Book Cover Tag

I have been tagged. The tagger is Cuckoo in her post here and in a comment to a previous post of mine.

Well, as most of you, I am not well-versed with tagging. Googling did not help much on this ‘tag’. Wikipedia gives me several uses of ‘Tag’, and the nearest is a game in which one child chases the others; the one who is caught becomes the next chaser. So, tagging is a children’s game. But another use Wikipedia gives is to engage in sexual intercourse, which is not exactly child stuff. So, I force myself to believe that tagging is no child’s play, and therefore accept this tag. And anyways, it is not everyday a sweet lady asks you to play with her. [Pun absolutely unintentional!]

From what I learnt from Cuckoo’s blog and the numerous tags she’s been doing, the blog version of ‘Tagging’ involves assigning a task to a few fellow bloggers, who, according to the ‘Tag Etiquette’, would do that task and pass it on to a few more in the blogger fraternity, thereby forming a tree of playful bloggers writing on a common topic. Then probably the best blogger gets a cotton candy or a lollipop. However, if you would seriously like to browse through tag etiquettes, Cuckoo has a ready reference here.

So, the tag given to me is: Go to the advanced book search on Amazon, type your first name into the Title field, and post the most interesting/amusing cover that shows up. This is a sort of egosurfing, the wikipedia link of which I had sent to Cuckoo on my first comment on her blog, and she was quite amused.

Anyways, coming down to business, I did the above exercise with “Ashutosh”, and was disappointed to find only one book: Sir Ashutosh Mookherjea, a character study, by one Mr. Bipin Chandra Pal. Now, Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee was an Indian educator and Vice Chancellor of the University of Calcutta from 1906 to 1924. He was also responsible for the foundation of the Bengal Technical Institute in 1906 and the Calcutta University College of Science in 1914.

That was all I could read about Sir Ashutosh when I started yawning and decided to move on to run an Amazon book search on “ashes”, a self-proclaimed anglicized version of the shortened form of my name, which returned 4,567 results—a prime number.

The first book cover that interests me is Ashes to Ashes (Blood Ties, Book 3) by Jennifer Armintrout. This is what the description of the book says:

Being a vampire is a life or death situation. When I was first turned, I had only my survival to worry about. Now I'm locked in a battle for the existence of the entire human race and the cards are definitely stacked against me.

The Voluntary Vampire Extinction Movement headquarters are destroyed, and their pet horror, the Oracle, is on the loose. She'll stop at nothing to turn the world into a vampire's paradise, even if it means helping the Soul Eater become a god and harnessing his power for her own evil ends.

An ancient vampire, a blood sucking near deity and oh, yeah, my presently human former sire thrown into the mix. I say bring it on. May the best monster win.

Sounds interesting. However, I’ll have to read the Books One (The Turning) and Two (Possession) before picking up Ashes to Ashes. Book Two sounds all the more interesting:
With the Soul Eater and my possessed sire on the loose, I have a lot to fear. Including being killed. Again.

Another interesting book I saw on the same page of the search results was Robert F. Bruner’s Deals from Hell: M&A Lessons that Rise Above the Ashes, which, according to the Wall Street Journal on 26^th May, 2005: “engages in the kind of candid thinking that has long been missing from the high stack of books”.

According to the author, six key elements embedded in disasters are 'complexity, tight coupling, management choices, cognitive biases, business not as usual, and failure of the operational team.' In unison, these are lethal, he cautions. He uncovers the real reasons for mishaps by taking a closer look at twelve specific instances of M&A failure in his three-part book. Bruner dins in before parting: “The growth that matters is growth in economic value. The rest is smoke.”

A few other interesting titles on subsequent pages were “Quit Kissing my Ashes”, “Dropping Ashes on the Buddha”, “Amber and Ashes”, “Ashes to Gold”, “Rising from the Ashes”, “Hearts from the Ashes”, “Ashes of Victory”, “Ashes of Roses”—the list is so long I believe there is a book title on whatever can be converted to ashes, or whatever can be risen from ashes.

An interesting game, and an interesting tag, I must admit. However, I shall not be able to follow the ‘tag etiquettes’ and pass on the baton. But obviously, if anyone wants to pick it up themselves from here, please. Now Cuckoo, where is my lollipop?