Can We Have Our Balls Back, Please? - Julian Norridge

Synopsis  
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"Can We Have Our Balls Back, Please?" is the highly entertaining story of how the British invented sport as we know it today (and then almost forgot how to play it.)

Long before Drake refused to interrupt his game of bowls when the Armada was sighted, the British have had a passionate relationship with sport. 
Julian Norridge goes through the stories of fourteen major sports from cricket to boxing to football, from their very beginning and throughout the British Isles, whether it's Welsh inventor and tobacco enthusiast Major Walter Clopton Wingfield coming up with a game that could use those new fangled rubber balls (modern tennis) or the Scots inventing the golf club - 500 years after the game.
But this is far more than a book about sport, it takes a very funny, very British look at our popular history, mythology and most importantly the highly eccentric figures that made it.
It chronicles the constant battle between fair play and gambling; between advances in the game and plain cheating (such as turning up with a cricket bat wider than the wicket).
Can We Have Our Balls Back Please? proves that there is an awful lot to be proud of in our (British) history and where that strange feeling of superiority really comes from. It shows why we (Britishers) get just so excited when we take on any other nation in any sporting event and are so disappointed when we lose...
[Source: Inner jacket cover of the book ]

 My Comments
A very informative and entertaining read.
Recommended for all sports lovers.


Book Excerpts
Table of Contents, Introduction, Chapter 1- Boxing.



Reviews 

• The Guardian Review 

• Telegraph Review

• Goodreads Rating - 3.25 out of 5 ( 4 Ratings)

 
 

The Mind of the Guru by Rajiv Mehrotra

In The Mind of the Guru, Rajiv Mehrotra presents dialogues with several contemporary sages and masters who have illumined the minds of millions around the world. 
Ranged here are gurus as diverse as B. K. S. Iyengar, who brought yoga from the world of the esoteric to our living rooms; Swami Ramdev, who has democratized yoga via television; and Mata Amritanandamayi, whose mere presence invokes an overwhelming awareness of love. 
There is Deepak Chopra discussing a quantum healing of mind and body,
Sogyal Rinpoche encouraging us to look at death so that we might live a better life and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar reaffirming each person’s right and access to happiness. 
And there is the unique and contrary voice of U. G. Krishnamurti telling us that all talk of transformation is poppycock. 
There are no grand narratives or final solutions, only guides who can show the way to the light within.
 Here you learn from voices as diverse as that of Thich Nhat Hanh, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Baba Amte and Stanislav Grof. 
Underlying the dialogues is their wisdom on how we can make ourselves unhappy – and guidance on how we can turn our lives around to achieve happiness.
[Source: Publisher's website : Hay House India  ]

My Comments:
An interesting compilation of spiritual conversations between the author and several contemporary personalities regarded as gurus. Covers a wide  thoughts and views expressed by  the gurus featured in this book.


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Table of Contents

The Wheel of Dhar­ma

• Ocean of Wis­dom (His Ho­li­ness the Dalai Lama)
• Through the Mir­ror of Death (So­gyal Rin­poche)
• Being and In­ter­be­ing (Thich Nhat Hanh)
• The Truth be­yond Thought (S. N. Goen­ka)

The Mind and the Body

• Light on Bliss (B. K. S. Iyen­gar)
• The Bal­ance of Mind, Body and Spir­it (T. V. K. De­sikachar)
• The Truth Is a Jour­ney (Deep­ak Chopra)
• The Yogi on Tele­vi­sion (Swami Ramdev)

The Play of the Di­vine

• The Sci­ence of the Di­vine (Swami Ran­ganathanan­da)
• With Kriya to Anan­da (Swami Kriyanan­da),
• The Em­brace of Di­vine Love (Mata Am­ri­tanan­damayi)
• The Art of Liv­ing (Sri Sri Ravi Shankar)
• Trans­form­ing the Human Heart (Sis­ter Jayan­ti)

The Know­er and the Known

• Trans­form­ing Con­scious­ness (Acharya Ma­hapragya)
• Spir­i­tu­al Ter­ror­ism (U.G. Kr­ish­na­mur­ti)
• The Seer and the Seek­er (Pir Vi­lay­at In­ay­at Khan)
• In the Foot­steps of the Prophet (Maulana Wahidud­din Khan)
• Ev­ery­thing is Con­scious­ness (Radha Burnier)
• The End of Knowl­edge (Swami Parthasarathy)
• The Way of the Stars (K. N. Rao)
• Psy­chi­a­try and the Spir­it (Stanislav Grof)

The Ethics of En­gage­ment

• Re­store Jus­tice, Seek Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion (Desmond Tutu)
• Char­i­ty De­stroys, Work Builds (Baba Amte)
• Cel­e­brate Di­ver­si­ty (The Aga Khan)
• The Mod­ern Guru (Sad­hgu­ru Jaggi Va­sudev)

The Intelligent Web by Gautam Shroff

 Synopsis  

• Describes cutting edge developments in the power and possibilities of the Web
• Explains how Google and other leading companies have developed ever smarter searching and advert placement
• Shows how 'Web intelligence' is emerging from increasingly smart algorithms that can sift, select, aggregate, and weigh up relevant information
• Explains the principles of logic and computer science behind these apparently intelligent procedures
• Considers possible similarities with how the human brain handles data
• Looks at new applications such as self-driving cars

As we use the Web for social networking, shopping, and news, we leave a personal trail. 
These days, linger over a Web page selling lamps, and they will turn up at the advertising margins as you move around the Internet, reminding you, tempting you to make that purchase. Search engines such as Google can now look deep into the data on the Web to pull out instances of the words you are looking for.
And there are pages that collect and assess information to give you a snapshot of changing political opinion. 
These are just basic examples of the growth of "Web intelligence", as increasingly sophisticated algorithms operate on the vast and growing amount of data on the Web, sifting, selecting, comparing, aggregating, correcting; following simple but powerful rules to decide what matters. 
While original optimism for Artificial Intelligence declined, this new kind of machine intelligence is emerging as the Web grows ever larger and more interconnected.
Gautam Shroff takes us on a journey through the computer science of search, natural language, text mining, machine learning, swarm computing, and semantic reasoning, from Watson to self-driving cars. 
This machine intelligence may even mimic at a basic level what happens in the brain.

Readership: Popular science and mathematics readers interested in computer science and artificial intelligence, as well as students of these courses.
[Source: Oxford University Press website.]
 My Comments: 
I completed an online course "Web Intelligence and Big Data" taught by the author a few months back. This book was released towards the ending of the course and I bought a Kindle edition to understand the topics better.
Gautam Shroff has taken a very logical and systematic approach to explain the fascinating area of Web Intelligence.
While the topics in this book are really interesting, the verbose explanations given by the author on many of the concepts were quite confusing. More illustrations would have helped. The book has just about half-a-dozen pictures, which for a content of 300 odd pages on technical topics is quite less.
It will take another reading of the book for me to fully grasp the explanations.
But overall this book is quite a good introduction to Web Intelligence, though not a very light read.

Links:

• Read Chapter 1

Goodreads Rating - 4.2 out of 5 ( 5 Ratings)

 

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The Art of India by Nigel Cawthorne

Book Synopsis  (inside cover description) 
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The diverse art of the Indian subcontinent spans many centuries and a variety of styles.  
The Art of India is an account of the major movements that have influenced and affected the face of India since ancient times. 
The book covers Hindu art from the temples and literature of one of the world's oldest religions, the rise of sculpture and monumental art from the Mauryan Dynasty, Buddhist shrines and Janism, the Mughals, and Islamic art. 
With a collection of more than sixty spectacular pictures, The Art of India illustrates the major works, whether expressed in paint, clay, wood, metal, stone, or brick, that characterize the art of one of the oldest civilizations in the world.
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 My Comments: 
A  light-weight (90 odd pages) coffee table book with several full-page pictures. A fairly good introduction to the art of India.
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Goodreads Rating - 4.17 out of 5 ( 6 Ratings)

 
 

My Guru and his Disciple by Christopher Isherwood

Book Synopsis  (as per the back cover) 
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In 1939, as Europe approaches war, the author Christopher Isherwood, an instinctive pacifist, travels west to California, seeking a new set of beliefs to replace the failed Leftism of the thirties. There he meets Swami Prabhavananda, a Hindu monk, who will become his spiritual guide for the next thirty-seven years. Late-night drinking sessions, free love, and the glamor of writing for the Hollywood studios alternate with meditation, abstinence and the study of religious texts in a compelling tug of war between worldliness and holiness.

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Extract from the Introduction by Simon Callow
Quite aside from the insights the book may offer into the life of an aspiring adept, My Guru and His Disciple offers a double portrait of two strikingly different personalities who were powerfully drawn to each other: Isherwood - quintessentially English, restless, sexually driven, found of the bottle, the darling of the Hollywood cocktail circuit - and Prabhavananda former anti-British terrorist, chain-smoking, tolerant, tender, subtle, unselfconsciously profound. Isherwood immediately responded to something he perceived in Prabhavananda, a  sense of resolution, of centeredness, of joy; while Prabhavananda, to Isherwood's  frank astonishment, saw in him a potential monk.

The relationship between guru and disciple was without cloud, although Isherwood constantly felt he was failing Prabhavananda, not least when, after a couple of months, he gave up the attempt to live in Prabhavananda's Vedanta monastery in the Hollywood hills; but Prabhavananda was never less than understanding, always sympathetic.

In this regard the book is very unlike most classic accounts of the guru/disciple relationship.
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 My Comments: 
A very interesting , frank and moving narrative. Though not a complete biography of Swami Prabhavananda, his character has been brought out very well.
Recommended for anyone interested in spiritual literature, though it may not go down too well with people with orthodox views.


Goodreads Rating - 3.94 out of 5 ( 116 Ratings)

 
 

Brilliant Cognitive Behavioral Therapy by Dr. Stephen Briers

Book Description (as in Amazon.com) 
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Brilliant  Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)  has been specially written to help give readers the insight, tools and confidence they need to understand and use CBT in their own lives.
It offers a cohesive approach to this groundbreaking therapeutic technique that unfolds in a wholly logical, accessible and practical manner whilst enabling the reader to personalize the information and apply it to their own unique situation. 
Written by an experienced and highly regarded clinical psychologist (Dr. Stephen Briers), Brilliant CBT has a conversational, accessible and personal tone which includes illustrative exercises, personality-style questionnaires and detailed checklists to provide all the information readers will need in a way they will find most simple and useful to put into practice.
 Brilliant CBT is the perfect guide for anybody who wants an effective grounding in the theory and range of practical tips and strategies designed to help them achieve authentic, lasting results when applying CBT to their own lives, or for anybody training to become a CBT practioner who wants an accessible, understandable and thorough introduction to the therapy.
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Table of Contents
1 So what’s so brilliant about CBT?
2 First principles
3 Common thinking traps – and how to avoid them
4 Grappling with negative thinking
5 Using behaviour to change your mind
6 Mapping out your problems
7 Beating the blues
8 Conquering anxiety
9 Taming anger
10 Boosting self-esteem 
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Goodreads Rating - 3.44 out of 5 ( 16 Ratings)

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My Comments: 
A fairly decent introduction to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).

The book suggests some doable action items unlike some other personality development books which tell us to do somewhat impractical things. 

 
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A Journey Down Melody Lane by Raju Bharatan

The Hindi film music industry is more than 80 years old.
It has given us numerous evergreen melodies.
The author, Raju Bharatan is a veteran film journalist and historian who was a regular witness to the  conceptualization, evolution and release of several of these melodies. 

In this book he shares his personal experiences with the singers, music composers, lyricists, film directors and producers.
Some of the notable ones he discusses at length are Naushad,  Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhonsle, Mohammed Rafi, Kishore Kumar, Geeta Dutt, C. Ramachandra, Shankar-Jaikishan, Kalyanji -Anandji, Laxmikant-Pyarelal, Vasant Desai, Talat Mehmood, R.D. Burman, Manna Dey, Hemant Kumar, A. R. Rahman, Raj Kapoor, Dev Anand and Yash Chopra.

The book also talks about the ego clashes and politics behind the music making scenes which brings out the fact that the much revered musical geniuses were after all human beings with frailties of their own.

There are lots of  trivia interspersed in the book. 
Just to mention a few:

•  Lata Mangeshkar was addicted to Wrigley’s chewing gum, loved wearing jeans, but never wore it outside her hotel room during concerts in America. 
• Rafi was the original choice for the popular songs from the movie Aradhana, instead of Kishore Kumar;
• The famous "Aye Mere Watan ke logon" song  was to be sung by both Lata Mangeshkar and her sister Asha Bhosle. But the lyricist Pradeep had not forgotten to inform the latter.

Almost all the melodious songs are based on classical ragas. The author provides the names of the underlying raga for most of the songs he mentions in this book. I like this approach because this information is helpful in recognizing a raga when it is being played in its pure form.

I bought  this book expecting it  to be an authoritative history of  Hindi film songs , which it is not.
Otherwise it is quite an informative and entertaining read for Hindi film music buffs.
 

   

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