Book Reviews

The Book of Awesome by Neil Pasricha
A collection of short (sometimes one-liners) blurbs about life’s wonderful moments. This book reminded me of how NOT to take myself too seriously and to enjoy and appreciate each event however, small or insignificant it may seem in the grand scheme of things. After all, life is a collection of small, seemingly inconsequential series of events. A very nice and light read . . .

The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich
This is the book that the movie “Social Network” is based on. While the movie closely resembles the book, there are quite a few valuable insights from the book that is not in the movie and a few scenes in the movie that is noticeably absent in the book . . . overall, it captures the personalities of both Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin in a whole different light — as this book is based on only one side (Eduardo’s) of the story, it does a good job of narrating the sequence of events leading up to what Facebook is now. Having read the book, I now completely understand why Mark did what he did and while I may not totally agree with his methods, I might have done the same if I were in his shoes, so I can’t really blame him . . . Eduardo, seemingly the “good guy/victim” in the movie also has his faults and the book does a good job of exposing that (the movie didn’t really do a good job of showing his flaws). And while I still sympathize with Eduardo, I don’t completely agree with his actions that may have lead to the eventual end of their (his and Mark’s) friendship. They sort of cancel each other out, in my opinion after having seen the movie and read the book . . . as the saying goes, it does take two to tango.

Pete Sampras : A Champion’s mind by Pete Sampras, Peter Bodo
A short biography of Pete’s rise to become one of the best tennis players to ever play the game . . . this book narrates what goes on in Pete’s mind while he was still a junior tennis player and what made him become the most dominant player in his era. I plan to read Andre’s biography as well and while I cheered for Andre whenever they played against each other – I have newfound respect for Pete Sampras, he is truly a class act and there may never be another one like him.

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