The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World -- A.J. Jacobs

A.J. Jacobs decides to go through the daunting task of reading all 32 volumes (32,900 pages) of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and does! The result - this book, a compilation of strange, very interesting facts associated with each word he reads, augmented by his own sarcastic humor about the fact and intertwined with funny events in his life, mostly around his quest for knowledge.

Excerpts:-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

oyster
Oysters can change sex according to the termperature of the water. I always knew there was something emasculating about warm baths.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

punctuation

The Greek interrogation mark became the English semicolon. Bizarre, no;

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

katydid

This member of the grasshopper family is named for its unique mating call, which sounds like a psychotic witness: "Katy did, Katy didn't, Katy did, Katy didn't."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

death
A Russian nobleman patented a coffin that allowed the corpse-if he regained consciousness after burial-to summon help by ringing a bell. A good idea. Because that could really screw up your week-to wake up and fine yourself in an airless coffin. I guess nowadays they could put cell phones in there.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

An encyclopedia with fun oddball facts. Would make for a nice coffee table book too, given you can turn to any page and spend just a couple minutes to be entertained and informed.

Tidbit: Some other people who have read the entire Britannica: Isaac Asimov, Richard Feynman, C. S. Forester and George Bernard Shaw.

Complications - A Surgeon's notes on an imperfect science - Dr. Atul Gawande

For the common man, medicine is as magical as wizardry and a doctor with a stethescope or a scalpel is seen as a wizard with a magic wand. Dr. Atul Gawande in his book, Complications, has tried to demystify medicine and surgery for you and me. The imperfectness, the procedures and other details that go on behind the blue curtains are illustrated with examples from Dr. Gawande's experience making this book a medical thriller from cover to cover. The depth of detail the author delves into is absolutely fantastic. At the same time, it is very easy to comprehend as the author doesn't use any fancy medical jargon. A National Book Award finalist, Complications was recommended to me by a colleague of mine.

In the first part of the book, the author deals with errors in the field of medicine and surgery. Good medical practices in hospitals, the use of computers to diagnose diseases, M&M (Morbidity and Mortality) conferences and retirement policies for doctors are discussed with insight into the pros and cons of these processes to reduce mortality and errors during treatment. Trade offs in using interns/residents to perform procedures are discussed in depth as well.

In the second part of the book, the author goes into the mysteries of medicine and other intriguing surgical procedures. The topics dealt in this part of the book include gastric bypass for obese patients, clipping of nerves radiating from the spine to stop blushing among blushers and a deep dive into nausea among patients.

The final part of the book is titled Uncertainty and this part deals with issues like autopsies and their usefulness, patient consent and the degree of patient freedom in making their medical choices. The book ends with "The case of the red leg", which shows us that our bodies are in equilibrium on a needle tip and a very small thing like a rash could make a case for an amputation.

Overall, it's an exciting book and I would recommend it to medical and non-medical professionals. The imperfectness of medicine has left an uneasy feeling in me and has perhaps made me a little paranoid, but it has definitely given me a different perspective into the world of medicine.

Freakonomics

I have been wanting to write this review for a long time now. I picked up this book from my favorite Tata Book House in Bangalore. (for an extra 10% discount and told the lady at the counter how much I liked the store and have been buying books from them for the past 10 years in spite of me working for the world’s biggest online book retailer).

Now about the book, I should say a very interesting read. A must read for information junkies, it provides numerous references to facts and correlates many of them. The main theme of the book is about asking interesting questions and trying to answer them with numbers and statistics. It is mostly analyzing tons to collected data and arriving at conclusions. And I should say in most his examples he makes a very interesting case for the way he munches these numbers to bring out the bottom line.

Here is one of the interesting questions:
Why do drug dealers still live with their moms ?
In most cases he talks how answers derived by conventional wisdom are not entirely correct and how numbers can be used to better answer such questions.
A fun read over all, easy writing style and is kind of gripping when you see it unfold and the way it defies common sense in many occasions.

Well if you are too lazy to read, then watch this author talk, the talk is very funny and nice, it is only 20 mins.