Review: Anger: Taming the Beast

Anger: Taming the Beast by Reneau Z. Peurifoy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

[Note: I got this book from NetGalley in return for an honest review]

This book is about Anger, which is one of the most powerful component of human behavior and weakest as well if not handled well. the main theme of the book is - how to experience anger at appropriate level and make it constructive.

The author starts with a question - what is anger ? and takes us through the reasons behind it and repercussions of it. What are the various ways a person responds when s/he is angry. the author has discussed four patients , coming from different backgrounds. these patients are discussed in almost all the chapters and through them the author has tried to convey minute details which were probably not possible without them.

The author has emphasized that anger can be controlled and this book is a kind of a workbook which demands you to take charge of your life and track all the details in your daily life that can cause anger. It also talks about how to know early if you are going to get angry by keeping a close watch on your body sensation, your behavior etc. almost each chapter has some sort of exercise to know your self more and to understand your relationships which are getting spoiled because of anger.

The book talks about how distorted thinking and stress cause inappropriate anger. there is a chapter about how the past of a person can cause it .

There is a very good chapter on how to handle kids and their power struggle with parents. these chapters are full of wisdom. after reading this chapter I realized what I should not do to encourage my kids.

The book also talks about conflicts and how to resolve them. how to handle shame, embarrassment, envy, jealousy, resentment.

I would be reading this book again after few months, as author has asked as well, to make sure that I do not forget the things I learnt from it.

This is a great book and I rate it 5//5.

View all my reviews

Review: OPEN-EYED MEDITATIONS Practical Wisdom for Everyday Life

OPEN-EYED MEDITATIONS Practical Wisdom for Everyday Life by Shubha Vilas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

[Note: I won this book in GoodReads Giveaway and this is my honest review]

This book has about 62 chapters and each chapter talks about some specific aspect of human behavior. there are chapters about managing your self and about leadership skills.

while discussing all these, the author also refers to incidents in the Ramayana and Mahabharata. at times it feels like that incidents are just pushed into the narrative even if it is not needed.

The book is full of wisdom and each chapter in the end has a terse summary which I liked more than the chapter. while reading about the relationships and people it reminded me of the Dale Carnegie's book - How to Win Friends and Influence People.

There are some good chapters on Leadership skills and how a leader should act in bad times. I feel that this book has to be read and read again by me, specially the summary of each chapter towards the end of it, to make sure that I can recall these ideas when needed.

I rate this book 4/5





View all my reviews

Review: JavaScript for Kids: A Playful Introduction to Programming

JavaScript for Kids: A Playful Introduction to Programming by Nick Morgan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I knew a bit of java script before reading this book and the last time when I did the coding in pure java script was around 12 years back. After that all kind of new frameworks like struts, JSF ,ADF hit the market and people like me who were on product development easily made that shift and stayed away from working in JavaScript for years.

Now again, everything is moving onto cloud and we need far better libraries , frameworks to meet the requirements and going back to basics.

I needed a kind of crash course in JavaScript and this book was a good one to start with. I took the baby steps while reading this book and wrote almost all the code mentioned in the book , in my browser and now after finishing the book I feel good and confident about JavaScript.

This book has set a good foundation for java script and I think that now I can read and understand JavaScript libraries better.

View all my reviews