on Dreams and the message it has. He highlights the importance of having a role model, the effect that teachers have on the students the way they give the initial casting to the life of the students during their initial.
He give something to pic for every individual in this book. If you like reading APJ don’t miss it…

I just love this book. The title of the book is just apt with the content that he is presenting. His style has really made the name worth… the book is just elegant.
The book is about the concepts of modern therory of the sub-atomic world and the quest for the “Grand Unified theory.” He speaks in very simple and clear method which makes the book all the more interesting.
Brian is one of the experts in the domain of “String Theory”, this is thought to be “The Theory” that would lead us to a better understanding of the universe and find the single theread that could bind all the theories togather and give an explanation to all the observations using this single theory.
Brian has a very clear understanding about the concepts of Physics. I just love the way way he has expalined the concepts of relativity.. hez made it more clear than other books which I have read. He doesnt follow th eusungl style of assuming we send one person into space and things like that, but rather uses simple analogies to get the concept clear. The other part where he shows his brilliance in explaining the concept of plank’s constant. He then gets the concepts of dimentions that are curled up and things like it to explain the string theory.. as this theory has in itself 11 dimentions!!!, but he makes it look easy by the way he explains.
He later goes on to inform the reader about the differnt parts of this string theory and their various implications. He also gets a small amount of science to make information more complete.

If you like physics and want to know much more about the modern developments in the latest attempt of grand unified theory… this is a must read… Nothing like it for a beginner. I advise you to go have a go at this book if you love physics.

Arindam Chaudhuri has written this book after his wel known mangement book – “Count Your Chickens before they hatch”. This book also revolves around the “India Centric – mangement theory.
This is an inspirational book in a lot of ways, but I sometime feel he is too idealistic and we must understand that not all these things are going to work as easily as he has mentioned in the book. He has started a foundation… to implement the dream that he has seen through this book.. and his success is mostly limited to West Bengal. I think it takes us to think over again and understand that though the idea that he has given is nice one it takes much more to implement it.
He tries to be over motivating… and seriously I think he has failed to convince me. His ideas are nice… but not in complete synch with my lines of thought. I would take it up with a pinch of salt, rather than just go by what he says word by word.
A nice book to read.. to think out of the box to a certain degree, some new ideas suggested, some open problems of the nation brought out.. but they I feel are not complete solutions that he has sugested…. go ahead and read in case you love to read and knoe more….

This is a book tha tis a compiled edition of the number of essays that Dr Amartya Sen has written about various topics ranging from India’s history to its culture; Politics to Protests, Reason, its Diaspora included.
The book is a bit heavy if you dont have the patience to read though it. The vocabulary is good. I would advice not to search for links between the various essays and to look at them indivisually. Dont even attempt searching for a flow, you can easily start hating his style of narrration. If you dont read this book at a stretch and get some time for yourself to digest what he has told, this will be a good book, with all its knowlege and experience that is open to the world.
Dr Amartya gives the book the touch of an expert.. he has written it in a very verbose manner and one in which not many can follow. The book deals with a lot of topics and give a very broad view of those concepts. He has given some descrion about Ravindranath Tagore.. who seems to have had a lot of affect on his life. He deals with some nice and interesting concepts like the Sino-Indian relations and others. A very knowledeable book to read.. but be cautious that you expect that it is going to be hard for you in case you think it is for timepass… you will be utterly mistaken.

This book deals with the speculations that Nobel Laurate – Steven Weinberg makes about the conditions that existed for the first three minure of the creation of the universe.
He starts off with the reason he has this speculations, the expansion of the univese, the background radio wave radiations that where one the first clues in this direction, the various experiments that were conducted to know the origin of this radiations, the Doppler effect and its use in estimations.
He then starts off realing with the situations that exsisted for the first 3 minutes, he continues on with this speculations of the contents what he calls as the recipe of the universe (the various sub-atomic particles that where in the state) the reason why they were in that state, how they combined to form various other sub-atomic particles. This journey through the composition of the universe is very exciting one. He explains these situations in frames dealing, which makes it more like a photographic explanation. The has written it very nicely. He leaves the speculations of the first hundredth of a second so as to get the people to understand it better and later on reveals his understanding of this small time frame in a very nice way.
He concludes the book with a whole new prospects let to the reader to think in a fresh manner.

Over all a very well written book with a lot of information for those interested in the birth of universe.

This is one of those novels which you can read when you have the intension of not straining your brain. A total timepass, absolutely nothing to pickup from this book except may be realizing that not many are satisfied in life with the job they do, but still do it for the sake of the heavier pay slip.
The book is about a persons thought process and his nostalgic recollection about the days he had spent earlier in the same call center job. I personally feel there is a lot of cook up in the story and nowere do we feel that there can be a genuine one, the ends up by introducing a unknown God who will speak to all of them in the cab whn it land in some big pit!!! what more can you expect to be cooked up in the story?
Well I feel the message that he wants to give to the people is just that dont worry to take up a new venture and just dont bother about that risk you are going to take up.. its always worth the effort.

This book in not as good as the first book by the author named – “Five Point Someone”. Which was a instant hit among the readers in college… that one looked more realistic. Overall a disappoint to those who expected this book to be to the earlier ones standards.. looses way behind.

This is one the first books I read, I have a lot of respect for this great man, who is the president of India.
Its an inspiring story to know about the person who started off from a tiny village in Rameshwaram and is now the First citizen of India, staying in NewDelhi.
The book gives a detailed account of the life of this great man, right from his birth to his education, his dreams, his work and then his acievements.
Some people feel, the book becomes less of his life story and more of the scientific milestones of the Indian defence. But that is what his life is about.. his life is all about those marvellous achievements that are part of Indian Defence now.
The book is a very motivating one, and gives a lot of messages to those who read it. The main message that I got from this book is – “Chase your Dreams”.
When you look at the chapters where he mentions about his mentors like – Satish Dhawan, Vikram SaraBhai, you realize how great these people were. How they nurtured young talent. This is exactly what I feel is missing now a days. The most touching instance for me in the book is that in which, the destined launch was flopped. It was a gr8 leadership lesson that I picked through this instance from the book.
You can find many more such instances in the book which are worth reading.

This is a sort of autobiography of the great man – MohanDas KaramChand Gandhi aka Mahatma Gandhi.
It is more of a discussion of this thoughts and the things he had picked up in his life. His moral values and principles that he stuck to and the reason why he adopted to those beliefs.
The book is rather slow moving, and not very easy to finish. We come to know about his thoughts in great detail.
He stops narrating his life story at a point where he feels that the wolrd has seen him more closely.. so the narration is just till the point where he thinks that people have not seen him much closely. There are a lot of things that you can look forward to, in knowing his life.
The most striking thing in reading the book is his way of thought, not all that great to start off his life.. but as he goes on his nature of sticking and believing in the traditons gave him a new dimention.
If you are intrested in knowing something about this gr8 personality… this is a must read.