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At a café in Lahore, a bearded Pakistani man converses with an American stranger. As …
This has been vaguely on my to-read list for a while, and I finally went through it—in one sitting! Incidentally, the story in the book also takes place in one sitting, albeit in a monologue covering many other incidents in the past.
A fascinating exploration of how a simple system used to measure and record wealth spawned …
I stumbled upon this book when I was learning about accounting in order to get my personal finances in order. While I came in expecting to read mainly about the methods used by the merchants and sailors, the introductory quote itself hinted at much more.
After going into the origins of accounting and how it spread across Europe—the suspicious gaze of the Church notwithstanding—Jane Gleeson-White goes on to describe how accounting changed the way people think about wealth: of themselves, of their nations, and even of the planet! It's not just the simple act of bookkeeping, but also the idea of measuring wealth: tabulating everything into a standard form, and then using that to draw conclusions.
The main problem today is, of course, that what doesn't get entered into account books is ignored (as exemplified in Kennedy's famous speech about GDP). This is an argument I've heard in many books, …
I stumbled upon this book when I was learning about accounting in order to get my personal finances in order. While I came in expecting to read mainly about the methods used by the merchants and sailors, the introductory quote itself hinted at much more.
After going into the origins of accounting and how it spread across Europe—the suspicious gaze of the Church notwithstanding—Jane Gleeson-White goes on to describe how accounting changed the way people think about wealth: of themselves, of their nations, and even of the planet! It's not just the simple act of bookkeeping, but also the idea of measuring wealth: tabulating everything into a standard form, and then using that to draw conclusions.
The main problem today is, of course, that what doesn't get entered into account books is ignored (as exemplified in Kennedy's famous speech about GDP). This is an argument I've heard in many books, but refreshingly, this book didn't dwell on the same points as everyone else, instead skipping on to different aspects of the problem.
A lot of science and history is also touched upon, again through the accounting lens—including how accounting helped finance Darwin's famous expedition, and how the idea of counting and quantifying things helped propel the development of modern scientific methods. One interesting tidbit I didn't know was that Karl Marx was also very interested in what accountants were doing, and his knowledge of accountancy helped form his theories of capitalism! Going even further, it has been suggested that without accounting, the capitalist world we know may not have been developed.
Like many history books, this one looks at things through a predominantly Western lens. While there is mention of how numerical notation and accounting technology came from places like India via the Middle East, all the focus is on what happened in Italy and other parts of the Western World. Perhaps we can't fault it because it is after all a book on double-entry bookkeeping: specifically, the method that developed by the merchants of Venice. It would be nice, though, to see how accounting methods developed in other places, independently at first, and then presumably being "standardised" to European practices as that part of the world gained dominance.
It would be remiss of me not to mention that the book does go into detail on the origin of double-entry bookkeeping itself, as well as how Luca Pacioli took advantage of the printing press to popularise the technique. There are also quotes from early accounting texts, and what's striking is that the method has remained largely unchanged to this very day!
As I mentioned, I was learning about accounting before reading this book. All the "Credit" and "Debit" and different kinds of accounts were confusing me though; reading about the origins in this book and actually imagining how merchants and other people were using it at that time helped me understand where everything was coming from. I wouldn't say I'm completely clear on when to use "credit" or "debit" records yet, but at least I'm now comfortable enough that I'm sure I can figure it out if I sit down and think it through for a bit. And in the meantime, I do know that Robinson Crusoe sat and figured out his own version of double-entry bookkeeping too 😉
Finished this too; I guess it was the aftershock of reading "Double Entry" lol
A fascinating exploration of how a simple system used to measure and record wealth spawned …
...and I'm done! This was a great read. Apologies for quote-flooding your feed, but Bookwyrm has a way to filter out quotes so I hope you'll be fine 😅
I'll write a proper review in a bit; here finally is one book where I'm all fired to write one! 😛
Guess I'm on a roll 👋🏽
A fascinating exploration of how a simple system used to measure and record wealth spawned …
I'm getting my personal finances in order using plaintext accounting: it's basically the "double entry bookkeeping" everyone keeps talking about, but in plaintext format, and then you can use tools like ledger-cli and @PaisaFinanceApp@mastodon.social to analyse it.
So when I stumbled upon this book, I thought, hey, if I'm going to do this why not go all in? 🤪
"This text is intended to be a high-level introduction to accounting/bookkeeping."--P. preceding t.p.
Wanted to get all my finances/bookkeeping in order so :P
Vasu has studied and imbibed the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta. He believes that sharing it …
Finished a book in one sitting after a long time! This book had a good mix of plot and philosophy, along with a very intense ending. I won't say more.
This new dual-language edition of ten stories selected from The Penguin Book of Japanese Short …
My parents found this dual Japanese/English short story collection at Bookworm (on Church Street, Bengaluru) and I'm using it to (finally) test the results of my Duolingo Japanese lessons.
The book is well laid-out, with the Japanese text on the right and its English translation on the left. It's a slow start, but I surprise myself by actually being able to comprehend half the Japanese, and match the rest when I refer to the English translation!
A man is about to kill a cow. He discusses life and death and his …
That was an intense read! I wouldn't say it was very rich literature-wise (especially after The Odyssey) but story-wise it had a good balance of depth and lightness. And plenty of humour!
A man is about to kill a cow. He discusses life and death and his …
Started reading this and finished about 10% in the first sitting! After The Odyssey I thought I was stuck with iambic pentameter but this book has brought me back to the world of prose 😛
The story is moving very fast; I thought it was going to be a long philosophical discource with the cow but no, the plot moves on and wow it's a whole different world! I won't say more because that may get into spoiler territory but so far it's all quite 😮
Finished reading it this morning before work! Wow, that went by faster than I expected 😮
The story flowed so well I didn't even realise it was passing by. Aks tells me that The Odyssey is very accessible compared to other works of the period, so that makes sense, but it makes me want more. Also this is the first time I've happily gone through a whole workful of iambic pentameter! (The original Odyssey was written in dactylic hexameter, but this translation is in iambic pentameter)
Now...on to the iliad? 🤔
So I started reading this! Posting late so I'm not sure of the exact date but it was either "yesterday" or "today". Read the intro first as a started, and then began the story itself on the subsequent day 😉
Richard, a wealthy doctor, invites his estranged sister Angela and her family to join him …
My Chennai reading :P I was thinking to take this to Bessy Reads, but that didn't end up happening. Anyway. This is the first book of Mark Haddon's that I've read that isn't The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time; weirdly I was surprised that he's written other books! I don't know how to compare the two since I read the other one long ago, but this was a nice "slice of life" read.
I'm getting some Crome Yellow vibes, not in the writing style or anything but in the way that and The Red House are both setting us down in a place and observing the people there. There's no "plot" that follows anything as neat as a beginning, development, and ending; the story moves forward merely because life does so, too.
I've never attempted to read any of Homer's works before, but I recently read an article about Emily Wilson (on Savs' recommendation) and now I'm interested! I like how her translation aims to avoid gratuitous complexity and avoid making things archaic just for the sake of sounding archaic—as she says in the article, "he didn’t sound archaic to the Greeks"!