Thursday, March 30, 2017

Book Review of "Endless Night - by Agatha Christie"



"Endless Night" will probably go down as one of my least favorite Agatha Christie novels. Sure, the twist in the end is neat, but the overall pacing is so slow, the story so needlessly melodramatic that after reading about 60% of the book, I thought to myself "if this is a mystery novel, then where is the damn mystery!" 

Surprisingly and very uncharacteristic of Agatha Christie, but the main players in this story are uninteresting and quite predictable to be frank. The entire book is a first person narration from the point of view of a one Michael Rogers and granted that there are some intriguing shades to his personality, they are not enough to salvage the entire story. 

Feels kind of bad, but Agatha Christie's "Endless Night" gets only 2/5 in my opinion.

Sunday, March 19, 2017

Book Review of "Predictably Irrational - by Dan Ariely"


Whether you are into behavioral economics or not, whether there are better books than "Predictably Irrational" out there or not, it is still a must read I feel. For one, it is less economics and more behavioral psychology (this would be considered good or bad depending on your expectations though). Two, about 50% of the experiments that the Author carries out and talks about at length in the book are fascinating and eye-opening. The rest of them, not so much. Three, the book makes you realize how complex human beings are, how the behavioral and emotional complexity makes us both more and less reasonable, both more and less predictable and hence effectively vulnerable as compared to the 'rational thinking human being' that was envisioned in classical economics. 


The good :
- Chapter about why and how we repeatedly choose middle path given several options.
- Clever decoys in marketing pertaining to "free stuff"
- Social norms vs market norms and how deceptively it affects us all !

The bad:
- Over-generalized, far-reaching conclusions based on small sample sizes. This was actually my pet-peeve with Freakonomics as well. I understand that it is very difficult for Behavioral Economists to run experiments on people from different cultures, different ethnicities and different countries. But "behavior" I believe, is tied closely to one's culture, upbringing, where they currently reside & work etc. What is "normal/rational" for an American consumer might be very different than what is normal for an Indian consumer - even though both have equal buying power. 

Overall, I would say Predictably Irrational is an insightful read. Not quite great, but good nonetheless. 4/5 from me.