Driven by thought

Most readers like to categorise their books based on genres or even authors. Rohit Agarwal, CEO techTribe, however, classifies them into those recommended by people he works with and those which apply to his day-to-day life.

He says he enjoys reading people's experiences but then he isn't referring to biographies and autobiographies. What Agarwal means is reading about someone's experience in branding, marketing or business and "anything that is concept based".

Quiz him about his last few reads and he throws up a laugh at the predictability of his answer, "I've recently read books that include The World is Flat by Thomas L Friedman, Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom and The Google Story by David A Vise and Mark Malseed, but then everyone has."

But Agarwal's book story has quite an inspiring twist to it. Brand Hijack, a book by Alex Wipperfurth watered an idea, that is now reality in the form of a social networking site. Reveals Agarwal, "Even the name of my website techTribe was derived from this book. The book changed the way I was building my company."

Reading for him is not restricted by reviews, book covers or synopses. His choice of books is often formed by others' opinions and fuelled by a desire to derive something from each book, preferably from someone's life experiences, though the same doesn't hold true for In the Line of Fire by Pervez Musharraf.

"I picked up that book but couldn't read it beyond the first few pages because it felt like reading a piece of fiction," he laughs.

Talk about fiction and romance novels and he almost cringes, opining that he hates romance novels because he doesn't want to read about others' love lives.