Ripples on the brain

I read two books this week. Since I have a very bad memory I thought I’ll register my current impressions about them here.

The Tipping Point
I think this one by Malcolm Gladwell was a suggested reading in some Marketing course (was it “Customer Focussed Product Development”?) during my MBA. I got a chance to read this only now. In my opinion, wikipedia gives a concise and almost comprehensive summary of the book. The book analyses some important events (which the author refers to as “social epidemics”) and arrives at the factors that the author thinks were the immediate causes for the rapid transitions in those examples. The author then advocates applying the lessons learnt from those examples for things such as social campaings and sales promotions.
As an aside, when I read about a class of people categorized as Mavens, I couldn’t but think about the desis, when they go to the US for the first time. Even for buying things such as vegetables, they derive ultimate satisfaction by visiting atleast 4 shops to identify the lowest priced products where the difference between the highest price and the lowest price might be in the order of 2-4 cents. They then call up all their desi acquaintances and provide them with the “market information” that they gleaned out of their shopping experience:).
I think the ideas suggested by the book to combat ills like nicotine addiction and alcohol addiction can be given serious thought by the governments.

One night @ the call centre
After I finished reading this book today, I searched the net to read some of the reviews and was surprised to find that my impressions matched most of the reviews.
1. The book opens up very well with well thought out characters, with the kind of humour that Chetan Bhagat is known for (especially associated with that Bhakshi character), but loses the plot somewhere in the middle.
2. The first half of the book compels the readers to finish the book in one go.
3. The climax is contrived, and not digestible even given the fact that the story is a fiction.
4. The book seems to be specifically written for Bollywood with a well-packaged love story with a happy ending.
5. In the end, invariably, the readers seem to be betrayed by a story that somewhat began well and ended up being so lousy that they cannot believe that such a book was published.
For me, both the books of Chetan Bhagat give similar kind of feeling towards the end. On both these occasions, however, the opening was so good that I couldn’t leave them till I completed them.