It has been a bit of an up-and-down week. For the longest time, I was waiting for a review, any review of Broadbandits to show up. It didnÌt and that bothered me a little, after all I worked very hard on it. And then it did! On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reviewed the book. But the review, The Other Bubble, was not kind by any means.

Perhaps for the first time, I was publicly skewered. And what hurt the most in this review was the Ralph Nader crack, though I did find the writer was funny and sarcastic. But still it got me an attack of megrims, which resulted in a quick visit to the Harringtons, a popular watering hole for the financial types on the make in San FranciscoÌs Financial District.

A quick phone call from my friend Dan Briody, who is also the best selling author of The Iron Triangle, urged me to develop a thick skin and try and go about life as if nothing has happened. I tried, with moderate success – but still, Om had the blues.

And then this Sunday, as I was sipping coffee in a neighborhood caf», I came across a review in the San Jose Mercury News, which was all praise for the book. It immediately lifted my spirits, if not the Amazon rankings, and the week that was coming to a close suddenly seemed better. “The book is fascinating and well-written. Lay people will appreciate the way Malik cogently analyzes the tumult in telecom. This book enables even those who have never read a stock market report in their life to understand exactly what happened and why the broadband bubble — and its demise — were so stupendous,” wrote Steve Powers.

Perhaps, it also helped me get through my next feature story for Business 2.0, though I am still about 12 hours late in filing the story. So back to the grind, and hard work for another day.