2016 just ended (Let’s just pretend that I wrote this post 6 weeks ago 🙂 ) and like the last 8 years here is my year-end review post.
Usually I publish this at the beginning of the year, but this year had been crazy so far and I am publishing this after a delay of about 6 weeks. Better late than never right? 😉
Posted in Random/Personal Tagged Blogging, Books, Year End Stats 1 Comment
If you look at my Good Reads profile, you will know that I have read lot of fiction lately. I wanted to take a break and so I picked up Why Do Buses Come in Three: The Hidden Mathematics of Everyday Life by Robert Eastaway and Jeremy Wyndham.
I came to know about this book through Good Read’s recommendation and added it to my to-read list probably a year ago. When I wanted to read a non-fiction book for a break I found it in my to-read list and immediately picked it up.
I found that alternating between fiction and non-fiction books is a nice way to read books from different genre and I have followed it up for the last couple of years.
Why Do Buses Come in Three: The Hidden Mathematics of Everyday Life tries to explain how Maths governs most of the things that we experience in everyday life. It answers some of the questions that we have everyday like why do buses come in threes (mentioned in the title), or why showers are always either too hot or too cold or why do clever people get things wrong etc using Maths.
In addition to answering these questions, the book also mentions the theory behind answers in simple terms.
The major thing that I learned from this book is that some times common sense (or intuition) may not be correct. It is either your brain trying to do an approximation (and failing miserably) or some clever marketer who is using statistics to lie to you 🙂
Some of the famous ones include
The other thing that I learned from this book are a couple of magic tricks based on Maths that were mentioned in the last chapter.
The main thing that I liked about this book is that it took most of the common day problems that pretty much everyone would have witnessed and then answered it using Maths. I found it very appealing since you can easily understand as you would have already experienced them.
The other thing that I liked about this book is that the answers were explained in very simple language which means you can understand most of them with very limited knowledge of Maths.
Also I liked the last chapter that had some magic tricks based on Maths that you can try with your friends 🙂
My rating for this book is 4 out of 5.
The only reason that I didn’t give 5 stars was because some of the theory that were mentioned in the book were not explained properly. I agree that this book was not about the theory, but I felt that some of it could either have been removed or explained a bit more.
After finishing the current set of fiction books that I am reading, I am planning to read No Place to Hide by Glenn Greenwald. The author is the reporter broke who broke the story about NSA surveillance scandal based on the documents released by Edward Snowden and in this book the author explores the extraordinary co-operation between private industry and the NSA, and the far-reaching consequences of the government’s surveillance program.
Sounds like an interesting read 🙂
Posted in Books Tagged Books, Maths, Review 3 Comments
2015 just ended (is it already a month?) and like the last 7 years here is my year-end review post and plans for 2016. I generally publish them in the first week of January itself, but this year started as a very busy year and this post got pushed back by a month.
2015 was a special year for me from my career perspective since I worked the entire year from home. Towards the end of 2014, I joined 10up which enabled me to work from home and this work-place freedom has also helped me to move back to Chennai, my hometown after being in Bangalore for about 6 years.
Working from home has enabled me to spend more time with my family, especially with my 2-year-old son and I am very glad that I choose to work with 10up.
Posted in Random/Personal Tagged Blogging, Books, Year End Stats 6 Comments
As I mentioned in my earlier book review post where I reviewed Stephen Hawking’s A brief History of Time, I started reading Ponniyin Selvan by Kalki and got completely engross in it. It is the main reason you didn’t see any blog post from me in the last few weeks, even though I took a resolution to write at least one blog post a week.
Posted in Books Tagged Books, Review, Tamil 2 Comments
After starting the year with Isaac Asimov’s Autobiography, I read a science book – A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking next to keep up with my goal to read books from different genre this year.
I tried to read this book a couple of years ago, but stopped in between and didn’t complete. I forgot the real reason why I stopped and so I took it up again this time and read it from the beginning.
Compared to my last book, this was not a page turner, but I was learning lot of new things which motivated me to finish the book. It took me about a week to complete this book.
Anyways, as I promised at the beginning of the year, I will try to write reviews for most of the books that I read and here is my review of the second book that I read this year – A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking.
Posted in Books Tagged Books, Review, Science 5 Comments
I started my reading for this year with the Autobiography of my favorite author – Isaac Asimov.
Pretty much all the books of Asimov that I have read so far are addictive page-turners and this one is no exception. I read this one in about 4 days, but could have finished it in just 2 days, if I was not busy with other things 😉
Anyways, as I promised at the beginning of the year, I will try to write reviews for most of the books that I read and here is my review of the first book that I read this year – It’s Been a Good Life by Isaac Asimov.
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2014 just ended and like the last 6 years here is my year-end review post and plans for 2015.
2014 was a milestone year for me from the career perspective. First, I completed my 10th year at work. It’s been exactly a decade since I started to work, fresh out of college. Then, I quit my job at Yahoo where I was working for more than half a decade, took a break, did a self-reflection, decided to steer my career towards WordPress and joined 10up. It’s been less a month since I joined 10up but I have already realized that I made the right decision.
Posted in Random/Personal Tagged Blogging, Books, Year End Stats 6 Comments
Last week, I asked for recommendations for some SciFi/Fantasy books and the response was enormous. Thanks to everyone who gave me recommendations. After some careful analysis, I finally decided to read Foundation Series by Isaac Asimov.
I was reading the wikipedia article of Foundation Series and then realized that the books were not published in chronological order, which bought the question – In which order should I read the books? In chronological order or published order.
After some research I came to know that Isaac Asimov himself suggested (In the Author’s note at the beginning of Prelude to Foundation) to read the books in chronological order. So I decided to follow his advice 🙂
I am currently reading them in the following order. The year in the bracket is the year of publication.
I have already finished the first two and I am currently reading “The Naked Sun”. So far it’s been really excellent and once again thanks everyone for the recommendation.
Posted in Books Tagged Books, Isaac Asimov 1 Comment
It’s been quite sometime since I read anything substantial and so I am planning to take a “reading break” and want to dedicate my free time in the next couple of months for reading.
Since I have a couple of months for this, I don’t want to read short stories or a single novel. Instead, I want to read a series so that once the characters are introduced, they will continue to be present for most of the series. This will be an important factor for me, since it motivates me to complete all the books in the series. This is one of the reason, why I was able to complete the entire Sherlock Holmes series in less than a week 🙂
I am not very particular about the genre very much, but I would prefer either Fantasy or Sci-Fi. The series that immediately came to my mind were Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings. I posted about it today morning in Twitter and asked for recommendations.
I am planning to spend a couple of months reading fantasy/fiction. What is your recommendation? Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings
— Sudar (@sudarmuthu) September 26, 2013
Within a few minutes, I got the following good suggestions and now I have the tough job of picking it up from here 😉
I have not made up my mind yet, but I am leaning towards Foundation series by Isaac Asimov.
Meanwhile, if you guys have any more suggestions, kindly do let me know.
Update: I have decided to take up Foundation Series by Isaac Asimov first. Thanks everyone for the recommendations.
Posted in Books Tagged Books, Recommendation 6 Comments
Sherlock Holmes was one of my childhood hero (together with He Man 😉 ) and was the main reason why I started reading books, which I am still continuing.
At school, we had a chapter about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in English Prose at 6th Std(grade) and a couple of short stories of Sherlock Holmes were include in non-detail. This influenced me a lot and I got interested in mystery fiction.
There were instance where I started to think how Sherlock Holmes would have solved the mystery, but I still couldn’t find out who stole my rubber or pencil sharpener 😉
The more I read about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes the more interested I got. But the library at school didn’t had many books and I was not able to read the full collection.
Years passed and one day I was browsing books at Crossword and came across the entire collection of Sherlock Holmes (4 novels and 46 short stories) and I immediately bought it. I think I finished the entire volume (more than 2000 pages) in less than a week 🙂
It was one of the best books I have read in my entire life. If you are interested in mystery and haven’t read Sherlock Holmes before, I highly recommend you to read it and I am sure you will like it.
Now, I am back to my bookshelf to find the book. Planning to read the entire collection one more time 🙂
Posted in Books Tagged Books, Review, Sherlock Holmes 2 Comments