If you still havent guessed it till now, this post is about the thoroughly irritating book by Thomas Friedman.
When I got into a management course, one promise I made to myself was to read books other than my normal sci-fi/fantasy genres. ‘The World is Flat’ seemed a good choice, considering that I had heard friends raving about it all the time. Well, I got down to it. No mean feat, considering that I barely get some time to myself at all, so its quite a valuable resource I am spending here. I have been trying to read a small section daily……. and I can honestly say that I am appalled. 😛
The quality of writing in itself is enough to make one want to put it down. Grammar is pretty much ignored throughout the book, and the writing style is nothing to write home about either. Every couple of sentences I read how he talked to someone (could be someone famous/important with a out of context quote, or a random person he met who’s name may not be mentioned) and how so-and-so or such-and-such is leading to a ‘flattening’ of the world. The repetition of the word has gotten to be so bad that I am ready to throttle the next person I meet who talks about ‘flattening’ something outside of a book. Not to mention jargon like 1.0, 2.0, which I assume he uses to show relevance with the tech world as such.
The book may have ‘some’ positive things to say about India/China, but has some bloopers as well. e.g. A wall street guy of Indian Origin is heard saying that India as a country has ‘no resources’. Thats actually funny, once you read it. Reminds me of something I read years ago which was a survey of the average American (I think). Basically the end result was that a large %age of them thought that Bangalore was the capital of India and had a billion people living around it. Seems co-incidental, considering that Friedman seems to have been based out of Bangalore for quite some time. Mr. Friedman may need a crash cource on some ‘Indian Resources.’
So as you can probably guess from my rant by now, I am pretty disappointed by what I have read so far (around 200 pages). For those wondering why I am still banging my head on it, its only because I pride myself on finishing whatever book I start reading, and also because I have at a couple of places that it gets interesting towards the last 100 pages or so.

Wish me luck……………

PS: A ‘review’ of the same book. I happen to agree with many points made by the author of the article: (Language is a bit strong)
http://www.nypress.com/article-11419-flathead.html