1. The Characters: Taking the folklores and legends and making a fiction of it requires a lot of fancy imagination and gut. Fortunately Amish seems to be having both. With the characters slowly outlined and growing on you, this first book of the trilogy (yes it is) offers a lot of promise. We tend to think on what or which mythical character/ situation some passages symbolise. Its fun.

2.  The Plot: The story meanders a lot but rightfully, it needs to look at all the things the protogonist had gone through to become a legend he is. As the story moves to its climax, the focus centres on how greatness is being thrusted on our hero and how he copes to it. Admirably done.

3. The writing: Indian writers tend to overuse descriptions. And with the stage being a lost civilisation, I was initially wondering how many pages I would be skimming through. Luckily, Amish kept it simple (and too simple at times) and the writing rarely forced me to take my dictionary. That said, the dialogues at times were a dampener with the modern curse words often in the lingo.

4.  The last chapter: The best part of the book. Though the ending seemed forced, the chapter leading to it was done wonderfully well. The ‘history written by winners’ duality is something that offers a lot of opportunity to explore. I loved the dialogue ‘being different is not being evil’.

That said, lets hope Amish lives upto this debut in the second and third installment. I would prescribe a good editor to trim down some parts and a little more concentration on writing the dialogues for Shiva. I dont want him to say ‘WTF’ next.

‘Delivering happiness’ is a book by CEO of Zappos.com, an online store for Shoes which has now branched out to Accessories, sunglasses, clothing etc. The website is pleasing on the eye so check them out at zappos.com.

The book is about the journey of Zappos’s CEO, Tony Hsieh (pronounced Shay) from childhood to the date when Amazon funded his company to further growth (We mortals call it a take over.) But more than that, this book is a sort of guidance and inspiration for wannabe entrepreneurs to understand what their ultimate goal (and their company’s) should be – Delivering happiness.

The biggest advantage of the book is the ability of the guy to connect with us. To ask the stakeholders of Zappos (Employees, Fred and even a client) to share their experiences with/ due to Zappos’s values and culture is a daring move which has worked in the book’s favour. It kills the monotony of a first person’s narrative.

The book is divided into three broad segments and I think moving along the same line would make things a bit easier for myself.

The first segment talks about the kid who started with worm farms and mail order button making kit to the teenager who sold pizzas to a 20 something who refused to sell his company for 20 million dollars because he was passionate about it and then sold it two years later because he realized that the passion has fizzled. I think among the books audience (I believe a large chunk would be wannabe entrepreneurs) this segment would be something they connect with.

The second segment concentrates more on Zappos and how it evolved as a company, or rather, a tribe. The core values and culture and the instances shared by the stakeholders makes this segment a very worthy read.

But of all, I personally loved the third section. My respect to Amazon as well as an understanding of how a business should run- If you outgrow your initial investors you must be able to move on, grew in this segment. I also loved the scientific take on happiness.

Personally, If that is the way Zappos communicates to employees as it had been showed through the book- Kudos. The negatives are very far and few. He could have trimmed a bit on the rave, some things he said seemed too easy (or maybe as he claimed he did get lucky) and most importantly he should have had a lot of those ‘tweets to live by’. They very well made up for those dull parts.

Overall, a good book that also leads to you to half a dozen other good ones. I have read ‘Good to Great’ during my college and found it a bit of a dull read. Now it might throw a totally different perspective. I also must learn poker. Too many business lessons in it