Reading for the week

I love classics. And Jane Austen rocks! I have just finished reading Persuasion and its been a fab read. The characters are brilliant and the simplicity with which Austen finely sketches the follies of human character, her astuteness and subtlety in bringing forth the silliness of our very many egomaniacal concerns, the narcissism that people with wealth and education offer suffer with, is just exceptionally endearing.

I have been impatient while reading a book and its happened after a long time... I was unable to take my mind off the plot... I was just as interested in what all other characters were doing as were the main leads. The fact that I'd know people very much like those characters in my life today is a trifle astonishing and I exclaimed several times 'What's new!' through the pages of a book written almost 200 years ago!

The same prejudices of race, birth, money are all just as alive today as they were then. It is just as often that the real merit of character slips from our fingers in an attempt to hold on to all that glitters!

If you do read the book, please pay special attention to the character of Mary. She is Anne's younger sister and it is through her that Austen has been able to so succulently bring about that nuantic perceptiveness of human foibles she is most famous for.

I am proud to say that with this one, I now own a collection of and have read all of Austen's work. The next focus point is 'Jane Eyre' by Charlotte Brontë, which I have been meaning to read after the seductive BBC book adaptation series that ran it on Zee Studio a few months ago. I truly liked the whole series so much I wished they'd never stop.

To change the flavour in between, I am also managing to be thoroughly engrossed by the management book called 'Hard Facts, Dangerous half-truths and Total nonsense: profiting by evidence-based management' by Pfeffer and Sutton. Pfeffer is God is all that I'll say, when it comes to management wisdom. I know of people who have his videos on their facebook profiles! Now you see!

This is one management book that has managed to make me laugh while I was reading it and think deeply (I'll acknowledge that this is a challenge for me most times... ) too. A very good read for anyone who wants to gain brownie points by talking sense in the next department meeting, specially if they involve discussions on hiring consultants or process improvement initiatives! Most other books in this field have not managed to hold my attention beyond 3.5 chapters... that'd explain the grades in B-School too now, that I think of it.

Anyway, I'll try and get some work done too this week to deserve the salary they are paying me. I hope you all have a good week ahead too!