Manoj's Review on Books

  Harit Nagpal has been the CEO of Tata Play over the last 13 years and spent four decades of his work experience in B2C segments with companies ranging from Vodafone, Marico, Pepsi and Lakme. He has tried to pick 10 case studies pertaining to B2C segments, created fictional leaders who drove their respective business entities, narrate unique problem statements in each of the case studies and finally an adaptive element that brought in a reliable solution. At the end of each business story there are ten checkpoints that Harit expects every reader to answer with earnestness, mostly in the binary yes or no responses.  Let me touch upon the case studies that were interesting, the first one that captured my attention was the storyline of how a newly recruited CEO of a leading AC manufacturing unit in Malaysia, was initially in shock to know that their entity lagging behind at 4th place after having been pioneers in AC business for over  a decade. The CEO breaks down the probl...

Why is storytelling important? Let me answer the question by picturing a couple of scenes, one is a nobel laureate scientist who calling a long list of statistical data that validates the effectiveness of his solution for problem like Malaria. On the other side, let’s remember Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech, of the two the latter captures our imagination, the reason lies in the power of storytelling. The three-pound mass of complex organ that lies within our hard skull relates to stories but plain data falls flat.    Given the importance of stories, Will Storr has tried to provide a broad framework for creating a captivating novel or a film. Beyond plot, character, struggle and victory, what are the factors that captures the attention of a bibliophile or an avid movie fan. One of the factors that Will Storr discussed in depth was to consistently provide only parts of information which would leave the audience guessing, till the very end.   In an experime...

When someone gets hitched to an eccentric herpetologist which essentially means a person who specializes in the study of reptiles and amphibians, it’s hard not be in love with animals and birds. Having devoured a range of articles on wire and other magazines focussed on reptiles, animals and birds for over a decade, it’s natural for Janaki Lenin, a passionate zoophile, to pick their unique traits and present them through a book. Every creature has a story is a collection of 50 articles that elucidates unimaginable traits exhibited by birds, fishes, insects, reptiles, primates and mammals. There isn’t any structure to the book and hence a bibliophile can pick any of the fifty articles in random order and read through them. Each story has it’s own essence and would take anywhere between 10 to 15 minutes to finish a single storyline. I would strongly suggest the readers to check out relevant youtube videos as a follow-up to each respective article which is bound to enhance their underst...