Book Review

The Best I Could
Sudhas Anandan

This is by far the best autobiography of a Singaporean that I have read. If Mr Anandan's life can be film into a movie, I am sure it will be a blockbuster as his cases are of such high profile.

If you don't even know who this guy is, I am sure you are not a Singaporean. Even if you were locked up in prison you would have heard of his big name. He is the top criminal lawyer in Singapore, having defended the most hideous criminals in your eyes. In Singapore, there is only a handful of violent crimes committed in its short 40+ year history and small island-terrain, and Subhas has defended about more than half of them.

He picked out some cases to mention in his book, from Took Liang How (of Huang Na's case) to One-eyed dragon, citing his own opinion of the proceedings which is very much different to what the media portrayed and the impact the public had on cases that are high-profile.

There is also a brief coverage of his life before becoming a lawyer dating all the way back to childhood, growing up as a defiant boy, standing up for what he feels is right. He had a exciting university life which I didn't have and beyond what most of us today can imagine. Other than that, he also mentioned of his encounters with some famous politicians like JB Jayaretnam and David Marshall.

This is written in a style for you and me and I finished it in less than a week. Truly a national icon. And makes me wonder if we will have another man like him to fight for our justice. Someone who will do the best he could.

"Even the most hideous offender deserves a proper trial."

Book Review

A Thousand Splendid Suns
Khaled Hosseini

Congratulations to myself for finishing a fiction book since secondary school days. To be frank, I hate reading storybooks because it is a waste of time and I have many things to do. But this time, I allowed myself to read a book that had no power to enrich my life, just for the sake of relaxing after a hard day of work. By the way, I don't watch TV too.

This book is really an easy read and it managed to capture my attention to finish all 300+ pages of it. Quite a feat I must say. Might be reading The Kite Runner once I find some time to waste. HA.

(click on the picture if you want to read more reviews or to purchase it.)

Book Review

Against The Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk
Peter L. Bernstein

This book is a classic worldwide bestseller that covers really in depth on the topic of risk measurement and management. From the title "Story of Risk", it can be translated to "history of statistics" dating back from 1200s to modern times. Names suchs as Keynes, Pascal, the Bernoullis, Laplace, Galton etc are mentioned in great detail as they contributed much to what we have now (such as the bell curve).

As a matter of fact, I do not really understand the earlier chapters as the subject matter and the depth of it tend to bore me out. But I have to admit that if the interest is there, it would be a tremendous read. However, as it approaches the last third of the book, topics covered becomes more relevant to what I have learnt, therefore understanding became easier.

John von Neumann is a name that facinated me. According to the author, he is the inventor of game theory and many other fields from economics to quantum mechanics. He also contributed to the utility theory (where satisfaction is measured, isn't it amusing). If you don't think that is facinating, then you probably won't be surprised that risk can also be measured. Harry Markowitz taught us that risk can be measured by something he called "variance", derived from a normal distribution. Until today this concept is still debated and I still do not understand how a value of variance tell me if I should make a gamble.

Financial engineering is not too old but has its roots in the aboved mentioned names as well. In the past people take on certain risk and win (or lose) to the house. Today, it is possible for risk to be traded through derivatives, first invented by some brillant mathe- maticians called Fisher Black, Myron Scholes and Robert Merton. Risk now has a monetary value attached. The market for options exploded not long after their paper on option pricing saw light in the world with the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) performing this function for bankers, institutions and commoners alike.

Just like what we saw in the subprime crisis, where some banks created stupid risks and won, and AIG became the ultimate loser.

This is definitely a must read for deeply interested in mathe- matics, statistics and risk. Will revisit this book again in the near future for a better understanding.

Book Review

The Armchair Economist: Economics and Everyday Life
Steven E. Landsburg

This book is supposed to be "Economics and everyday life", unfortunately it is not in everyday's language. This book is far too technical for the average person not trained in economics, furthermore I cannot relate the topics discussed to everyday life. So it's either the title is lying or I am damn stupid. I choose to believe the former.

Worse of all, this is the one book where the author keeps criticising other people on their knowledge of economics. I know people who write books always think they are superior beings, but not to this extent of criticism please.

Conclusion: One of the worst books ever read.

Book Review

Think Like a Maths Genius
Arthur Benjamin and Michael Shermer

This, is a book of magic. Arthur Benjamin makes you rethink what you have learnt in elementary school, and that is totally inefficient. We used to learn addition and subtraction from the right to the left, but this genius here is telling us that left to right is the right way of doing! Other than that, he teaches us to break down digits for easier multiplication and even squaring.

The second half of the book introduces mnemonics as a way of remembering large numbers that enable you to handle 4-by-4 multiplication or 4-digit squares. Simply breathtaking.

Using the wonder of algebra, Benjamin also taught us afew tricks that will make you seem like you can read minds. Check out this book to impress the kids.

A must read for all with interest in maths.

Book Review

The Long Tail
Chris Anderson

This book is on the future of marketing using the internet, how the tail on the bell curve is extended out and the head flattened (see diagram). The invention of internet brings marvellous benefits and changes to the behaviour of the population. People can now have endless choice for a product due to zero inventory costs as compared to bricks-and-mortar stores where shelf space is money. Also, word of mouth spreads faster through the medium as it can be seen by the world (think blogs, subject specific forums).



This is useful for people studying consumer behaviour on the micro level, how demand shift from hits to niches. Really useful book but don't really appeal to me. Don't really like the style of writing as I don't see the proper flow of content and it gets repetitve.

Only for people in the area of IT, marketing.

Book Review

Predictably Irrational
Dan Ariely

Another interesting read that I got in my hands, this time on behavioural economics. Rather, to a layman like me, this is a book more on human behaviour and nothing much on the economics side. Makes us realise that some actions are really not too rational, and I'm not going to say much so that you can pick up this good book to kill time.

It covers topics such as the power of prices (how discounts can make us buy things we do not want, and that FREE! is not just another price), on choices and closing doors, and particularly interesting to me, the placebo effect on medcine (how a 50 cent medicine works better than the same pill that costs 5 cents).

And yes, cheating. You do not want to miss that part, do you? Seriously, stop reading fiction. These books that I read are not that serious.

Visit the official web here.

Good read

Book Review

Blue Ocean Strategy
How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant

I feel this is a must read for all management students. Managers should read this to get a fresh viewpoint of the business environment as well, especially in this times when everyone is killing one another by cutting cost to gain market share. They simply forgot to innovate, by adding value and not resorting to cut cost.

In this book, as like all management books, we see simplified box diagrams on creating new value curves, and their analysis is on the other end of Michael Porter's work on Five Forces analysis and generic strategy. Chan and Mauborgne calls competition the red ocean, as we know competition is really brutual.

This will prove to be an interesting read even for non-management readers as well because the language used is rather layman and the examples of companies engaging in blue ocean activities will spur you to think creatively (if you have any creativity in the first place). Some companies mentioned are Cirque du Soleil, QB House and the NYPD. You will be surprised how easy it is to make competition totally irrelevant.

Other than that, the book also covered sub topics like strategic pricing on target cost, target profit etc.


Read it

Book Review

From this year onwards, I will be doing reviews of every book that I read. Being an avid reader, I drop by book stores almost once every week to check out new titles and will then proceed to libraries to get it. However, the ratio of non-fiction to fiction books is about 20 to 1. Good books will definitely end up on my shelf, so drop me a comment if you are interested to borrow.

The first completed book for 2009 is Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.

I liked his first two books (The Tipping Point and Blink) very much but this is abit of a disappointment as compared.

This book subjects itself on what makes an outlier, the one that lies at the tail end of the bell curve. Intelligence and success may not have correlation. It talks about the success behind successful people like Bill Gates and others, on why asians perform better in mathematics, just to name afew. People with the highest IQ might not even make it without the luck and the people you meet along the way. Just like the chinese saying, "天时、地理、仁和、智慧", one needs a combination of them to be successful.

As usual, this book is packed with facts that will make you realise the reason why things are the way it is. Visit his site to find out more.

Out of his three published books, I still like The Tipping Point best.

The Tipping Point
Blink
Outliers