books from goodreads statistics page

Since I have the practice of recording the books I read on Goodreads, I get some interesting statistics everytime I record a book. It does list the short books published locally though.

Since I have been foraging on books from the Juggernaut app as well, there are quite a lot of them which are on Goodreads though.

Looking at my statistics as of today, here is a list of books I have read. I'll try to put a few notes I could recall on that book. It might be more of a mental activity to remember the book, but if any of the readers of this post find any of them interesting, you may take up further checking on Goodreads/Amazon or your local bookstore.

The Shortest Book seems to be "The Angel of the Odd" at just 12 pages. I recall this book from the many short story books I was reading from Juggernaut which were available for free.

The Angel of the Odd (Edgar Allan Poe) -> This is the story where a man questions the concept of luck in the regular logical arguments mode, and is faced with a terrible fantastic adventure as a consequence. This adventure described in a  sequence of mishaps leaves him doubting his own convictions about the importance of luck. I recall the book especially for the comic narrative. As with all short comic books, the entertainment is in the flow and narrative.

The Longest Book seems to be "A Falcon Flies" at 704 pages. This was from a collection of British books I purchased from a local Bookstore in Kochi.

A Falcon Flies(Wilbur Smith) -> This is quite an interesting book since it introduced me to the colonial British involvement in the African continent. I hadn't really read any books on this topic prior to it and there were lots of new ground to cover like connecting the history and sequence of events leading to the story and characters. The book itself seems one off a long series with a similar theme of British adventurers on African soil, with some sympathizing and aligning to the plight of the natives, while others playing at various spectrums. Overall, it felt like a good travel read. Oh yeah, let me add - this is a work of fiction.

The Most Popular one seems to be "Blink:The Power of Thinking Without Thinking". This was one of those 'thinking' books I read and that was quite recently too. I even was trying a more involved way of reading such books, inspired by "Farnam Street".

Blink:The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (Malcolm Gladwell) -> This isn't the first book I have read of this author and I really liked many concepts in his previous books. In fact when I tried to recall them, I had difficulties doing it. It was one of the reasons I decided to try new techniques from Farnam Street while reading "Blink". I wrote on the margins with a pencil with my thoughts and wrote crystallized thoughts on a small notepad after I finished a short reading session. Needless to say, I found it quite a nourishing way to read.

Now about the book itself; It is an interesting take on topics like judgement, split-second decisions, bias, fast learning etc. Being a complicated topic with no stiff borders and definitions, I believe the author did a good job overall. He introduces the concept using an interesting example of an art fraud which goes undetected through scores of months-long scientific analysis but is caught in a moment by some art experts. He then investigates what made it possible for them to do it. Though he starts of with some over-the-head promises like "Anyone can do complex intuitive judgements without years of practice", at the climax, the book didn't seem to do anything like that.

What it in fact provides is a better awareness of some concepts like the unknown bias that affects everyone,  how stress makes even the most clairvoyant and fair person myopic, and provides some terminology and techniques to explain yourself to others when you perform an intuitive judgement. I found the term 'thin-slicing' very useful. He also has a very interesting case of why too much information inhibits decision making skills. I could really apply these to daily personal and professional tasks. Hence I enjoyed the book quite a lot.

Stopping it here. Will put out another post peppered with thoughts on a few other books.

Working deep in the mines

Nowadays the majority of my working hours are in discussions, either passively listening or taking notes or explaining or negotiating things.

With the remote working nature, even the simplest discussions and interactions need to go through elaborate chaos of noise, dropped calls, and overlapping voices. Oh I almost forgot the great villians: Echo and Delay.

Also, it seems like everyone is almost always in discussions/meetings, so its hard to have quick drawing-on-the-board discussions or idea generations over a cup of tea.

I find the impacts to be mainly on topics which require convincing people, sending subtle reassuring messages using body language, and generally to capture everyone's attention. The people you want to convince are either busy doing something else when you are carefully articulated sentences are pronounced, or they have connection problems or worse they misunderstood your voice modulations.

Also working from home, with a small kid and spouse also employed, meetings sometimes become a nuisance as it disrupts the family ceremonies like lunch,dinner and conversations. This is also partly due to the lack of any fixed start or end timelines for a working day. At least when we used to commute to office, one could just be away from the seat ( be it sipping tea, or at restroom, taking a call, puff or even gone home for the day ), and others would let you be unless its urgent. Now, all this happens through meetings, especially with colleagues of different geographic regions competing to fit the schedules into those of others.

My son who has just started speaking already has words like Appa Amma Meeting, Aptop ( laptop ) in his vocabulary and imitates me typing with headphones on, sipping green tea.

With no boundaries between office life and personal life, there is no space for social life either. And there is nothing to blame the office life for that since the virus takes the primary blame for it anyway.

Now with all this chaos around us, when work requires one to think deeply and extract its gems, there is an interesting condition. When one is able to sink oneself into the deep workings of the mind, making connections, all the din outside fades away, replaced by quiet neurons at work. But as always the deep work sessions last but for a few minutes. Many a times the deep sessions happen by themselves like at loo or while doing something else which require mechanical repetitive actions. Also the time just before sleep invades at night and just before sleep retreats in the morning brings along with it various insights which enhance or correct the previous day's deep thoughts.

The meditative state of the mind is so satisfying and enriching that one yearns to keep going back there and it requires significant investment in isolation and time. So naturally, it keeps many shallow tasks aside, which requires others around you to pick them up or if it suits, they'll just wait for you to get back to it.

Notes from Coronapril

Notes from April 2020
This lockdown and isolation is gonna last for a month more. Oh god. How do I bear it?

Even the thirty day subscriptions or Prime and Magzter would come to an end soon. Then I would have only cooking, workout, music, books, writing and painting to keep myself mentally sane. And there is the garden too which is quite ignored. And of course, I almost forgot, there are the extremely crushing office schedule, collaborating with remote colleagues and some really lengthy training modules too.

Also, on Magzter, what could be the inspirational motivation to read the magazines on Architecture, Aeroplanes, CoViD updates and medical news? I have earmarked a lot, but unable to start reading them. I find myself only looking forward to reading on travel (which is the last thing possible now).
-----End of notes---

PS: Nothing happens the way one notes down about it. I ended up either binge reading every single magazine on Magzter before its subscription ended, or deleted a few I realized were too dry. I ended up not doing any workout, did no painting or writing and just stuck to movies, office work, books and magazines.

Reading in the time of Corona

The months of lockdown also meant months of reading hundreds of magazines and books from free eBOOK apps and physical ones. I was extensively using Magzter and Juggernaut apps on the phone. I continue to use the latter while the former was stopped after its free version ended. Since there was a deadline, I also read feverishly and later sat down to vomit it all out to a diary to see how much I could recall. Now I am just digitizing some of those notes .. for fun.

In fact, as of today, I have 40 books marked Read in Goodreads, compared to the usual maximum of 20 a year. This doesn't count the hundreds of magazines and books which are not in Goodreads. If I try to recall the genre of magazines, I can quickly recall Architecture, Landscape, Science, Travel, Technology, History, Facts, History, Sci-Fi, Historical Fiction, Indian Mythological Fiction, Health Foods, Crime and even some Malayalam Literature.

There was this article I read about the Archer fish, originally found in the Sundarbans.
The fascinating aspect of this fish is that it beats refraction aspects and manages to shoot perfectly at insects high above the water line even while its eye is below it.

Then there was the article on the Basilisk lizard that has perfected running over water with a mechanism of running. It helps it to survive and gives more options of escaping compared to other similar organisms.

I also came to know that Band Aid was created by an employee whose wife kept having cuts and bruises at the kitchen. It was prepared by sticking pieces of gauze with anti-septic stuck on small tapes for easy application.

Also I realized that all dogs are the same species though they vary in lots of characteristics. This is because they are able to inter-breed between breeds.

The invention of MRI is a disputed one between some American and British scientists.

The head feels rotating in the direction opposite to the actual motion as it is still undergoing the cancellation action ordered by the brain to retain some kind of equilibrium.

The reason air is invisible is because it doesn't alter the photons which pass through it. Other materials like water in it does it and causing it to translucent.

There were some tough science topics also that I read about a lot like the Corona Virus, T-Cells, Lymph nodes, generation of antibodies, and the history of deep bores into the Earth. Looking at the vast topics these are, I can justify not having written down lengthy notes at that time.

Then there were the stories of exploration of the Angel falls, detailed full magazines on Ladakhi architecture, garden landscaping ideas and stories on sustainable living environments.

Since I am not able to locate the other notes, I might keep putting more posts on what I am able to recall, more as a memory recall exercise than anything else.