The book I am reading currently

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abhi1984 said:
As someone who interned at some of these places I can vouch for some of the issues in the book too. During my interns we have to reverse engineer a chemical patent and even after multiple centrifuge runs nothing happened. The company man directing our internship came and changed the numbers using whitener and simply writing over it.

Though I felt the bashing has to be measured against what is the cause behind the rise of generics. R&D costs are high and because US has insurance paid programs people get away with high price. But, there are others who need lower price even if the price is too good to be true, people still want to believe it.
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Well, the challenge is if the drug doesn't work, any amount of money spent on buying it money down the drain, be it 1 rupee or 100 rupees. As it is, the USFDA has a ****ing 45% range for generics to work with (80% to 125% of the original molecule), and that itself can create issues.
Now we are dealing with either non working API or worse, illegal substitutes which can kill individuals. Not acceptable for any cost, not even for free.
 
alekhkhanna said:
If you have ever taken any medication, it's an essential read.
I work in the same industry, and I know that most of the drug manufacturing in India and China is essentially shit with no QC, but never knew the situation is so bad.
The book primarily focuses on Ranbaxy, which basically sold drugs with no or little API in them for well over 40 years in multiple countries, but then it touches over other companies too, like Dr Reddy's, Glenmark, Zydus etc and the kind of shitshow FDA has seen at their plants. Have personally experienced multiple instances when generics (rather branded generics) would just not work, and having moved to a brand name drug solved the issue in days (most notable example being I've never found any brand of Clarithromycin to work adequately in most of my patients except Claribid (made by Pfizer), to the extent I have to warn them not to change it to any other brand/generic). I stopped using most branded generics (i.e. Indian/Chinese manufactured variants) about 4-5 years ago for my family members, except the superstar drugs (like Telma for Glenmark, which is their flagship brand), but now when I think about some of the symptoms my mom and dad sometimes experience, I do think it can be due to erratic release of the API in blood due to no QC by manufacturing sites. Time to change them to costlier branded versions.
The situation is worsening as almost all generic MNCs have moved their production to India or China, with almost no regulatory oversight. Many of the times, even the MNCs have no clue as to what is happening at the plant. Scary.
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Thanks. Will give this a read :)
 
A nice bump:

Since I got the Kindle have read:
  • Sackett's Land - Louis L'Amour
  • The Adventure's of Sherlock Holmes - Arthur C. Doyle
  • Call of the Raven - Wilbur Smith
  • Titanic: Story of the Unsinkable Ship - Henry Freeman
  • The Odyssey - Homer
  • History of Cleopatra - Jacob Abbot


Note:
Thread has been stickied.!
 
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Almost every year I create a reading challenge in Goodreads with ~12 book to read a year.
This year I have read(!) 16 till now. (link)
  1. Memoirs of a Geisha (ebook)
  2. Harry Potter #6 (ebook)
  3. Harry Potter #7 (ebook)
  4. Ender's Game (Audiobook)
  5. 1984 (Audiobook + ebook)
  6. Homo Deus (Audiobook)
  7. ABC of Murder (Audiobook)
  8. Ikigai (Audibook)
  9. <8x Assamese novels, hard copies I bought from Guwahati Book fair in Jan'21>
  10. Atomic Habits - (Audiobook, in progress)
I recently started walking for some ~1hr daily in the evening and I found Audiobooks are way better than listening same music playlist everyday :) .
And Youtube got lots of them. Many of those from Audible or other such good sources. I got youtube premium, so don't need to keep the screen on and no ads of course.
 
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Just started 'The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue' . Started it a couple of hours back since I am taking a break from work for a couple of days. Enjoyable so far. Like @mathrisk I have been setting myself a Goodreads challenge for the past couple of years. Happy to say that for the second time in a row, I beat the challenge by a fair margin with almost no cheating (few to no books under 150 pages long, with more than 70% being over 500 pages long.

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Recommended Books for the Year
1. Soul of an Octopus
2. Lies of Locke Lamora (Lamora #1)
3. The Republic of Thieves (Lamora #3)
4. Red Seas under Red Skies (Lamora #2) - grudging recommendation
5. Project Hail Mary - Must read for Scifi and Martian fans!

All the books are rather long, and are mostly for seasoned readers.
 
It's a little dry (economics tends to be) but I've been reading `The Deficit Myth` by Stephanie Kelton.
I only get a few minutes to read on my lunch break everyday, but it's quite interesting so far, if only because it's interesting to read about an economic theory that is so new compared to the standard ones everyone learns about in school/college (marxian/keynesian/neoliberal).
 
Started reading Dune! I'm 25% done. The movie was really good, I wish I got to watch it in IMAX or at least in theatres but unfortunately I had to make do with watching on my Mac, Dolby Vision HDR and AirPods Pro Spatial Audio Dolby Atmos.
 
Too many that i start and don't finish

Four miles to freedom - Escape from a Pak POW camp
Silent invasion - China's influence in Australia
The gray lady winked - Ashley Rindsberg
How to read a French fry - Russ Parsons
 
alekhkhanna said:
Well, the challenge is if the drug doesn't work, any amount of money spent on buying it money down the drain, be it 1 rupee or 100 rupees. As it is, the USFDA has a ****ing 45% range for generics to work with (80% to 125% of the original molecule), and that itself can create issues.
Now we are dealing with either non working API or worse, illegal substitutes which can kill individuals. Not acceptable for any cost, not even for free.
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Read The Bottle of Lies in one go yesterday, and it was such an eye opener. Not surprised, because corporate cronyism and compromising on safety and quality in lieu of profits is a recurring problem in Indian companies. I felt there was inherent American bia towards India and the East as well in the book as well, but the reporting seemed well researched. The horrors of sub standard medicine in Africa were bone chilling
mathrisk said:
Those are listed here https://www.goodreads.com/user_challenges/26688463

Last week picked up "Dune".
It was on my to-read list for some time. Now since the movie has also came, I thought better to read the book then watch the movie.

Anybody done both (book & movie) for Dune ?
Any comment on the movie?
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Dune, the book is a masterpiece of science fiction. The movie is a good visual watch, but can't capture every intricacy mentioned in the book. Read the book and you will know ...
 
Trying to make a list of some good books to start my 2022. Here are the books. A little veering towards scifi and fantasy, but I am hoping to add to the mix as the year progresses. All titles link to good reads.

All these books are at 30% read, and I have not been getting too much time. So these are the ones I will complete in 2022. I am including a short write about the book and where pertinent, how I came across these.

Non-fiction
  1. Octopus - The Ocean's Intelligent invertebrate - Sy Montgomery's Soul of an Octopus prompted me to know more about the amazing life on the planet and how intelligence might have evolved, so I got started on this book. Enjoying it fully - reading it slow and easy.
  2. Stiff - The Curious Life of Human Cadavers - A book about the (mis?)use of human cadavaers - particulary interesting because as a family we do not much care about what happens to our bodies and have donated our organs and bodies to appropriate donors and or science.
  3. The Zoologists Guide to the Galaxy - As a scifi fan, and a keen follower of science, this book is an interesting take on how life could be on other planets and the paths evolution could take. A nice way to brush-up on how to think critically.
  4. How to Catch a Mole - A nice book on how we interact with nature. A little rambing, but interesting for me. Might not be to everyone's taste.
Fiction
  1. Infinite Stars - Dark Frontiers (#2) - An anthology of Science fiction stories which I came to from a Becky Chambers book, which has in turn led me to some awesome books, like Tuf Voyaging.
  2. Tuf Voyaging - Darkly funny, superb character development and what a world! I never quite managed to like GoT, but GRR Martin really hit this one hard! Would recommend it to everyone who likes scifi with humour and fantastic character development and story arcs.
  3. Six of Crows - Coming from Leigh Bardugo's Shadow and Bone Trilogy - this is even more interesting than the earlier trilogy, and reminds me of The Lies of Locke Lamora. Once again, a good, read with a great layered story arc.
  4. Children of Time - Came to this one via comments on Ars Technica on an article about spiders of genus Portia. A slow but a fascinating book about human exploration of galaxy, evolution, and some good, proper action and politics.
  5. The Goblin Emperor - A good reads recommendation that I decided to check out. And I have been patting my back about picking this one. Definitely worth a read.

Shameless Self Promotion
In continuation from the previous post, I reckon, I am not going to be able to add any more to the list this year!

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soulweaver said:
Trying to ........

Shameless Self Promotion
In continuation from the previous post, I reckon, I am not going to be able to add any more to the list this year!

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75 a year ~ 1.5 books a week :openmouth:. That's amazing !
How many hours do you read in a day !

I am slow reader, plus with all those distractions (netflix, youtube etc), I take 10~15 days to complete a book (say a 500 pager) :D
 
mathrisk said:
75 a year ~ 1.5 books a week :openmouth:. That's amazing !
How many hours do you read in a day !

I am slow reader, plus with all those distractions (netflix, youtube etc), I take 10~15 days to complete a book (say a 500 pager) :D
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TL;DR - About an hour a day at the least. And I am a fast reader. I read consistently, with retention about 600 wpm, and when I reading fluff about 750wpm. So, that helps too.

I do not have any subscriptions. I have prime, but I have never even watched a full movie there. Also, some books there are pretty small. About 10 books are in the 100 to 150 page range. The others are more full-length (350 to 1000+pages).

I read whenever I get the time. I wake up early (5:10am) and spend about 25mins reading. Then, I read when I am take a break at work. I also read Hindi, and couple of other languages, but sadly there are no GoodReads links. I also write, so reading helps me keep my writing style non-monotonous.

I have been reading since I was 6, so that helps too. It is only recently that I got into the game of reading multiple books at once, and that greatly helped my increase the number of books.

I have in the last 3 years never got a story arc messed because of reading multiple books. So when I get bored with one, I switch. So my overall reading time has also gone up.

I do hope you also get into reading as much as you would want. It is such a pleasure! These days, I am actually more drawn towards books than series.
 
I used to read a lot since I was a kid, right upto my second year in college. And then I got a PC and started watching instead of reading. I had finished the whole library that was in my vicinity in Chandigarh and during summer holidays, used to read 3-4 books a day. Also used to read Harry Potter books in one go on the day of the launch itself.
I have tried getting back to reading, but find it harder to do with digital format and I have no access to a local library anymore and can't buy so many books either. Trouble with reading on phone is that there are other distractions as well. Reading speed has always been very good and I don't think it has deteriorated despite no practice in the last decade and a half. I have picked up Dune because of the movie and it's a famous novel series as well. Have always felt that books are better than movies. Only 'Harry Potter' movies were ok because they copied the books verbatim. Let's see how it goes. It's much easier to leave the book mid-way when reading on a phone than, when reading a hardcover.
 
rdst_1 said:
I used to read a lot since I was a kid, right upto my second year in college. And then I got a PC and started watching instead of reading. I had finished the whole library that was in my vicinity in Chandigarh and during summer holidays, used to read 3-4 books a day. Also used to read Harry Potter books in one go on the day of the launch itself.
I have tried getting back to reading, but find it harder to do with digital format and I have no access to a local library anymore and can't buy so many books either. Trouble with reading on phone is that there are other distractions as well. Reading speed has always been very good and I don't think it has deteriorated despite no practice in the last decade and a half. I have picked up Dune because of the movie and it's a famous novel series as well. Have always felt that books are better than movies. Only 'Harry Potter' movies were ok because they copied the books verbatim. Let's see how it goes. It's much easier to leave the book mid-way when reading on a phone than, when reading a hardcover.
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For me, the Nook when it came out, and now the Kindle, helps me immensely with reading. I work in the outdoors and travel a lot, so having a Kindle really works for me.

@All, I don't keep a count of books. Just started "The Wheel of Time" series, which has been on the bookshelf for many years (too many books to commit to!) I usually read books/series back to back, so can't really get into a series unless I have time at hand. End of year, and an impending winter trek seems the best time to start!
 
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