Ankur Sharma

For people who know me, know how close reading and books are to my heart and how Shweta (my wife) and I have this whole library stock of books at our home. In just between yesterday and today, I have been able to mop off 2 books which I was reading at a snail's pace. Apart from that, I started off 2 new ones, out of which I did finish off one just in few hours, which is becoming a rarity now-a-days. Hence it will be understatement to say that this week has been phenomenal to me, at least, up until now. The two I wrapped up, though covered diametrically opposite aspects, at the heart, they both were business books: The Real Deal by James Caan is a brave and courageous autobiography, which covers nifty aspects of businesses. What, actually makes it brave was that, despite being a celebrity, James Caan, stayed truthful in his personal stories and with a lot of candor, spoke about the journey which he undertook to find himself, considering he was an Asian and a Mus...

I usually don't read a book just because everyone else is reading it - it makes me thinks conventionally, corrupts my thought process into more of a mass one, not the kind I usually love to live with. But if I can take the liberty of paraphrasing Steven Levy from " In The Plex ", with his new book, Walter Isaacson made me chase everyone elses' tail lights, and for the first time, I am kind of proud at being conventional. From today, I am going to start reading Steve Jobs in Hardcover, which has gotten shipped at a 50% pre-release discount, from Indiaplaza (Yes, Flipkart ; they pipped you this time!), a couple of days back.  Now if you please excuse me, I have to go to get some carrot juice for Mr. Jobs! It's Halloween after all!

"If we aren't a lot better next year, we will already be forgotten," Page said to one of the first reporters visiting the company.  The founders also knew that Google had to be a lot smarter to keep satisfying users - and to fulfill the world-changing ambitions of its founders. "We don't always produce what people want," Page explained in Google's early days. "Its really difficult. To do that you have to be smart - you have to understand everything in the world. In computer science, we call that artificial intelligence." Brin chimed in. "We want Google to be smart as you-you should be getting an answer the minute you think of it." - From " In The Plex " By Steven Levy

"He ( Krishna Bharat ) said to Page .  "You are such a tiny group!"  Page's answer was surprising and impressive.  "Looking at things from a different perspective could lead to unexpected solutions", he said. "Sometimes in engineering you look at things with tunnel vision and need a broader perspective."" - From " In The Plex " By Steven Levy