Kiran Jonnalagadda’s Blog

Passed on from . It’s been a while, Bala.

Some of this information is available on my book collection page (which sadly doesn’t live up to potential), but I’ll happily re-present. All links lead back to (mostly blank) pages on my site, and from there to various online bookstores.

1. Total number of books owned:
   About 190. See the list here (some are borrowed).

2. The last book I bought?
   Two photography books on the last trip:

   • The Camera by Ansel Adams, and
   • Moments When You Know There’s a God by M. Balan and B. R. Swarup.

   The latter is a book of pictures of Kerala.

3. The last book I’ve read?
   Pageant: The Beauty Contest by Keith Lovegrove. I bought this book primarily for the fashion pictures—it’s hard to learn by looking at a picture unless you can see what’s lacking or unusual, and this book held promise. Reading this book is like ordering an Indian Bread Basket at a fancy restaurant. You get to sample lots, and maybe get a leaflet describing what each is, but don’t get enough of any. In the end, you want more.

   OTOH, the book I’m currently reading is a delight.

4. Five books that mean a lot to me:
   I’ll sort these into categories, since five books is too few. I’m only counting books I’ve read in the last four years or so (that’s how long I’ve been keeping track).

   1. Travel: Rough Guide to First-Time Around the World by Doug Lansky. Most travel books tell you what’s worth seeing around a place, and where to stay and eat. I find them stifling, and ultimately uninteresting. This book tells it like it’s meant to be experienced. Most will tell you what vaccinations you need and precautions to take when visiting a particular area. This book tells you to carry only one change of clothes, not including that favourite pair of jeans, since if you wash it’ll only take an afternoon to dry, and it is usually cheaper to buy clothes than carry them. I’ve been a happier traveller since reading this book.

   2. Work: Maverick and The Seven-Day Weekend, both by Ricardo Semler, describe the unusual working atmosphere at Semco in Brazil. I’ve been lucky to experience a similarly inspired environment early in my career (which is how I found these books), and aim to reproduce it everywhere I work. It’s too early to say if it works long term, but I have tremendous faith in people’s ability to manage themselves effectively if given the freedom.

      What Should I Do With My Life? by Po Bronson is a collection of true stories of average people who struggled to find purpose in their lives, sometimes trying several times before getting it right. I found this book at a time when I couldn’t make sense of where my life was heading, and am glad I read it.

   3. Science Fiction: Frank Herbert’s Dune deals with prophesy, management, leadership, loneliness, reputation, perception, interpretation, and most of all, the individual worshipped as superhero. The first time I read it, it left me with a buzz that lasted weeks. The second time I read it, it left me with a buzz that lasted weeks. Highly recommended reading.

      Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card deals with authority, trust and individuality. I’m deeply distrustful of all forms of self-declared authority, and this book touched several raw nerves. Reading it left me plain scared. And then, when the story is nowhere near complete but the pages are running suspiciously thin, comes the whopper. The ending grabs you by the hair, slams you against the wall, and makes you rethink everything you thought you had figured out about trust and authority. It left me very shaken up.

      The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. Haldeman was a physicist who got drafted into the Vietnam war and hated every moment of it. And then he was wounded and sent back with a Purple Heart (read his own words). This book is his take on the experience. It describes a war played out across galaxies. Centuries pass on Earth as soldiers regroup and take lightspeed travel to each point of rendezvous. Each separation could mean an age difference of decades at the next meeting. Earth is no longer the society they went to war for. The physics is as detailed as the frustration. In the end it turns out neither side wanted to go to war. The few surviving soldiers are a thousand years from home and trapped in a society that holds them at fault. Forever War is the kind of book that makes you slam your fist and moan at the futility of it all.

   4. India: I grew up being taught a squeaky clean edition of India’s history. We were told all about our great kingdoms and how European aggressors took over the country and reduced it to tatters and how our great freedom fighters brought the country independence and how greatly it has done since. Mind you, these were the early years of economic liberalisation, when the general populace wasn’t feeling it yet, and when my teachers taught us from the books, they themselves were frustrated all the greatness amounted to naught when comparing India to the world. It should have felt suspiciously hollow, but it didn’t. Like everyone else around me, I was happy to blame the British for all our problems and live with the excuse that had India always been independent, it would have been a superpower today. The veneer lasted until I chanced upon Khushwant Singh’s View of India, a book that, in setting the balance straight, upset my applecart. Singh summarily dismissed everything I had been taught as making India great. He was thorough; there was nothing to hide behind. I learnt an important lesson from that book: mistrust anything that paints the world in black and white, for surely it is not that way.

      Nearly a decade later, two books served to fill in my history. India Unbound by Gurcharan Das describes all the missing figures from the freedom struggle. Whoever knew that the leading industrialists of the day, Tata and Birla, were as important figures as Gandhi and Nehru? They didn’t exist in our textbooks. Whoever thought Indira Gandhi’s declaration of Emergency, independent India’s only break from democracy, had little to do with an actual emergency? Das does a wonderful job telling the not-so-pleasant story of India’s post-Independence development.

      The other book is India Discovered by John Keay. It goes back a century and describes how India’s forgotten past was unearthed, how legend was turned back into verified reality, all in the hands of British officials. It did much to erase my belief that the colonists only pillaged. Neither book may seem significant to you if you do not come from a similar background, but for me, these books mean a lot.

   5. Society: In The Mystery of Capital, Hernando De Soto dares suggest that the secret of the West’s success isn’t capitalism but private ownership of property (real estate, not IP). Given clear ownership, property leads a second life as a value that can be traded to raise capital for business. De Soto goes on to estimate that in developing countries like Egypt, if slum dwellers had clear title to the land they lived on, the resulting value created would exceed all foreign aid the country has ever received. If countries cleaned up their property laws, they can lift themselves out their current state without depending on any aid.

      Aramis, Or The Love of Technology by Bruno Latour, translated into English by Catherine Porter, describes a failed subway project in France. Aramis—as the project was called—attempted to marry the automobile with the train, creating a subway where a user could dial a destination and be taken directly there without transfers or intermediate stops. The project dragged on for eighteen years before being terminated in 1987, and even then some thought it was still feasible and should be given another chance. Latour documents the various factors, technological and political, that defined the project, and how they added up to its demise. He presents in the voices of various actors, real and fictional, sometimes even letting Aramis speak for itself. This book is remarkable in that (a) it documents why technology projects fail, for reasons that may or may not be due to the technology itself, and (b) does it in a manner that does not read like a documentary. I consider this book mandatory reading for anyone who manages any kind of technology project.

5. Passed on to:
   Please feel free to add yourself here.