Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell by Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, Alan Eagle

I picked up this book after listening to some real good reviews from the people in my work group.

This is a quick read, and can be labelled as leadership, management etc book from the very first page.

The whole narration revolves around Bill Campbell who was a mentor/coach to almost all the large organizations in Silicon Valley.

Well the whole book is filled with superlatives for Bill, and I couldn't find a single thing which is not so good about him. In a larger perspective this sounds like a eulogy to Bill, and unfortunately doesn't throw much light on Bill's leadership style. The book is mostly filled with all the possible big names of Silicon Valley. It sometimes amazes how he was able to reach out to so many people with equal zeal but than you realize that's why a book was written about him. People came forward to talk about him, and how he influence their lives.

The one thing which comes out really strong is that empathy is the strongest leadership skill. But than this is the single strongest trait to have irrespective which line of work you're in.

For a long time it was believed that only a care giver or NGO worker or humanitarian need empathy but now this has become one of the key ingredient to be successful in anything you do.

A quick read but if you're not much into leadership books, better skip it.

Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology by Adrienne Mayor

Another book picked out of curiosity.

Artificial Intelligence is a buzzword, and the whole world is talking about it. Science has made a huge success in cracking it, and if we look around we can see a lot of devices are building intelligence on it's own. We even hear that machines are going to take over the world much before than expected. There are different school of thoughts who are arguing about it but that is not the focus here.

The book is full of ancient myths from Greek, Roman, Indian, and Chinese literature. The oldest reference is the Greek myth of Talos created by Hephaestus, the Greek god of invention. Surprisingly, Pandora was also a female robot. The broader uses of such inventions were slave, security, spectacle, sex, and punishment.

The movies related to artificial life, and robots are also extensively quotes. Not a bad thing but could have avoided the overkill.

In a lot of cases the mythic inventions were compared to the latest inventions. There were even some cases where a detailed design is available was replicated by the modern scientists.

Artificial intelligence, and robots has fascinated the human imagination since long. In different era it has been designed to serve different purposes but the main object was the spectacle, and saving the human efforts. Which still holds good with more sophistication added to it. The scientific researches have made a lot of things possible which was just a myth in early days. We heard the stories of fascinating inventions but don't really have a proof if it really existed which is why the lines between science, and myth gets blurred. It is quite possible that the ancient workman might have imagined the possibilities of things like airplane, and might have even came up with some working models but it was definitely not a success otherwise some remains might have been available.

Well, if you're interested in myths, and would like to have a modern retelling than this is where you can start!

Less by Andrew Sean Greer

I picked this one up when I saw a coverage of it getting the Pulitzer Prize, and it was just there when I was looking to start a new one.

So, the first impression is not so great. I've not read much stories with a gay man as the main character, and this is definitely the first one where the man is getting about to turn fifty.

This is a story of Arthur Less an ageing writer who recently split with his long time boyfriend, who is getting married, and to avoid the invitation Less starts on a journey around the globe. This is a story of journey to unlikely places, and reflections of all your life.

You may escape the events (the whole journey is actually an escape to avoid the wedding of his boyfriend) but you can't escape the thoughts. The idea is to grow over them, and move on.

Not the best one but it's a prize winning for sure.