2018 - List of Books

End of every year I put up a list of books I read that year, whether I write much on blog or not this one post that appears early January every year.  Finding time to read is always a challenge as reading is a solitary pursuit unlike watching movies or TV or playing some game. So at this stage of my life carving time out is always hard. Around 4-5 years back in order to get some more time to read I decided on trying out Kindle and from being a skeptic turned into a huge fan of e-books and Kindle. It did help me read a lot of books as I could turn waiting time at several places spent doing nothing into reading time.  So much so that from someone who believed only in actual book, I turned to reading only e-books until last year.

In 2017, I had started listening to podcasts and by early 2018 lot of my early morning walk time or commute time was dedicated to listening to podcasts. Many folks who read a lot had mentioned about trying Audio books and somewhere in Mid 2018 I decided that this was worth a shot. Though I did enjoy the convenience of e-books, since my day job was  spent staring at a laptop screen and I was fairly well addicted to my mobile screen rest of the day, I figured it was time to take some load of my eyes and put it on ears instead. I decided to test waters with non-fiction at first and quite liked the experience. So majority of books this year turned out to be Audio books on Audible or Kobo

Enough of that, here is the actual list:

1) A Champions Mind : Lessons from a life in tennis : By Pete Sampras & Peter Bodo

Last year I read Agassi's biography and after a tour of late 80s to early 2000s tennis through that book, I wanted to read about what Sampras had to say as well. I enjoyed this one as well and the book also matches with the player's personality.

2) TCS Story by S Ramadorai

Having spent most of career working for Indian IT companies, I was really keen on reading this book which covered  his life and the story of How Tata Consultancy Services got started and how they became a leading force in IT services world. This was strangely available only in Audio format on Amazon and that had kept me away until I decided to embrace Audio books this year. Its not a super entertaining read but folks who worked in these companies and are interested in the back story of TCS will certainly like this one. Its amazing how such companies succeeded despite our Government and bureaucrats who until mid 90s made things tough with archaic rules and regulations.  People  did wonder why India did not have great product companies ( several of my friends did in 2000s) and this book helps understand why it was super hard to succeed.


3) Bad Blood : Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Start-up by John Carrerou

This was actually the first book I heard and what a book it was. I had vaguely heard about Theranos scandal which was about silicon valley based well funded bio startup which basically operated on false promises, claims and by fudging key data and basically got tons of funding and a free pass by most until a determined journalist blew the lid off. This certainly was the best read ( or I should say listen) of the year for me

4) Homo Deus : Brief history of tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari

Several interesting ideas but did not really work for me as I was perhaps comparing this with his previous work.

5) Billionare Raj : A journey through India's new Gilded Age by James Crabtree

The author was an FT foreign correspondent who lived in India for a few years and this was his take on the growth of super rich in India and how it resembled the Gilded age in early 1900s America with Robber Barrons who control several industries and have good political connections to go unchallenged. He also examines how politics and business and corruption all co-exist and why that happens to be so.  As the nation is transforming at a rapid pace economically and politically perhaps and finding its feet on global stage, it seems to finding itself at a stage where there is pronounced inequality in its society. Really liked this one

6) AI Superpowers : China, Silicon Valley and the new World order by Kai Fu Lee

Was an interesting book, he talks about current state of AI and where it could lead us and compares how US has progressed and how far China has moved. With its vast troves of data available and Privacy not a major issue and with government backing, China is well positioned to leap frog Silicon Valley. There are thoughts about the impact AI adoption could cause in society and what could be done to make the impact less painful for the workforce.

7) Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow by Daniel Kahneman

I got through this partially and put it on hold to read the story behind the Author ( refer #15 below). So I'm still listening to this book at the moment.

8) The Coming Storm by Michael Lewis

This felt too short, it examined how efficient and well run National Weather Service is getting run over by appointees backed by powerful private lobbies who want to further their commercial interest.

9) Saudi America : The truth about fracking and how it is changing the world by Bethany McLean

10) The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith

This was the only fiction I read this year, had noticed this in the year end lists of my cousins last year so wanted to give this a try. As young adult I had read JK Rowling and had loved her writing and though the genre was different I liked this one as well. Hope to get around to reading rest of the books in Cormoran Strike series soon.

11) Incarnations - A History of India in 50 Lives: Sunil Khilani

Author picks 50 Indians in the past couple of thousand years who mattered for the idea of India.

12) Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

In an era of sugar coated biographies and autobiograhies this one is a refreshing change as Isaacson tries to convey somewhat accurate portrait of one the visionary genius who was mercurial, arrogant and brash in dealings with other humans.

13) Everything Store : Jeff Bezos and the age of Amazon by Brad Stone

14) Conspiracy : Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker and the Anatomy of Intrigue  - Ryan Holiday

This is actually non-fiction, but as they say truth is stranger than fiction. In late 2016, Gawker media empire and its millionaire founder Nick Denton were brought to knees as a US court sided with Wrestler Hulk Hogan who had sued them for leaking a stolen sex-tape and Gawker went bankrupt. Later it emerged that Hulk Hogan who fought a hard to win costly litigation was actually backed covertly by Tech Billionaire Peter Thiel. This was his way of settling scores with Gawker who had outed him as gay and their founder Nick Denton himself had made several comments poking fun at Thiel and fanning flames online and putting Thiel firmly in their cross-hairs for a while. The response from a hurt Thiel was a secret multi-year  well funded conspiracy  to legally stop Gawker through litigation by supporting any worthy fight against Gawker. Ryan Holiday examines all sides of the case and also details how the conspiracy was hatched and executed and how no one really ended up winning in the end.

15) The Undoing Project - The friendship that changed our minds by Michael Lewis

This one is about the friendship between Israeli Psychologists Danny Kahneman and Amos Tversky and how they collaborated to figure out how human mind makes decisions.

16)  HillBilly Elegy - JD Vance

Much talked about book last year for understanding the rust belt America. This was a very good read.

17) 281 and beyond - VVS Laxman

There is lot of highlights reel as Laxman recounts the cricketing encounters in his entire career but there are also some interesting anecdotes here and there. Laxman also reveals a bit more about himself, so all in all was a good read. Not super insightful or anything but a very pleasant read for cricket fans.

18) A Full Life : Reflections at ninety by Jimmy Carter

Carter at 90 takes this book as opportunity to recollect and recount his journey from humble roots as peanut farmer to public service to eventually ending up as President and then he also covers what happened afterwards including his humanitarian efforts  like building homes for poor/needy, which he incredibly does well into his late 80s as well.

19) African Diary by Bill Bryson

20) Silence : in the age of noise - Erling Kagge

This was fittingly the only book I read this year that was a physical / dead tree version. The author is an explorer who is perhaps the first to do North Pole, South Pole and climb Everest. He had done solo trek to South pole. This is a small but powerful read on the concept of silence and need to spend time without distractions and enjoying the silence and how it helps us.


Lot of reading was actually listening on Audible , Kobo , Libby apps. I started listening to books during lunch time and then if it was not a super busy day used to take a walk in the park nearby while listening. Plus tried listening during commute to work or during morning walks. Special word of thanks for the wonderful public library system in US. Several audiobooks and some e-books and the only physical book I read came from from Public Library.

20 is above the target I had for this year as things did get hectic from work perspective as anticipated, so really pleased with that. For 2019 I hope to match this, I really hope to cut down on time spent on twitter and channelize that to read some books instead so maybe just maybe I will do better.

Being remote

I started my professional career in IT/software industry 15 years back and working to me always meant going to an office with cubicles, the typical IT company set-up. Nothing much changed over the years though we moved from using ‘desktops’ to using laptops, the overall concept of office was same for me. There was a team I would work with locally and there would be folks from another location in India or abroad you would work/collaborate with. Once I moved to US in early 2013, I found out that my team was mostly in two cities in US and with some folks spread all over the country . Most folks in my location had never met our manager in person. The project I was on had folks from several cities ( several time zones) spread across this super large country. This was one of the world’s largest communications company, so they had this view that location is not an issue as we have enough tools to keep you all connected and it did make sense. But the concept of office which for me was being with team mates you sit with and work together, attend meetings together or hang out together for lunch/ water cooler / coffee break conversations, that changed totally. Sure half of my project team was still in same location but the folks I spent most of the time with were just voices on phone. A person I was working closely initially told me that she was a ‘remote office worker’ for almost 10 years now and that was something really hard for me to imagine from where I came from at that point. She set up some time to catch up me in general to ask about me, my family and to talk in general to find common points of interest to chat about and she said that she makes an effort to do this as it helps to build better bonds with co-workers.

In early 2016, I switched over from being a contractor to a full time employee with my current employer and also moved teams. So while I did work from home 1 day a week in the previous 3 years, this was different. Now I had the option to actually work from home almost full time. I resisted that and opted to do a combination of working from office as well as from home. At office I did not have a designated desk however, there was something called ‘Drop-in seats’. So everyday you go in and find an empty desk and sit and use it for the day. I tried going to this kind of office set-up for two days a week initially, very soon I had certain days where I did not know anyone who sat near me in office or met anyone who I knew the whole day. So it sort stopped making sense and I decided to work fully from home.

It was something that was much needed at that point in life with a new born daughter and wife opting to take a break for an year to spend time with baby. Having spent a good part of previous 3-4 months making just weekly one or two visits to office and not having any meaningful interaction with anyone at office just made it easy to transition into full time working from home office. From productivity perspective I felt it made no difference whether I was working from home or office. While you could potentially get distracted and step away for personal stuff more when you work out of home, office also has its fair share of distractions like chatting with folks during coffee or spending a good amount of time during lunch. While working from lunch mostly was something I would eat quickly and get back to desk in 10-15 mins and coffee was consumed in my office room. 

Office room, that was something that I slowly added. When I first moved to US, I had rented a single bedroom apartment but then every friday I started working from home. Sitting and working from bed started causing back pain, so a table and chair was added. After that we moved houses a few times and every time I insisted on having 2 or 3 Bed apartment so that I can use one room as my office. More on the office room later, but for now I had some space to sit and things were set for fully working from home.

One of the big challenges of being remote is getting cut from cooler talk at office and corridor conversations both of which help in taking you forward and I found that there was no easy solution to that. It was extremely hard to form bonds with people you never met, how much ever you tried to build good rapport over phone calls or messenger it still did not have the warmth of real conversations at least for me.  Luckily I happened to work for a couple of years in our offices in both Seattle and Dallas the two places with lot of folks I would interact with and having met them at some point in person and having had regular conversations with them in past did help when we started interacting virtually. Of course there were lot of folks I never met but did work with easily.

A typical work day would be involve waking up early ( mostly by 6- 6:30 AM) preparing something for lunch that day and getting ready - taking bath, ironing shirt / trousers and getting your socks and shoes ready and rushing out by 8:30 AM. All of that no longer needed to be done in an intense 2 hour window in the morning. There was no need really for any fancy office wear or ironing formal shirts and trousers!  I could start my day much more calmly by slowly consuming morning coffee, spending time going through news on phone. Taking time to eat proper breakfast and not wolf down mouthfuls  of plain old breakfast cereal or bread.  For the record I did take bath daily, even if I was spending time at home throughout. I did avoid shaving for several days altogether and did have an occasional stubble but only change was I did not need to shower early in the morning. I could actually do it a little later in the day if I wanted. Having that choice was great.

A huge change and a positive with this lifestyle was not having to do any sort of commute in the morning to work. After my coffee and based on the workload and things going on at that point, I will login to work by 7 to 7:30 AM and spend some 30 min working on emails that had come in either early that morning or late in the evening. After that I would spend some more time at home doing anything that needed to be done or doing nothing at all and around 9 AM start my day at work in my office room. Sometimes this meant I will go for an early morning walk/run. During non-summer months going for a walk/run before 7 was hard but with this arrangement I could go for 30 min walk at 8 or 9 AM. Which ever way you see for my employer this meant an earlier start than the usual 9:30 start if I was working out of an office building and I would have handled essential tasks and had a better view of what was needed by the time I started. Not being at work meant lesser distractions ... really that is a true statement. You would think it is easier to slack off at home than at work but I think if you want to slack off you can do that anywhere. When you need to focus on something, being at home where you are usually undisturbed works better than an office cubicle or the open work-space that we used to have where you will spot someone who will come over for a chat or you walk around for getting water/coffee or bathroom break and bump into someone and end up chatting. Most of those did not happen when working at home. You do chat with folks online and have occasional casual conversations but the frequency was lot lesser.  That perhaps helped from productivity perspective but overall I did miss the human touch or interacting with fellow human beings.

Lunch was another bright prospect during 2016 and most of 2017 my wife was either on maternity leave or had taken break to spend time with our daughter. So she was around plus we had both sets of parents visiting and someone was there for at least 9 months an year. So eating super hot lunch which gets prepared fresh was a great experience, something I think you cannot put monetary value against. You finish up work and instead of reheating in microwave your lunch prepared either the previous day or assembled in hurry that morning , here was fresh cooked food served piping hot.

During late afternoons again fresh home brewed coffee or tea with some snacks, it was good indeed. Overall I was extremely careful and  conscious that being a remote worker any unexplained absence will not be viewed well, so I had to ensure no one thinks I'm misusing this and that attitude perhaps made it work. Of course I did take those occasional trips to shop for stuff during the day when the workload was light and there was nothing pressing or urgent requiring my presence in front of the computer.  Its actually pretty nice to shop during the day as the lines at counter are better and folks are not in super rush both on the roads and in the shops. You see a totally different crowd than the ones you see when you shop in evenings. Right from the time I started working, the jobs I did were always the ones you were confined inside a large glass building and stayed there from morning till dusk.  Until this point in life I had never seen how it is outside during a regular working weekday, it was good to experience that. At least initially there was a feeling of pulling off something sneaky when you went shopping at 11 Am or 3 PM.  I once went for a haircut at 10 Am and the lady asked if I have taken the day off and I said no, I create my own schedules with great pride.  Those were certainly some high points, needless to add being around when you have a little one helped in managing things. When we started sending daughter to daycare, since I was at home it was easy to go and pick her up early. Once my wife started working and she had an hour plus commute to get to her workplace then I could easily take care of home needs when she was out. I would feed our daughter and drop her to daycare and take care of dishes in sink and laundry whenever I found some gaps during my workday schedule.

Being at home ensured it was not overwhelming and I could be around if needed for anything. Having said that I sometimes started missing office, despite the rosy picture I painted. Maybe it has something to do with us being social animals, you do need to meet folks have casual conversation. That applies to even some one like me who was/is never into socializing a lot. Another realization was that we don't have any friends anymore where lived. There were folks I used to work with a while ago before I switched jobs, but I had lost contact with them. My wife had moved between 3 short term projects in an year in Texas before taking maternity break so we basically had zero friends from work. Being relatively new in this city and being part of a culture where interacting with neighbors is rare, it was tough finding social company. We hardly had anyone, most friends of mine were in different cities and we just interacted on whatsapp regularly or over phone once in a month.  So that was an aspect which I found pretty challenging, sometimes I would find some excuse to go to some grocery store just to step out of home. It was until well into mid of this year that we made some new friends in our apartment community and started going for potlucks and birthday parties. All of which was thanks to our little daughter ( but more on that later!)

So when they finally changed the way we work and asked us to come to office and work from there regularly by March of this year I did not mind at all. Initially it was hard to sit in one place the whole day especially if you are not having a busy day but slowly got adjusted. There are several aspects of the remote life I missed like not having to drive to office during rush hour, eating good fresh hot home food and having a lot of control over your time and being productive and also having time to do a lot of things you want. As much as I loved all of these things, sometimes you have to admit that having 4 people in same room and talking in person easily beats having couple of long conf-calls. Lot of times 'face-time' makes a difference and you do get undivided attention which never happens with people on conference calls. So while it does seem plausible to me to have a future where people work seamless and collaborate across the globe and offices moving away from conventional office after having been there and being back again I guess there is no easy answer.

Ultimate long term fantasy for me is to become a remote worker from some hill station in India, perhaps even doing my current role as product manager in a US company. Lot of companies have tried to embrace remote workers route and changed back to offices as its not really easy to make it work but I think eventually we will find a way to make it work.  My current take is that such lifestyle should be possible if we are willing to find some common time window of 4 hours for entire team to connect and maybe meet in person once in every 6 months and spend a week together. I think over a period of time as we get more and more global ( though an equally competitive surge of nationalism will challenge it), physical boundaries will fade away or will not be a deterministic factor in certain occupations/industries or roles. Tons of studies and lot of chatter about how high paying tech jobs have altered certain cities offer a cautionary tale. Cities mostly never keep up with huge number of high laying jobs suddenly pouring in and locals who don't work in such places invariably hate these companies. From such considerations having workforce spread over the country makes lot of sense and I'm certain lot of remote jobs will be part of the future.

Smartphone ... dumb owner

There are like some interesting things to do but I don't do any of it. There are so many courses waiting on various online learning platforms which need lot of dedicated effort but I don't get time. There are new things at work that I want to learn, read about and come up with new ideas and stuff, but I don't as I clearly don't have time. Then there is this much forgotten blog here which can certainly do with some attention but again like I said before I don't have time. Where is this time going actually since I don;t work long hours, I don't have a tedious work commute and I don't even watch TV, so where is this time going? No, its not really a question. Everyone around me know and I also know its that damn 'smart'phone. I have it handy all day long and keep scrolling through twitter, engage with lots of friends on whatsapp groups, catch up daily news via news portal apps and then tune into the latest outrage and to be honest it is addictive and really enjoyable. As I have noted in an earlier post, after some reflection this clearly is of no use. I had declared my intentions of curbing the 'screen time' and put in place some rules I would follow. No pointing in going over those as they eventually got ignored. The phone is like 'One Ring' and it exerts tremendous pull over the person bearing it and there is this wide portal or enormous amount of meaningless information waiting out there that is too hard to resist.

Resist we must, reclaim our life we must. So efforts keep getting made  but its always hard to resist falling back into old habits. While the phone was smart the owner clearly was not as temptations of spending free afternoons, evenings and weekends browsing meaningless chatter seemed to powerful for the smartphone owner to overcome. Addiction is actually the right word when it comes to smartphone and social media. One thing I realized early on  with social media was that engaging passionately with various outrage worthy topics of the day was of no use. Still it was fun to follow even if you don't participate much. That did take some time to remove yourself from following such topics which are really of no major significance. That approach meant questioning what passes of as Daily News. I don't read a newspaper but I did follow certain liberal and progressive news sites via phone app. Even after selecting what appeared to good news sites the quality of most information coming through was not all that great. So I removed all of these news apps and cancelled subscription to Economist magazine which I had been relying on for almost last 8-9 years to help me with forming my worldview. I stopped all of these start of this year and really think have not missed anything. It does give some additional time which you can put to some good use like a morning walk/run. If something significant does happen it turns up on Twitter feed eventually or someone mentions it in Whatsapp groups. So I keep wondering why is there this urge to spend so much time chasing information of current events. I did clean up my twitter feed quite a bit by removing all political discussion and adding some filters to remove out discussions on topics I didn't care much. I do think I learnt a lot from following folks on twitter and by interacting with friends of Whatsapp. There was a lot of things gained, lots of positives but there are lot of negatives. The signal to noise ratio is still very poor if we don't engage with these mediums properly. Lot of time is wasted on meaningless and frivolous things which is something I have been consciously trying to avoid. My daughter usually gets up and runs away after we read a couple of stories and goes and plays on her own. But recently she went away and then came back and told me 'Daddy no phone'. I think that did hit home and I put the phone away.

So this one other thing I started using after that incident was to use the smartness of my smartphone on itself and on the owner. There is a feature called 'screentime' on my iphone which I knew was there but refused to acknowledge until now. Finally last week I started using it and set 1 hour time for the day for all social media.  So when an hour overall of using Twitter, instagram, telegram, whatsapp happens on that day, the phone would lock all of those apps.  The first week, I did override it because I started hitting the 1 hour limit by mid day. It was also showing overall how much time in a day is spent on these apps. Within a week I learnt to ration the time so that I don't hit limit until evening. Last couple of days, during evenings I'm fully at home without any distractions and so far it seems to be working. Just a week so far but hey I'm even blogging and stuff  so that is a big change plus I do find time later in the day to catch up on some book reading as well so 'smartphone' is indeed smart after all.

Update : End of 2nd week, stats show that overall screen-time went down by 11% from usual average, End of 3rd week of implementing this, the screen-time dropped by 27% from the average. So it is working as of now!!!

Just another year ...

We keep saying "time flies" , "gosh I did not realize we are in 201X " , "wow we are already half way through the year, just feels like it started a few days ago". I have used this many times and have always got "I know right" or something on similar lines to indicate the other person also totally agrees with that thought.  To best of my knowledge, earth still rotates the same way it used to and goes around the sun the same way it used to ... but we are losing track of how things move, despite them moving as fast as they used to.

Speaking of things moving fast, it just seems like not so long ago that I moved to US for an year or so as I explained to others. I really had visa for just 8 months, so that was the story I went with  as one is never sure if visa will get renewed or not. Once it did get renewed, it was granted for exactly another 1 year. The story changed to just another year more. Somewhere in the middle of April this year it actually has been 5 years since I relocated from India. The milestone date, came and went without much fanfare. I should really be more surprised as I never expected to stay here so long really. Yes, really!

When I managed to land a project in the city of my first preference - Seattle, it was a great feeling. I knew I was going to a foreign land of unknown to take up a work assignment which was new to me in a new team and in totally new place. So many folks asked me why are you going away into such an unknown when I was doing really well at that point in my role and was in a good team and was primed for fast growth in India.  I somehow felt that for the industry I was in, it was very valuable to get an experience working in US for career progression.  So once my project and start date was confirmed, I called up my friend Ramki who was living in Seattle and was with the same company as me but worked for a different client. During our conversation on life in Seattle and how to adapt, what to get from India etc.. I think I must have mentioned a few times that this was a short visit and I meant to stay only for an year or two at max to pick up some international experience. Ramki stopped me there and added with a hint of smile in his voice, "Anush, no one who moves here goes back within an year. How much ever you insist that will be the case or you are different, I personally don't know anyone without visa issue or urgent personal issues needing them to be back in India ever going back voluntarily despite what they claim at first, and knowing you I don't think you will either." It did turn out to be prescient any way!

This is something I have heard from several others as well that they never thought they will be here so long, but ended up staying. So many friends mentioned that they never enrolled in 401k savings ( retirement fund to which employer also contributes) because they thought they had come for just an year or so and why take time to set-up all these things. That includes me as well, we all just left money on the table by not enrolling in retirement plans.  Another interesting conversation I had a few years back on this topic was when I traveled in a cab once in Dallas and the driver was from Nicaragua and we were chatting in general and he told me he had also come to US  a few decades back with exactly the same thoughts that he will come here for an year or two and make some money and head back home to be with family. He said every year he used to tell himself that just another year and he will go back to his home country. Apparently that was more than 30 years back. Now there is no immediate family left in his country to even go back to.However I told myself that he had come from a troubled country where there was not much prospects unlike my situation where the country I left is moving ahead rapidly.

This is a topic I bring up often when I meet up with old friends or have long conversations with them . Almost all of my friends are folks in IT who came to US on work visa from India and were working here . Most of them own and live in their own homes here in US. When I ask whether they intended to settle down here, the answer was either no probably not or I'm not sure. But they clearly don't have any immediate plan to wind up and head back to India even though it is there somewhere in the back of the mind somewhere. I don't own a home here, avoided that as that could be a huge grounding factor but no clear plans on return as of now either. So we all continue in a limbo, with no clear plan to stay or settle down anywhere. Which I think is fine and we keep saying just another year and then we will see!  

2017 - List of books

So its that time of the year when I come back to my much neglected blog and put up my reading list of previous year. Something I have been doing throughout this decade along with my cousins who have a much bigger and super interesting  year end book lists put up on their blogs here & here.

Well back to the list, this year all my reading was done on Kindle ebooks which has been a conscious decision and over the last 2-3 years I migrated to mostly ebooks and this is the first year it has been exclusively ebooks. I don't think its the future ( it may well be), but I think this makes it much easier to read as I do read using my laptop and even Mobile phone. So makes it much easier and reading on phone is one of the reasons I have been able to progress with my reading this year.

Enough of analysis, without further ado here is the list and some thoughts on a few books

1.Open - Andre Agassi

Really enjoyed this one. Like several books in this list, this was a book I wanted to read for a long time having seen most of the matches/tournaments described in the books during my childhood days. I was a huge Sampras fan but towards the later stages of his career I did not mind Agassi winning. The book is like its title, really open and was an entertaining read. I hope to read the one from Sampras this year to see how things stack up the other end of the court. I don't think anyone can match the colorful narration from Agassi though!

2.Things Fall Apart: African Trilogy, Book 1 by Chinua Achebe

Recommended by my friend Ramki, this was an excellent read and is a classic I guess. Story of clash of traditional/animist culture with Colonialism & christianity

3.Ghachar Ghochar  by Vivek Shaunbag & Srinath Perur

4.NW: A Novel by Zadie Smith

5. Moonglow: A Novel by Michael Chabon

6.A Farewell to Walmart by Carly J Hallman

I decided to try something different from usual fare and picked some Kindle singles - which is books from new/upcoming authors and this being set in rural Texas not very far from where I live made me pick it up. Was about growing up in small town America and the impact of Walmart on the local economy and life of folks there.

7.Paper or Plastic? : The grocery store chronicles by Ricky Bylina

Kindle pitched this to be based on the one above - its diary account of a person who recently retired and decided to work an year as night shift checkout clerk at a local big brand grocery store

8.Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan

Had heard a lot about this one and it really was a page turner! Filmy yes but readable as well and glimpse into world of nouveau riche from Asia

9.Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike - by Phil Knight


10.Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier - by Edward Glaeser

11.River of Gods by Ian McDonald

Dystopian sci-fi set in future with AI out loose trying to escape humans and running amok, might seem standard stuff but what made this interesting for was this being set in India of 2047 ( a century after independence) which has split into several nations at war/conflict with each other over water. AI has progressed to attain consciousness and there is a squad to catch rogue AI called Krishna cops. The story is mainly set in Varanasi on the banks of river Ganga. He also introduces a new neutral gender ( nutes) and the story is a mismash of several characters and how their lives intersect which is standard potboiler stuff, but having this set in India  and incorporating some Indianness in the concept made it a really good read for me

12.A Walk in the woods - Bill Bryson

I read one book from Bill Bryson every year and this one was about his attempt to hike the Appalachian Trail . Interesting and hilarious with loads and loads of trivia and information tossed in as usual was a good read for me.

13.Consider Phlebas: Culture Series, Book 1 - by Iain M. Banks

Among the best stuff in science fiction perhaps, really liked this intro to culture series which I heard several times earlier and finally decided to start this year. Enjoyed this one and hope to read more of this series in 2018. Excellent stuff!

14.Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations - by Thomas L. Friedman

15.Streaming, Sharing, Stealing: Big Data and the Future of Entertainment - by Michael D. Smith

16. The second machine age - by Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee

17. Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money - by  Nathaniel Popper

Good accessible primer on origins and history of the most discussed term of the year perhaps - Bitcoin. I thought it gave a good idea of how bitcoin originated and looked at its evolution and adoption through the people behind it from libertarians to cyberpunks and tech geeks to dark web pioneers to astute businessmen and silicon valley VCs who were able to see the future. The concept of bitcoin and 'blockchain' piqued my interest sometime in the middle of this year and I quickly realized learning about the fundamentals is more important that the price action and this was one the first books I read to learn more.

18. The Ivory Throne  by Manu S Pillai

Last year I read a book on Vijayanagar empire and decided to try and read at least one book every year related to South India. So it was Kerala this year and this book by Manu S Pillai on travancore royal family through last few centuries with focus on the ruling queen Sethu Lakshmi Bai. Very well researched and narrated and a good read for anyone interested in Kerala's history. Covers this mostly from ruler's perspective from 1500s onwards but also spends time covering the customs and practices as well especially the matrilineal system and how women had much better rights in the medieval society than modern one! Highly recommend this one

19. Fifty Inventions that shaped the modern economy by Tim Harford

Fascinating stuff, the only book from 2017 in this list. I had listened to Tim Harford on BBC podcasts talking about this and was sufficiently intrigued to pre-order this book. Was a good read

20. An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth: What Going to Space Taught Me About Ingenuity, Determination, and Being Prepared for Anything - by Chris Hadfield

I had attended some training session in office and a guy played some cool videos and this was one the books the guy in the cool video suggested.

21. Temporary People by Deepak Unnikrishnan

Having lived for 6 months in Dubai and having interacted with folks there I have heard about the life there first hand. By now most folks know that life in desert paradise is not easy for the immigrant worker with minimum rights and how they get fleeced and are 'kept in their place' even though they do end up earning several times what they make back home in Indian subcontinent. This book covers all that and explores what these identity-less/powerless temporary migrants to gulf nations (who are in fact majority of the population in those nations) go through but is told with inventive prose with dash of magical realism thrown liberally. Just like gleaming immaculate cities in desert nations which look fantastic at surface but you really peer closer you see all the inequalities, injustice and stuff. The book I think is not everyone's cup of tea, there is not a single straight forward story, but most of them are metaphorical takes. I think through the surreal stories he conveys the rigid hierarchical and racist society and the precarious world of a lowly migrant worker and covers some instances when these worlds clash and disastrous consequences. Knowledge of Malayalam was a big plus while reading

So that's the list, 21 this time. 

Did I say 21 books, may not be much but 20 was the lofty target I had set for myself for 2017 and glad I actually crossed it. I covered a lot of ground middle of the year when I was working from home and had relatively light work load between projects. I wanted to read a little more fiction this year as I was moving towards reading non-fiction by default and wanted to break that habit. So this time it was 8 fiction and 13 non-fiction which seems to be good ratio, since I don't get time to sit down and read mostly and get disturbed often. Except for 4 books, all the rest were borrowed from library for free so big thanks to US library system and their Kindle integration which made it really easy for me to put 'holds' get notified via email and click a link and add it to my Kindle effortlessly.

I'm hoping to read more varied list of books in 2018, I'm positive I may not make it to 20 with all the learning targets I have set for myself. Last year I spent a lot of time trying to reequip myself with more skills to succeed careeer-wise and enrolled in a few programs in Coursera. I hope to spend lot more time on those things this year and so setting myself a target of 15 books and also hoping to use Goodreads at least this year. At least it will make putting this list up easy!

Dude, wheres my car?!

So it was warm  hot Saturday morning and that particular weekend was a 'Tax-Free' weekend ( yes its a real thing) in the state of Texas. So the wife and I decided to quickly head to the big mall nearby to visit a couple of large retail stores ( JCP, Macys etc) to do some quick shopping if we found something good. My wife's parents who had been with us for a few months in US were returning back to India and as is customary in Indian homes, wanted to get some small gifts for friends and family in India. So for men the safe bet usually is t-shirts and my wife wanted to pick a couple of good shirts for her dad as well.  Being able to buy stuff without paying taxes was a good deal and usually most stores top it off with good discounts to encourage people to buy more stuff. Shopping is US usually is  really easy but difficult. The easy part is being able to access stores easily and the hard part is that its a time consuming process mainly because there are too many choices all of them very similar and confusing. So we reached the mall , this being Texas with so much space available the whole mall was spread out over a large area and so was the parking. Plus it was a hot summer day so I dropped my wife very near the entrance to JC Penney store which was the first store we were planning to cover and then parked the car somewhat close to that store.

So we went in covered a few stores and bought the t-shirts. It was almost lunch time and we were hungry and wanted to get back quickly. So we came out and I walked straight to where I parked my car think I parked my car and could not spot it. It was almost mid day and was hot outside as I started walking through rows and rows of  exceptionally large parking lot pressing my car key hoping for my car to answer the call. Nothing, nothing at all.

Which reminds me this was not really the first time this had happened, this has happened many times earlier but within 5 mins I would find my car. Truth be told usually my wife would locate the car as she used to remember where we parked much better than me. Last time I really struggled was almost an year back in the exact same place by a strange coincidence. It was the Thanksgiving day 2016, the day means something to lot of people but for so many of us its the day for retail shopping where retailers give massive discounts on some products which some sensible careful shopper utilize well to get good deals, but most of us just go crazy and buy lot of junk. So on thanksgiving day 2016, here I was looking to buy suitcase for the trip to India that weekend. Rest of the family was already in India and since I did not have too many vacation leaves that year had to follow them after a few weeks. I did get a good deal and picked a big suitcase and a smaller suitcase. I was carrying both suitcases and came out to parking area and realized I had no clue where I had parked my car. I did walk around for 15 mins but it was November and the weather was beautiful and at no point was I unduly worried. I was frustrated at not being able to locate my car quickly and lugging two suitcases (even though they had wheels) did not make the matters easy. I had a rough idea about how much distance I would have walked to the door to the mall from where I parked so using that as guideline. I slowly started walking through each and every likely row of parked cars and kept pressing my car key and in sometime spotted my car. After getting back I started thinking won't it be wonderful if there was mobile app which tracks where you parked your car. Upon checking I was not surprised to find that there were hundreds of apps. But remembering to use it was always going to be a challenge unless you rely on google which for sure never stops tracking you ( Yeah I know you do track everything). The Google maps app lets you mark the place where you parked as well but was not very easy to use. Long story short there are apps if you feel you always forget so that's longer an excuse, but didn't seem to score well in easy of use.

Back to the present, initially it was amusing to start wandering in circles in exactly the same place as last year - proper DeJa Vu. Last time I was on my own but this time I had my wife who is usually better organized and composed in such situations. So I told her how I did it last time and mentioned how much distance approximately I would have walked from where I parked the car to the door through which I entered the mall today. So we split up and approached from opposite ends and started going through each row to identify the car.Then I saw another couple wandering around like me totally lost and pressing their key, they used the 'panic' button and few rows away their car started emitting loud beeps and owners and vehicle were reunited. I tried doing the same on my car key and again nothing, so maybe I was out of range. I kept doing this for a while now and completed all the rows where I suspected I could have parked. By now I was covered with sweat not just from  wandering under hot sun but more from dread as the panic button thing was the last step and usually always works as long as you are somewhere in the vicinity of the vehicle. By now I was seriously considering the possibility that someone could have stolen the car, I could feel my heart beating faster and things were getting a bit woozy as I could not think of any other possibility. Auto theft was supposed to very very rare here. It was open parking but this was a good decent suburb of Dallas and this city was supposed to be 2nd most safest city in the state and in top-20 safest cities in the country. So it did not really make any sense, maybe if I was dumb enough to leave my keys in ignition or drop it near the car someone could have tried to steal it. But stealing car in such a public place would be stupid but you never know maybe some dumb guys decided to try their luck and picking an ordinary everyday car might make sense. I started walking back into the mall thinking about what I need to do next. The first step I thought would be to go to the mall authorities and alert them and ask them to call cops maybe and then  book a cab for my wife to go back home and then ... Before I could go forward with that line of thought my wife came running towards me and told me we were not searching in the right place. She said she was positive we have come out of a different exit from the mall and we are nowhere near where we parked. Suddenly a feeling of relief washed over me within a second I felt better and from a worried frown sported a sheepish smile.

We went back into the mall through JC Penney store which itself was very huge and had 5-6 different entry/exit doors, all doors and signs outside looked  alike but it didn't take much effort to find the section of the store through which we had originally entered a couple of hours back and I went out into the parking area and easily spotted my car and my breathing became normal again

I think I had wandered around for 20 mins looking for my car  and it was easy to laugh it off and with most problems we ignore when we solve it. I did try to take some positive steps like clicking a pic of the row number to spot where I park. I do the clicking pic part every time I park my car in airport multi-level parking as there is no way I will spot my car otherwise and it could take the whole day to locate the car in such places if you have no clue! What really scares me is the scenario where I forget to take the pic and then run around, though we all like to avoid being too dependent on technology I'm now veering towards grudgingly accepting some tech solution. I'm going to find some way for my phone to track where I park my vehicle and then to tell me how to get to my car when I ask it next time I forget where I parked. Maybe we will soon have a way to speak into your phone and say "Ok Google / Alexa / Siri where did I park my car?" ...At least until we get into autonomous cars or partially autonomous cars and that day does not seem to be very far away either!

Lucky Break

The year 2011 was a stressful and tiring year for her. Throughout the year she remembers slogging hard at work, there was work and more work. Work kept her occupied till late in the day  during the week and most of the times on weekends as well. What made it worse was that the project was managed poorly and deadlines were arbitrary and the manager expected everyone to give up personal life and just focus on work. Speaking of personal life nothing much was moving well there as well, as most friends had drifted away into relationships or lived in other cities and for her an arranged marriage was on cards as well. Her parents had agreed to wait for a few years until as she wanted to focus on her career for a while and that time had run out. Not only the parents the whole extended family and well wishers were constantly talking about finding a suitable match for her. It did irk initially but now that she had settled into a routine of working till late in evening and arriving home by 10 pm, these things never bothered her. After all those long hours, something had to give and recognition came in form of a meeting with onsite manager in UK. He wanted to get her to UK soon and mentioned it will help her move further in career.
Back home the reaction was not all that great as she expected, parents were happy at her getting recognized as good performer and being offered opportunity to work abroad. But there was also fear that this may delay her marriage search but she had decided she was travelling and that was it. She was to travel in March of 2012 and towards end of Jan the visa interview was set-up. After a bleak and tiring year things seemed to have turned a corner in the  new year ... and then it happened a few days before the visa interview!
She cannot remember how exactly it happened but somehow while visiting her cousin's house two floors above in same apartment her foot slipped on the stairs and she landed awkwardly flight of stairs below with severe pain at the point of impact - her left hand. She was quickly taken to a specialist who took x-rays and confirmed it was a fracture.  Doctor advised taking 4 weeks break for the arm to heal. Suddenly all plans had gone for a toss and the UK trip was now out of question as the role had to be filled by next month so someone else will end up taking her place while she sat at home. Missing work for a whole month would mean she will fall back at work and will no longer be assured of the top rating that seemed to be in the bag. While she was lost in thoughts and feeling sad about herself, the doctor was chatting up with her parents and had discovered that she was in 'marriage market' and had suggested a few suitable boys he knew which drove her even more mad. Here she was in pain and ruing about the missed chance to do some exciting work abroad and all these guys can talk about is marriage. The doctor was not done yet, he delivered an epic closing line with a smile to her.  "Let this be a lucky break for you"

Lucky break indeed, sitting at home bored out of wits with an arm in cast she could not understand what was lucky in this. But the break from routine was welcome, spending time at home during the day was a good change. Not having to get up feeling sleepy and rushing off in hot Chennai morning in crowded bus and heavy traffic was a welcome change as well. Break allowed her to see things better in terms of life and career. And just as she was getting slightly tired and bored about confined at home a marriage proposal had come. Her mom passed the details of this boy they thought was ok based on profile and his family was interested as well and here was the phone number. The boy wants to talk on phone before taking anything further, that suited her as well. 

So numbers were exchanged and they spoke to each other cautiously at first. She had lots of free time and was bored out of wits so was eager to talk to someone and they hit off really well very soon they were talking for a couple of hours daily. He would text whenever he got free and if she was free which she was for most part they would talk. Pretty soon it was becoming apparent that they were comfortable talking to each other and this moved to serious territory. But with like all things she wanted to keep hopes down so decided to approach this causally. After a few weeks, he suggested meeting up in person to decide if this will work. Meet-up for coffee was at mall nearby which was usually very crowded and the food court was a very noisy place as she remembered it. 

So the day arrived and she caught an auto and went there. The place looked super crowded and she still had pain in fractured arm and dreaded moving through the crowds.He was waiting outside and looked just like she expected. Though mall entrance was crowded, he had identified a different entrance which was not crowded and it had an elevator which they took to reach the intended floor and he marched her straight into a home furnishing and gift store which was odd. She was surprised to find a good coffee shop inside which gave them enough privacy to sit and talk. Sit and talk they did for a long time and finally it was time to leave. Standard operating procedure that she was aware for such meetings is to play it safe at the end of the meeting and part well. Whether you like the person or not was usually conveyed subsequently over phone or text. So as they were about to get up she mentioned the usual lines of lets think about how to proceed next and we can drop each other text message later today.

But she was met with a smile and he just got up and said "I don't know about you, but I like you a lot and I'm very much interested in proceeding. What do you think?". She had decided to keep the expectations low as she walked in and think later in the day. So this was a surprise and she is not sure how and or when she made up her mind but she found herself smiling back while saying "Its ok from my side as well". So they walked out together ...

Now 5 years later on warm summer morning in Texas as she wakes up next to him she has to admit that it was a lucky break indeed