Venkat (ADDA) Kandaswamy

My 2010 Books Roundup

1 & 2. Dune and Children of Dune by Frank Hebert

The first part – like all movies – is the best. Truly unputdownable – best science fiction I have ever read. Second part is little tiresome.

3. Flow – Psychology of Optimal Experience. How to find joy in everything you do. This book helped me in my running and car washing! Amazing book – will give a new perspective to how you view little chores to big tasks.

4. Outliers – By Malcolm Gladwell. Reasearch is boring – but reading the interpretation of such research is fun. The figure – 10,000 hours got drilled into my head.

5 & 6. Goal 1 & Goal 2 – By Dr.Eliyahu M.Goldratt. This book is a must read for everyone in any profession. It has got nothing to do with Agile or Lean – it will shake you up and make you think. I have heard multiple times about out-of-the-box thinking – this book has enough examples to trigger the out of box thinking process. Also it gives a whole different view point to dealing with constraints and inefficiencies – it is an opportunity waiting to be exploited.

7. My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk. I picked this book because cover said Nobel Prize winning author. And what a ride it was – Traditionalist vs Modernism. I think I missed most of the deeper philosophies ingrained in it – but what I grasped it was intriguing. Highly recommend this one.

8. Viral Loop by Adam Penenberg. We live in a an interesting social networking era. This book will be defunct in another year or two ( Ning is already on a downward spiral – and this book glorifies Ning ). With MySpace going down the drain – Facebook is not far off. This book covers the journey of all these startups.

These are the 8 books I read in 2010. Just finished reading a mind blowing book this year already – but hey – to know about it you have to wait for my 2011 Books Roundup !

Close Bitnami banner
Bitnami