What have I been reading?

Managed to squeeze in few books in the hectic startup schedule. Ones I completed:

• राग दरबारी by Shri Lal Shukla
• Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond
• Sahyadri ki Chattanein by Aacharya Chatursen Shastri
• Freakonomics by Steven Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner
  

राग दरबारी has been on my reading list ever since. I remember going to my dad's office and seeing this book on the shelves there. I recognized its name because of the TV serial based on it which aired on DD in the good old days. Don't remember anything from the serial but all this did manage to setup some high expectations from the novel in my mind. And boy! does it deliver! It is a masterpiece. All those people who have only lived in cities and often dream about the simple, carefree lives of rural areas are in for a rude shock. The hypocrisy of rural society is on display in its full glory. After reading the novel, I am now desperate to get my hands on the old DD TV serial and watch it. Doesn't seem to be available anywhere though. A must read for every Hindi literature enthusiast though to provide fair warning - Jaya didn't like it and couldn't go past first few pages :).

Sahyadri ki Chattanein is the dramatized version of the life of Shiva Ji and his early struggle with Mughals. It is a small average read, nothing particularly remarkable about it. Leaves you with some nice historical nuggets and trivia. One thing I noticed was that I am getting good at catching tons of proofreading mistakes in the books I read. Though written by the very prolific and excellent Chatursen Shastri, this one had particularly bad production quality!

Guns, Germs and Steel should be prescribed as a history textbook in all the schools. This is the way history should be taught & learned - not the what but the why and how. A fabulous read which challenges our understanding at every step and shows us a larger picture of world history as it has been unfolding over past few thousand years. There does remain the chinks in the armor though - some explanations seem forced, the book over all felt a little longer to my information-snacking-addict brain but all those are just minor annoyances. The new perspective, the new way of analyzing and understanding human history that the book leaves you with, makes up for all that. Highly recommended.

Last is Freakonomics which I finished just today and which prompted me to return to this blog. Freakonomics is an interesting and light read which can be gauged from the fact that I managed to start and finish it in about 1.5 months :). It is interesting and just like GGS, provides you a new way of looking at seemingly straight forward things and figure out surprising patterns. some of these patterns look particularly insightful and clever while others not so much. I would say it is worth a read. Also while reading the chapter which analyzes the reasons behind the crime rate drop in US, I sorely wished that someone would dig out the reservation data (now that we have RTI) and apply similarly rigorous analysis to that. Gathering data, defining metrics and then holding ourselves responsible to them - that is how the affirmative action programs should be run. Not through the hand waving arguments and decades old data.

Question now is, what next? May be "The Principles Of Beautiful Design" by "Jason Beaird" which is the first e-book I bought :)