Pegasus Book Club

A 4000 year old document—The Seventh Scroll—contains the location of the crypt of the Pharaoh Mamose. Egyptologist Royan Al Simma and her husband Duraid are trying to decode the cryptic messages of the scroll that will reveal them the location of the Pharaoh’s crypt.

But they are not alone in the search. There are a group of cruel and unscrupulous people who will wipe out everything that stands between them and the treasures.

Druaid is brutally murdered and their house is burned and the attackers take the scroll also with them. Left with nothing but her memory, Royan seeks the help of one of Druaid’s friends—Sir Nicholas Quenton Harper—a daring man who will stake his fortune and his life to join her hunt for the king’s tomb.

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INDLISH: The Book for Every English-Speaking Indian by Jyoti Sanyal is about fighting commercialese, officialese, and legalese and promoting the use of plain English. Indlish is a compilation of Sanyal’s articles on plain English first printed in his column in The Statesman. Sanyal was formerly Dean of Asian College of Journalism, Bangalore, and an assistant editor with The Statesman, Calcutta. Now he is part of Clear English India, which encourages people to use good contemporary English instead of Raj-day commercialese, officialese, and legalese.

It is a great book that makes a lot of sense. It is easy-to-read, witty, clear, and concise. The author practices what he preaches. As the title says, it is a book that should be read by every English-speaking Indian. It is full of good advice about how to write English in simple, easy-to-read and easy-to-understand way.

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This book is about assholes and fighting them. The back cover summarizes the content of book very nicely: The definitive guide to working with—and surviving—Bullies, Creeps, Jerks, Tyrants, Tormentors, Despots, Back stabbers, Egomaniacs, and all the other assholes who do their best to destroy you at work.

In this book Robert Sutton, a professor of Management Science at the Stanford University expands on his article More Trouble than They’re Worth that appeared in the February 2004 issue of the Harvard Business Review. This book explains why our workplaces have many nasty people, why they survive and thrive and how they ruin other people’s life and career. The author argues that assholes—those who deliberately make co-workers feel bad about themselves and who focus their aggression on the less powerful—poison the work environment, decrease productivity, induce qualified employees to quit and therefore are detrimental to businesses, regardless of their individual effectiveness. Sutton goes on to explain how to build a civilized workplace and surviving one that is not.

The book contains an introduction, seven chapters, additional reading, acknowledgments and an index. In the introduction, the author explains how he stumbled on the ‘No asshole rule’ and how it got published in HBR and how it became a book.

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In this book Marshall Goldsmith, one of the most successful executive coaches of our times tells us how successful people become even more successful. He enumerates 21 habits that could hinder one’s success, how to identify these dysfunctions and how to get rid of them.

Many people, at the start of their careers have enjoyed tremendous growth with double and triple promotions fast track career paths and have moved up the corporate leader very fast only to stumble after a certain point in their growth. However hard they try, they seem anchored to that position. They can never hope to reach the top and most of them never will. But they are the very same people who have been earmarked for the top slots. Why some people fail to reach the top? What stands between these people and the top position? This book provides the answers to the above questions and explains how to get rid of the bad habits and handicaps that pull you down and prevent you from moving forward.

The book contains 4 sections, an appendix and an index. The first section—The Trouble with Success—discusses how our previous success often prevents us from achieving more success. It contains three chapters: You are Here, Enough about You, and The Success Delusion (why we resist change). This section acts as an introduction to the book and explains whom the book is for, how the book is organized and how to use this book. It introduces a few habits that inhibit success with real world examples.

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