Goodreads challenge 2016

Against a target of 25 books to read this year, I somehow managed to read 36 books, totaling about 12000 pages. That averages to 3 books / 1000 pages a month. Not too bad, but still quite a long way to catch up with my icon Bill Gates, who reads, on an average, a book per week. And he is much more a busy person than the most of us.

हाच माझा मार्ग (Haach Maajha Marg) - Sachin Pilgaonkar

हाच माझा मार्ग (Haach Maajha Marg), the autobiography of Sachin Pilgaonkar is perhaps one of the most detailed memoirs written by a contemporary Indian film star, and rightly so… His repertoire across Hindi and Marathi films spans a staggering 50+ years. 

The book measures about 320 pages and almost each page has a photo, many of them quite rare ones. Text is lucid and we get to read many behind-the-scenes, personal stories about movies and movie legends. The author shares his feelings, views and thoughts candidly and at times bluntly, which is great for a book about film industry notorious for its hypocrite ways.

The problem with this book is, after a while, it starts sounding a bit too much of "I, Me, Myself". At first glance, this may seem inevitable in an autobiography, but in the hands of a good editor, so many sentences could have been written in a much better way to make Mr. Pilgaonkar appear less of a narcissist. 

Secondly, and more importantly,  nowhere in the book does the author offer any deep, substantially meaningful insights into the soul of the industry he worked in for 50 years. The book reads more like a chronology of films and events than a retrospection of a thoughtful veteran.  

Daemon and Freedom - Daniel Suarez

Do you love technology-focused, fast-paced thrillers with multiple plots converging at the conclusion? 
Did you enjoy the movie "Transcendence" but wanted the story to be on a grander scale? 
Do you feel -- or rather, fear -- that rogue artificial intelligence (AI) will one day overpower humanity? 

You should read these two novels. 

And if you are a fan of FPS and MMORPG type video games, you must definitely read them.

AI has been featured in many books and movies, but the one in these novels is truly novel, something we haven't seen before. What makes it even more terrifying is, unlike other sci-fi components that require a leap of technology (wormhole, quantum computing, time machine), this one practically exists in our modern world. The author worked as cyber security adviser to many Fortune-500 companies, and he draws on all his expertise in depicting the technical details.

"Daemon" and "Freedom" constitute a two-novel series. If you read one, you gotta read the other.

Economics books by Tim Harford

Economics wasn't a subject we had much exposure to in our school and college, and as a result, the concepts of monetary economics remain rather fuzzy. However, its cousin seems much more interesting and exciting: The Behavioural Economics, partly because it relates more to our day-to-day lives and contains intriguing stuff such as Game Theory (developed by John Nash of " A Beautiful Mind").
During the last three weeks, I have been reading two superb books by a British economist, Mr. Tim Harford, and enjoying them thoroughly.