Just Me - India - books

Book Review: One Night @ The Call Center

noreply@blogspirit.com (LeoBoy) — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 17:25:00 +0200

Rating: **

This is a book that starts off with a great promise, even the few lines summary in the back cover page interests you. But it fails to deliver completely.

It is a story about the lives of few individuals working in a Call Center. This story is apparently told to the writer by a girl whom he meets in the train. It starts off fairly well, but loses track very soon, and goes on and on about their relationships with one another. It is almost as if, the writer wanted to write some sort of a relationship book. More than 50% of the book deals with that - something u were not expecting from a book with this title !!

The last few chapters of the book are unbelievably bad. Almost as if the writer was in tremendous hurry to finish it. After reading this, there is no interest left to read an earlier book by this same author: Five Point Someone.

Highlights:

The book is correctly priced only at Rs 95.
Not a very big book, easy to read (large fonts).
Storyline, not very good. Too much focus on discussing relationships of all sorts. You start wondering - whats going on !
The end is bad, and not well-thought out. Rushed finish.

Can anyone write something and become an author?

Made in Japan - Akio Morita

noreply@blogspirit.com (LeoBoy) — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 12:20:00 +0100

Rating: *****

Autobiography of Founder of Sony !

If you want to know about the life and success story of the man who created Sony - this is the book. Among many other things he talks about:

His early years in the military.
How the work patterns in Japan differ from those in the West (USA).
How intuition is often greater than data - everyone had predicted there was no market for 'Walkmans' - but Akio Morita - went ahead with their introduction in the market - and rest is history.
Importance of excellence and quality in their products (this is real quality built into engineering - not something external)

Wonderful thing is he understands his business every which way you look at - the R&D, Engineering, Marketing, Sales, Management. Overall very interesting reading.

Wonder - Why people slot themselves as technocrats vs Management Guys vs something else... here is a shining example to learn from !

Direct from Dell - Michael Dell

noreply@blogspirit.com (LeoBoy) — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 12:05:00 +0100

Rating: ****

Yes, you guessed it - this is the autobiography of Michael Dell - or rather the story of Dell's suceess. Actually, it is more about Dell than the man himself.

One of the fundamental premises of Dell is remove the middleman - customers order directly from Dell - and Dell delivers ! Does this ring a bell ? Yes, Sam Walton - Walmart Founder - was able to come up with low prices because he removed middlemen on the supplier side of Business, among other efficient things he did.

Apparently, Dell is very efficient in on-demand fulfilment of Orders. Their network of Vendors/Suppliers work so efficiently with them, that they can assemble and send PCs to customers in a very short time. Dell dwels on this apsect a lot.

Made in America - Sam Walton

noreply@blogspirit.com (LeoBoy) — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 12:00:00 +0100

Rating: *** 1/2

This is the autobiography of Sam Walton - founder of Walmart.

As you would expect it has the story of Walmart, and its stupendous growth. An interesting aspect of the book is - the way it is written. There are paragraphs (quotes) from several people associated with Walmart across the book. That sometimes distracts the reader - as there are too many of such quotes.

One of the things Sam Walton states about 'Charity' is : Walmart or he does not believe in charity for the sake of charity. They would and are charitable where they think they should be. This is really cool - because thats the way it should be. Business Enterprises do not exist for Charity - they exist for Business. A business enterprise that drops its profits, will also not be able to pass on the benefits of its success to its customers !

But, if such a success story interests you - this book is for you.

Freakonomics

noreply@blogspirit.com (LeoBoy) — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 11:15:00 +0100

Authors: Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

This is a interesting book - very easy to read as well.

It analyzes some events, and happenings, and comes out with interesting reasoning as to why those events happened. It is largely supported by data. But, unlike a economics book, it does not really deal with numbers or economy, instead it about Why and How of the events.

And yes it is funny to read; especially because much of what is written is not conventional wisdom.