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ஜார்ஜ் ஆர்வெல் 17 ஆகஸ்ட் 1945ல் வெளியிட்ட நூல் “அனிமல் ஃபார்ம்” (Animal Farm). 66 ஆண்டுகளுக்கு பிறகு தமிழில் பி.வி.ராமஸ்வாமி மொழி பெயர்த்திருக்கிறார், கிழக்கு பதிப்பகத்தின் 2012ஆம் ஆண்டு வெளியீடு. நண்பர் பத்ரியின் வலையில் படித்துவிட்டு நேற்று தான் வாங்கினேன், கையில் எடுத்ததிலிருந்து படித்து முடிக்காமல் கீழே வைக்க முடியவில்லை, அவ்வளவு சுவையாக இருந்தது. சில புத்தங்களை ஏன் மொழிப் பெயர்ப்பை படித்தோம் என்று எண்ண வைக்கும், வெகு சில தான் நம் நல்ல காலம் தாய் மொழி தமிழில் படித்தோம் என்று தோன்றும். அப்படி எனக்குப்பட்டதில் இது இரண்டாவது புத்தகம் (முதலாவது: சீனா).
விலங்குப் பண்ணை புத்தகம் -சிரித்து, சிந்தித்து, சிரித்து என உணர்ச்சிகள் மாறி மாறி வரவழைத்தது. வேறும் 140 பக்கங்களில் (ஆங்கிலப் பதிப்புக்கூட இதே அளவு தான்) ஒரு முழு கதையும், அதுவும் ரஷ்ய ஸ்டாலினிசத்தை நையாண்டி செய்துக் கொண்டே எழுதுவதென்பது ஒரு சிறந்த எழுத்தாளாரால் மட்டுமே முடியும் அதை தெளிவாகச் செய்துள்ளார் ஜார்ஜ் ஆர்வெல்.
மிக உயர்ந்த நோக்கத்தில் ஆரம்பிக்கப்படும் புரட்சிகள் கூட எப்படி சில ஆண்டுகளிலேயே கருத்து வேறுபாட்டால் உருமாரி, சிதைந்துவிடுகிறது என்பதற்கு அனிமல் ஃபார்ம் ஒரு சிறந்த கையேடு. போன வருடம் நடந்த அரப் ஸ்பிரிங்க் இதன் இன்றைய கால அடையாளம். சர்வாதிகாரத்தின் கொடிய முகத்தை ஆசிரியர் உன்னிப்பாக சொன்னாலும், விலங்குகளை வைத்து கதைச் சொல்லி சொல்வதால் நமக்கு எளிதாகப் புரிகிறது. ரஷ்ய ஸ்டாலினை நெப்போலியன் என்கிற பன்றியும், ட்ராட்ஸ்கியை ஸ்நோபால் என்கிற பன்றியும், லெனினை ஓல்ட் மேஜர் என்கிற வெள்ளைப் பன்றியும் அப்படியே இயல்பாக நம் கண்முன்னார் கொண்டுவருகிறது.
Being a weekend I had time to read this novel “Losing my Virginity and other Dumb Ideas” written by Madhuri Banerjee and published by Penguin India. Needless to say what caught my eye to pick up the book was the first part of the title, which was probably inspired from Richard Branson’s book “Losing My Virginity: How I Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way”. For a first time author, good work by Madhuri, best wishes.
The Protagonist in the novel is a young well educated, 7 language speaking, attractive 30 year old girl “Kaveri” living in Mumbai and doing freelance translation at foreign consulates & for visiting dignitaries. The story starts off interestingly with Kaveri worried about being a virgin for too long, but mid-way into the book the story gets lost in the direction it is going. It strays into reality TV, tour guide, then into New York and Barcelona, ending kind of abruptly.
After the book “Invitation” by Shehryar Fazli, this is another fiction I am reading that is happening around Karachi, Pakistan. This time what I read was two books from a popular series “Ali Imran” set of detective novels written by South Asia’s popular write IBN-E Safi who was a celebrated author in Pakistan in last century. The first book in the series of 79 novels was published in October 1955, IBN-E Safi (meaning Son of Safi) is the pen name of Asrar Narvi who was borh in 1928 in Nara (Allahabad District) in British India, he started writing in 1940s while in India and then moved to Pakistan during partition where he continued to write till his death in 1980. It is said people queued up in Pakistan to buy his books on there release.
The books are “The House of Fear” and “The Dangerous Man” both are English translations of the original from Urdu, translated for the first time. Each book contains two stories, each story about 100 odd pages. The books revolves around Ali Imran, an engaging protagonist, he has an MSc and PhD in criminology from Oxford, but can be disarmingly moronic, even appearing mad at times. Imran is the son of Intelligence Bureau chief and in the first book (The House of Fear) he appears as a freelancer helping his friend Captain Fayyaz. Captain Fayyaz telegrams to Colonel Zargham who needs help withe a problem this “I am sending someone who could be of great use to you if you don’t get fed up with him”. This statement captures the character Ali Imran is portrayed in the story, most of the time he talks nonsensical to the point of irritating the other characters, but as a reader we are having a good laugh. In many places in both the books I was laughing myself loudly to disturb others in the room with me. At the end, Imran solves all the cases without much bloodshed and all mysteries unravelled. The subject of each story seems to be different as well – one was about a Murder, another was about Smuggling, another was about Drug Trading and the other was about Ghosts.
If you enjoy a mystery novel that is fun and engaging, I will recommend you try these two books.
 
Story summaries from the Publisher:
1. The House of Fear: Dead bodies have been found in an abandoned house, each bearing three identical dagger marks, exactly five inches apart. Who is behind these eerie murders?
2. Shootout at the Rocks: Colonel Zargham knows he is in grave danger when he receives a three-inch wooden monkey in the mail. This is no ordinary threat, but a warning from the two-hundred-years old Li Yu Ka, one of the world s deadliest gangs. The monkey will be followed by a wooden snake, and then a wooden rooster, after which the colonel will be swiftly murdered.
3. Mysterious Screams: Ten years ago, Nawwab Hashim was found dead in his bedroom. Now a man claiming to be him appears out of the blue. Sajid, his nephew and heir, doesn t know what to believe, nor can he fathom the terrible screams that have started emerging from the house each night.
4. The Dangerous Man: Roshi, a prostitute, has always known how to take care of herself until the day she meets a handsome young man called Parrot . Soon she is caught in a spiral of intrigue and she doesn t know who to trust. Who is this Parrot ? Will he prove to be her saviour? Or is he the archnemesis?
After 25 hours of listening spread over last 30 days during my regular drives to work and Gym sessions I finished listening to the Audiobook of “Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson. Few months back I had finished the book “The Steve Jobs Way: iLeadership for a New Generation” by Jay Eliiots so I was familiar with the man & his life. A lot has been written about Mr.Jobs and about the book in the weeks following his sad demise in October, so I will write in next few paragraphs my impression about the book and what I feel after reading it.
First thing you notice is the size of the book which looks exhaustive, over 600 pages in the hardcover edition. A thorough work by the author “Walter Isaacson”, considering it should have been a monumental effort for Walter to make Jobs talk and then to verify/cross-verify facts as Steve Jobs (as you will learn in the book) is known to distort reality both wilfully and unawares.
In the recent years media has taken a liking to Apple because of Apple’s phenomenal success in Marketplace and its massive market capitalization. Millennials reading it are unaware of the two decades of struggle Jobs had to grow through to bring (personally mature and ripen with age) to that level, he had to suffer through being ousted from the company he founded & so on. Jobs’ early life was unlike any others, he had to deal with the fact of being adopted, had long stints with most things that are narcotics (ACIDs, LSDs), his year of free-roaming in India in Himalayan plains, his interest of Japanese Zen philosophy, yet his appreciation of Italian architecture and the list goes on. What strikes you is the realization that a man as creative as Jobs, with his Buddhist bend he can be a sensitive person, pick up easily vibes assessing people emotionally, yet can use those same skills to hurt the people who are around him at his will. It is well know that Jobs liked the quote “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish” from the back cover of last issue of “Whole Earth” magazine in 1971. Jobs had a way of thinking/behaving like pirates during the original Mac development times in early 1980s. Jobs doing most of his important meetings and probably decisions too during his long walks with the concerned person – be it Sculley, Gates or Music label titans. Jobs had an enviable ability to laser-sharp focus on items he cared and completely ignore things he doesn’t care or don’t want to hear – this led him to create brilliant products of our age.
Readers will see the obvious differences between the two personalities who shaped the digital world in last 4 decades – Bill Gates & Steve Jobs, they are exactly of opposite poles. I enjoyed this quote from Bill Gates while countering Jobs claims that Microsoft stole for its Windows the GUI from Apple Mac OS – “Well, Steve, I think there’s more than one way of looking at it. I think it’s more like we both had this rich neighbour named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it”.
In the last chapters of the book you are left wondering what if this man could have lived for few more years, what more great products he could have given us and what about his young kids losing their father for ever. But then it suddenly hits you, that’s what life and nature is. All of us including Jobs get to stand on giants (and generations before us) shoulders and it is up to each one of us to make use of the vantage point & the time we have got there.
After listening to the Audiobook I bought the hardcover edition as well – as the book certainly needs a reserved place in my bookshelf and the hardcover has some of the rare photographs from his life journey.
After listening to few audiobooks with the last being “The Steve Jobs Way: iLeadership for a New Generation” I bought this book from my Audible monthly Gold subscription about 2 months back. The audio version is in two parts (8 hours each) and the best part it was read by the author “Douglas Edwards” himself.
Douglas Edwards joined Google as its 50 something employee on November 29, 1999 just about a year after founding and full 5 years till March 4, 2005 before its stunning IPO in 2004. Before Google he was working for San Jose Mercury News, a 150 year old newspaper managing their online product “Merc” (The Newspaper of Silicon Valley). Douglas was the first director of Google managing its early days marketing and brand management, much of what we saw of initial days Google marketing was written by him. He has penned the text and documentation of many of the early products the mountain view firm. One of the first products for which he wrote the welcome text was for Google Toolbar for which he wrote the below “…NOT THE USUAL YADA YADA” text, he seems to be so thrilled by this line that he repeats it often in the book.
Douglas recalls about the early crazy days of working in Google, late nights, mid night emails to getting to office next day early morning. His encounters with the Chef Charlie, interactions with Larry & Sergey, Product managers like
He recalls tales of how everyone in Google helped to add server capacity in their data center just before big customers like Yahoo! or AOL signed up. How Will Whitted, Hardware Engineer of Google designed Machines so cheap that they don’t need to care if they fail – this is something that all new age computing firms including FaceBook, Amazon seems to take advantage of today.The author goes into explaining what he saw happening on how Google won many of its early deals with Yahoo!, later with ISP as first customer for Adwords & then the biggest of all AOL
In the later chapters as Google evolves & grows big, teams were formally divided Douglas recalls many occasions where he was constantly in struggle with Marissa Mayer who was managing Product Development and Douglas was managing Branding & Marketing. What Douglas leaves out, probably we readers can guess the reason for Larry to be siding with Marissa was because he was dating her then. Douglas seems to have had a better relationship with other early product managers including Salar Kamangar (9th employee and presently CEO of YouTube).
Douglas talks of many Holiday parties at Google, how extravagant they were and the facilities in Googleplex. He talks of the founders obsession with trying to solve everything with Engineering & Algorithms, not having empathy or respect for conventional way of working with people & companies, sometimes this bordering on arrogance. He recalls how the founders disliked to spend money for vendors, they wanting a vendor of a CRM system they wanted to buy to give it free for the privilege of having Google as their customer. In the end how they went with a not so popular CRM solution to manage the thousand of email pouring in to Google from users and all the problems they had till finally writing an email & CRM system on their own. He recalls of what they did immediately after 9/11, pouring into Web logs trying to dig any clue that may be useful for security agencies.
Douglas talks on how Google went searching the next billion dollar idea after search’s success – how it accidentally got GMail! and Google News. He talked on how he got into preparing company’s IPO documentation, how he parked his car miles away from the Investment banking firm handling the deal.
An interesting book to read if you are interested to know the true Google story.
Today in one sitting I finished the book How STARBUCKS saved my life? by Michael Gill. The book is a Riches to Rags story of a man, who had it all, then lost it all and found it again. Michael Gates Gill was born in Connecticut, son of renowned New Yorker writer Brendan Gill. After twenty-five years working as a creative director at J.W.Thompson he was fired, entering his seventh decade, he was offered a job at Starbucks.
Michael Gill makes the book interesting to read, covering his story from the day he was offered a job in Starbucks and ends it on the day he completes a year at the store in 93rd and Broadway, mixing with flashbacks from his advertising days, his kids, his affair and his brain tumour. Gill’s recall of his advertising days on how he made his best presentations start with some surprising visual or prop were interesting – shooting of a bow and arrow when presenting to Military, Shooting an empty rifle at his colleague to prove how the company will never forgive mistakes, throwing a ball up in air and hitting it which went very near to the Chairman of the Airline company.
His days in Starbucks stores needing to match with the teenagers working, makes us feel for him. He starting from cleaning the toilets, getting nearly stabbed by a rude customer, his hard work during the closures and openings (I couldn’t believe that you have to do so much work in so little everytime in a Starbucks store during openings & closings), his fear of working behind the cash register, though they had machines to weigh-in the currencies and coins. The last few chapters reads more like a Starbucks Public Relations work, but the overall story makes us forgiving to the author.
The book is both a good story and inspiring for the reader. I recommend this book to be a good read.
I have been reading the book Googled- “The End of the World As We Know It” by Ken Auletta for many months now. Half-way through the book I wrote my early comments on the subject in this February blog post, completing the second half of the book took a long time. The Author has done extensive research on Google, over 150 interviews with the top management and people in Google over 2+ years and the book is the best biography of Google written till 2009. But the book reads more like a management report & interview quotes. It would have been more readable and enjoyable had the author told it with a story, yeah story-telling is what that was missing in the book. Otherwise a good biography especially for those in Media & Publishing industry. The last few chapters covers in detail on how Google sees Media Industry, how Google impacts the Media & Publishing Industry and so on.
Now I am looking forward to next books about Google – In the Plex and I’m Feeling Lucky.
I am a fan of P.G.Wodehouse Jeeves and Wooster series of novels. You simply can’t go wrong with any book from the series, all of them are classics created by a master craftsman for whom English language is the wet clay to be moulded and shaped the way he wants. And the resulting product is not something that is physical, but is created in the mind of the reader and that’s the brilliance of P.G.Wodehouse. Unlike other fiction works, you can’t skip even a single word or read between the lines, because the whole point of reading a PGW work is the language. To enjoy them I definitely needed LIFCO’s Mega English Dictionary next to me, but you don’t feel the extra effort needed, it only adds to the overall fun experience. The storyline as such is always very simple, but it is the language which flows like a water in a waterfall from sky.
This book ‘Aunts aren’t Gentlemen” is the last work of PGW in this series written just before his death in 1975. And to think of the fact the series was kept alive and vibrant by PGW for nearly 60 years is amazing – the first Jeeves stories appeared in 1919. The story in this book is about Bertram Wooster going to the country side to get rest on doctor’s advice, but what turns out to be is more an adventure of getting engaged and near death experiences for good ‘ol Bertie. As always Jeeves comes and rescues Bertie. The climax scene is not told, but left to our imagination after being outlined in the scene before that where Jeeves & Bertie discusses the plan in quick sentences and that adds to the brilliance of PGW’s narrative style.
I have been listening to the Audiobook version of this book “The Steve Jobs Way: iLeadership for a New Generation” for last few weeks during my everyday commutes. The book is written by “Jay Elliot” who was Senior Vice President of Apple computer reporting directly to Steve Jobs, not in the recent decade but during Apple’s early days. Owning a MacBook Air (running Windows 7), iPhone and an iPad like many others I am eager to understand the success of Steve Jobs and his presentation skills are legendary. So when I saw this book in Audible listing I immediately bought it.
The book covers extensively Steve Jobs early days in Apple building Macintosh, but has very little on his days in NeXT or after his return – which is the most exciting period. The book is not a complete biography of either Apple or Steve Jobs or about Jay Elliot, though it attempts to be one when talking about the early days of Apple. The book is about the lessons on management Jay Elliot was able to distil from observing Steve Jobs. It goes into length on how Steve Jobs directly managed the team, selected the members, interior of the office (large atrium with a tree) and how he never took a “NO” or “Not Possible” as an answer from the engineers or anyone else.
In the first few chapters, Jay Elliot gives a brief about his childhood days in his ranch in California. He writes about how in age 15, he could single-handily fix his old 1932 Ford Model-A car and how Henry Ford and team had the wooden slabs in which the original parts came used to build the structure pieces for the floorboards, seats & the interior, the part numbers were etched in easy to find places and the car required no manuals to take apart or to be put together. When talking about how to design and use your own products, Jay Elliot mentions about how rust happens in almost all cans of Gillette Shaving Cream cans, all along I thought I was the only one who was having this problem. He continues to write on the Importance of the first experience of the user when he/she takes the computer or device out of the box, how quickly they can start using it.
Jay Elliot lists many of the abilities he has observed of Steve Jobs that led to Macintosh success. Steve’s obsession with perfection, no compromise attitude, identifying the most brilliant people and going for them (including going for John Sculley), caring for his people, attention to detail, wanting to have the best for the company and the product he is building. It seems Steve Jobs build a whole new factory and assembly line different from rest of Apple for manufacturing Macintosh. In the Mac early days, Steve motivated his people by calling them “Pirates” and not as Navy!. Steve has a power of vision that’s almost frightening, that power sweeps aside any problem or hurdles. How Steve Jobs accepted technologies that were not build in-house like Canon, Japan for Apple Laser Writer and the Celebrity status reception he got during his first visit to Sony, Japan. How Steve persisted on getting Regis McKenna to do the Advertisements for Apple and how he went ahead even with Apple board’s refusal on the1984 most popular TV commercial of Macintosh by Chiat\Day agency. Steve is first a consumer, the most demanding consumer and his Buddhist faith probably has lead him to have a minimalist approach to the products he design – simple, intuitive user interface and features. Steve believes every user wants to feel successful, feel good about using the product Jay Elliot talks briefly about how Steve Jobs hired John Sculley, got kicked out himself from Apple, how he passionately build NeXT & Pixar. How Steve betted his whole fortune on Pixar and the first Toy Story, which then became a huge hit and paying him and Disney a windfall. The book then talks about (again very briefly) about how Steve Jobs returned to Apple, build successful products like iPod, iPhone & iPad one after the other, how he will not ship something until the technology is ready.
The author goes into length to praise as Steve’s brilliance on getting into retail and opening the Apple Stores in 2001, then on entering into Music Retailing and iPods. The author showers lavish praises on Steve Jobs to an extend of becoming an unashamed fanboy. At the last chapters the Author talks about his latter years experience of starting Migo & Nuvel.
If you are interested on how Apple got started and early days then a good book to read will be iWoz by Apple Co-founder Steve Wozniak.
I am not sure how came across this book, but I am extremely glad I did. The book is “Delivering Happiness” by Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh. When I bought the AudioBook from Audible.com I knew very little about Zappos other than having heard about their legendary Product Videos in their site and that they were bought by Amazon in 2009 (which implied they should be super smart on e-commerce & warehousing).
The book starts with Tony Hsieh (pronounced as shay) talking about his childhood and teenage misadventures and business ventures. Tony’s narrative style, especially listening to as Audio grabbed my interest. I was reminded of similar incidents in my own school & college days and it motivated me to immediately make a list of events of interest in my own growing years, thank you Tony. Then Tony talks about his founding days of LinkExchange, I remembered I was one of the early users of the service and loved it for generating traffic to EasyTools.com in those early days (~1998). He then goes on to sell LinkExchange in two years of founding to Microsoft for $265 Million after realizing the culture of the company deteriorating so badly that he couldn’t get himself up from bed to work one morning. Many entrepreneurs won’t have the luxury that Tony got of selling it and starting new – so it is important to listen to the second part of his story of how he build a fun & energetic culture in Zappos.
It was news to me that Tony didn’t start Zappos, instead it was by a young first time entrepreneur Nick Swinmurn. Tony Hsieh got involved in Zappos initially as an investor through his venture fund “Venture frogs” which had invested on Zappos, then after the Dotcom burst Tony became more hands-on and then to risk his entire LinkExchange fortune on Zappos – fascinating indeed. Many entrepreneurs including myself can easily relate to the struggles the company has gone through in early days from 2000 to 2003, but the growth story from 2003 to 2009 (when they hit a Billion Dollars) was like a fantasy come true. Tt would have been great to learn about those years had Tony chronicled them in detail (in preface of the book he did say this is not a Biography of Zappos, but I wish it was). Tony wants us to believe it was all due to the Culture he created in Zappos. May be it was the culture primarily, but I feel it got to have been helped greatly by other factors as well – their technology, marketing, warehousing capability and so on.
The book then focuses on what is happiness (sounded to me like a PR creation and retro-fitted in later years, though nothing wrong about it), what Tony has learned on the subject from research he read, Employees talking in their own voice on how Zappos culture impacted their happiness & well-being. Some of the things about Zappos stands out clearly & uniquely and those are certainly inspiring. They have something called as a culture book – you can see videos of it online and can even request a free copy of it (they ship anywhere outside USA to international as well). Their risky move from the “hip” San Francisco to Las Vegas (of all places on earth). The ability of Zappos to maintain their independence even after their sale to Amazon. Their willingness to share their ideas on Culture & Delivering happiness to rest of the world – through tours of their offices as part of Zappos Insights, through this book and now they even got a bus tour as well.
After listening to the AudioBook I have bought few copies of the paper-back from FlipKart.com to gift it to my colleagues for them to enjoy and learn. A great management book that is fun to read, which can bring happiness to employees around the globe if only every CEO under the sun reads it.
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