Category: Non fiction

  • The Year of Magical Thinking

    Joan Didion

    “We never know we go,—when we are going
    We jest and shut the door;
    Fate following behind us bolts it,
    And we accost no more    .” ~ Emily Dickinson

    Death and illness is around us, and as we grow older, even more so. Or maybe we become even more conscious of it. And yet, it is as Yudhishtira answered the Yaksha’s question – “What is the greatest wonder?” with “Day after day countless people die. Yet the living wish to think they will live forever. O Lord, what can be a greater wonder?”

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  • Scale

    Geoffrey West

    I am quite a fan of patterns. It is difficult to look around and not believe that there is some grand order in the scheme of things. But it becomes even more difficult when one does not have the luxury of faith. And thus it is a pleasure when science points to a possible unifying theory that brings some amount of order to what could be mistaken for randomness. Scale begins with showing how ‘there are scaling relationships that quantitatively describe how almost any measurable characteristic of animals, plants, ecosystems, cities and companies scales with size.‘ We are talking of things as varied as metabolic rate, patents, and companies’ income and assets! The simplicity underlying the complexity is what this book is about.

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  • The Molecule of More

    Daniel Z. Lieberman, Michael E. Long

    The ‘molecule of more’ whose machinations make you desire what you don’t have, and drives you to seek new things. That which offers rewards when you obey it, and punishes you when you don’t. Dopamine, whose fingerprint is visible in most of the thoughts and actions we do on a daily basis, is the subject of the book. Discovered in 1957 by Kathleen Montagu, and first thought of as a pleasure molecule, only .0005% of brain cells produce it, but it has a disproportionate influence on us.

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  • Happy Money

    Ken Honda

    I’m a big fan of The Psychology of Money and really didn’t think there’d be another money book that would interest me to this extent. I bought the book thanks to an article about it (at CapitalMind), which convinced me that the book had several insights that would be helpful.

    As with the other book, this one too is less about investing/trading tips and secrets, and instead deals the subject with a light touch. By attaching the quality of happiness to money itself, he quickly points out the difference between happy money (e.g. being paid by a happy client for work you love to do) and unhappy money (e.g. taxes, salary for a job you hate). Money, according to Honda, is energy (current – currency) and the energy with which you give and receive money defines your relationship with it. It has some common functions – saving, exchange, growth, but our relationship with it is subjective. And we all want to win. But the big insight here? ‘Winning is not how well you do financially. It is how good you feel about playing.‘

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  • Walking Towards Ourselves: Indian Women Tell Their Stories

    Catriona Mitchell

    That it took Catriona Mitchell, born in Switzerland, and raised in UK and Australia, to edit and publish this anthology – about and by Indian women – is perhaps a statement in itself. In any case, I am glad she did. The flap describes it as a kaleidoscope of distinct and varied real-life stories, and I think that is just about accurate. Just about because I don’t know if it sufficiently captures the distinctness and the variety.

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