Category Archives: Books

Books

In My Hands Today…

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Sovietistan: Travels in Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan – Erika Fatland

Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan became free of the Soviet Union in 1991. But though they are new to modern statehood, this is a region rich in ancient history, culture, and landscapes unlike anywhere else in the world.

Traveling alone, Erika Fatland is a true adventurer in every sense. In Sovietistan, she takes the reader on a compassionate and insightful journey to explore how their Soviet heritage has influenced these countries, with governments experimenting with both democracy and dictatorships.

In Kyrgyzstani villages, she meets victims of the tradition of bride snatching; she visits the huge and desolate Polygon in Kazakhstan where the Soviet Union tested explosions of nuclear bombs; she meets shrimp gatherers on the banks of the dried out Aral Sea; she witnesses the fall of a dictator.

She travels incognito through Turkmenistan, a country that is closed to journalists. She meets exhausted human rights activists in Kazakhstan, survivors from the massacre in Osh in 2010, and German Mennonites that found paradise on the Kyrgyzstani plains 200 years ago. We learn how ancient customs clash with gas production and witness the underlying conflicts between ethnic Russians and the majority in a country that is slowly building its future in nationalist colors.

Once the frontier of the Soviet Union, life follows another pace of time. Amidst the treasures of Samarkand and the brutalist Soviet architecture, Sovietistan is a rare and unforgettable adventure.

World Book and Copyright Day

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Tomorrow is World Book and Copyright Day, a day I enjoy and celebrate because well, books!

Celebrated on 23 April each year, the day is a celebration to promote the enjoyment of books and reading. The idea for celebrating this day originated in Catalonia where on 23 April, St George’s Day, a rose is traditionally given as a gift for each book sold. The date of 23 April is also symbolic for world literature, for on this date and in the same year, 1616, Cervantes, Shakespeare and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega all died. In the UK and Ireland, World Book Day is celebrated earlier in the year, usually on the first Thursday in March, to ensure it falls outside of school holidays.

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The pandemic and isolation we faced showed us how important books are to maintain mental balance. Books are an individual’s best friend and to those who do not like reading, I always say they haven’t found a book or genre they love yet. Books are amazingly powerful tools to combat isolation, reinforce ties between people, expand horizons and all this while stimulating our minds and creativity.

When one reads, they exercise their comprehension abilities and analytical abilities. Reading fires up the imagination and stimulates the memory centres of the mind, helps recall information as well as stabilise emotions. The importance of a reading habit is that it strengthens mental muscles. Reading is one of the best mental workouts there is and it has been found that regular mental stimulation can slow down and possibly even prevent diseases like Alzheimer’s and Dementia because reading keeps the mind agile and young.

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Each year a city is designated as the World Book Capital that undertakes activities to encourage a culture of reading and diffusing its values in all ages and population groups in and out of their country’s borders and spend the year between one World Book and Copyright Day and the next to promote books and fostering a reading culture. The World Book Capital for 2022 is Guadalajara in Mexico. The city, already a UNESCO Creative City since 2017, was selected for its comprehensive plan for policies around the book to trigger social change, combat violence and build a culture of peace. Guadalajara’s proposed programme focuses on three strategic axes: regaining public spaces through reading activities in parks and other accessible places; social bonding and cohesion especially through reading and writing workshops for children; and strengthening of neighbourhood identity using intergenerational connections, story-telling and street poetry.

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Tomorrow, make sure you take some time to do some reading, be it a physical book or an e-book. Reading fiction can help one be more open-minded and creative, live longer and be successful in life. So grab a book, make time for yourself and discover new worlds.

In My Hands Today…

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Strange Stones: Dispatches from East and West – Peter Hessler

Over the past decade, Peter Hessler has built a reputation as one of the finest journalists working today. The three books he’s published in that time brilliantly explore the wonders, oddities, and paradoxes of life in modern China. In the pages of The New Yorker, he has persistently probed and illuminated worlds both foreign and familiar, ranging from China, where he served as the magazine’s correspondent from 2000 to 2007, to southwestern Colorado, where he lived for four years.

Strange Stones is a far-ranging, thought-provoking collection of Hessler’s best reportage over the past decade. During this time, Hessler lived in Asia and the United States, writing as both native and knowledgeable outsider in these two very different regions. This unusual perspective distinguishes Strange Stones, which showcases Hessler’s unmatched range as a storyteller. “Wild Flavor” invites readers along on a taste test between two rat restaurants in South China. One story profiles Yao Ming, basketball star and China’s most beloved export, another David Spindler, an obsessive and passionate historian of the Great Wall. In “Dr. Don,” Hessler writes movingly about a small-town pharmacist and his relationship with the people he serves. While Hessler’s subjects and locations vary, subtle but deeply important thematic links bind these pieces-the strength of local traditions, the surprising overlap between apparently opposing cultures, the powerful lessons drawn from individuals who straddle different worlds.

In My Hands Today…

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Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant – W. Chan Kim, Renée Mauborgne

Since the dawn of the industrial age, companies have engaged in head-to-head competition in search of sustained, profitable growth. They have fought for competitive advantage, battled over market share, and struggled for differentiation. Yet, as this influential and immensely popular book shows, these hallmarks of competitive strategy are not the way to create profitable growth in the future.

In the international bestseller Blue Ocean Strategy, W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne argue that cutthroat competition results in nothing but a bloody red ocean of rivals fighting over a shrinking profit pool. Based on a study of 150 strategic moves (spanning more than 100 years across 30 industries), the authors argue that lasting success comes not from battling competitors, but from creating “blue oceans”—untapped new market spaces ripe for growth. Such strategic moves, which the authors call “value innovation,” create powerful leaps in value that often render rivals obsolete for more than a decade.

Blue Ocean Strategy presents a systematic approach to making the competition irrelevant and outlines principles and tools any company can use to create and capture their own blue oceans. A landmark work that upends traditional thinking about strategy, this bestselling business book charts a bold new path to winning the future.

In My Hands Today…

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One Life To Ride: A Motorcycle Journey To The High Himalayas – Ajit Harisinghani

The book is based on my motorcycle journey from Pune to Ladakh and Kargil – a travel story which takes the reader through the hot and dusty plains of India to the higher mountains of the vast Himalayan range many covered in snow even in June. Weaving its way along coastal roads of western India, to Goa, with pig toilets and palm liquor, the story winds through old and new stories – one from a holy-man cycling from Mumbai to Mecca, another about the meditation technique of Vipassana, yet another of a light-hearted con-game at a scout’s camp in Rajasthan – the tale finally takes you to the highest motorable road in the world – the fabled Khardung-La.

You’ll meet Sufi saints, fake fakirs and homesick soldiers. You’ll get stuck in an icy road river and be miraculously rescued. You’ll feel the stress an average Kashmiri experiences everyday. You’ll see how blind and dangerous religion can be if it is only followed in rituals and illogical beliefs. You’ll see how friendly and hospitable everyone is on the roads of India. You’ll come away feeling exhilarated, entertained and yes, also exhausted by the physical arduousness of the motorcycle ride.