The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living by Dalai Lama

Rating 2/5

the first book about Buddhism that I read was “an end to suffering” by Pankaj Mishra. I liked it very much and in my excitement I picked up this popular book by the Dalai Lama. I was disappointed.

I found much of his writing is similar to that of Deepak Chopra, I am surprised that people have not called his bluff yet. In his writing he does not seem to be the great person that he is made out to be in the media.

In the book, someone from the audience and asks “how to deal with suffering, great loss, loss of child”. To this the Dalai Lama offers vague, half baked solutions, shallow analysis “... idea of rebirth”, “ stop worrying because long-term worrying is harmful.” these fantasies solutions, with reward and punishment. They are not true insight into human suffering.

Prelude to foundation –Isaac Asimov

Rating: 3/5

my first Asimov book. The best part is that it is not bad. Story and writing are plain. I do not see much creativity in the story, he does not take advantage of all the possibilities that science fiction offers. I will read one more book from the same author just to see whether he is consistently like this.

Extra comments:
my friend, who recommended this book, says Asimov's cool idea is that humanity does not change over time. I think the lack of change depicted shows the lack of creativity of the author.

Just as an example: how about predicting a world where humans do not have the internal conflict and hence do not have external conflict (by internal I am referring to inside the human, this is somewhat like J. Krishnamurti's vision). Our e-mail exchange follows:

My friend replies:
There is no such thing as a perfect balance.
Not in nature, not in the Universe.
Physics proves it, energy transfer is not 100% efficient either. There is always loss of energy while transferring.
Therefore there is no such thing as complete harmony in balance inside or outside.
As History has proven, Humans prefer to live quite selfishly within themselves, for themselves and are therefore entirely unpredictable individually. Which is why Asimov treated them as a Whole to predict their behavior.
You'll need Psychohistory to predict the future of human nature OR look deep enough inside to discover the ONE truth. 

I'll wait to see what future prediction to come up with.

I agree with Agent Smith in the Matrix, we won't stop until we destroy our own host and therefore ourselves, like Viruses.

How about that?


My reply:
agent smith's view is common,well known,pessimistic,easy and tempting.
it is based on short history of humanity.
asimov's time is waaaaaaaay far into future. by then i suspect things will be much more different.

[this is just one prediction, just to show how to be different from asimov. based on what u r saying, asimov believes human nature doesn't change. where's the creativity in that]

about perfect balance and nature:
in some aspects of human life we have already broken away from nature's rules.  Especially in aspects related to culture, literature and other creations of the mind.  a large complement of the prediction that I made is related to what humans would believe at that time, and because our beliefs have some independence from the rules of nature, I think that the perfect balance rule you mentioned may not apply so strongly.

Gandhi An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments With Truth - Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma) Gandhi

Rating: 3/5

these are just my notes from reading the book about halfway:
“the choice was now made in favour of vegetarianism, the spread of which ends for it in my mission.”
Just because he chose to be a vegetarian why is it natural for him that he should spread it, that others should follow?

Gandhi is very honest in this book, he mentions details that people would normally be shy to talk about. For example about his obsession with sex, other attitudes, some bad things he did in his youth.

If all the things that he is navigating in this book come from memory (no Journal) then I must saying he has excellent memory. Or, he is good at making up the details.

Page 317: “I saw that bhramacharya, which is so full of wonderful potency...”. This statement from the book implies that potency is desirable. Most people have sex, Gandhi wants to become portent by not doing it. But both (common people and Dundee) are united in their desire for potency. So at a deeper level aren't the two the same?

seven spiritual laws of success – Deepak Chopra

Rating: 1/5

he has some cool insights, although sufficiently vague that they can be interpreted in many ways. For example, “all of creation is the result of the unmanifest transforming itself into the manifest.” But most of the book seems quite fake and mushy, it has a lot of new jargon like self-referral, pure-potentiality, infinite creativity. Somewhat like the motivational speakers on TV: “you are a healthy, confident, successful man. Women find you attractive...”.

I can see that this would be appealing to a large audience, but I cannot understand why they are so stupid.

Superclass by David Rothkopf

Rating: 3/5

This is not the peek into the lives of the rich, famous and powerful that I was expecting. It is a social commentary/analysis of the place of the superclass in the world (it is at the top).

No major insight, the author does not pick a fight even though this is such a polarising issue (pulling society apart). No strong statements, no big predictions.

Super Crunchers by Ian Ayres

2 stars out of 5

Picked it up because I am interested in data mining but I was already a bit disappointed when I saw that a co-author of freakonomics (I don't like that book very much) has a comment on the cover.

I didn't find anything wrong (inaccurate) in the book but it is very light and shallow. It contains many shallow examples of data mining but very little real insight. Good to know that many people on Amazon field the same way.

Games Indians play by V. Raghunathan

Rating: 2/5 stars

The book is incomplete, it does not provide a solution to the problem. Even the explanation of the problem is not very deep, or broad,or thorough.

He makes a good list of observations of Indianness, I especially liked the example of traffic on the two sides of the railway crossing : )

But he repeats variations of the prisoner's dilemma, the maximiser's problem, etc. over and over. He does not provide examples of working systems or how we could get out of our bad habits.

The preface by Infosys man Narayana Murthy is like a book review by a high-school student. He talks more about the book than he talks about the topic of the book, makes empty praise for the author.

But the author is a successful businessman, was a professor at IIM, then why is this book such a mess? Maybe he didn't put much effort into it?

Some cool ambient music - legal mp3 download

Found these through somafm, though I could not find a download for the specific track they were playing on radio I did find a remix and a few others. checkout:

http://www.ovarecords.com/discography/downloads/Awaken-Tardbass%20remix.mp3

And some whole albums for free download:
http://www.ovarecords.com/ova2/frame_whereyouare.htm
http://www.ovarecords.com/ova2/frame_satydownload.htm


do let me know if you know any other websites where i can find more ambient music. [i do listen to somafm and also buy from amazon.com mp3]

update 1: i have been listening to these songs over the last few days. very good and highly recommended.

why i like ambient music

I like ambient music very much, some of my favorite artists are perfume-tree, starseeds, etc. Thanks a lot to: http://somafm.com/

I have wondered about why I like this type of music. One possible explanation dawned on me a few days ago: I like ambient music because it makes my real life feel like a dream. Helps me detach from the present moment. This dreamy detachment is very attractive to me because dreams are a creation of the mind and so is a large part of real life.

Some free ambient music for download at: ... sorry can't find the link right now. will post later. in the meanwhile checkout:

foreign babes in china by rachel dewoskin

Rating: **

Not much depth or commentary on the culture. Missed a good opportunity. I have never visited China but I think this book only represent a small part of the society, and that too not a very interesting part for me.

One Billion Customers: Lessons from the Front Lines of Doing Business in China - by James McGregor

My Rating: ****

I wish there was such a book about India. Please let me know if you have a recommendation. I could not find one on Amazon.

I feel that people in China share with people in India a fear of the white man. That he will exploit their people without giving them much in return. This book presents the situation from the white man's point of view. It showed me that the white man's intentions are not always as sinister as they are made out to be in the media. You can't blame him for wanting to make a profit. He is not the villian he is made out to be in the media.

The author is well qualified to write such a book. He writes well and handles politically risky topics well, presenting his point in a balanced way.

DVD - Cocoon

My Rating: *****

One of the few movies I watched without fast-fwd'ing portions. Very well made, well handled movie. I should look for more work by Ron howard. Do you have any recommedations?

The elephant and the dragon - by Robyn Meredith

The cover:
Front cover says “...what it means for all of us” but the book only talks about what this means for the United States.

The back cover:
Praise: glowing comments from the CEO of UPS and also from the former president of Mexico! I don't think them to a case that great, I wondered how she managed to get such glowing comments.

Inside:
This book is a lot like other recent books about globalisation -- “the world is flat” etc. There is a lot of good reporting and a lot of information except for some errors (example procedure for foreign travel from India, 20 years ago).
There is not much of an analysis, mostly just narration. The few times she tries to say something of her own she ends up giving free advice on how to run a country (example “India needs to open its economy is it wants to reduce poverty”. I am not saying whether or not this is good advice, just as king what qualifications she has to give such advice)

This book pales in comparison to order the course in the Economist magazine (I'm comparing because I read a good one soon after reading this book).
A different much better book though about China is “One Billion Customers”. I wish there was such a book about India.




Update 1: the elephant book helped me better understand why India's economic policy was so narrow minded before 1991, and why we changed in 1991. Due to our bad experience with the british rule we are very suspisious of the white man.

Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

This book was one of the recommendations from my friends. I was interested in this book because of the novelty factor and also because of the current war in Afghanistan.

The story is gripping, pretty fast-paced. Life events take place in quick succession, migration to US, graduation, marriage, cancer, death, etc. Several parts of the story (e.g. scene with beggar who knew Amir’s mom) didn’t and much to it.

I did not find much of a core of philosophical message or statement in the story. I had the expected to find one given the topic and the popularity of the book. The book is mostly a window into the life in a poor Asian country going through political and cultural turmoil.

There is a lot of drama in the story, it reads somewhat like a Bollywood movie (without the singsong though). I was a bit surprised to find some Urdu that I was able to understand (‘zendagi’, ‘mareez’).

The author is a skilful writer; he makes good use of writing techniques – scene transitions, managing pace of the story.

I am not very excited about reading his other books. I would give this book a three star rating.