Thursday, February 19, 2009

Joker in the Pack - Book Review !!!



Book Review : Joker in the Pack - An Irreverent View about Life at the IIMs

Author: Ritesh Sharma, Neeraj Pahlajani

As a person who is fond of reading from time to time, and exploring the inner hidden writing talent in me (Believe me I myself did not know that I can take up writing as a hobby until lately ...), I found this book really inviting to be purchased and read ... The story took me so much into the eventful IIMs that I read it almost I can say in one stroke in just under 3 days ...

This post is just a short summary of the review of this book as per my perspective...

The name - Joker in the Pack - sums up a lot of information as to what this book could be about ... There has been a trend after "Five Point Someone", for authors to write about life at IIMs and IITs and other famous trendsetter institutions ... This book is nothing different where the entire story revolves around - Shekhar Verma - who hails from a typical Indian middle class family background, and who like others aspires but is fighting to find out the correct direction for his life ... While running in the so-called famous "rat races" as the IITians and IIMites have coined it, the story unfolds the all possible experiences that an averge student can go through while struggling to graduate - peer pressure, family pressure, relatives, love life, friends, break-ups, pin-ups, job hunts, interviews, graduating, dreams, realities of life etc ...

Everything has been described in fine details - life in the hostels, fresher batches, seniors, placements, job hunt programs, studies, outside world, inside world and mind you - the pen has flown just like a smooth talk from an average normal human being ... The usage of language and the way this book has been written, is very informal, very lucid, clear and loud !!!

Overall a book for the light mood, something that you can read at leisure, finish it quickly and yet learn something from it and most importantly travel down the memory lane of your own by imagining your own past and finding similarities in the pages and situations described in this book. Although the overall plot and the gist is quite redundant and at some moments of the book, one can surely guess what is coming next ... But yes it also has some surprises ...

Definitely a worthy one time read.

My Personal Rating: 7/10

Cheers
Samkit

1 comment:

Unknown said...

can i borrow ur book :)