Printers pick the best books of 2014

Surendran M, Techno Graphic Services - Oru Desathinte Katha (The Story of a Locale) by Sankaran Kutty PottekkattOru Desathinte Katha portrays life in Athiranippadam. It sketches a unique history of the country while detailing the micro-history of a place. Pottekkatt is the author of nearly 60 books; 10 novels, 24 collections of short stories, 18 travelogues and four plays. Oru Desathinte Katha has won the Kendra Sahitya Academy Award in 1972, and Jnanpith Award in 1980

G Venugopal, Sterling - Does He Know a Mother’s Heart? : How Suffering Refutes Religion by Arun Shourie According to G Venugopal the feel of Does He Know is excellent. The cover photo, the "feel" of the paper and the binding – all makes it a great book. The book begins with Arun’s role as a caregiver. Then he takes us along a journey of quoting religious texts of Islam, Christianity and Hinduism and then explaining how they don’t really makes sense. Extreme suffering can never be justified

Arjun Nanda, Eye Candy Visuals - Durbar by Tavleen Singh Tavleen Singh was a seasoned reporter and newspaper columnist a while back. Durbar is a sharp account of the turbulent years of the Emergency and the political shifts that followed. Singh writes of the birth and evolution of insurgencies in Punjab and Kashmir, the blood spilt in assassinations and massacres, of crises internal and external and the clumsy attempts to set things right

Rekha Sharma, Manroland India - Some Luck by Jane Smiley Some Luck is about the life and times of a remarkable family over three transformative decades in America. Each chapter in Some Luck covers a single year, beginning in 1920, as American soldiers like Walter return home from World War I, and following their lives up through the early 1950s

N Sreekumar, Bhavish Graphics – A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill BrysonThe book explains some areas of science, using accessible language. The author explores the history of geology and biology, placing emphasis on the development of the modern Homo Sapiens. In 2005, the book won the EU Descartes Prize for science communication and was shortlisted for Samuel Johnson Prize

Prashant Sehra, Print Emporio - The Bhagvad Gita According to Sehra the Bhagwad Gita is an encyclopedia of the realities of life. The Gita, is a 700-verse scripture that is part of the Hindu epic Mahabharata. This scripture contains a conversation between Pandava prince-warrior Arjuna and his guide Lord Krishna on a variety of theological and philosophical issues. However, unlike the rigorous monism of the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita also integrates dualism and theism

Sagar Shejwalkar, SIES GST - Life after Life by Kate Atkinson According to Shejwalkar, Life after Life depicts the concept of the continuum circle of life. In the novel, every time the main character (Ursula Todd) dies, she’s reborn. We see how Ursula’s choices affect her, those around her, as well as the fate of the 20th century world. It’s theme revolves around the liner: What if you could live again and again, until you get it right?

Hemant Paruchuri, Pragati Pack - Matabele Dawn by Saad Bin Jung Jung paints a picture so vivid that the reader is often transported to the shrub jungles of Africa or the reeling palaces of Northern India in Matabele Dawn, a book about two men and two lands. The two protagonists Shaaz and Chenjerai are faced with many ups and downs but the ultimate challenge may destroy not just their own lives but their families and generations ahead. The book is not just a story of identity but a peep into the lives and the history of two ancient societies

Vikas Raj Gupta, Zeb International - Malicious Gossip by Khuswant SinghMalicious Gossip like most of Khuswant Singh’s work is blunt, perceptive, incorrigibly provocative and often amusing. The book includes candid portrayals of public personalities such as Zail Singh, Rajiv Gandhi, and Nargis Dutt along with beautifully weaved images of Delhi, Amritsar, Goa, Lucknow, Bhopal and Hyderabad. Peppered across the text are issues of communalism and terrorism, which are major issues which in today’s society

Deepak Sheth, Sheth Publishers - Sun Tzu’s The Art of WarThe book is one of China’s Seven Military Classics. Sheth has read it almost 15-20 times and calls it ‘serious reading'. The book is a prehistoric Chinese military treatise attributed to the author, Sun Tzu, a high-ranking military general, strategist and diplomat. It comprises of 13 chapters, each of which is devoted to one aspect of warfare. Tzu emphasises on war being a necessary evil that must be avoided whenever possible

Saifee Makasarwala, Silverpoint Press - The Monk Who Sold his Ferrari by Robin S Sharma Robin Sharma is the CEO of Sharma Leadership International, a global training and coaching services firm. Makasarwala said, “The book is very interesting because of its theme which centres on how to live a life.” This book tells the extraordinary story of Julian Mantle, a successful but misguided lawyer. It is an informal step-by-step approach to living with greater audacity, balance, abundance, and bliss

Prasad Balan Iyer, SIES - Transforming Indians to Transform India by Chinmaya Mission Iyer said, “Transforming Indians is an interactive and powerful book with seven stories that entices every individual to transform oneself, and will collectively transform our country into a better nation.” The book’s stories are independent of each other and highlight the essence of India. There are philosophies, motivations, solutions with help of verses from Bhagvad Geeta, Quran, Bible and Guru Granth Sahib

Ashok Goel, Essel Propack - World 3.0 Global Prosperity And How To Achieve It by Pankaj GhemawatGhemawat’s title answers questions that have arisen after the 2008 global economic recession. World 3.0 posits four “Worlds”. World 0.0 where life was “nasty, brutish and short”; in World 1.0, nations were largely self-contained; World 2.0 is the industrialised and globalised world of today. Ghemawat’s World 3.0 is semi-globalised where nations retain control of their economic destiny

Haridas Krishnan, Pragati (Kerala) - Zachariayude Kathakal (Selected Stories by Zacharia) by Paul Zacharia Paul Zacharia is a Malayalam short story writer, novelist and essayist. The book is a collection of all (97)Zacharia stories, starting from the first to the latest, including those which were not published earlier. Zacharia’s stories have laid the foundation for modern Malayalam literature. He is a recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award

CP Paul, APL Machinery - Good to Great by James Collins Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't aims to describe the transition from being average companies to great companies and how companies can fail to make the transition. Collins and his researchers studied 6,000 articles, generated more than 2,000 pages of interview transcripts and created 384 megabytes of computer data for this book, over a period of five-years

P Sajith, Welbound Worldwide - One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez The book tells the story of the Macondo town through the history of seven generations of the Buendias family. Sajith says, “I often wished I could be Melquaides, the mystic gypsy who visits Macondo every year with objects from around the world. He comes back to life from his reported death, and declares ‘I could not bear the solitude of death’. I hope Gabo can neither.”

Monica Rohra, manager-sales, PrintWeek India - Love in the Time of Cholera Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez was a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo by his fans. The Nobel prize winning author passed away on 17 April in Mexico City; a day that was mourned at PrintWeek India

Vashikaran Rajendrasingh, managing director, Bell Printers - The Little Black Book of Innovation: How It Works, How to Do It by Scott Anthony The premise of the book is simple. Innovation is the hottest discipline around today—in business circles and beyond and its practice is no longer impenetrable. Scott revisits innovation with his research and field work with companies like Procter & Gamble and a powerful 28-day program for mastering innovation’s key steps

Boman Moradian, director, Essel Propack - Joel Barker’s Paradigms: Business of Discovering the FutureIn ParadigmBarker explains how to, in any business, spot paradigm shifts, how they unfold, and how to profit from them. With concrete examples and predictions for the future, the book shows the power of the method to effectively grapple with one’s intractable problems and improve results incalculably

Faheem Agboatwala, Hi-Tech Printing ServicesLegacy: Letters from Eminent Parents to Their Daughters by Sudha MenonMenon, a journalist with over two decades of experience ín news and feature writing has brought together a compilation of personal letters from India’s most prominent personalities to their daughters. Some of the featured include including Narayana Murthy, Chanda Kochhar, Kishore Biyani, Zia Mody, Pradeep Bhargava, Capt. Gopinath, Mallika Sarabhai, and Prakash Padukone

Ashlyn Antony, Redlands - Sidin Vadukut's The Sceptical Patriot

O Venuopal, Anaswara Offset - Randamoozham by M T Vasudevan Nair

Prashant Khomne, Global 5 Technologies, 2014 The Election That Changed India by Rajdeep Sardesai

Rushikesh Aravkar, PrintWeek India – The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes Printed and bound in India by Replika Press, Barnes' book is an intriguing story of three school-friends. One of them, Tony, also the narrator, tracks the origin of one particular memory throughout his life. About memory and history, aging, guilt, and remorse. The 150-page novella won the Man Booker Prize Winner in 2011

Tanvi Parekh, PrintWeek India - Montalbano series by Andrea Camilleri Tanvi Parekh says, “I stumbled upon Montalbano a few years ago in tiny bookshop near CST station. Since then, I'm keen to visit some of the locations used in the books - so as to experience the joys, pitfalls and quirks of Sicilian life as described so vividly by Camilleri.”