Books that kept me busy in October!

Hyperbole and a half by Allie Brosh

This was a quick and fun one to read. Filled with art work (there is more art in the book than text), Allie Brosh has created an impressive comic-style book capturing her life lessons and imparting some forms of wisdom. I could relate a lot to her thinking and the way she goes about questioning the life around her. You could visit her blog for a glimpse of what to expect: https://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/

She talks about dogs, depression, identity and so many important aspects of life (and how to enjoy it). This is one book you can keep coming back to when you are feeling low or want to have a laugh or want to ponder about life’s basic questions. Would highly recommend it.?

Six easy pieces by Richard Feynman

Richard Feynman is a famous physicist, Nobel peace prize winner and widely known for the Feynman technique which is a mental model to convey information using simple steps and easy to understand language. Six easy pieces is an exhibit A for the technique. The chapters are text from his actual lectures to students and six concepts - atoms in motion, basic physics, the relation of physics to other sciences, conservation of energy, the theory of gravitation and quantum behavior. This took me back to my days in school where I found it hard to understand physics and to be honest I still do even after reading the book. That’s not to say that the book is bad in fact it tries to explain things in a very simple way… its just me.?

Anxious people by Fredrik Backman?

This was my fiction pick for the month. It is truly a fascinating read and to be honest it took me quite a few pages to get hooked onto the book - it was like one of those TV series whose pilot episode is not that great but grows on us later on. The story is about a group of people who get to know each other and learn more about life, all when they are held hostage by the robber. Its a very unusual plot for such a heart warming story. The book reinforces the role of simple and basic things like friendship and companionship and how that can cause a great positive impact on humanity in general. Like I said, it takes a while to like the book but once you’ve given it a try, I promise you’ll not be disappointed.

Poor Charlie’s almanack by Charlie Munger and Peter Kaufman

This book is a collection of Charlie Munger’s speeches and notes. For the ones who don’t know Charlie Munger, he is a close aide and trusted adviser of Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett constructively debates things with Charlie and considers him his right-hand man in running Berkshire Hathaway. This book is pretty long and it is filled with wisdom that doesn’t just cover the obvious investment world that Charlie operates in but it it also covers economics and its interaction with psychology. Charlie is no trained economist but shares his personal learnings and lessons from it. My favourite part of the book is his 11th (and last) talk in the book which talks about 25 psychological tendencies which serve as a primer on psychology. Each of them is explained with examples and how it affects decisions.

Charlie is also known to be an exhibit A for his latticework of mental models (frameworks for problem solving by gathering information, analysing them and then making informed decisions). Most of us grow up with 1-2 mental models and pretty much use that for every problem that we are challenged with. Charlie’s wisdom couldn’t have built on just 1-2 of them. He uses a variety of them to solve everyday problems and also gives us real-world examples to illustrate that in action. To know more about mental models and for further reading on decoding Munger, I’d recommend the blog - Farnam street

Mastering fear by Brandon Webb?

A very interesting book and I’ve listened to the authors podcast on the Tim Ferriss show. One of my eye opening themes from the book was on how the author provides a different perspective to being in or staying out of your “comfort zone” and to redefine it with a different term: competence zone. Its a short book and can be completed in under a week with one chapter a day. This is one of those books which will make you ponder and daydream as you read it. Packed with examples from his SEAL training days and elaborate practice notes and descriptive idea to execution steps, Mastering fear is a must read for everyone.

Smart Business: What Alibaba's Success Reveals about the Future of Strategy by Ming Zeng

I have always been amazed by Jack Ma, the way he speaks disperses humility, his wisdom gained from building Alibaba and multiple organisations.?

Because of social media, many of you would be of the opinion that Alibaba is a copy-cat of the common household name firms from the Silicon Valley - it definitely is not. The book exposes the vision of Jack Ma in building Alibaba and what strategies worked for the organisation. Written by Ming Zeng who was a senior executive in Jack Ma’s leadership team, we get a first-person view into the inner workings of Alibaba.?

The book names network coordination and data intelligence as the two critical drivers of value creation and looks at a C2B (Customer to business) strategy which was very interesting. He also goes on to say that Smart businesses are the ones who have established a synergy between network and data thereby making your organisation powerful and dangerous to the competition. The other key strategy to building a smart business is to embed rapid feedback loops in every relationship and action in the network of your organisation by means of data intelligence and live data.

Though the book is a bit dated (published in 2018), the insights are very relevant. I would highly recommend this book if you ever think of building a business yourself.

How to manifest anything by Nitish Kannan

The book is written by Nitish who is a friend of mine. I can say that when I met him way back in 2016 in Sydney, the book wasn’t written and I could already see that he was living to what he’s written now. He truly dreams big and lives a life of possibilities.?

Filled with possibilities, the book talks about dreaming big, being grateful for what you have and the opportunities you get and to imagine different possibilities for you in life. The book doesn’t have anything that is eye opening or jaw dropping but it condenses a lot of useful tips on living a content-full life into simple terms. Kudos to Nitish for synthesising these key insights and infusing the current COVID-19 circumstance.?

Flux: 8 superpowers for thriving in constant change by April Rinne?

April Rinne is a famous futurist and a change navigator. In the book, she starts by saying that the world is in constant flux but instead of being bogged down and unprepared for the uncertainty, let’s try and attempt to have a graceful and confident trial to survive and eventually enjoy our life. The book has some interesting concepts like asking someone “What do you do?” fundamentally asks the wrong question. “What motivates and inspires you?” is better way to ask a new person as it helps learning about their unique script. The book talks about leading change and innovating in the future by moving from an old script that has been passing across generations to a new script which requires 3 key shifts to flux: A mindset shift from predict to prepare, and expectations shift from “things will go to plan” to “plans will change” and a focus shift from known to unknown.

There is a fundamental call back to the stoic philosophy throughout the book’s concept and that hit a deep connection with me.

The book also includes a good, detailed discussion guide in a question format to help you ingrain the change in your mindset.

"Life is flux"

- Heraclitus

Thanks for reading!

Here are my previous editions from the year:

• Books I read this July!
• Books that captivated my mind this August!
• Books that I read in September!