Caridad Pineiro

Six Frames: For Thinking About Information
by Edward De Bono

Attention is a key part of thinking clearly and productively, and yet we pay very little attention to attention itself.If you see someone lying injured in the middle of the road, for example, your attention would go to that person but, if a bright pink dog wandered past at the same time, your attention would automatically stray to the dog. That is precisely the weakness of attention - it is pulled to the unusual. How much attention do we pay to the usual? So, what can we do about it? Instead of waiting for attention to be pulled towards something unusual, we can set out frameworks for 'directing' our attention in a conscious manner.Just as we can decide to look north, west or even south-east, so we can set up a framework for directing our attention, and that's where Edward de Bono's 'six frames' come in. Each frame is a direction or method in/with which to look, based on a different shape - triangle, circle, heart, square, diamond, slab. Today we are literally surrounded by information and it has never been so easy to obtain. Yet, information itself is not enough; it's how we look at it that really counts. Using the 'six frames' technique is the key to extracting real value from the masses of facts and figures out there and, like all de Bono's techniques, it is simple, effective and will utterly change the way you interpret information.

ZERO PERCENTILE: Missed IIT Kissed Russia
by Neeraj Chhibba

Zero Percentile is a heady cocktail of the fascinating adventures of Pankaj, a less favoured son of destiny across two completely different countries, India and Russia.

As a brilliant young boy Pankaj never imagines that he will ever be swamped with problems. Life with his friends Motu and Priya is fun. Always destined to go to IIT, a cruel accident makes him end up in a place he had never heard of before, Volgograd a Russian City of Heroes, so-called for its role in the Second World War for stopping Hitler's assault on Russia.

At hostel, in Volgograd, life is entirely different. There, not brain but brawn rules, which makes him land in jail after being induced into a gruesome brawl over food, with other very powerful and aggressive hostellers. Desperate for a win, he masterminds a coup, but makes the Dean his enemy instead who becomes hell-bent on destroying him. The journey never eases for him after that. Under extreme peer pressure he tries hard to lose his virginity and then cope with the agony of his best friend Nitin getting infected with HIV.

After his father's death, he struggles to sustain himself in a highly expensive, newly capitalist Russia. His seniors, who he always looks upto as Gods unexpectedly turn into his enemy and conspire to ruin him with the help of the local mafia. He takes the gauntlet of fighting all these adversities and emerges victorious ultimately only to succumb to love.

Neeraj Chhibba was born and raised in India. He studied engineering at Volgograd, Russia, where he spent almost seven and a half years of his life. He is currently employed with a software company in India. His single claim to literary honours is a "Highly Commendable" certificate in Class X in an English Essay Competition organised by the Royal Commonwealth Society and he himself was surprised to be the only one in New Delhi to have received it that year in his category. He could perhaps have done more but the pressure of succeeding professionally and earning bread made him turn away from writing. This is his first book. And if you like it, he promises, there would be a lot more.

Bee Season
by Myla Goldberg

Eliza Naumann, a seemingly unremarkable nine-year-old, expects never to fit into her gifted family: her autodidact father, Saul, absorbed in his study of Jewish mysticism; her brother, Aaron, the vessel of his father's spiritual ambitions; and her brilliant but distant lawyer-mom, Miriam. But when Eliza sweeps her school and district spelling bees in quick succession, Saul takes it as a sign that she is destined for greatness. In this altered reality, Saul inducts her into his hallowed study and lavishes upon her the attention previously reserved for Aaron, who in his displacement embarks upon a lone quest for spiritual fulfillment. When Miriam's secret life triggers a familial explosion, it is Eliza who must order the chaos.

Myla Goldberg's keen eye for detail brings Eliza's journey to three-dimensional life. As she rises from classroom obscurity to the blinding lights and outsized expectations of the National Bee, Eliza's small pains and large joys are finely wrought and deeply felt.

Not merely a coming-of-age story, Goldberg's first novel delicately examines the unraveling fabric of one family. The outcome of this tale is as startling and unconventional as her prose, which wields its metaphors sharply and rings with maturity. The work of a lyrical and gifted storyteller, Bee Season marks the arrival of an extraordinarily talented new writer.