Books I Could Read This Year

Books

1. Men Who Made New Physics It is the story of the physicists who heralded the new era of physics.

2. Five Dollar Smile One of the early writings of Shashi Tharoor, perhaps when he was in college. Stories feature subjects that occupy adolescent minds. Subjects like friendship, love, sex, and politics are dealt with in a very comical way.

3. How I Taught My Grandma and Other Stories

4. Old Man and His God Both books by Madam Sudha Murty. Most of the stories uphold values, virtuous nature in human beings, human dignity, and many ethical and philanthropic subjects.

5. It's Not About the Bike It is all about strength and courage by the cyclist and marathoner Lance Armstrong, who defeated cancer to get back to racing and win the Tour de France five times.

6. Just Do It Very practical advice from Sir Richard Branson. He just built the Virgin empire and encourages everyone to just do what one wants to do.

7. Bridges of Madison County A very romantic book. In fact, the best romantic book I have read so far. The writing is very good, and it is a subject that lies on the borderline of love and infidelity, but the author has dealt with it in a wonderful way that the reader can understand and sometimes agree with the borderline it portrays.

8. Guide to Earth, Moon, and Space Asimov's non-fiction writing. His writing is very lucid, and it tries to bring back the questions that a curious child wonders when standing outside and looking at the night sky. Questions like, "What are those shiny things? Why are they there? Why are they not falling? Why are so many of them there? Why is it dark now? Is the sun asleep? When we travel on a scooter, how come the moon is also traveling along with us? Can we race ahead of it?" Those are just fun and very valid questions. Asimov tries to answer them all in a way that can be understood by the child who asks those questions. The book is simply too good. I really loved it.

9. The Theory of Everything Stephen Hawking explains science as it evolved from the times of Galileo to string theory. It is easy to read and presented in a very concise manner.

10. Revenge of the Baby-Sat

11. Calvin and Hobbes (1st Book) Both of them feature lovable Calvin and Hobbes adventures.

12. Asterix Series

    • Asterix the Gaul
    • Asterix and the Golden Sickle
    • Asterix and the Goths
    • Asterix and the Chieftain's Shield
    • The Mansions of the Gods
    • Asterix and the Soothsayer
    • Asterix and Caesar's Gift

13. Fantastic Voyage Asimov's fiction, which is, in fact, based on the screenplay of a movie by the same name. The book came much earlier than the movie. Three men and a woman miniaturize themselves and enter inside the human body in a miniaturized submarine to perform an operation. They must complete the operation and get out of the body within a time limit; otherwise, even as their goal fails, everyone stands in danger of losing something very valuable—the information available with the person they are trying to save at any cost. Asimov has taken care to write fiction in a very logical way. For example, the team experiences "Brownian Motion" as they enter inside the body.

14. Out of My Comfort Zone Steve Waugh's biography. While reading this, I had many fits of laughter, moments of amusement, and wonder at this simple guy with a lot of character. Steve is definitely one of my favorite sportspeople. He is very plain and direct and a very bold person too, as we can see in his autobiography. Good lessons on leadership and management are presented in his book.

15. Krishna and Gopal

16. Savitri

17. Buddhist Tales From the Amar Chitra Katha series, based on folklore, mythology, and ancient Indian stories. They deal with moral values, justice, ethical leadership, and administration. I have more Amar Chitra Katha books to read.

18. The Hound of the Baskervilles

19. The Sign of Four

20. A Study in Scarlet These showcase the brilliance of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle through Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. I read these for the second time, as I had completed the Sherlock Holmes series a long time back.

Many of these books, like Guide to Earth, Moon, and Space, The Theory of Everything, and the Sherlock Holmes series, I read along with my friend Avinash, and we both enjoyed them together.

Technical Books

Apart from these, there are a few technical books I could lay my hands upon. Note, technical books are not meant to be read; they are to be studied thoroughly and worked upon a number of times. So, I cannot put them in the "read" category.

I could get a chance to work with: - Version Control with Subversion by Ben Collins-Sussman, Brian W. Fitzpatrick, and C. Michael Pilato - Word Power Made Easy by Norman Lewis - Cryptography and Network Security by William Stallings

Final Thoughts

My friend and I had thought at the start of the year to compete for the 50 Book Challenge. While that was my list of books, I am glad that we got started, and next year, I plan to read at least 50 books.

Let me know if you would like to read any of these books; I would be glad to share them with you. You can also have a peek into my online library at books.google.com.

Happy New Year 2008 to all!

Good list of books.If you have time watch the movie "Bridges of Madison Country".It starrs Clint Eastwood

Anonymous

Great Post this time, i have seen quality of books you read.The Buddhist tales from amar chitra Katha Books made me to think about it, as i have not been through it.I like the ack series the much.

geet_jain

I often forget the syntax and usage of lambda functions, the following examples should help as a reminder.

>>> def function(x):
...     return x*3
...
>>> function(2)
6
>>> func_with_lambda = lambda x: x*2
>>> func_with_lambda(2)
4
>>> (lambda x: x*2)(2)
4
>>>

First, Freed.in Conference.

Next, the fun-filled Manali trip with friends.

Then, hacking something at the Y! Hackday.

It was a week full of fun.

I was at Hack Day too, too bad we didn't meet up, maybe next time :)

swaroopch

Hi Swaroop, remember that guy who approached you for help with "Beautiful Soup" Library. Yes, that was I, another Python programmer who has found your "A Byte of Python" very useful and has been constantly recommending that to everyone who wants to get started with python.

Nice to meet you. I hope we will have a lot of 'pythonic' things discuss. :)

Senthil

Oh! That was you :) ... Yep we should discuss, pythonic or otherwise :)

swaroopch

http://slashdot.org/anniversary.pl?view_id=583

{H,F}ello /. ers!

I will be at my home town, Madurai, on 13th October and I was looking for Slashdot party at Madurai and could not find one, so I decided to host one myself and invite Madurai geeks for the meet.

Location:

Anna Nagar Cafe Coffee Day.

Timings:

5:00 PM to 7:00 PM.

Party Link:

http://slashdot.org/anniversary.pl?view_id=583

If we get going, then we shall: - Have some fun discussions. - Cut the Cake. - Enjoy the evening.

Hope you will be able to make it, let me know if you have some ideas. (Either comment on this post or email me at orsenthil at gmail dot com)

Thank you.

Update

I convinced my sister and my cousin to come along for a coffee and we all went there. btw both of them can be considered geeks as I have seen my sister twidling with computer a lot before she decided to pursue her Dental Studies, and my cousin aged 11 was playing with Nintendo DS lite in full swing. We had good time and had a cake cheering slashdot. :)

So you're getting the T-shirt. :) Have fun!

Oh that, and, deja vu. ;)

sajith

Came to know about the T-Shirt stuff later only, Sajith. As I would not be at blore on 13th, I wanted to 'be there with ww-/. folks' from mdu. :) Pass it on, if you have any other, madurai/tamil nadu friends.

Thanks,

Senthil

Avi, Sanju, and I watched "The Chronicles of Narnia" on DVD. Based on The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis, this film is a fairy tale intended for children with a truly happy ending. It is a delightful movie that offers a hopeful reminder that things do end well.

Re: Chronicles of Narnia

Hi Loga,

Yes, it was indeed a very nice movie. very positive one. :) I like Harry Potter also. This time, I watched "Harry potter and the order of phoenix" twice in the theater and have been a potter fan now. I really liked the last dialog where in Harry says to Hermoine, "we have something that Voldermort does not have", thats friendship and love.

It was a nice one as well.

Senthil

Senthil

Chronicles of Narnia

I too enjoyed that movie rather than Harry potter..

Loga

Anonymous

Leading author and programmer, Bruce Eckel, posted some of his concerns on Python 3000 stating that python community is missing to address some of the important issues with this major, backward incompatible release. Problems he mentions are concurrency support on multi-core cpus, easy deployment support, a standardized user interface amongst others. He expresses his dissatisfaction at the post titled Python 3K or Python 2.9?. Guido van Rossum, in a very pragmatic way addresses the concerns with his response to Bruce Eckel and calling out more for developers to contribute to Python to improve it further. Bruce Eckel concludes with his thoughts that he wants his favorite language to be better with his reply to Guido's reply.

I moved to Orange belt on 29-07-2007. My friends moved to Yellow belt to. Sharma is the senior with black belt.

We had good fun that day. Our practice as a team and improved from then on.

If the slide show does not show up, here is the photo link.

Orange Belt

Congratulations...

Anonymous

Re: Orange Belt

Thank you. :-)

Senthil

My sisters and I called up our school maths teacher, Vijayaraj madam to wish her on teachers day. Also called up my college prof, Dr. K. Ramar to wish.

Its a nice tribute we give to our teachers who have influenced us in many ways.

My English teacher, Mrs. Padmini Vasanthan seem to have influenced me to strive for a patient and organized approach in all activities.

Ramar sir, when I recollect, all I can appreciate is his humility, ability to strive and achieve things, even when somethings presented are above our comprehension. One can learn a lot from this simple person. He is always learning from others.

--- Teachers Day from Wikipedia ---

September 5 is Teacher's Day in "India". It is the birthday of second President of India and teacher Dr. Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan. It is considered a "celebration" day, where teachers and students report to school as usual but the usual activities and classes are replaced by activities of celebration, thanking and remembrance. At some schools on this day, the responsibility of teaching is taken up by the senior students as an appreciation for their teachers. The idea is to let teachers sit back just for a day and let the students have a glimpse into the life of a teacher. It is an occasion when a token or appreciation in the form of presents are given to teachers by students to show their love and respect. A central piece in Hindu scripture reads "Guru Brahma, Guru Vishnu, Guru devo Maheshwaraha - Gurussaakshaath param brahma tasmai shree gurave namaha," which translates as "The Guru (Teacher) is the Lord Brahma (the Creator), the Guru is the Lord Vishnu (the Preserver), the Guru is the Lord Shiva (the Destroyer). To that Guru we offer our salutations."

Teachers Day

Jus got a glimpse of the teachers day I used to spend in my school days after reading ur post!!! Athoda Teachers Day Maranthu Pochu.. Gud that you keep remembering ur mentors...

Loga

Anonymous

Common sense is the most evenly distributed quantity in the world.

Everyone thinks he has enough.

-- Descartes, 1637

While reading through Mark Pilgrim's Dive into Python, stumbled upon this interesting thought, wherein he says that, when you 'plan' to develop a full -fledged feature for a software which will help in certain tasks, and if you end up coding a small version, make it just work rather than a completed polished 'as-per-plan' thing, then you are not only being inefficient, but you are being rude (to your customers).

That's a very good thought. Most of times, I think of designing a software and when it reaches to level where it works, I stop there and move to next. The working thing, sometimes never goes past my computer.