Book Reviews

Disclaimer: Boring. Dont tell me that i did not warn you beforehand. People in need of more entertaining stuff please go forth and read Bharadwaj Rangan's nice review of 'Luck'

The entire week or so has gone through in a sort of haze - the rest of the year will now go through really quickly with the travel season approaching.

Got through two really good books this week - Malcolm Gladwell's 'Outliers' and Atul Gawande's 'Complications' - Both, interestingly, I started last month - and although i found them engaging - had to drop them off within a few sections because of travel related breakup of routine.

I have in the past struggled to get through Gladwell's 'Blink' and 'Tipping point' - starting them multiple number of times - always losing grip after a session or two - In hindsight probably because, although they were both excellently written - they did not deal with a broad subject that i could identify with at that point of time (still, in fact)- and repeated attempts to read through only made me mentally tired. (A bit like reading this after a hard day's labor, heh)

In one decisive, well-executed stroke - 'Outliers' - Gladwell is back in business with me.

'Outliers' - is a book about people who've gone on to achieve extraordinary things - outstanding things - and Gladwell, in his regular thorough & extremely lucid style runs through various casestudies in sequence to illustrate one funda after another - stuff which he believes actually made them 'outliers'

- The book is split into Part I : Opportunity and Part II : Legacy - through which Gladwell illustrates why certain people - because of a combination of a host of 'opportunity' related, 'legacy' related, 'overall cumulative external influence' related factors tend to perform better.

While there are some parts of the book that are slightly tedious and - in my humble opinion - a little too needlessly long winded (The Pilots/ Colombian planecrash section for eg.) - its still overall a great read.

If one is still wary of Gladwell - I strongly recommend a quick read (possibly even at a bookstore) of the 10 odd pages of Gladwell's own story (which is like a sort of an epilogue in the book's narrative sequence) - about his mother Joyce & the circumstances of her education, combination of opportunity & Legacy that eventually made her go to college, meet Gladwell's dad, emigrate to the US and all.

Now to the other book - Gawande's Complications : Notes from the life of a young surgeon

Im sure youve heard of Dr. Atul Gawande - Hes apparently Gladwell's friend - they're both staff writers on the New Yorker - Gawande's articles of course appear frequently on the 'Annals of medicine' section.

Complications is a light, extremely engrossing collection of Gawande's own memoirs during his time spent as a surgical intern, collection of articles on various themes around Medicine & more specifically as a surgeon (Which were published in the New Yorker and The Slate).

Contrary to what one might think at first sight - the book is extremely lucid & written with non-medical people in mind.

Gawande - with surprising amount of candidness - explores (In Gawande's own words) 'about how things go wrong as how things go right' and i dont think there are too many other similar writers in existence especially as 'Doctors and hospitals are usually suspicious of efforts to discuss these matters in public' (again his words).

The book - actually sort of split into 3 parts - actually has the first few chapters dedicated to notes from his specialization as a surgeon - in terms of experiences with procedures etc. - the other parts of the books have really interesting chapters on grey areas of medicine / treatment like pain, nausea, eating disorders - a doctor's thought process regarding offering treatment for such cases and so on..

I have to say one thing though - both Gladwell & Gawande are superlatively gifted - through 'Outliers' and 'Complications' respectively - they display this amazing, (majorly jealously inducing, if i might add*) flair to sift through a large volume of relevant academic research related to their respective subjects and present their cases via extremely enjoyable, instructive narrative.

* P.S: Question : Have you ever read someone's work and went "Aww. How wickedly brilliant ! I'd give an arm or a leg to be able to do that" (and NO he does not count. Who doesnt want to be him :). I am referring to the serious ones)

My answer: These two probably come pretty high up on this list **

** P.P.S: I guess every1 went through a juvenile phase of trying to write like Salinger, and like me, only got the swearwords part right - Heh. So that does not count as well.