What keeps me busy and other stories...

Well,

I happened to visit Om Book Shop in the Metropolitan Mall over the weekend and as a result, I'm currently reading

1. The Origin of Brands
2. Catch-22
3. The McKinsey Way
4. What They don't teach you at Harvard Business School.
5. Made in America

I 've wanted to read 2 & 3 for long but somehow could never manage. I got 2 and 5 as gifts from a few close friends. A friend bought 3 from Bangalore for me and I haven't cared to pay as yet, and I've bought 1 & 4.

As I've been reading Catch 22, I was just wondering that Heller's sense of humor is quite similar to that of Nagrajan, if, infact, Nagrajan (or Heller for that matter) has one... I'm completely 'sold' after reading first fifty odd pages of Brands, although I think there are more exceptions than Ries' would admit. McKinsey is basically a 'satsang' kind of book, probably we all know whatever the author(a former consultant at McKinsey) is writing but still shelling out money to read it. "What they..." is interesting and some of the points that IMG's Mark McCormack makes are really really good, sort of a must-read but for the fact that Mark McCormack has either portrayed himself in such a way or he really is a real BIG shot. I already knew that he was a bit of a high flier but probably in every paragraph he mentions that he was having lunch with X or a dinner meeting with Y or he had already met Z a couple of times, where X,Y and Z all are either Vice Presidents/would-be-presidents/presidents of USA or some big corporate honchos. Sportsmen do figure but not that prominently!!! Finally "Made In America" is alright but I don't like Sam Waltons style of having a couple of paeans about him by others on every other page. Probably writing the book was some sort of ego massaging for Walton.

Will post my final impressions once I'm through with them.

Next In Line

1. Theory of Everything (heard of it from a friend)
2. The making of McDonalds
3. Absolut
4. House of Lies : How Management Consultants Steal Your Watch and Then Tell You the Time.