What the industry read in 2014

Surendran M of Techno Graphic Services - Oru Desathinte Katha (The Story of a Locale) by Sankaran Kutty Pottekkatt.

Oru Desathinte Katha portrays life in Athiranippadam. It sketches a unique  history of the country while detailing the micro-history of a place.

Sankaran Kutty Pottekkatt is the author of nearly 60 books which include ten novels, twenty-four collections of short stories, eighteen travelogues and four plays.

Oru Desathinte Katha is one of his most celebrated work which won the Kendra Sahitya Academy Award in 1972, and Jnanpith Award in 1980.

 

Haridas Krishnan of Pragati (Kerala) - Zachariayude Kathakal (Selected Stories by Zacharia) by Paul Zacharia

Paul Zacharia is Malayalam short story writer, novelist and essayist. The book is a collection of all Zacharia stories, starting from first to the latest. It’s a combination of famous stories written by Zacharia, which had laid foundation for modern Malayalam literature. In total, there are about 97 stories in this edition, including those which were not included in earlier publications.

Zacharia is a recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award. His short stories and novels are radical in theme.

Arjun Nanda, director, Eye Candy Visuals finished - Durbar by Tavleen Singh

Tavleen Singh a seasoned reporter and distinguished newspaper columnist a while back. Durbar is a sharp account of the turbulent years of the Emergency of her youth and the political shifts that followed, Tavleen writes of the birth and evolution of insurgencies in Punjab and Kashmir, the blood spilt in assassinations and massacres, of crises internal and external and the clumsy attempts to set things right.

Durbar is a compeling memoir, vivid with the colour of election campaigns and society dinners, low conspiracies and high corruption.

 

Vikas Raj Gupta, director, Zeb International - Malicious Gossip by Khuswant Singh Malicious Gossip like most of Khuswant Singh’s work is blunt, perceptive, incorrigibly provocative and often amusing.

The book includes candid portrayals of public personalities such as Zail Singh, Rajiv Gandhi, Nani Palkhivala, Rajni Patel and Nargis Dutt along with beautifully weaved images of Delhi, Amritsar, Goa, Lucknow, Bhopal and Hyderabad.

Peppered across the text are issues of communalism and terrorism, which are major issues which in today’s society.

 

Prashant Sehra, Print Emporio - The Bhagvad Gita

According to Sehra the Bhagwad Gita is an encyclopedia of the realities of life.
The Bhagvad Gita (The Song of the Bhagavan), often referred to as simply The Gita, is a 700-verse scripture that is part of the Hindu epic Mahabharata. This scripture contains a conversation between Pandava prince-warrior Arjuna and his guide Lord Krishna on a variety of theological and philosophical issues.
The Gita upholds the essence and the theological tradition of the Upanishads. However, unlike the rigorous monism of the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita also integrates dualism and theism.

 

Prasad Balan Iyer, assitant professor and ISO QMS coordinator, department of printing and packaging technology, SIES - Transforming Indians to Transform India by Chinmaya Mission.
Prasad Balan Iyer is impressed and inspired by Transforming Indians to Transform India.
Iyer said, “Transforming Indians to Transform India is an interactive and powerful book with seven stories that entices every individual to transform oneself, and will collectively transform our country into a better nation.”
The book’s stories are independent of each other and highlight the essence of India. There are philosophies, examples, motivations, solutions with help of verses from Bhagvad Geeta, Quran, Bible and Guru Granth Sahib.

 

Sagar Shejwalkar, head of department of Printing and Packaging Technology, SIES GST - Life after Life by Kate Atkinson.
According to Shejwalkar, Life after Life depicts the concept of continuum circle of life and is aptly described by the author.
In the novel, every time the main character (Ursula Todd) dies, she’s reborn. Every new life is iteration on the last, and we see how Ursula’s choices affect her, those around her, as well as the fate of the 20th century world. This book is utterly original and it is Kate Atkinson at her absolute best. It’s theme revolves around the liner : What if you could live again and again, until you get it right?

 

 

Deepak Sheth of Sheth Publishers – Sun Tzu’s The Art of War
Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, one of China’s Seven Military Classics. Sheth has read it almost 15-20 times and calls it ‘serious reading’.
The book is a prehistoric Chinese military treatise attributed to the author, Sun Tzu, a high-ranking military general, strategist and diplomat. It comprises of 13 chapters, each of which is devoted to one aspect of warfare.
Tzu emphasises on war being a necessary evil that must be avoided whenever possible. The book is commonly known to be the definitive work on military strategy and tactics of its time. It has had an influence on Eastern and Western military thinking, business tactics, legal strategy and beyond.

 

 

Saifee Makasarwala, chief operating officer of Silverpoint Press - The Monk Who Sold his Ferrari by Robin S Sharma
 Robin Sharma is the CEO of Sharma Leadership International, a global training and coaching services firm. Makasarwala said, “The book is very interesting because of its theme which centres on how to live a life.”
This book tells the extraordinary story of Julian Mantle, a successful but misguided lawyer, whose physical and emotional breakdown forces him to confront his life, forced to confront the spiritual crisis of his unstable life. It is an informal step-by-step approach to living with greater audacity, balance, abundance, and bliss.

 

G Venugopal of Sterling - Does He Know a Mother’s Heart? : How Suffering Refutes Religion by Arun Shourie.
According to G Venugopal the feel of Does He Know a Mother’s Heart?: How Suffering Refutes Religion is excellent. The photo on the cover, the feel of the paper and the binding – all makes it a great book.
The book begins with Arun’s own role as a caregiver to his son and later to his wife as well. Then he takes us along a journey of quoting religious texts of Islam, Christianity and Hinduism and then explaining how they don’t really makes sense. Extreme suffering can never be justified and bad karma, act of god, lack of faith are all but mere tags to help people to get over the suffering.

 

Ashok Goel, VC and MD, Essel Propack - World 3.0 Global Prosperity And How To Achieve It by Pankaj Ghemawat
World 3.0 Global Prosperity And How To Achieve It answers questions that have arisen after the 2008 global economic recession. Ghemawat’s World 3.0 provides a balanced view of globalisation. The book posits four “Worlds”. World 0.0 where life was “nasty, brutish and short”, In World 1.0, nations were largely self-contained; World 2.0 is the industrialised and globalised world of today. Ghemawat’s World 3.0 is semi-globalised where nations retain control of their economic destiny.

 

Rekha Sharma, assistant manager of marketing &communications, Manroland India - Some Luck by Jane Smiley

Some Luck is an engrossing novel about the life and times of a remarkable family over three transformative decades in America. Each chapter in Some Luck covers a single year, beginning in 1920, as American soldiers like Walter return home from World War I, and following their lives up through the early 1950s, with the country on the cusp of enormous social and economic change.

Jane Smiley is the author of numerous novels, including A Thousand Acres, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.