Chasing the Mountain of Light

[Author: Kevin Rushby; Publisher: Constable and Company Ltd.; 
Hardcover: 276 pages ]

The world famous diamond Koh-i-Noor (which means "Mountain of Light" in Persian language) has been adorning the British monarch's crown since 1850s. How it landed up there is a fascinating story.
In late 1990s the author Kevin Rushby  traveled through India following the trial of Koh-i-Noor diamond from Kollur mines in Andhra Pradesh to Amritsar in Punjab.
This book is an account of this journey during which he met people from all walks of life - miners, smugglers, merchants , politicians, royalty, bureaucrats, scholars , academicians - in the places where the renowned diamond has passed through hundreds of years ago. These encounters helped him to know more about the Koh-i-Noor and also provided him a good exposure to the Indian society where he found "both the depths of human greed and heights of spiritual aspiration".
An interesting travelogue. A good light-read to pass your time.

Links 

• Wikipedia article on Koh-i-Noor
• Author's website
• Goodreads Ratings and Reviews -  Average Rating 3.63 / 5;  27 ratings; 3 reviews

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How to be More Interesting

[Author: Edward de Bono,  Publisher: Penguin Books , Paperback:  304 pages ]

In this book, the author Edward de Bono the originator of lateral thinking methods, provides guidance on developing oneself into an interesting person. And this transformation does not  necessarily mean being a  celebrity or performing outstanding feats or having an unusual experience or holding an interesting job. 
According to de Bono what make you an interesting person depends upon - what happens in your mind; how you express what happens in your mind; what impression you create in the mind of a listener. 
Being interesting is a skill which can be developed. Hence this book is a workbook consisting of 70 short  and simple exercises intended to help you develop this skill. These are exercises to train your mind to think and express yourself in an interesting manner.
de Bono strongly encourages you to do these exercises to get full benefit from the book. He also cautions that book should not be read like a novel in a hurried manner. Instead it should be read through slowly, agreeing or disagreeing with the points made by him based on your own experiences.
Well I did implement de Bono advice to some extent but I doubt whether this book has turned me into a more interesting person. Maybe you can try yourself and see whether this book works for you.
Just an OK sort of book, authored by a person who has written path-breaking bestsellers like "Lateral Thinking" and "Six Thinking Hats". I was rather disappointed since I had high expectations from it.

Overview of Topics
 
Apart from the Introduction and Summary , there are three main sections in this book. A brief overview of  topics discussed in these sections are as follows. Each of these topics has several exercises associated with it.

The Basic Operations of Interest : 

• Possibility : Opening up and exploring possibilities in mind. Going beyond what is in front of you. The role of hypothesis and speculation.
• Alternatives: The deliberate generation of alternatives. Alternatives of explanation, action, ways of looking at things, etc. The importance of the 'fixed point'.
• Concepts: The fundamental importance of concepts to all thinking. Concept extraction as a source of interest.
• Run Forward in the Mind: Visualization, imagination and projection. Looking ahead, moment to moment, to see what follows and what happens next. Exploring forward in time.
• Connect and Link Up: The effort to make connections and to link up different matters. Skill at connecting things enlarges the field of interest. We are no longer limited to the immediate matters.
• Provocation: With provocation there may not be reason for saying something until after it has been said. Provocation are the basis of creativity. Provocations open up new lines of thought.
• Attention-directing: Where do we direct our attention? Why do we direct attention? Attention either flows on or is directed. Directing attention creates the dance of attention that is central to interest.
• Alleys, Avenues and Themes: We choose to open up and to pursue avenues and alleys of interest. How do we notice them? Why do we choose them? Themes are very broad areas of attention.
• Clarify, List and Summarize: The need to express things simply and to communicate them well. The use of analogies and metaphors. The value of lists in clarifying, thinking and providing attention points.

The Drivers of Interest

• Feelings: Feelings provide the fuel for interest. There is a whole range of human feelings. They are there to be enjoyed. Interest seeks to  draw in those feelings.
•  Relevance: Relevance to yourself. Relevance to other people. Relevance to human nature and so on to individuals. Relevance is a key part of interest. Something becomes interesting as soon as it can be made relevant.
• Human Interest: There are a number of basic 'human-interest' drivers: sex, money, scandal, categories, etc. People are interested in people and people's behavior.
• Emotions: These are strong emotions. What is their place in 'interest'? Do they help with interest or do they interfere with interest? Emotions may be simple or mixed.
• Humenes: This is a new word to cover that aspect of interest that derives from physiological behavior in the mind: humor, insight, surprise, etc. This is a powerful form of interest but need not involve either relevance or feelings.
• Fascination: A powerful form of interest. The interest that is aroused by wildlife television programs. Something may be fascinating in itself. The importance of curiosity.
• Knowledge and Stories: The content part of interest. Information and experiences. First-hand or second-hand stories. The ingredients of interest as distinct from the operations.

Interaction

• Discussion: Discussion and conversation. Interacting with other people. The use of basic 'interest operations' to increase the interest of a discussion.
• Agreement: The value and use of agreement. Ways of agreeing. Developing and building on ideas. Full agreement and partial agreement.
• Disagreement: The dangers of negativity. The ego-driven sources of disagreement. The fundamental flaw in Western thinking. The benefits of parallel thinking. The Six Hats framework for discussion. Designing a way forward.
• Bores and Boring: Why is someone is boring? Jumps and changes in conversation. The use and dangers of interruption. Diversions.

Links 

• Edward de Bono's website

• Goodreads Ratings and Reviews -  Average Rating 3.02 / 5;  51 ratings; 8 reviews

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Outliers - The Story of Success

[Author: Malcolm Gladwell,  Publisher: Backbay Books , Paperback:  346 pages ]

People who are extraordinarily smart, accomplished and successful are very few. They are Outliers ! You won't come across them in your normal course of life.
What makes them stand out among the crowd ? In this book the bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell  says that intelligence, ambition , personality traits may be necessary but not sufficient conditions for becoming such extremely  successful  achievers. The circumstances-  like culture, family, time, location, upbringing, luck etc. - in which they are  born and grow up in, play a major role in their achievements.
This book is full of examples and case studies of outliers to substantiate this theory. The reason why a person is an outlier is well researched and described in a very interesting manner.  At the first instance the linkages between the causes and the outstanding success stories are not obvious and even seem bizarre  . But once Gladwell explains it one can see how well they stand the test of logic.
One of the most interesting books I have read so far this year. A must read !
 
Links

• Dan Dascalescu's Wiki  has an  excellent and comprehensive summary of case studies discussed in this book
• Extended Synopsis of Outliers in Wikipedia 
• Malcolm Gladwell's website 
• Goodreads Ratings and Reviews -  Average Rating 4.05 / 5; 143902 ratings.

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A Prisoner of Birth

[Author: Jeffrey Archer,  Publisher:Pan Books , Paperback:  624 pages ]

This is the second book of Jeffrey Archer  which I have read within a  year. I had read his False Impressions few months back.

Danny Cartwright has been sentenced to 22 years of imprisonment for the murder he did not commit. He has been framed by a bunch of four close friends who are the real culprits. They  go scot free. The novel is all about how Danny escapes from the prison and takes revenge on them (ala author's first novel Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less)

Though it seems like a Bollywood movie plot  the story is actually inspired by Alexander Dumas'  The Count of Monte Cristo,

Jefffrey Archer is in his elements in this book . Only he can keep the readers engaged on a very hackneyed plot right from the page one till the last page.

A very entertaining light read !

Links:

• Author's Website  
• Goodreads Review  -  3.99/5.0; 9,979 ratings; 1028 reviews 

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The Professional - Defining the New Standard of Excellence at Work

Author:         Subroto Bagchi 
Published:   2011
Publisher:    Penguin Books India
Hardcover:  256 pages
 
Who is a true professional ? 
The author a well known business leader in Indian IT industry, redefines "professionalism" in this book. 

 A book which every professional should read and benchmark themselves against the yardstick laid out by Subroto Bagchi. 

Read more about this book in my professional blog.

Goodreads Rating : 3.86 out of 5 (14 ratings)

Flip It - How to Get the Best Out of Everything

Author:       Michael Heppell
Published:  2012
Publisher:   Pearson Education Ltd.
Hardcover:  176 pages


In this book the author offers his approach for thinking and taking actions that lead to higher levels of happiness, confidence, creativity and success. He calls this approach  "Flip It".  
Nothing new about it. Flip It  approach is just another way of looking at things from a  positive and optimistic perspective (Reframing) . 
 The book describes how to apply Flip It thinking in different situations - while interacting with friends, spouses, partners, family; at work; in business etc.
The narrative is supported by ample illustrations,anecdotes and techniques.
 Some of the techniques I liked are :
Friends Grid: Classifying the friends we have in four categories - Poor Me, Grower, Sapper and Groupie depending on how positive/negative and giving/taking they are so that we can choose to spend maximum time with the Growers and avoid the Sappers.
Rock to Resolution : Breaking down a big problem into small chunks; identifying solutions for each of these chunks; and visualizing how the outcome will look if all the solutions were in place.
Link Words: An idea generation technique - picking a random word and forming a network of words linked to this word; then choosing a couple of words from the network at random and develop a link between them.
The book is written in a conversational manner with a sense of humor and is a good  light reading material. But it does not have an USP which can clearly differentiate it from other self-help books in the market,

Table of Contents:

  1. Finding Flip It
  2. Flip It for confidence and happiness
  3. Flip It for friends, love and family
  4. Flip It for health
  5. Flip It for money
  6. Flip It for success
  7. Flip It for creativity
  8. Flip It at work and in business
  9. Flip It for your fantastic future
10. Flip It when you’re having ‘one of those days
11. Flip It for everything else

Links:

• Goodreads Rating - 3.6 out of  5  (55 ratings)
• Book Website

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Mathematics of Life: Unlocking the Secrets of Existence

Author:       Ian Stewart
Published:  2011
Publisher:  Profile Books Ltd.
Hardcover: 368 pages


 I remember my high school days in late seventies, when the students who wanted to join the science stream but were not confident about their mathematical abilities would choose PCB (Physics, Chemistry, Biology) instead of PCM (Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics)  as their subjects. 
Seems like this escape from mathematics is no longer an option in twenty-first century !

Many of the important questions opened up by modern discoveries in biology cannot be answered without significantly drawing upon the knowledge of mathematics.
Therefore in the present times biologists and mathematicians are collaborating on finding solutions to such questions especially those related to nature and origins of life itself.
The former pose the biological questions or describe a set of experiments, while the later develop a mathematical models to simulate them.

Welcome to the field of Mathematical Biology ! This book is a layman's primer on this subject.

It explores several connections between mathematics and biology, viz; -  the Human Genome Project; the structure and function of the complex molecules that coordinate the complex process of life; the shape of viruses; the organization of cells; the form and behavior of entire organisms and their interaction in the global ecosystem; evolutionary games that led to huge diversity of life in earth; the workings of the nervous system and the brain; nature of life; possibility of alien life forms.
The theory behind these connections encompass a wide range of mathematical concepts - probability, dynamics, chaos theory, symmetry, networks, mechanics, elasticity, knot theory.

While I don't claim to have understood each and every topic discussed in this book, I found it a really interesting read and would recommend it to anyone who is a keen reader of  popular science genre.
 Pythagoras the renowned mathematician of ancient Greece once said,"All things are numbers".  Ian Stewart, the author of this book and a mathematician of the modern era  has shown that this statement is true to a great extent in life forms.

Links:

• Goodreads Rating - 3.46 out of  5   (112 ratings)
• Review in The Guardian
•  "What is Mathematical Biology and How Useful Is It ?", Avner Friedman, Notices of the American Mathematical Society, August 2010, Volume 57, Number 7 - A technical paper (lots of differential equations !) that discusses application of mathematics in studying wounds, spread of cancer cells, reconstructive microsurgery, lung infection.

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