Into The Water - Paula Hawkins

At first, it was difficult to remember all characters - they made fast appearances within first few pages. And there were quite a lot of them. Jules's (not Julia!) quiet little world is shaken to the core when she gets news that her elder sister Danielle (Nel!), who she has been estranged with since years, has committed suicide and that she will have to take care of Lena, Nel's teenage daughter, who hates her for always ignoring her mother.

Then there are the residents of Beckford. DI Sean Townsend is a capable officer but there is a shadow there somewhere of some tragedy - recent or past, it is hard to figure out. His wife, Helen, is rather plain-looking but there is steel beneath that soft exterior. Sean's dad Patrick is well-respected in the community but the town's psychic (I forget her name!) cannot help but suspect that he had something to do with the death of his wife. Then there is Katie, Lena's 15-year old dear friend who had ended her life but no one knows why. Her younger brother Josh is evidently keeping some secret. Her mother is trying her best to cope with her grief but blames Nel for Katie's death. Mark Henderson is a handsome teacher - perhaps a tad too handsome for the 'little town of Beckford'. There is a police officer who is assisting Sean in the investigation of Nel's death.

And surrounding all this are two structures. One of them is man-made. The other was fashioned by Nature. Wards' Cottage has a bloody history associated with it - Annie killed her husband there and then jumped into the pool. Ah yes, The Drowning Pool. A place where countless women, through centuries, have reportedly ended their miserable sad lives. But Nel had been sure that the pool was a convenient place to get rid of women who had become 'troublesome' for someone or other. Did her conviction made someone get rid of her? Or did she commit suicide? Was Jules justified in hating her all these years?

We get some answers and some, we don't. Of course, the author tells her whether Nel killed herself or was murdered by someone. She tells us why Jules hated her for almost all her life. She also tells us about why Annie killed her husband, why Libbie Setton was drowned in the pool and how Sean's mom died. But she doesn't tell us about how Jeanie died. She doesn't tell us about how Patrick ended up with Nel's locket, though we can make an educated guess. We are kept wondering about how town's psychic knows things that even the cops are unaware about. And about what exactly is the relation between Patrick and Helen. And about what happend to Henderson. The twist in the tale sounds lame and artificial, as if the author thought of it at the very last minute.

Needless to say, the book left me with a sense of being cheated by the author :-(

97 Things Every Programmer Should Know

To be frank, I was looking for '97 Things Every Architect Should Know' when I came across the above title instead. Intrigued, I read on.

And was glad that I did. Ranging from the delightful 'Learn To Say "Hello World" -' about letting go of your IDE and using the command line tools - to the quirky 'Let Your Project Speak For Itself' - about using an extreme feedback device to publicizing project metrics - to the arcane (at least to my Java ears!) 'The Linker Is Not A Magical Program', this 188 page book is packed with little gems that will go a long way in improving not only your projects but also how you do your work. And they are a joy to read.

I highly recommend getting a copy for the developers in your team. And while you are at it, do take some time to go through it yourself.

P.S. Wonder why they couldn't make it a 100 things.

Patterns Of Software - Richard Gabriel

At the beginning of this year, a friend had forwarded a list of things to do this year. One of them was 'Read a difficult book'. I guess I can confidently put a check against this one - I just finished reading 'Patterns Of Software' by Richard Gabriel. To be accurate, it's not actually a book. Rather, it is a collection of essays that appeared in the Journal Of Object-Oriented Programming, somewhere in the distant 90s. Though many of them talk about how 'Patterns Of Architecture' popularized by architect Christopher Alexander apply to the world of software, there are others that talk about the size of computer languages, their history, productivity etc.

To be fair, I hadn't expected to grasp 100% of the material. And some parts of many chapters simply sounded too  abstruse. But the article that totally stumped me was 'The Bead Games, Rugs and Beauty'. I tried to make sense of it, I really did. But my grey matter was just not upto the task. Much as I like leaving things unfinished, I had to abandon reading the chapter. Must say that this chapter is mainly responsible for my completing the 'Read a difficult book' part of this year's to-do list. :-)

And I was thinking that the honor would go to Stephen Hawking's 'A Brief History Of Time' :-)

Marketing High Technology: An Insider's View - Davidow, W. H.

The Loonliness Of A Deep Sea Diver - David Beckett

Pakistan Courting The Abyss - Tilak Devasher

Being Happy & Happier - Tal Ben-Shahar

The world's Last mysteries - Readers Digest

Ashoka In Ancient India - Nayanjyot Lahiri

Crossing The Chasm – Geoffrey Moore

It’s a dated book. I will grant you that. It was originally written in 1991 and even the revised edition is from 1998. But it is mere 174 pages and to be frank, I don’t reach out for marketing books in my sane frame of mind :-)

So what’s the chasm? Basically, it has to do with the technology adoption life cycle with its 5 distinct phases – Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority and Laggards. The chasm exists between Early Adopters and Early Majority and so the book talks about what needs to be done to make sure that the product travels smoothly from Early Adopters to Early Majority – without ever losing momentum, and thus market share, profitability etc. Etc. The author also makes it clear that the efforts have to be made by all parts of the organization and not just the marketing folks. There are many reasons for the existence of this chasm but chief among them is the fact that the Early Majority is seeking maximum discontinuity from the old ways of doing things whereas the Early Adopters are looking to minimize it. It also doesn’t help that while the Early Majority can  live with a few bugs, the Early Adopters are far less tolerant of them. The net effect is that Early Adopters cannot be referrals for Early Majority. Hence the chasm. That basically is the gist of the first chapter.

In the second chapter, the author sets about explaining how to close this chasm. The definition of a market consists of the familiar terms – customers, their need and the product that promises to fulfill it. The addition here is the reference that the customers seek from each other before making a buying decision when it comes to high-tech products. What follows is a description of salient characteristics of each phase of the technology adoption life cycle, the gotchas and must-dos of marketing to them.

The third chapter starts by talking about the unsavory characters - such as ruthless competitors & predatory investors -  that seem to inhabit this chasm and emphasizes the need to select a target niche market as the first point of targeted attack on the way to heading into the major market. The analogy of Allied Invasion of Normandy on D-Day fits it like a glove. Though I don't know the ABC of marketing, the scenarios described in this chapter are so logical that I found myself nodding in understanding. There is also an interesting section about 4 companies that seem to have navigated this chasm successfully. Unfortunately, the chapter doesn't offer any tips about how to effectively deal with the unsavory characters that are talked about at the beginning.

The 4th chapter is about how to make your decisions about the high-risk low-data market that's going to be your springboard into the wider market. And the interesting subject of Target Customer Characterization. The fifth chapter deals with how to shape the market for your company's whole product offering. The main poitnt that the author makes is that while the early market (consisting of innovators and early adopters) can get by without the Whole Product, the other side of the chasm needs it.

Chapter 6 is about fighting it out with the entrenched competitor and forcing him or her out of the target market segment. Oh, and creating competition if it doesn't exist. Sounds counter-intuitive? It sure does. But then you got to read the chapter to know what the author has in mind. I found the section on 'Positioning' a bit hard-to-digest but that could be because I am not the marketing type.

The last chapter tackles distribution and pricing i.e. customer-oriented distribution and distribution-oriented pricing. I don't know for sure but I suspect that this is perhaps the most dated chapter of this book because the Internet has come a long way from what it was in the 90s.

P. S. It was amusing to read the following about neural networks - the software has shown little commercial success because there has not yet emerged a unique and compelling application that would drive its acceptance over other, more established alternatives. Oh, and also the following one - Today, however, AI has been relegated to the trash heap. :-)