We have become so accustomed to talking about startups through funding rounds, valuations, unicorns and rapid growth that entrepreneurship itself can sometimes begin to look like a financial event. A founder raises money. The valuation goes up. The company expands. The headlines arrive. But somewhere underneath all of this is a much simpler question. Is anyone actually willing to pay for what the business is offering? That question kept returning to me while reading Narasimha

A tree is one of the easiest things in the world to ignore. We pass hundreds of them without looking twice. They stand outside our homes, along roads, inside school grounds, beside temples and in the middle of cities. We use their shade, breathe the air around them and depend on the ecological systems they belong to. Yet most of the time, we simply call them part of nature and move on. That ordinary relationship with trees is what makes Boban Idiculla Oonni's TREE: The Sixth

Artificial intelligence is becoming very good at finding patterns. It can process enormous amounts of information, identify risks, forecast possible outcomes, compare scenarios and surface relationships that a human team might miss. For Project Management Offices, that creates an obvious opportunity. But Thinking With Machines: Building AI-Enabled PMOs for the Age of Intelligent Project Leadership by Danilo Arba made me think about a less obvious problem. When a machine becom

Aurora S.’s First You, Then the Rest asks a deceptively simple question: what happens when choosing yourself disappoints other people? The title makes a promise that is easy to agree with. Choose yourself. The difficult part begins when that choice has consequences. Saying no sounds liberating on a page. In real life, it can cost us approval, affection, friendships, family harmony, or the comfortable identity of being the person everyone can depend on. That tension sits at th

Most of us know what we should change. We should sleep better. Move more. Drink enough water. Spend less time scrolling. Protect our attention. Be grateful. Breathe. Make better choices. The strange thing is that knowing all of this does not necessarily make us do any of it. That gap between knowing and doing is where Theresa Cheung's Walk Your Talk begins. Her argument is simple: lasting personal change depends less on what we intend to do and more on what we repeatedly do.

What if the real problem with our economic debate is not that we have chosen the wrong system, but that we have become too comfortable believing there are only a few systems to choose from? That question stayed with me while reading A Republic Reimagined: A New Economic Model for a New Age by Joshua Schmude. Schmude challenges the familiar argument that economies must ultimately choose between capitalism and socialism. Instead, he explores a hybrid economic model in which pri

There is something almost absurd about a life being reduced to ten inches. Twenty-two years of pouring tea. Twenty-two years of knowing who wants extra ginger, who will pay tomorrow, who needs a cup on credit, who comes to the cart simply because there is nowhere else to go. Then someone draws a chalk line on the pavement and decides that those ten inches matter more. That is where Shekhar Nerala’s Ten Inches: A Novel of Bada Shehar begins to become interesting. When a Tea Ca

There is a particular kind of loss that comes with leaving home. You can leave a house. You can leave a city. You can even leave a country. But leaving the version of yourself that existed there is much harder. That is what stayed with me while reading Shiraz Nomad's A Place We Used to Call Home. On the surface, this is a memoir about growing up in post-revolution Iran, living through political upheaval, witnessing violence and repression, enduring imprisonment, and eventuall

Finish What You Start by Peter Hollins is a practical book about one of the most common problems in modern life: starting things with enthusiasm and then quietly abandoning them. We make plans. We set goals. We buy books. We begin projects. We promise ourselves that this time we will stay consistent. Then something happens. Life gets busy. Motivation disappears. A distraction looks more attractive. The task becomes repetitive. And the unfinished goal slowly moves into the bac

Some people fall in love by saying it. Some by showing it. And some spend years doing everything except saying the one thing that matters. That is where Kartikeya Dhar places Kabir Sharma in The Unsaid, a quiet contemporary Indian love story set in Shimla in 2003. Kabir is the kind of person who notices things other people miss. He sees unhappiness, hesitation, small lies and changes in behaviour. He observes the world around him with unusual sensitivity. Yet when it comes to

There is something very appealing about being told that we can change our lives. Change the way we think. Change what we do. Change where we eventually arrive. It gives us something we all like to have: a sense of agency. Brian Keane’s Rewire Your Mindset works from that belief. The book is built around personal responsibility, discipline, habits, confidence, resilience, goal setting and, most importantly, the gap between intending to do something and actually doing it. Much

We call someone a stranger when we know nothing about them. But perhaps the more accurate definition is this: A stranger is someone whose story we haven't heard yet. Jay Divyam's None of Us Are Strangers begins with a little girl, an absent mother and a man who never intended to become responsible for either of them. Veer Mehra is at a Mumbai party when a woman asks him to look after her daughter, Aaruhi, for a few minutes. She doesn't return. Those few minutes be

“What's your price?” It is an uncomfortable question because we are used to putting prices on almost everything. A house has a price. A car has a price. A company has a valuation. Even our time is increasingly measured in money. But what happens when the question is directed at a human being? That discomfort is precisely where Dr. Manjit Hans begins in What's Your Price? Understanding Your Worth. The title initially sounds transactional, almost provocative. Yet the book

Nick Trenton’s I’m Anxious and Can’t Stop Overthinking made me look differently at the noise inside our heads There is something strangely exhausting about an anxious mind. It can take one unanswered message and turn it into a story. One mistake can become evidence of incompetence. One uncertain tomorrow can occupy an entire afternoon. And sometimes, the more we try to solve the thought, the more thoughts we create. That is where Nick Trenton’s I’m Anxious and Can’t Sto

What if having it all is not about getting everything? What does it actually mean to have it all? More money? A successful career? A happy family? Good health? Inner peace? Meaningful relationships? Freedom from regret? We tend to imagine these things as items on a checklist. The more boxes we tick, the closer we are to a great life. Gaur Gopal Das’s You Can Have It All made me question that definition. Perhaps the difficult part is not getting more out of life. Per

What happens when a place stops producing gold but refuses to stop carrying its history? That question stayed with me while reading Rabi Samuel’s Cold Mine. Set against the history of Kolar Gold Fields, the novel takes us into abandoned mine shafts, forgotten records, unfinished maps and old legends. But beneath the thriller machinery, Samuel is interested in something larger: what happens to people when the place that gave meaning to their lives also takes something from

Why does a young woman avoid buying a personal product from the family grocer? Why can a Sunday breakfast table in an Indian home look like a tour of the world? And why can a retailer with a deceptively simple business model understand Indian consumers better than companies with far larger resources? These questions are more interesting than they first appear because they point to something businesses often forget: consumers don't always behave as logically as market re

Why do intelligent people make simple problems complicated? Sometimes because the problem really is complicated. But sometimes because complexity makes us feel that we are doing serious thinking. That distinction stayed with me while reading Mukesh Sud's Simple Thinking. The book begins with an idea that sounds almost obvious: when we are surrounded by information, opinions and noise, finding a simple way forward can be more useful than adding another layer of complexit

We thought we knew the result. The pollsters thought they knew. The television studios thought they knew. The political class thought they knew. Then the voters spoke. And suddenly, almost everyone had to explain why they had been wrong. That is where Rajdeep Sardesai’s 2024: The Election That Surprised India becomes fascinating. Because this isn't merely a book about an election. It is a book about how narratives are created, amplified—and sometimes shattered

A crown is supposed to be a symbol of power. But what if it is actually a debt? That was the thought I kept returning to while reading Rajesh Mehta’s Bleeding Crown: Protector of Sivi. Set in 726 BC, long before the familiar chapters of Indian history that most of us encounter in school, the novel takes us into the kingdom of Sivi, where a young prince is expected to inherit not merely a throne, but everything that comes with it—promises made by those before him, politi