‘If you don’t like to read, you haven’t found the right book.‘ – J.K. Rowling
Hello friends, I’m back for another book review! Sorry this is rather delayed. April was a bit of a reading slump for me, work was extremely busy but I did pick it up again in May so watch out for my review, which will be out next week 🙂
April Book Count:
Book Count: 3
BOOK OF THE MONTH: Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World – and why the world is better than you think by Anna Rosling Rönnlund, Hans Rosling, and Ola Rosling
A great book on how and why we perceive the world the way we do. It’s full of wisdom, it’s factual and it’s witty. I love it! This book is authored by the Late Hans Rosling, his son & his daughter in law (in fact he worked on it till his demise in 2017). Rosling is a Swedish Physician and Statistician, most famously known for all of his presentations presenting the factual trends of the world.
In the book, Rosling clearly points out our tendencies and biases, and when i read the book a quote came to mind. There is always 3 sides to a story: Yours, mine and the truth. After all the world is what we perceive it to be, and unbeknownst to us, our tendencies cloud our view of the world’s progress; it misleads us in the process of forming our opinions and judgments. I felt called out for so many times in the book (in a good way) and I walked away feeling more self aware. If you are interested to check out the summary of the 10 reasons, you can read the article I wrote here. Would highly recommend this!
Other books for the month:
Non-Fiction
The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
I was really excited about this book because I have always been interested in good design and it had pretty good reviews. In fact, when I found out this is the Norman of the ‘Norman Door’ concept, I was even more psyched. Unfortunately, I think this book didn’t live up to my expectations. This book had a more textbook-like feel to it; he expanded a lot on the theory and while I really appreciated the knowledge, I felt the writing style was quite dated. To make matters worse, I couldn’t quite understand the flow of the book cause it felt like he was repeating himself. I tried hard to like it but the fact that it took me a really long time to finish it does say a lot. There were some great teachings though such as how good designs should account for the fact that humans will make error! Most of the time it’s the design that is poorly designed. A good design should be intuitive, to reduce the amount of relearning and likelihood for mistakes. Great wisdom just poorly structured….
Fiction
Anxious People by Fredrik Backman
I don’t know what to feel about this book. I have never felt so torn when reading a fictional novel. A story about a hostage drama which is more about the people involved, than the hostage taking itself. Make no mistake this is no Money Heist kind of novel; instead the author actually cleverly explores many of life’s conundrums about long term relationships, suicide, divide between the rich and the poor through these characters. But the thing is – I find the conversations to be insufferable. I really do. The humour is quirky but sometimes lends too much of it. And too much of anything is just bad. The characters are not just anxious people, they are annoying people. Like that one friend you know who won’t shut up. So while I enjoyed some of the POV by the author, the personalities were just too much for me. Nevertheless, I’m keen to give this author another go so I will be checking out more titles in the coming months.
Year-To-Date Book Count : 17
Book reviews from other months:
Gudeiary 
One thought on “April Book Reviews | 3 books I’ve read”