Reading List
- Four Thousand Weeks : Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burman
- The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel
- Don’t Even Think About It by George Marshall
- All We an Save : Truth, Coverage and Solutions for the Climate Crisis
- Where the Money Is by Adam Seessel
- A Line to Kill by Anthony Horowitz
- The Postscript Murders by Elly Griffiths
- The Maid by Nita Prose
- Dark Horse by Gregg Hurwitz
- The Anomaly by Herve Le Tellier
- The Catalyst – How to change anyone’s mind by Jonah Berger
- The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson
- How to Avoid Climate Disaster by Bill Gates
- The People Vs Tech by Jamie Bartlett
- Dirt to Soil by Gabe Brown
- The Tyranny of Merit by Michael J. Sandel
- How to Take Smart Notes by Sonke Ahrens
- Contagious by Jonah Berger
- Think Again by Adam Grant
- The Reality Bubble by Ziya Tong
- Ek Desh Sarah Duniya by Shirish Khare
- Awara Mashiha by Vishnu Prabhakar
- Prodigal Son by Gregg Hurwitz
- Best Served Cold by Bhaskar Chattopadhyay
- The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz
- The Sentence is Death by Anthony Horowitz
- Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz
- A Gambling Man by David Baldacci
- Eight Detectives by Alex Pavesi
- The Kingdom by Jo Nesbo
- The Black Book by James Patterson and David Ellis
- The Red Book by James Patterson and David Ellis
- The Thirst by Jo Nesbo
- Mercy by David Baldacci
- A Gambling Man by David Baldacci
- The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave
- Fair Warning by Michael Connelly
- Silent Parade by Keigo Highashino
- Connect by John Browne
- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo
- What I talk about when I talk about running by Haruki Murakami
- Smarter Faster Better by Charles Duhigg
- Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace
- Hooked by Nir Eyal
- Saving Capitalism by Robert B Reich
- The Antidote by Oliver Burkeman
- Birdman by Mo Hayder
- Stranger by Dean Koontz
- Memory Man by David Baldacci
- Trunk Music by Michael Connelly
- The Last Mile by Michael Connelly
- The Short Drop by Mathew Fitzsimmons
- Instruments of Night by Thomas H Cook
- Orphan X by Gregg Hurwitz
- Before the Fall by Noah Hawley
- The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
- Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama
- Fool Me Once by Harlan Coben
- A Midsummer’s Equation by Keigo Higashino
- The Absent One by Jussi Adler Olsen
- The Guise Of Another by Allen Eskens
- Make Me by Lee Child
- Essentialism by Greg Mckeown
- Move Up by Clotaire Rapaille and Andres Roemer
- How to Be Alone by Sara Maitland
- Looking Away by Harsh Mander
- I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes
- The Farm by Tom Rob Smith
- Einstein’s Dream by Alan Lightman
- The Accidental Universe by Alan Lightman
- The Girl On the Train by Paula Hawkins
- One False Move by Harlan Coben
- The Sympathiser by Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Descent by Tim Johnston
- The Gir in the Spider’s Web by David Lagercrantz
- Journey Under the Midnight Sun by Keigo Higashino
- Villain by Shuichi Yoshida
- Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith
- The Tokyo Zodiac Murders by Soji Shimada
- Capital by Thomas Piketty
- The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker
- The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell
- Think Like a Freak by Levitt and Dubner
- Decoded by Mai Jia
- Night Film by Marisha Pessl
- The Colorado Kid by Stephan Kind
- Deception by Jonathan Kellerman
- Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan
- Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino
- The Redbreast by Jo Nesbo
- The Goldfinch by Donna Tart
- Personal by Lee Child
- Yatrik by Arnab Ray
- Malice by Keigo Higashino
- Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo
- Eat by Globe by Simon Majumdar
- Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahnman
- The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
- Scarcity by Sendhil Mullainathan and Elder Shafir
- David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell
- Focus by Daniel Goleman
- The Price of Inequality by Joseph Stieglitz
- Why Does the World Exist by Jim Holt
- The salvation of a Saint by Keigo Higashino
- The Thief by Fuminori Nakamura
- Phantom by Jo Nesbo
- Woman with Birthmark by Hakan Nesser
- Immoral by Brian Freeman
- The White Lioness by Henning Mankell
- The Footprints of God by Greg Iles
- A Game of Thrones by George RR Martin
- Live By Night by Dennis Lehane
- Inferno by Dan Brown
- The Killings of Badger’s Drift by Caroline Graham
- Blowback by Brad Thor
- My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
- A Storm of Swords by George RR Martin
- The Ice Princess by Camilla Lackberg
- Deception Point by Dan Brown
- Policy by Jo Nesbo
- The Crucifix Killer by Chris Carter
- The Luminaries by Eleanor Cotton
- The Laughing Policeman by Maj Sjowall
- The Stuff of Thoughts by Steven Pinker
- Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
- A Clash of Kings by George RR Martin
- Before I Go to Sleep by S J Watson
- The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino
- Shibumi by Trevanian
- Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
- Things Fall Apart by China Achebe
- Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
- The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
- Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? Agatha Christie
- The Green Mile by Stephen King
- The Poet by Michael Connelly
- Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham
- The Day of Jackal by Fredrick Forsyth
- The Stalker by Bill Pronzini
- Gone Gir by Gillian Flynn
- Siddhartha by Herman Hesse I read this 15 years ago, could not get much of this book at that time. Re-read it.
- Sacred Games By Viikram Chandra
- Bandicoots in moonlight by Avijit Ghosh
- The Girl with Dragon Tatoo by Steig Larsson
- Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- Egonomics by David Marcum and Steven Smith
- The Cult of Amateurs by Andrew Keen
- A Perfect Mess by David Freedman
- Super Crunchers by Ian Ayres
- Wikinomics by Tapscott and Wiliams
- How to change the world by David Bornstein
- Stick to drawing comics, monkey brain! by Scot Adams
- Getting things done by David Allen
- The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
- The Stuff of Thoughts by Steven Pinker
- Madness and Civilization by Foucault
- Imagining India by Nandan Nilekani
- The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner
- Hot Flat and Crowded by T. Friedman
- Dreaming of Jupiter by Ted Simon (Thanks Srey for the gift.)
- India: The Emerging Giant by Arvind Panagariya
- Phantoms in the brain by Blakeslee and Ramachandran
- Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- Tribe by Bruce Parry
- Alchemy of Desire by Tarun Tejpal
- Wild Fire by Nelson DeMille
- The Righteous Men by Sam Bourne
- Snow by Orhan Pamuk
- The Innocent Men by John Grisham
- The Broker by John Grisham
- The Last Song of Dusk by Sidhart D. Sanghvi
- Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner
- The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford
- The Fortune at the Bottom of Pyramid by C K Prahalad
- The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
- The New Earth by Eckhart Tolle
- The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
- The Secret by Rhonda Byrne
- The way of the Sufi by Idries Shah
- Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra
- The Road by Cormac McCarthy
- The Cuckold by K Nagarkar
- The Moral Mind by Marc Hauser
- Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco
- Search in Secret India by Paul Brunton
- Hermit in the Himalayas by Paul Brunton
- The Age of Reasons by Jean Paul Sartre
- Meetings with Remarkable Men by Gurdjieff
- The Outsider by Albert Camus
- The Plague by Albert Camus
- By The River of Madeira I Sat Down and Wept
- Autobiography of a Yogi by Yogananda Paramhansa
- Many life many masters by Weiss
- Sidhartha by Herman Hesse
- Portrait of an artist as a young man by James Joyce
- Notes to myself by Hugh Prather
- Who Am I by Maharishi Raman
- The power of now by Eckhart Tolle
- I am that by Nisargdutta Maharaj
- Song of Life by J Krishnamurthi
- Freedon from the known by J Krishnamurthi
- Art of loving by Erich Fromm
- You shall be as Gods by Erich Fromm
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
- The way of all the Earth by John S Dunne
- The song celestial by Edwin Arnold
- Cutting through spiritual materialism by Chogyam Trungpa
- The Rebel by Osho
- Books I have loved by Osho
- Caravan of Dreams by Idries Shah
- Feeling Buddha by David Frazer
- Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley
- Light on the path by Mabel Collins
- The Good Heart by Dalai Lama
My Reading List – 2022
I already wrote about what happened with my reading routine and habit this year. But still managed to read some books. Here are the books that I finished this year. There are at least 3-4 books that I am done halfway and will include them in the next years list.
The first two in the list are recommended to anyone who is interested in reading books that fundamentally change your perspectives about many things. The first one changes the way you look at success, time, and life and the second one changes the way you look at money.
Previous Years
2021 2020 2019 2018(2) 2018(1) 2017(2) 2017(1) 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2008 2007 2006
What I read in 2021
Non-fiction
This year I consumed more reports on climate change and carbon market than books. COP26 was a landmark event for everyone whether working on climate change or not and it produced a lot of decisions and debates, resulting in hundreds of reports and opinion pieces. Before the COP26, we also had a launch of IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report which automatically found a place in my reading list. Probably I should prepare a separate list of all the key reports that came out last year and helped us get more understanding and updates on how we are planning to tackle climate change.
Yet all these reading of reports on topics that I work professionally did not stop me from picking a couple of books on climate change and related topics. Both of these books, How to Avoid Climate Disaster and Dirt to Soil deserve to be read. The first one is good starting point for anyone to get acquainted with the climate change (although it has limitations, for someone interested in more comprehensive and easy to understand treatise on climate change, I recommend Climate Change – What Everyone Needs to Know by Joseph Romm). Bill Gates surely made more people to read about climate change with this book. The second book is an immensely readable journey of a farmer who moved from industrial agriculture to regenerative agriculture (in simple words: a form of agriculture that is more environment friendly and focuses on restoring degraded soil).
The other theme that dominated my reading last year was behaviour change, and things that influence our decision making. I came across the work done by Jonah Berger and picked all the three books he has written. Think Again and The Reality Bubble are the other two books that provided great insights in our biases, blindspots and need for revisiting our thinking process. Surely worth a read for anyone interested in these topics or just looking to get some entertaining facts (The Reality Bubble is full of entertaining examples and facts!).
I have been working on my note taking system, especially learning from the Zettlekasten method of Niklas Luhmann and How to Take Smart Notes is one of the best books that explains the whole process of Niklas Luhmann in simple words. But now I see a number of YouTube videos that have condensed the learnings in 10-15 minutes so you can learn the key principles without going through the book.
But the best non-fiction that I read this year, or probably in last 5-6 years is The Tyranny of Merit by Michael J Sander. This changed the way I look at the success, achievement and the role of society in our lives. His dissection of meritocratic hubris is hard-hitting and deserve attention of everyone. Those who argue for meritocracy must read it. In case you do not have time to read that you can watch this TED talk here https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_sandel_the_tyranny_of_merit.
Non-fiction books that I read last year
Fiction
My fiction picks were my comfort reading and guilty pleasures. I liked Anthony Horowitz’s style of murder mysteries and read a number of them. Best Served Cold found a place in my reading list as I was looking for some new Indian writers in this genre and Bhaskar Chattopadhyay was better than I expected. Jo Nesbo’s The Kingdom was a deviation from his usual stuff but was an engaging read for character building and different treatment that what I had expected from his previous books. The most overhyped book was The Last Thing He Told Me. I had seen thousands of great ratings of this book on Goodreads but it was disappointing. Keigo Higashino’s latest book The Silent Parade had flashes of brilliance that we experienced in The Devotion of Suspect X and Salvation of A Saint but I was expecting more from him.
Apart from the books I finished, I left Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart and Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. Probably I will finish Pachinko in sometime but Shuggie Bain did not entice me enough.
What I read in 2016
Non-fiction
Fiction
What I read in 2015
Non-fiction
Fiction
What I read in 2014
Non-fiction
Fiction
What I read in 2013
Non-fiction
Fiction
What I read in 2012
Non-fiction
Fiction
What I read in 2011
Fiction 1. Never Let Me Go by Ishiguro Kazuo Highly recommended if you are looking for a good thought provoking science fiction. A mushy story about the lives of clones who were raised to be ‘donors’ for human beings. Was shortlisted for Booker in 2005.
2. 1984 by George Orwell I read a couple of dystopian novels recently. This was surely one genre defining novel. Does not need any recommendation.
3. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe Probably the most widely read novel by an African author. Loved this book, reading this book was a pleasure. Simple story, simple writing, great impact.
4. The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevesky One of the greatest Russian novels. You will love the struggle of ‘the original’ protogonist with the materialistic society. The tragic love story of Prince and Nastasya adds a number of new dimensions to relationship and love.
5. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury The second dystopian novel that I read this year.
6. The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M Cain A very highly rated crime novel. Some people put this novel in top 100 novels of last century. Did not impress me that much, story seems too familiar.. probably I read too many adaptation or saw different versions of the story in some movies.
7. Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King Somehow finished it. I am not a big fan of horror stories, Stephan King’s writing and story telling skills made me tolerate this one.
8. Along came a Spider by James Patterson Wanted to read some light fiction and picked the Alex Cross series for time pass. Nothing much to write about here. A time pass.
9. Max: Maximum Ride by James Patterson Juvenile fiction. Well just picked it out of curiosity and lack of other options.
11. 2666 by Roberta Bolano A slow and very lengthy novel. Over 1000 pages. It was an ordeal in patience and test of my passion for reading as the story did not move much in first few hundred pages.
Non-Fiction 12.I hope they Serve Beer in Hell by Tucker Max Curiosity. Yes, that’s why I picked the book.
13. May I hebb Your Attention Pliss by Arnab Ray By One of my favorite bloggers who turned author. A great satire on our life in eighties and nineties.
What I read in 2008
Fiction
Non-Fiction
Half Read / Unfinished Books
Surely I could not read a lot of fiction this year and spent a lot of time on non-fiction/ pop-economics. Though I wanted to read some good fiction titles. I bought many books last year and I think I need to speed up my reading to consume them this year.
What I read in 2007
Though I could not read as much as I did last year and left many books half finished, or just untouched on the shelf. These are books I did manage to finish, apart from the compulsory reading required by my job.
Fiction
Non-Fiction
I bought several books last year and many of them are still waiting to be finished. I read a few pages and somehow could not finish them. Hope to finish them soon this year.
Half Read / Unfinished Books
Let see how much time I get this year to satiate my desire to read. Getting Thinds Done by David Allen and The Perfect Mess by E Abrahamson and D Freedman are the two books which I am finishing this month. Two books advocating completely contrasting approach to manage your work-life.
My Reading List 2005-2006
This year I planned to read around 100 books, but could not achieve the target, and looking at the academic calender and schedule it does not seem possible. Though I think I have managed to read around 20-22 books so far, excluding academic or related books. But, the revised target for the rest of the year and first half of next year, is the following list. This time I decided to go for some meaningful thought provoking books(subject to availability of books in libraries and purchasing power of my pocket), instead of Grisham, Archer and the usual stuff.