Review: Anxious People

Anxious People by Fredrik Backman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Hooter: A witty tale of a bank robbery turning into a hostage situation with a motley crew of hostages.

I been doing quite a bit of Fredrik Backman and I think this one takes the cake in terms of wit and smart writing (smart translation I guess). A bumbling bank robber ends up taking an apartment viewing session into a hostage crisis and comes across a very interesting set of people. The bank robber then vanishes into thin air. The rest of the story follows the police investigation and interviews interspersed with back stories of each individual and also flashbacks into the hostage crisis.

Fredrik leverages a very unique structure to his writing in this novel, sort of prodding the mind to work harder as the structure isn't the linear storytelling narrative you'd expect. He captures such heavy subjects such as depression, loneliness, disappointment in a very thought provoking but light manner. This would make a perfect sitcom as he so wonderfully depicted the quirkiness of each of the characters involved adding flesh to all of them through the book whilst bordering at the edge of absurdity.

A nice fun feel good read with some twists and turns and a lot of quirkiness all packaged in a smartly written piece.

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Review: Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts

Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts by Annie Duke
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Hooter: Yet another book on cognitive biases and behavioural economics by a former poker champion

There are some wonderful insights shared by Annie who puts on her poker game experiences to capture statistical analysis and behavioural outcomes. "Life is more poker than chess" does make a lot of sense and how the quality of a decision shouldn't be decided by the outcome. Whilst she uses a superbowl example, we could very much relate it in cricketing terms. This leads to resulting.

Also probability of something happening 4% doesn't mean you predicted wrong when it does happen. Long shots do play out.

The second half of the book talks about tips and ways to get to smarter decisions like having decision making groups, especially ones that have diversity. If this is your first time in this topic, the book makes for a good introduction, if you have read this topic before, this book doesn't add any new insights.

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Review: Just Do It: The Nike Spirit in the Corporate World

Just Do It: The Nike Spirit in the Corporate World by Donald R. Katz
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Hooter: A journalist's version of the rise of Nike as the father of Sports marketing and the enigma of Phil Knight

Whilst Shoe Dog is all about Phil Knight, Just Do it is all about the larger than life celebrities revolving in the Nike universe, many of whom Nike helped build their image starting with Michael Jordan. This book was written in 1994, so a lot of the current stuff in the book is already a few decades old and that shows. The book starts with a high with how Nike seems to get all its dice rolling up to 6 everytime and how they change the whole sports marketing space which was so prevalent already by the time I could make sense of the world around me that I assumed it was the norm since time immemorial only to realise it was all Nike's doing starting in the 80s where every inch of real estate (and now every pixel ) had a price to it. The Olympics controversy makes for good reading so do the initial drafts and the inner workings of Phil Knight and how he was perceived by Ekins (Nike freshers).

Another interesting reading is how everyone in Nike would breath the Just Do It phenomenon and the campus lifestyle. The book then brings in characters probably pivotal to Nike ethos but don't add value to the casual reader who isn't writing a thesis on Nike. I am sure for folks working in Nike, the evolution of the culture and key stakeholders makes for great reading.

The history and how the various competitors came into play along with how Nike literally stormed the world of sports one step at a time make for interesting nuggets and insights.

Overall an interesting first half and a middling second half almost similar to Nike's journey.

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Review: The Presidential Years: 2012–2017

The Presidential Years: 2012–2017 by Pranab Mukherjee
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Hooter: A personal journal through his presidential years as President of India

The two non politically correct opinions Pranab shared and went viral is pretty much the only bit in the entire book that feels heartfelt. Kinda like the movie whose best parts are in the trailer. The rest feels heavily edited with emotions pulled out of it. He talks about how he maintained his constitutional neutrality every time they was an issue in Congress and you could feel that he had taken to heart how he had been shunted from being a probable Prime Minister to a ceremonial President. The book captures some of the duties he performed as the President continuing to open up the veil of mystique in the office of the President to the common man. I guess it was the pain of a man who knew he could have beaten any contender in the boxing ring whilst he was made to sit ringside.

The most interesting part of the book is the collection of photographs he shares with the whose who from over the years part of his official engagements.

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Review: The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money Power

The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money Power by Daniel Yergin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Hooter: If Oil was narcissistic and believed it was the centre of the world. Oh wait...

A very well researched 800 pages of the rise of commodity oil and how a lot of geo-political events across the past century and more can be traced to the single quest of oil. Rockefeller, Nobels, Rothschild and so many brand names had a play in this space and Daniel does a wonderful job of keeping the flow interesting in a potentially very dry topic and thesis this could have turned out to be.

The detailed overview of World War I and World War II strategies centred around oil make for interesting perspectives that I wasn't aware of. How the red line defined Middle East politics, the rise of ARAMCO and BAPCO - both household names from my childhood and how the Middle east was pissed that instead of water, this black liquid was popping up. The way commodity oil has changed the world and in current times when oil prices are something households keep track of, this book makes for interesting reading of how oil indeed become the centre of the current world and how petrodollars still speak high volumes of its power.

Heads up! You may need stamina to get through this big book with small print but if the economics of history interest you, this is a good informative read worth the hours poured in.

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Review: A Grown-Up Guide to Dinosaurs

A Grown-Up Guide to Dinosaurs by Ben Garrod
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Hooter: An extremely novel concept of talking about things we found cool as kids and never followed up - dinosaurs in this case.

I really liked the concept of the series, providing a layman overview of concepts we read in our science textbooks or fascinated about in our childhood and then sorta forgot about it. In this case, it is dinosaurs. I remember I knew a lot more dinosaurs than T-Rex, Diplodocus , steganosaurus etc as a kid but don't really remember too many now. Then again, I had trump cards pack on dinoasaurs as a kid. This series gets a number of paleontologists to share their insights on dinosaurs and how we have been building our knowledge on them through available pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and various technologies revolving around building a picture of the past. The potential of birds being the successors of dinosaurs also makes sense based on some of the details they share of how evolution could have led to the same. A very scientific approach to a topic we probably enjoyed but didn't grasp as kids with parts on how they grew so big, how do we really visualise them considering we only have a few skeletons and no images of their flesh and density and how'd mammals coexist with them if they did.

There are a lot more questions I'd have loved to get answered and that void is probably why I leave this as a three owls hooter.

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Review: Putin: Prisoner of Power

Putin: Prisoner of Power by Russell Finch
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Hooter: When you want a quick refresher on Russian politics and want it to be as serious as a buzzfeed article.

Russian politics in the past 2 decades at the highest echelon has revolved around one man and this takes a look at some instances of his journey from the clearly unsavvy media engagement at the start to how he controls the global narrative. How probably placed in as a nobody to keep the seat warm or a puppet with strings but he cut off those strings and choked (figuratively) the very people who had attached the strings. It also captures the tussles internally and externally with Crimea and Ukraine getting their spotlight.

This is a very short and extremely lightweight one so you probably will get a superficial look at the players, the general mood in certain sections of society and a quick capsule of the two plus decades of Putin and how will he play out his power plays as his Presidency officially comes to an end as per constitutional decree.

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Review: The Perfect Swing

The Perfect Swing by James McGirk
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Hooter: An analysis of the baseball swing between technically correct DiMaggio and the unorthodox Ted Williams - both greats in their own rights

This is marked as a bedtime story under Audible with Nick Jonas narrating it. I wasn't sure why till I heard Nick narrate. He manages to get you to want to doze off with the lullaby tone and speed he uses. For baseball fans, this is a nice quick look into the technical differences in their swing styles and the framework of a good swing and James McGirk does a good job in being able to make the reader/listener visualise the swing but it pretty much stops at that.

Being a very short one, you get through fine, any more and you'd feel like you are sitting in the Baseball theory 101 class.

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Review: Dream with Your Eyes Open: An Entrepreneurial Journey

Dream with Your Eyes Open: An Entrepreneurial Journey by Ronnie Screwvala
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Hooter: Lessons from an entrepreneur with a start up even before the term start up had made it to India.

Ronnie Screwvala and UTV are household names we were born with with almost every other TV serial content created by them, his theatre innings, then them spanning across the various media spectrum and into movies with duds but also blockbusters like Rang De Basanti and Swades. In between there is a stint with manufacturing toothbrushes which I wasn't aware of.

Ronnie shares a heartfelt look back his journey, owning up to failures more than successes and repeatedly using we in his stint at UTV signifying the importance that he lays to his team. This is an interesting insight into the journey he has gone through in the media industry of the 90s and beyond.

I share his penchant for theatre and how it relates to various situations in real life like the board room meeting with Murdoch's team and him being alone being equivalent to being on stage with entire audience staring down at you.

There are or aren't learnings you'd take away from this book. gets a bit repetitive at times with his philosophies which could have done with some crisp editing but provides some interesting nuggets of behind the scenes media - the Rang De Basanti screening to the army fraternity before getting censor board certificate, watching SRk, SLB , MD and ARB at Cannes making a bold desi statement to the run ins with international media houses like NewsCorp, Fox and Disney.

If you are interested in hearing Ronnie Screwvala's entrepreneurial story - this book gives you exactly that.

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Review: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Hooter: A brief history of humankind as the title suggests sums up the content with a lot of thought provoking insights.

Yuval takes a very heavy subject that could span volumes and manages to do certain level of justice to share a series of thought provoking insights on us - the homo sapiens relative to our ancestors and we have evolved over centuries yet probably account for a blip in our own timelines.

His take on the evolution of gossip forming the basis of community to shared beliefs like religion allowing for us to grow as a society makes for an interesting story arc. Wheat domesticated man and not the other way around as we moved from nomads to settling down to farm over centuries.

The role of gender from women being a property of their menfolk to the battle for gender equity in today's day and age also is another arc he tries to share through the evolution of society.

Similarly how capitalism, communism meet the criteria / definition of religion if looked from a particular lens. The interactions with Homo Erectus and other variations that would have co existed and maybe even inter species copulation make for interesting reading. Along with how genetics might have a neanderthal come to life potentially, Yuval captures and provokes a lot of thoughts around our evolution and at what cost to the rest of the planet if not just humankind.

By focusing purely on humans from a social order perspective, he keeps the flow directed without it going all over. Makes for an interesting read loaded with numerous anecdotes from all over the world and some strong hypothesis to push you think beyond the construct we lazily fall back onto.

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