The best books I read this year were:

Fantasy
Salman Rushdie – Luka and the Fire of Life
George R.R. Martin – A Game of Thrones
George R.R. Martin – A Clash of Kings
JRR Tolkein – The Hobbit
Nilanjana Roy – The Wildings

Humour
Tom Holt – The Better Mousetrap
Tom Holt – Barking
David Thorne – The Internet Is a Playground
Nora Ephron – I Remember Nothing

YA Fiction
Suzanne Collins – The Hunger Games

Thriller
Jo Nesbo – Headhunters

Comics
Neil Gaiman, Mike Dringenberg – The Sandman: Preludes & Nocturnes (Volume 1)
Brian Vaughan & Fiona Staples – Saga, Vol. I
Art Spiegelman – The Complete Maus

Poetry
Gulzar – Selected Poems
Jawed Akhtar – Laava
Faiz Ahmed Faiz – Pratinidhi Kavitayein

Reading
Veena Venugopal – Would you like some bread with that book?
Mark Haddon, et al – Stop What You’re Doing And Read This

Business
Lynda Gratton – The Shift: The future of work is already here

Life & Philosophy
Cheryl Strayed – Tiny Beautiful Things
Clayton M. Christensen – How Will You Measure Your Life

Non-Fiction
Joshua Foer – Moonwalking with Einstein
Simon Singh – The Code Book: The Secret History of Codes and Code-Breaking

Miscellaneous
Don Rickles et al – The Playboy Interview: Funny People
Rukun Advani – Written For Ever: The Best of Civil Lines

The complete list of books, in the order of reading is:

1. Terry Pratchett – Carpe Jugulum – Pratchett leads you down quite a few blind alleys, on a hilarious horror story with witches, to an extremely satisying ending with a twist.
2. Vendela Vida – The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers – Interesting interviews, although some of them were mutual admiration society stuff. Still, a worthwhile peek into the writers’minds.
3. Jeremy Hope – Reinventing the CFO – A war-cry to the CFO’s to change: the world has changes, and the stresses are many; the only CFOs worth looking at/for, are those who know how to lead this. Hope tells them how!
4. Paul Hoffman – The Left Hand of God – Hoffman built an interesting, gripping premise for 300 pages, and then lost it not knowing what to do with it! Disappointing!
5. Salman Rushdie – Luka and the Fire of Life – Rushdie tells a children’s tale; only it’s too powerful to be read only by kids! Proves why he is one of the best writers around.
6. George R.R. Martin – A Game of Thrones – This book proved well deserving of the hype…as well as being as good as the tv series based on it! Martin spins a complex web of stories, which will captivate, enthrall & fascinate readers of all hues & age groups!
7. George R.R. Martin – A Clash of Kings – Martin continues the saga with a worthy sequel to “A Game of Thrones”. Although I need a break from this epic thriller now, I can’t seem to let go of the Starks & the Lanisters!
8. Cyrus Broacha – The Average Indian Male – Cyrus tries to be funny. In fact, he tries too hard. And fails consistently. Add to that, the numerous spelling & grammatical errors that plague this book, and you’ll be well advised to avoid this altogether!
9. Josh Horowitz – The Mind of the Modern Moviemaker – Only for movie buffs; the interviews give an insight into the minds of the folks selected, but most of them are people you’ve never heard of, and so are left wondering about their inclusion.
10. Louis L’Amour – Dutchman’s Flat – Nice stories to while away the time, daydreaming of a place long ago, the Wild American West.
11. Eugene O’kelly – Chasing Daylight: How My Forthcoming Death Transformed My Life – O’kelly writes movingly of meeting the final days head-on; with joy & building on the relationships.
12. Louis L’Amour – Kiowa Trail – Westerns in first-person are never as much fun as those in third-person; strictly for L’amour fans
13. Gerald M. Weinberg – The Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully – Invaluable resource book for all consultants, and their clients! The book’s funny, irreverent tone only masks some really good & true & serious advice.
14. Marshall Goldsmith – Mojo: How to get it, How to keep it, How to get it back, If you lose it – Goldsmith is the world’s leading executive coach, and the book demonstrates why. It’s witty, insightful, and filled with really good advice on how to become more effective professionally. However, he fails when he asks you to compromise your values in order to succeed professionally.
15. Jennifer Egan – A Visit From The Goon Squad – No more classical literature for me. Ever. Thoroughly disappointed by the fact that critics seem to love only the books which somehow are a showcase for the writer’s wordsmithy, rather than for actual story-telling. Nothing moves in this book for damn near 200 pages!
16. Neil Gaiman – The Sandman: Book of Dreams – Really good stories with many layers, and awesome one-liners!
17. Louis L’Amour – The Daybreakers – Part of the immortal western series, “The Sacketts”, this is a slow, thoughtful examination of human frailties & motivations, set in the context of the Wild West.
18. Richard N. Bolles – What Color Is Your Parachute?: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers – This is the definitive how-to manual on finding a job. But it left me a bit disappointed, since there was nothing really new here!
19. Ronald Cohen – The Second Bounce of the Ball: Turning Risk into Opportunity – Good guide to making use of your inner uncertainties, and overcoming them, in order to succeed as an entrepreneur. Could have done without the repetitive examples of how Cohen made it happen!
20. Michael Robotham – The Wreckage – About a 100 pages too long, but a delightful thriller nonetheless.
21. Angie Sage – Septimus Heap I: Magyk – Why does all YA fiction have to travel the same roads as Rowling/Pratchett, I’ll never know…but it’s getting repetitive, and quite boring folks!
22. Veena Venugopal – Would you like some bread with that book? – The best book I’ve read this year! A journey into a reader’s heart…lots of laughs!
23. Neil Gaiman, Mike Dringenberg – The Sandman: Preludes & Nocturnes (Volume 1) – The reputation of this book, as one of the foremost comics of all time, is rightly deserved!
24. Lynda Gratton – The Shift: The future of work is already here – Gratton examines the changes in the world, and how they impact work & workplaces. A sociological masterpiece!
25. Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely – All-Star Superman, Volume 2 – Not really all that great
26. Jon Stock – Games Traitors Play – Jon Stock writes a spy thriller, reminiscent of Jason Bourne, but rather darker. I do wish he’d found a better way to end this one though.
27. Oliver Sacks – The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat – Some interesting cases, of rare neurological disorders, which give us an insight into what makes us whole, what makes us human!
28. David Stone – The Orpheus Deception – Stone writes a worthy sequel to Echelon Vendetta, which I read 2 years ago.
29. Swapan Seth – This is All I have to Say – Short, quick reads; musings on everyday life, from success & failure, to marriage, love & parenting! The chapter on failure was great!
30. Mark Haddon, et al – Stop What You’re Doing And Read This – A collection of 10 essays about reading, and books, and the thoughts & dreams of readers. Absolutely delightful. Goes to the top shelf!
31. Tom Holt – The Better Mousetrap – Possibly the best fiction I have read this year, or in the last 2 years! Holt at his personal best. An engaging, hilarious mix of magic, management and humor.
32. Vilayanur Ramachandran – The Emerging Mind – Ramachandran’s BBC The Reith Lectures compiled in one small volume. Essential for anyone who wants to understand neuroscience.
33. George R.R. Martin – A Storm of Swords – The third book in the series, A Song of Ice and Fire.
34. Stephen King – Full Dark, No Stars – Chilling stories of humans who go over to the dark side, which is in all of us!
35. Gulzar – Selected Poems – Some really nice poems, with stunning translations by Pawan Verma
36. Raghuvir Sahay – Log Bhool Gaye Hain – These are highly acclaimed poems, by a much-celebrated poet. But they didn’t work for me!
37. Jo Nesbo – Headhunters – Absolutely brilliant! Nesbo writes lyrically, magically, about crime, and the baser elements inside his protagonists! Some amazing lines too!!
38. Nora Ephron – I Remember Nothing – Ephron is always a delight to read; she finds the absurdity in everyday affairs & displays it for all of us, with sympathy, wit & humor.
39. Jawed Akhtar – Laava – This is a stunning collection, of really fabulous, heart-moving ghazals & nazms!
40. Jeffrey Archer – False Impressions – Archer is a master of racy thrillers, which make you believe at times that they could have actually happened, some small plot-holes & unnecessary descriptions notwithstanding!
41. Cheryl Strayed – Tiny Beautiful Things – Luminiscent is the only way to describe these essays; they provoke really strong emotions, at times tears…absolutely amazing advice columns on life & love!
42. Michael Pollan – The Omnivore’s Dilemma – It’s an important book, tracing the journey of the food we eat…but for some reason important books are usually really badly written. Boring as hell; abandoned mid-way!
43. Clayton M. Christensen – How Will You Measure Your Life – Christensen’s classic HBR article turned into a book, still manages to retain the vibrancy & relevance. A must-read for everyone, not just young college graduates!
44. Terry Pratchett – Thud! – Pratchett is the only writer who, rather consistently, manages to hold my attention throughout the book, with his wit & humour, masking the fairly important points he wants to make.
45. P.D. James – Talking About Detective Fiction – I usually avoid reading criticisms, but James brings a keen eye to her first love, Detective Fiction, and introduces us lovingly to her favourite contemporaries & predecessors.
46. Louis L’Amour – Lonely on the Mountain – L’Amour is a master at the craft of storytelling, but this one didn’t work for me. Too many changes in tone & voice, and too many long-drawn descriptions of stuff not happening.
47. Ramesh Menon – Siva: The Siva Purana Retold – Menon’s translation skills are seriously good; but the stories are by-now too stale & repetitive for me. Hindu mythology is like a longer, and boring, version of Game of Thrones.
48. Kouzes Posner – Credibility: How Leaders Gain And Lose It, Why People Demand It – Kouzes & Posner make a compelling case for credibility, as the primary quality a leader needs to strive for.
49. Tom Holt – Barking – Anyone who wonders why Tom Holt is my favorite writer, needs to read this book. Holt brings law, lawyers, and other horrifying creatures to life in this rollicking read.
50. Nilanjana Roy – The Wildings – Nilanjana’s debut breaks new grounds, from the story to the characters. This is a genre-defying, absolute must-read. Can’t wait for the sequel.
51. Faiz Ahmed Faiz – Pratinidhi Kavitayein – There is no modern urdu shayar who even remotely compares to Faiz. It’s difficult to say whether these are revolutionary love poems, or romantic revolutionary poems.
52. Saul Smilansky – 10 Moral Paradoxes – This was on my to-read list for a long time. But to say that I was disappointed would be understating it a fair bit.
53. Sam Harris – Lying (Kindle Single) – Harris makes a compelling moral case against lying, except in the most extreme situations.
54. Parween Shakir – Pratinidhi Kavitayein – Shakir is a new voice, a refreshing change from the recent crop of the shayars. But this is not a very encouraging selection.
55. Rukun Advani – Written For Ever: The Best of Civil Lines – These are brilliant essays. Made me want to pick up each issue of Civil Lines & devour it.
56. Jo Nesbo – The Leopard – Nesbo is a master. This is a great thriller, although it brought me to my pet peeve of complaining about the length of novels nowadays!
57. Nazir Banarasi – Nazir Banarasi ki Shayari – Some of the sher’s were passably good, but Nazeer is just not in the same league as Faiz, Akhtar, Gulzar or even Raahat Indori.
58. Odayan – Level10 Comics – Indian comics have certainly come of age; the story arc & the art in both these comics was stunningly good!
59. Daksh – Level10 Comics – Indian comics have certainly come of age; the story arc & the art in both these comics was stunningly good!
60. Terry Pratchett – Equal Rites – Pratchett takes on the touchy, sensitive issue of misogyny & gender with his trademark light touch, lacced with humour, wit & sharp satire! Really, really good!
61. Terry Pratchett – Mort – This was a re-reading; and it was worth it!
62. Art Spiegelman – The Complete Maus – Spiegelman manages to weave in the complex Holocaust history with his troubled relationship with his father, in a moving, harrowing comic, which will stay with you a while after it’s over.
63. Daniel Coyle – The Little Book of Talent – Coyle talks about 52 tips & tricks to improve performance; a brief summary of all factors. Very very good!
64. Ben Coes – Power Down – The first half of the book was reminiscent of Ludlum, but Coes couldn’t keep the pace up. Not to mention the racist black & white world he drew.
65. Joshua Foer – Moonwalking with Einstein – Foer’s engaging & inspiring account of going from covering Memory competitions to winning one, with a year’s preparation is filled with unexpected nuggets of wisdom & insight. Great!
66. Jonah Lehrer – The Decisive Moment – Lehrer sheds light on the deepest mystery of all – how our brains make up their mind!
67. Suzanne Collins – The Hunger Games – This was the best YA fiction I read in a long time; slow on romance, deep on action. Collins doesn’t treat her reader as kids to be talked down to.
68. Sidin Vadukut – Who Let The Dork Out – A fitting conclusion to the Dork Chronicles. Robin Einstein Verghese grows up, and wins the day by wits & luck! Hilarious
69. David A.J. Axson – The Management Mythbuster – Axson is everybody’s favourite old uncle: wise, world-weary, cantankerous, doesn’t tolerate fools gladly, yet lovable! Must-read for all who are weary of management bullshit!
70. John Grisham – The Racketeer – Grisham returns to form, after a few years of meandering in wasteland. Really good!
71. Ben Coes – Coup D’Etat – Factual errors & a meandering story made this a disappointing read. One wonders why thriller writers don’t use wikipedia, at the very least! I couldn’t finish it – a first after a long long time!
72. Anant Pai – Mahabharata I – The Kuru Princes – There are a few typos, and one wishes some of the language was a little less flowery. But on the whole, this series is as satisfying a read as it was when I read it as a kid!
73. Anant Pai – Mahabharata II – The Pandavas in Exile – The language in this part of the Trilogy is really awful: cliched, ornate & meaningless at times. The story continues to rock!
74. Louis L’Amour – Jubal Sackett – This is a winding novel, with nothing much to it, except the thoughts of a lone wanderer. L’Amour tries to write a literary western novel. Didn’t work for me.
75. Simon Singh – The Code Book: The Secret History of Codes and Code-Breaking – Simon Singh brings to life an arcane topic, but one that is possibly of interest to everyone. This is a really well-written book.
76. David Thorne – The Internet Is a Playground – Thorne is wildly funny; it is not advisable to read anything written by him in public – you’ll laugh so hard, you’ll lose your reputaion!
77. Jon Scieszka & Lane Smith – The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales – These are NOT your everyday Fairy Tales; these are Fairly Stupid Tales…in fact, some of these are Incredibly Stupid Tales. Delightful!
78. Jon Scieszka, A. Wolf & Lane Smith – The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs – Scieszka is a true master – it’s a tribute to his genius that he can tell an upside down fairy tale, with a twist, without dumbing it down.
79. Jon Klassen – I Want my Hat Back – Really good pictures, and a simple but lovely story!
80. David Thorne – I’ll Go Home Then, It’s Warm and Has Chairs – 2nd book by David Thorne is almost better than the first!
81. Anant Pai – Mahabharata III – On the Battlefield of Kurukshetra – This was significantly better than Part 2 of the trilogy, partly because it avoided (to some extent) the religious imagery
82. JRR Tolkein – The Hobbit – Tolkien’s mastery of the forces that make a great fantasy are evident here; this story could have led to the birth of a 100 LOTRs. Great imagery!
83. Don Rickles et al – The Playboy Interview: Funny People – Do NOT, under any circumstances, read this book in office, hospital, bus/train, or any other place with other humans present. These are really hilarious interviews!
84. Nasreen Munni Kabir – In the Company of a Poet: Gulzar, in Conversation with NM Kabir – Long interviews are a dying form. This is very readable, but most of the stuff here is known facts. What makes this book readable is the character of Gulzar which shines through.
85. Brian Vaughan & Fiona Staples – Saga, Vol. I – Stunning imagery, great storytelling: graphic novels come of age!
86. John Kay – Obliquity – Some of our most important goals are achieved indirectly. Kay makes some important points in this regard. However, parts of the book seemed rather contrived

My wishlist is up at Flipkart – http://www.flipkart.com/wishlist/mohit

Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day…I can’t help but wonder whether all this histrionic exhaustion isn’t a way of covering up the fact that most of what we do doesn’t matter…

Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets. The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration — it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done. “Idle dreaming is often of the essence of what we do,” wrote Thomas Pynchon in his essay on sloth. Archimedes’ “Eureka” in the bath, Newton’s apple, Jekyll & Hyde and the benzene ring: history is full of stories of inspirations that come in idle moments and dreams. It almost makes you wonder whether loafers, goldbricks and no-accounts aren’t responsible for more of the world’s great ideas, inventions and masterpieces than the hardworking…

I suppose it’s possible I’ll lie on my deathbed regretting that I didn’t work harder and say everything I had to say, but I think what I’ll really wish is that I could have one more beer with Chris, another long talk with Megan, one last good hard laugh with Boyd. Life is too short to be busy.

- From The ‘Busy’ Trap – NYTimes.com

2. Pg. 5
Click-buzz, said the phone. Duncan held it at arm’s length and scowled at it for a moment before putting it back. In many ways it reminded him of the former Mrs Hughes; every day he held it close to him, and every day it whispered in his ear horrible things that ruined his life.

3. Pg 28
Duncan Hughes adhered to the school of thought that maintains that you shouldn’t buy newspapers, because it only encourages them. Nevertheless, he had a guilty feeling that he really ought to keep up with current affairs, as a sort of miserable civic duty.

4. Pg 30
There is a moment, a watershed in one’s development as a human being, which must be passed before one has any claim to enlightenment and understanding. It’s the moment when you come to realise that, just because somebody likes you, you’re under no legal or moral obligation to like them back.

5. Pg 153
We’re lawyers. We know that the secret of attaining happiness lies in starting off with a realistically achievable definition. Only want what you know you can get.

6. Pg 402
Very few of the millions of people who hate their jobs ever get around to admitting it in so many unambiguous words, and of that small minority, only a fraction ever take it into their heads to do something about it.

2. Pg 41
The world is full of people who pay serious money for bad pictures by good artists. and mediocre heads on tall bodies.

3. Pg 58
An artist who maintains that he has been misunderstood is almost always a bad artist who, I’m afraid to say, has been understood.

4. Pg 107
We all drink according to how thirsty we are.

5. Pg 108
There is nothing that makes a man grow beyond his stature than a woman telling him she loves him. and however much she might have lied to him, there will always be a part of him that is grateful to her for this, and that will harbour some love for her.

6. Pg 164
Modern man spends six times as many hours communicating as our forefathers. So we communicate more, but do we communicate any better?

7. Pg 224
Yes, it hurt to think, it was easier to desist, to be resigned, not to rebel against the gravity of fate. It’s just that the stupid, trivial course of things is so irritating that you simply lose your temper. So you think.

The best books I read were:

1. Stop What You’re Doing And Read This
2. The Better Mousetrap
3. Would you like some bread with that book?
4. The Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully
5. Luka and the Fire of Life
6. A Game of Thrones

The complete list of the books I read in the first 6 months of 2012, with a brief review is below. Enjoy!

1. Terry Pratchett – Carpe Jugulum – Pratchett leads you down quite a few blind alleys, on a hilarious horror story with witches, to an extremely satisying ending with a twist.
2. Vendela Vida – The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers – Interesting interviews, although some of them were mutual admiration society stuff. Still, a worthwhile peek into the writers’minds.
3. Jeremy Hope – Reinventing the CFO – A war-cry to the CFO’s to change: the world has changes, and the stresses are many; the only CFOs worth looking at/for, are those who know how to lead this. Hope tells them how!
4. Paul Hoffman – The Left Hand of God – Hoffman built an interesting, gripping premise for 300 pages, and then lost it not knowing what to do with it! Disappointing!
5. Salman Rushdie – Luka and the Fire of Life – Rushdie tells a children’s tale; only it’s too powerful to be read only by kids! Proves why he is one of the best writers around.
6. George R.R. Martin – A Game of Thrones – This book proved well deserving of the hype…as well as being as good as the tv series based on it! Martin spins a complex web of stories, which will captivate, enthrall & fascinate readers of all hues & age groups!
7. George R.R. Martin – A Clash of Kings – Martin continues the saga with a worthy sequel to “A Game of Thrones”. Although I need a break from this epic thriller now, I can’t seem to let go of the Starks & the Lanisters!
8. Cyrus Broacha – The Average Indian Male – Cyrus tries to be funny. In fact, he tries too hard. And fails consistently. Add to that, the numerous spelling & grammatical errors that plague this book, and you’ll be well advised to avoid this altogether!
9. Josh Horowitz – The Mind of the Modern Moviemaker – Only for movie buffs; the interviews give an insight into the minds of the folks selected, but most of them are people you’ve never heard of, and so are left wondering about their inclusion.
10. Louis L’Amour – Dutchman’s Flat – Nice stories to while away the time, daydreaming of a place long ago, the Wild American West.
11. Eugene O’kelly – Chasing Daylight: How My Forthcoming Death Transformed My Life – O’kelly writes movingly of meeting the final days head-on; with joy & building on the relationships.
12. Louis L’Amour – Kiowa Trail – Westerns in first-person are never as much fun as those in third-person; strictly for L’amour fans
13. Gerald M. Weinberg – The Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully – Invaluable resource book for all consultants, and their clients! The book’s funny, irreverent tone only masks some really good & true & serious advice.
14. Marshall Goldsmith – Mojo: How to get it, How to keep it, How to get it back, If you lose it – Goldsmith is the world’s leading executive coach, and the book demonstrates why. It’s witty, insightful, and filled with really good advice on how to become more effective professionally. However, he fails when he asks you to compromise your values in order to succeed professionally.
15. Jennifer Egan – A Visit From The Goon Squad – No more classical literature for me. Ever. Thoroughly disappointed by the fact that critics seem to love only the books which somehow are a showcase for the writer’s wordsmithy, rather than for actual story-telling. Nothing moves in this book for damn near 200 pages!
16. Neil Gaiman – The Sandman: Book of Dreams – Really good stories with many layers, and awesome one-liners!
17. Louis L’Amour – The Daybreakers – Part of the immortal western series, “The Sacketts”, this is a slow, thoughtful examination of human frailties & motivations, set in the context of the Wild West.
18. Richard N. Bolles – What Color Is Your Parachute?: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers – This is the definitive how-to manual on finding a job. But it left me a bit disappointed, since there was nothing really new here!
19. Ronald Cohen – The Second Bounce of the Ball: Turning Risk into Opportunity – Good guide to making use of your inner uncertainties, and overcoming them, in order to succeed as an entrepreneur. Could have done without the repetitive examples of how Cohen made it happen!
20. Michael Robotham – The Wreckage – About a 100 pages too long, but a delightful thriller nonetheless.
21. Angie Sage – Septimus Heap I: Magyk – Why does all YA fiction have to travel the same roads as Rowling/Pratchett, I’ll never know…but it’s getting repetitive, and quite boring folks!
22. Veena Venugopal – Would you like some bread with that book? – The best book I’ve read this year! A journey into a reader’s heart…lots of laughs!
23. Neil Gaiman, Mike Dringenberg – The Sandman: Preludes & Nocturnes (Volume 1) – The reputation of this book, as one of the foremost comics of all time, is rightly deserved!
24. Lynda Gratton – The Shift: The future of work is already here – Gratton examines the changes in the world, and how they impact work & workplaces. A sociological masterpiece!
25. Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely – All-Star Superman, Volume 2 – Not really all that great
26. Jon Stock – Games Traitors Play – Jon Stock writes a spy thriller, reminiscent of Jason Bourne, but rather darker. I do wish he’d found a better way to end this one though.
27. Oliver Sacks – The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat – Some interesting cases, of rare neurological disorders, which give us an insight into what makes us whole, what makes us human!
28. David Stone – The Orpheus Deception – Stone writes a worthy sequel to Echelon Vendetta, which I read 2 years ago.
29. Swapan Seth – This is All I have to Say – Short, quick reads; musings on everyday life, from success & failure, to marriage, love & parenting! The chapter on failure was great!
30. Mark Haddon, Michael Rosen, Zadie Smith, Carmen Callil, Jeanette Winterson, Tim Parks, Blake Morrison, Maryanne Wolf, Nicholas Carr, Jane Davis – Stop What You’re Doing And Read This – A collection of 10 essays about reading, and books, and the thoughts & dreams of readers. Absolutely delightful. Goes to the top shelf!
31. Tom Holt – The Better Mousetrap – Possibly the best fiction I have read this year, or in the last 2 years! Holt at his personal best. An engaging, hilarious mix of magic, management and humor.
32. Vilayanur Ramachandran – The Emerging Mind – Ramachandran’s BBC The Reith Lectures compiled in one small volume. Essential for anyone who wants to understand neuroscience.

• The Millions : The Game’s Afoot: The Case of the Mystery Genre’s Terrible SecretIf you’ve ever felt let down by the end of a mystery novel, there’s a good reason why. The biggest secret in crime fiction is that there are really only, like, four ways to tie up a mystery, and I’m going to show you all of them in 1,200 words. Get ready to have an entire genre irrevocably spoiled.

  tags: mystery genre reading books wp

• Of readers and their rights – Analysis – DNAPennac examines three fundamental issues: how much small children love hearing stories; how wonderful it is when they discover they can put letters together and actually read; and how between parents and schools, we push kids away from books in the years that follow…
  There are habits that foster reading — we all evolve these instinctively for ourselves as readers. Pennac calls these ‘reader’s rights’. It’s just that when we become parents and teachers, we forget them…
  As parents and educators, our job is simply to enable kids to read. Whether they read later or not is their choice. As Pennac reminds us, while it’s fine for a child to grow up and reject reading, ‘it’s totally unacceptable for someone to feel that they have been rejected by reading’

  tags: reader reading kids parenting books review wp

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Atul Gawande: Failure and Rescue : The New YorkerThis may in fact be the real story of human and societal improvement. We talk a lot about “risk management”—a nice hygienic phrase. But in the end, risk is necessary. Things can and will go wrong. Yet some have a better capacity to prepare for the possibility, to limit the damage, and to sometimes even retrieve success from failure.
  When things go wrong, there seem to be three main pitfalls to avoid, three ways to fail to rescue. You could choose a wrong plan, an inadequate plan, or no plan at all. Say you’re cooking and you inadvertently set a grease pan on fire. Throwing gasoline on the fire would be a completely wrong plan. Trying to blow the fire out would be inadequate. And ignoring it—“Fire? What fire?”—would be no plan at all…
  We have this problem called confidence. To take a risk, you must have confidence in yourself. In surgery, you learn early how essential that is. You are imperfect. Your knowledge is never complete. The science is never certain. Your skills are never infallible. Yet you must act. You cannot let yourself become paralyzed by fear.
  Yet you cannot blind yourself to failure, either. Indeed, you must prepare for it. For, strangely enough, only then is success possible…
  As you embark on your path from here, you are going to take chances—on a relationship, a job, a new line of study. You will have great hopes. But things won’t always go right…
  So you will take risks, and you will have failures. But it’s what happens afterward that is defining. A failure often does not have to be a failure at all. However, you have to be ready for it—will you admit when things go wrong? Will you take steps to set them right?—because the difference between triumph and defeat, you’ll find, isn’t about willingness to take risks. It’s about mastery of rescue.

  tags: failure success risk life Attitude atul_gawande wp

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• Kathryn Schulz on ‘Internal Time’ by Till Roenneberg — New York Magazine Book ReviewOne of those whatevers is us. Time is what we measure, not just with our external Einsteinian clocks but with our internal Roennbergian ones: heart rate, hunger, breath, sleep. Like almost every other species, we humans are a kind of mobile timepiece. Unlike other species, we’ve overrun our niche in the temporal ecosystem, just as we have in the physical one. We move as freely from time to time as we do from place to place—working nights, jetting three hours into the past for a long weekend. That remarkable temporal suppleness, like our adaptiveness more generally, both rewards and imperils us. We live in all time but, unlike De Mairan’s mimosa, we live uneasily in it, struggling to balance our inner self with the demands of nature and each other.And we live uneasily in time in another way, too. Time is what all creatures measure, but humans are the creatures who measure time. That is a remarkable but not a comfortable ability. If human culture is delightful but disrupts our sleep, the same could be said of human consciousness. It’s wonderful, thank heavens for it—and yet we are the only species kept awake at night by the thought that time is passing, that its quantity, for us, is finite. This is the fundamental pathos of being, in effect, a conscious Swatch. Our internal clocks do what we cannot: keep time

  tags: book review time sleep habits wp

• Kathryn Schulz on Being a Literary Night Owl — New York MagazineI can’t remember a time when I wasn’t a night owl. As a kid, I read in bed until hours that would have horrified my parents, had they known…I pulled my first all-nighter halfway through sixth grade. I was 11.
  There was no particular reason for it, that first time. I didn’t have homework, wasn’t behind on any project, wasn’t in the grips of preadolescent angst. I just wasn’t tired…
  Predictably, getting up in the morning—not that morning; every morning—was a misery. By seventh grade I walked to school, and I was never not late, which was unfortunate, because I hate being late. (As an adult, I am scrupulously punctual; but then, I also scrupulously avoid early-morning meetings.) On weekends, liberated, I routinely slept until eleven or noon…Even more annoying, though, were family vacations, when my parents, sister, and I would all share a hotel room.tags: sleep habits nocturnal night wp

• Maurice Sendak Scared Children Because He Loved Them – Joe Fassler – Entertainment – The AtlanticThrough reading, then, a young person can try out the prospect of illicit freedom—disobedience, overindulgence, parentlessness—but can ultimately make a willing return to home sweet home.
  When fairy tales flirt with trouble, but avoid real consequences, they really work. And yet the possibility of straying too far—the Lindbergh scenario—haunts Sendak’s work. “Certainly,” Sendak told the Caldecott audience, “we want to protect our children from new and painful experiences that are beyond their emotional comprehension and intensify anxiety.” The child must return home safely for the story to have ameliorative power; Sendak criticized Roald Dahl and Hans Christian Andersen for veering into unnecessary cruelty. Still, he insisted that children are more complicated, tolerant readers than we think, and that they will surprise us in their ability to respond to difficult literature.
  Eventually, we all endure a startling transformation, if we are lucky—the transformation from child to adult, or from child to parent. We can lose touch, along the way, with the people we once were. In this light, we should be grateful to Maurice Sendak: His work reminds us that we contain many selves, and that there can be fluidity among them. He was dark and light, innocent and experienced, playful and morose. He opened a roiling window into childhood, he cast the shadow augury of growing old.tags: maurice_sendak children kids stories books wp
• 8 Songs That Will Get Your Butt Out Of Bed In The Morning « Thought CatalogExactly what it says!tags: songs morning wp

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• Smite the Heathens, Charlie BrownAs the world grows more open, religions have turned more dogmatic and stringent. Instead of letting them evolve and adapt with modern life, the human race has turned religion into something complex and grotesque. These days religion is less about finding the meaning of life and more about competing with each other…
  Also, pretending to defend god is also pure human hubris. What the self-appointed defenders of faith are essentially saying is that not only is their god the most omnipotent, the most powerful, the king of every other god, but this very same powerful entity needs them, the average Joe – the guy who gets confined to the bed for five days because he was dumb enough to leave home without an umbrella even though it was drizzling outside-to defend them. Talk about your delusions of grandeur.tags: religion faith atheism belief offence freedom wp

• Salman Rushdie’s PEN World Voices Lecture on Censorship : The New YorkerThe creative act requires not only freedom but also this assumption of freedom. If the creative artist worries if he will still be free tomorrow, then he will not be free today. If he is afraid of the consequences of his choice of subject or of his manner of treatment of it, then his choices will not be determined by his talent, but by fear. If we are not confident of our freedom, then we are not free…
  At its most effective, the censor’s lie actually succeeds in replacing the artist’s truth. That which is censored is thought to have deserved censorship. Boat-rocking is deplored…
  You will even find people who will give you the argument that censorship is good for artists because it challenges their imagination. This is like arguing that if you cut a man’s arms off you can praise him for learning to write with a pen held between his teeth. Censorship is not good for art, and it is even worse for artists themselves…
  Even more serious is the growing acceptance of the don’t-rock-the-boat response to those artists who do rock it, the growing agreement that censorship can be justified when certain interest groups, or genders, or faiths declare themselves affronted by a piece of work. Great art, or, let’s just say, more modestly, original art is never created in the safe middle ground, but always at the edge. Originality is dangerous. It challenges, questions, overturns assumptions, unsettles moral codes, disrespects sacred cows or other such entities. It can be shocking, or ugly, or, to use the catch-all term so beloved of the tabloid press, controversial. And if we believe in liberty, if we want the air we breathe to remain plentiful and breathable, this is the art whose right to exist we must not only defend, but celebrate. Art is not entertainment. At its very best, it’s a revolution.tags: art creativity offence salman_rushdie censorship wp

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• Change This – Let’s Make Leadership Real Again“What has happened to leadership? With all the crises and challenges we face and the increasingly risk-averse environment in which we operate, leadership has become generic, ephemeral, and bland…
  The problem is we’re no longer leading. We’re hiding behind committees. We’re using the crutches of data and metrics to make our decisions for us. We blame policies and corporate culture for the problems our teams face rather than delivering the tough messages with a sense of ownership.
  The result of all of this is our people don’t trust us anymore. Work has become transactional. They do the work and we pay them. It’s a fee-for-service mindset. When they find someone who will pay them more for their services, they’re gone. And when we no longer have need of their services, we simply cast those people aside. It’s a toxic environment. It’s hard for people to trust their leaders when they feel like they’re simply a cog in the machine.”tags: change leadership business culture wp

• How to get your team to speak up | SmartBlogsReality-avoidance is the dark side to the pursuit of excellence. It’s ironic: when leaders drive for results at all costs, making it difficult for their people to point out unrealistic objectives, they actually get further away from achieving their objectives. There is a fine line between challenging a team to achieve beyond all expectations and living in a fantasy world. The only way a leader can discern the boundary between “all-out effort” and “this is total make-believe” is to create a culture where team members feel empowered to push back on their leaders’ demands…
  “You can do it!” isn’t motivating and it’s not productive. Show your team that you live in the Land of Reality, not the Land of the Overly Optimistic, by encouraging a culture that’s that say it’s OK to speak up.tags: business management voice team leadership wp

• How Yahoo Killed Flickr and Lost the InternetWeb startups are made out of two things: people and code. The people make the code, and the code makes the people rich. Code is like a poem; it has to follow certain structural requirements, and yet out of that structure can come art. But code is art that does something. It is the assembly of something brand new from nothing but an idea.
  This is the story of a wonderful idea. Something that had never been done before, a moment of change that shaped the Internet we know today. This is the story of Flickr. And how Yahoo bought it and murdered it and screwed itself out of relevance along the way.

  tags: flickr yahoo web startup failure strategy wp

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