Kiran's Reads in 2016

2016 Reading Challenge

Kiran has read 14 books toward his goal of 50 books.

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14 of 50 (28%)

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Kiran's 2016 book montage

Kiran Hegde's favorite books »

What Kiran read in 2015?

1. Spring Integration in Action - sometime in between

2. Just finished reading this book:"The Power of Full Engagement:" by Jim Loehr, @tonyschwartz https://t.co/HelcETsOQl pic.twitter.com/kACQLtyCy1

   — Kiran Hegde (@hegdekiranr) December 26, 2015

3. Just finished reading this book: "The Power of #Habit " by Charles Duhigg https://t.co/rWdMH6zCPf pic.twitter.com/8c44Takkk5

   — Kiran Hegde (@hegdekiranr) December 14, 2015

4. Just finished reading this book:"#Thrive : The Third Metric to Redefining…" by @ariannahuff https://t.co/4jqJCbAcyJ pic.twitter.com/onzfn3qa7w

   — Kiran Hegde (@hegdekiranr) December 13, 2015

5. Just finished reading this book:Driven to Distraction at Work:How to #Focus by Ned Hallowell https://t.co/oQwFhvjIVu pic.twitter.com/Qiyrizx5AX

   — Kiran Hegde (@hegdekiranr) December 12, 2015

6. Just finished reading this book: "@elonmusk : #Tesla , @SpaceX & the Quest " by AshleeVance https://t.co/RWZZMieAhu pic.twitter.com/io2J8WM7uS

   — Kiran Hegde (@hegdekiranr) December 3, 2015

7. Just finished reading this book: "Emotional Intelligence" by Daniel Goleman https://t.co/SWrqznR4XE pic.twitter.com/iq22U7S5Jc

   — Kiran Hegde (@hegdekiranr) November 29, 2015

8. Just finished reading Pro Spring Batch (Expert's Voice in Spring) by Michael Minellahttps://t.co/5Gcji9e8yo

   — Kiran Hegde (@hegdekiranr) November 24, 2015

9. A Fantastic book I finished reading, " #Focus: The Hidden Driver of…" by #DanielGoleman : https://t.co/hLcEznSipX pic.twitter.com/Ap43pkEIGa

   — Kiran Hegde (@hegdekiranr) October 31, 2015

10. Check out this book I finished reading, "The Organized Mind: Thinking…" by Daniel J. Levitin: http://t.co/ebhhSyTKBC pic.twitter.com/IM3eG79LH4

    — Kiran Hegde (@hegdekiranr) August 22, 2015

11. I just finished The #TippingPoint : How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm @Gladwell, on Kindle for Android!

    — Kiran Hegde (@hegdekiranr) March 18, 2015

12. I just finished reading "Think Like a Freak": The Authors of #Freakonomics by Levitt, Steven D.; Dubner, Stephen J. on Kindle for Android!

    — Kiran Hegde (@hegdekiranr) March 9, 2015

13. I just finished "What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures by Gladwell, Malcolm" on Kindle for Android!

    — Kiran Hegde (@hegdekiranr) March 1, 2015

14. I finished reading #Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by #Gladwell Malcolm on Kindle for Android!

    — Kiran Hegde (@hegdekiranr) February 7, 2015

The #TippingPoint : How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm @Gladwell

I just finished The #TippingPoint : How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm @Gladwell, on Kindle for Android!

— Kiran Hegde (@hegdekiranr) March 18, 2015

Think Like a Freak

Interesting excerpt from a Book I am currently reading - "How to Think Like a Freak" by Steven Levett (Pulitzer Prize winner equal to Nobel Prize in Literature)

A tough Question:
A little girl named Mary goes to the beach with her mother and brother. They drive there in a red car. At the beach they swim, eat some ice cream, play in the sand, and have sandwiches for lunch. Now the questions:
1. What color was the car?
2. Did they have fish and chips for lunch?
3. Did they listen to music in the car?
4. Did they drink lemonade with lunch?
All right, how’d you do?

Let’s compare your answers to those of a bunch of British schoolchildren, aged five to nine, who were given this quiz by academic researchers. Nearly all the children got the first two questions right (“red”and “no”). But the children did much worse with questions 3 and 4. Why?
Those questions were unanswerable—there simply wasn’t enough information given in the story. And yet a whopping 76 percent of the children answered these questions either yes or no. Kids who try to bluff their way through a simple quiz like this are right on track for careers in business and politics, where almost no one ever admits to not knowing anything. 

If the consequences of pretending to know can be so damaging, why do people keep doing it? That’s easy: in most cases, the cost of saying “I don’t know” higher than the cost of being wrong—at least for the individual.

If you say the stock market will triple within twelve months and it actually does, you will be celebrated for years (and paid well for future predictions). What happens if the market crashes instead? No worries. Your prediction will already be forgotten. Since almost no one has a strong incentive to keep track of everyone else’s bad predictions, it costs almost nothing to pretend you know what will happen in the future. In 2011,

For most people, it is much harder to say I don’t know. That’s a shame, for until you can admit what you don’t yet know, however that makes it virtually impossible to learn what you need to (for Real Success!).

I just finished reading "Think Like a Freak": The Authors of #Freakonomics by Levitt, Steven D.; Dubner, Stephen J. on Kindle for Android!

— Kiran Hegde (@hegdekiranr) March 9, 2015

"What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures by Gladwell, Malcolm"

I just finished "What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures by Gladwell, Malcolm" on Kindle for Android!

— Kiran Hegde (@hegdekiranr) March 1, 2015

Book Review - The Accidental Billionaires - Story of Facebook, Mark Zuckerburg et.al

I just finished reading the book  The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal by Ben Mezrich - its a story primarily focused on how it all happened at facebook.com with Mark Zuckerburg , his VC venture capitalist friend and mentor Sean Parker, his co-programmer Dustin , initial co-founding friend Eduardo Saverin et.al.

As its stated in the Author's Note - Its a dramatic, narrative account based on dozens of interviews, hundreds of sources and notes from court proceedings which is summed up by author as what can be called as story of Facebook.

The book is narrative from various vantage points viz. The initial funding kid Eduardo who is co-founder and Sean at times who is also stated as co-founding president but for Mark there is not statements from him as the author states that he has refused !

Short Description of people involved :
Mark is described as a kind of Introvert guy but an obvious programming genius.
Winklevoss Brothers - (Tyle & Cameron) and Divya Narendra - who claimed that Facebook was their idea which they later conceived in form of Harvard Connection but not to mention that it didnt pick up like Facebook did.
On a different note they sued Facebook and Mark and won a significant payout in vicinity of sixty-five million dollars.
Other interesting mentions : Divya Narendra is children of India origin parents and Winklevoss brothers competed in U.S. Olympic rowing team in 2008 Beijing Olympics, placing sixth in the men's pair competition.
Eduardo Saverin :  The initial seed funding friend of Mark who had been looking at business side in the initial days.
Sean Parker : The VC friend who drives facebook.com from a small plant to a Big Tree which his VC connections.

The Story:
It starts with house Mark gets pissed of with a girl & starts programming on something to just take her off his mind and that was Harvard Face Mash which was an application which used to rate person based on their pics and all the pics were hacked in from various servers on the campus which used to maintain their details.

It was an instant hit, but then he closed escapes from being expelled and obviously tarnishing his reputation to some extent especially amongst the campus gals ;-) and like wise giving him publicity too..

This leads to the Winklevoss Brothers and Divya to approach him to program him on their website which they had been apparently working for some time. There is mention of exchange of 52 emails between Mark and them where in Mark reason for not having enough time but then later on going on and launching thefacebook.com

Facebook grows, Mark eventually meets Sean and on his advice they move to California, the turning point is when a VC Peter Theil promises funding of $5,00,000 and rest as they say is History..

Quotable Quotes :
"Certainly, he (Eduardo) had no way of knowing, then or now, that the kkid with the curly hair was one day going to take the entire concept of a social network and turn it on head"

After Sean thought he might get arrested at some party
"The odds are good that Mark was at the Facebook offices at the time - because he was almost always at those offices.
"May be it was still the middle of the night, or may be early morning; time had never been a very useful concept to Mark, just twitches in a clock that had no real-world purpose, no claim or innate value."

"Sean Parker was a genius, and he'd been instrumental in getting Facebook to where it was now. Sean Parker was one of the Mark's heroes and would always be a mentor, an adviser, and maybe even a friend"

Learn able Notes:
The focus and vision of Mark has been seen throughout the story
Similarly focus and hunting by the VCs like Sean and the energy and pace they bring to the table gives example of collaborating.

Movie: The movie Social Network is based on this book.
An excellent movie which is very engaging and interesting through out...
As mentioned here, "You dont get into 500 million friends without making a few enemies!"

Chetan bhagat's Book - Revolution 2020

     

      Abt the book in  Short :

           Raghav, Gopal and Aarti are childhood friends who grow up together. Professionally Raghav becomes a IT-BHU grad, Aarti interests lie around becoming an  Air-Hostess & Gopal a wannabe engineer studies at an engineering college in his city after his 2nd try at IIT entrance.

          Series of dates for years between Gopal and Aarti ends with Aarti & Raghav getting along together. 
          Gopal sets up a college with a surprising help from a local politician and becomes Financially successfull. Raghav opts out of Infosys placement after studies to become a journalist, his article and newpaper exposes the same politician's scams and blows him out of power.
          A bit of Raghav's following his work and negligence of the relationship with Aaarti and a bit of her attracted towards Gopal with his display of power & money turns her towards Gopal but eventually Gopal screws up the relationship. 
          End of story shows up Raghav turning a politician after marrying Aarti "who's family is already into politics" which was portrayed as Gopal's would be status in mid part of the story. 

      Quotable quotes - Didn't highlight something inspirational.. :-)
      Learn able Notes : 

1.  Follow your passion (perhaps chetan’s philosophy also..)

2.  A some one "nobody" with out capability can be so called "successfull" with influence or money get used to it and at the same time you can work hard enough you could win too...

3. Society stereotyped definitions of "Sucess" are too many - dont let them calm your inner voice..



Devils Advocacy : 

    A not so dark side story about the Love & some what coherence to academic/professional Success, Education as a business which includes running of coaching classes to running engineering colleges wherein its ties with Politics is highlighted.

    A too much of IIT glorification at times.

    A nice representation of what success means to most many on-lookers, friends and parents which is most of the times within bracket of high ranks and a good job. 

    Following one's passions means being ready to face difficulties, again silent criticism of Indian corruption which favours the corrupt which most of us become comfortable with eventually. 

    An extremely good example of what it means to live with corruption and stand up against corruption. Can a small locally printed paper - printing few hundred copies blow up an influential political leader? May be ?
       Some times its just that if fulfills a reader's fancy may it be fulfilling expectation of changing system or a turning around one's dream girl from someone else..

            An extremely abrupt turn in the end which shows Gopal screws up his relationship with his girl friend, no one who is hiring such types of girls for his delegate or business partners would get them into his house or rather even allow & even if he does - incase of a shared institutional house as in the story would probably not bring them in such places or mess with them...

Chetan Bhagat and his books!

I am sure you arent asking "Who is Chetan Bhagat?" :-)

By any remotest chance if you are then the you can find out here that he  studied Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute Of Technology (IIT) Delhi (1991–1995). He graduated from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM)  Ahmedabad (1995–1997). After graduation he worked as an investment banker in Hong Kong.

That would be what most such IIT/IIM would be most happy with but Chetan choose a different path to pursue his passion for writing.

He has written 4 books so far and all of them have remained bestsellers till date...

A trend breaker – of course one would say...

What are his 4 books like ?

1.     Five Point Someone – What not to do at IIT! (2004) – A dark side book on 3 IITians viz Alok, Hari and Ryan who did all sort of not to do things at IIT securing 5 point something grades (which happens to be on lower side on scale of 10). It highlights many issues in the system in India which could be ragging, grading systems which as perceived leaves lesser room for creativity and so on..

Quotable quotes - C2D"(Cooperate to Dominate)

Movie - 3 idiots is based on this Novel although story line is considerably different..

Actors & their roles could be co-related as below

Aamir Khan – Rancho – Ryan – the seemingly wealthy, successful & intelligent

R. Madhavan - Farhan Khureshi – Hari – The narrator, photographer

Sharman Joshi – Raju Rastogi – Alok – Less confident seeming arising out of familial pressure.

Learnable Notes : All is well, Follow your passion (perhaps chetan’s philosophy also..)

2.     One night at call centre (2005)

Its based on  a group of six call center employees working in Connexions call center in Gurgoan, Harayana. Its how these 6 people traverse with their problems, Lot of mention about the cheap office politics, creating taking & too much filmly with the story Narrated by a beautiful girl in Train & the final call from God.

Movie – Hello is said to be based on this Novel

Quotable quotes : Dont remember any : -|

Learnable Notes : -

3.     3 Mistakes of My Life (2007)

Again 3 buddies

Govind – An typical less emotional more analytical business stereotypes

Ishaan – Cricketer by heart & by business later due to alliance with Govind

Omi – Represents back ground of fanatic political family back ground

Story line has combination of Riots to religionistic fanatism and secularism to Cricket love to Love Story.

Quotable Quotes: Life is an optimization problem, with tons of variables and constraints. You can minimise the pissed-off state, but can't make it zero. We can only optimise life, never solve it!

Learnable Notes : -  

4.     2 States : The story of my Marriage (2009)

Is said to be fictionalized version of his own marriage story

You can relate a lot to Bollywood films, I particularly liked the explicit dialogues expressing statements of typical North & South Indian parents and their relatives when they find their son/daughter marrying some one not of their castes, states and so on... ;-)

Quotable Quotes :  -

Learnable Notes : IMHO (& personal O too.. ;-))

1.     A spouse of same caste/religion/state means default respect, love, acceptance n all & for other caste/religion/state means vice –versa

Why? – just because they think is to be incorrect/in-appropriate primarily because they didn’t have a say in it..

2.     The pace of acceptance in future is directly proportional to the professional success or displayed smartness or at least proportional to perceived smartness of the contender ;-)

3.     (Not all but definitely many) Families are least bothered about compatibility of the couple rather are most bothered about the increasing number of points they can brag about !

4.     The type of comment about you is going to be good if they like you and other wise if they don’t.. It hardly happens other way! : -)

Common Stuff :

1.     All stories have a dark side, but again in real life as well one goes through dark phases.

2.     All stories have intimate scenes ;-)

Chetan Bhagat writes periodically in top newspapers which can be read one his blog here –

His writing style here is completely different & analytic

His awe-inspiring speech “Spark” is here and Excerpts are as follows :

“Life is not to be taken seriously, as we are really temporary here. We are like a pre-paid card with limited validity. If we are lucky, we may last another 50 years. And 50 years is just 2,500 weekends. Do we really need to get so worked up? It’s ok, bunk a few classes, goof up a few interviews, fall in love. We are people, not programmed devices.

I’ve told you three things – reasonable goals, balance and not taking it too seriously that will nurture the spark. However, there are four storms in life that will threaten to completely put out the flame. These must be guarded against. These are disappointment, frustration, unfairness and loneliness of purpose.You cannot avoid them, as like the monsoon they will come into your life at regular intervals. You just need to keep the raincoat handy to not let the spark die.!

P.S. I am not affiliated to him in anyways, just like him, kinda follow him, so wrote abt him!

Kiran Hegde

http://about.me/hegdekiran

The Thinkers 50

Thinkers 50 by Ciaran Parker is an interesting book with a short description about The World's 50 Most Influential Business Writers and Leaders..

Few of them are as below.

• Bill GATES (20)
• C.K. PRAHALAD (12)
• Tom PETERS (3)
• Jack WELCH (8)
• Richard BRANSON 
• Philip KOTLER (6)
• Vijay GOVINDARAJAN and so on... :)

Appealing part is the precise description, highlighting important works done by them

About the book :

Parker, Ciaran. "Assembling the 50". The Thinkers 50: The World's 50 Most Influential Business Writers and Leaders.Praeger Publishers. © 2006.