Book Reviews – Newsletter March 2023

Everyone would like to be able to communicate effectively, express freely, or impact/influence people through their words alone, but they keep falling short and wonder why. Marketeers aspire to pull off successful campaigns, advertisers would want their ads to stir our souls, sales professionals would like to close deals, leaders aspire to lead their teams to the peaks of their industry, and the list goes on. There is a way to making this happen, and surprisingly it may have nothing to do with the message itself. The secret lies in the seconds before the message is delivered – the set up, the environment, the background, the context, the intro, the music – there are so many elements to discover in this book. It would make you think about everything that you have missed out completely. Fantastic Read. Especially, if success in personal and professional life matters to you !!

This is a remarkable book about investing wherein the author takes us hundreds of years back during the time of Darwin, and explores many evolutionary theories and wonders of nature since then. The style in which these natural phenomena are laced with the world of investing is truly insightful. What is value investing? What is quality vs momentum? What is long term vs short term? How do you analyze a company? – What if you got the most effective answers to these questions, making your investing journey highly lucrative and joyful? What if dinosaurs, ants and dung beetles taught you these concepts, and in a manner that stays with you forever? That’s the magic of this book. Stop reading further, go online and buy the book. 5 Stars from me 

There are many questions that perplex us in our endeavors e.g. how much time to invest in exploring vs exploiting, giving up or going all in, adding to your life or subtracting to keep things simple, optimizing or satisficing? These are questions that keep coming up in ivesting, in our professions, in our personal lives, and our pursuits of wisdom and happiness. How about letting Computer Science and its all time greats show us the way. You will be amazed. In addition, if you would like to be intellectually challenged, while building mental frameworks for decision making – then this is a delightful read.

Vitaliy’s quirky sense of humour makes reading a real pleasure. And his honesty to share his struggles in the journey gives you a glimpse of where some of this focus comes from as well as how much is achievable if we put the time and effort. For instance, the story of his writing career – from being hopeless at it in school (debunking the widely held belief that writing is an innate skill that you are born with) to being a widely translated author – is eye opening.  His sections on writing are priceless and much recommended for anyone who is eager to become one or give it a big boost. The book helps you see the value of this and how to translate this into what you can achieve through simple steps. It has lots of such powerful life hacks to help create enduring habits.  Read more…