Inspired by Patrick Collison’s luscious bookshelf, this page is the list of books I have read in the current year (whichever year you are reading it). Most of these are plucked from other people’s recommendation lists, popular choices, stuff I find interesting or just a random topic I want to learn about on a Saturday evening. Suggestions? Drop me a line!
I read somewhere (probably in an Umberto Eco article) that one can understand a man by going through his bookshelf. In any case, this is my bookshelf and I leave you to judge me at my worth. Happy browsing!
Currently Reading
- One, Two, Three…Infinity
- Meditations
2024
Dune | Frank Herbert
Probably my favourite science-fiction saga so far. I’ll write more about it when I finish the other books.Dune Messiah | Frank Herbert
Mossad | Michael Bar-Zohar and Nissim Mishal
India Unbound | Gurcharan Das
Undoubtedly, this is a book which has fired a lot of imagination and thought in me. India Unbound is a socio-political and economic analysis of India from Independence to the 2000s, written in a semi-memoir-like style by a liberal. This is exactly what I was looking for in terms of depth of analysis which is well suited to a beginner layman. I can now say I have decent historical context to analyse future reports and events in India. I can philosophise a lot after reading this book but I’ll stop myself and wait till I have seen my India. A quarter of a century is a generation and a long time for India to come-of-age. In some distant future, I wish to see India as it exists today and record what this miraculous nation is upto since the 2000s. And yet, somewhere deep down I’m afraid that I romanticise much.
Maybe it is not as rosy as it seems. For as I keep pondering Gurcharan’s words, I realised how bound we are to our uncontrollable fates being somehow thrown into the world and asked to make sense of it (and honestly, not a lot of us have the mental awareness to seek out the “moral and spiritual platform” to view themselves and the world around them and are happy to learn, earn, and die). I mean the individual aspirations of one person may not be enough to steer a country to greatness (because these are macroscopic emergent properties) or it might not be achievable in their lifetime. Is it then still worth it? To follow a passion so dearly as to gamble everything else?
I was born a decade after the economic reforms into a India which spoke of television and Coca-Colas and grew up in relative connectedness to the world through the Internet, listening to Radiohead and U2. And yet, my India is not the complete picture. It is like looking at the picture through a narrow slit. I yearn to see the picture. Maybe some day I will.
There are 2 sequels to this book on the broader themes of Dharma (Morality) and Kama (Desire) while this one dealt with Artha (Wealth). I’ll probably skip those for now and come back to them later.
Understanding Power | Noam Chomsky
Probably not a major upgrade after reading ‘How the World Works’ because it has the same themes and topics that it talks about. It follows the same format - just a set of Chomsky’s talks and Q&As edited together into a book. The organisation is also not something I particularly like - its arranged choronologically and maintains too much of the conversational flow to be worthwhile to mentally address the sections. I didn’t see any particularly good organisation metric used (For instance, HTWW had a country-wise organisation in the last section). The fact that the chapter and section titles are abstract-y doesn’t help either. But those are not Chomsky’s fault, those are the editor’s faults.
The material reads like Chomsky and gets repetitive (especially if you have already read HTWW). At times, I got rather bored of the same “US is oppressing poor countries” narrative and felt sleepy. It’s true, however, that Chomsky is perhaps one of the very few people who are actually first-order thinkers on geopolitics and human rights. The passion that exudes from the text is very typical of far-left thinkers. Chomsky is able to back his claims with irrefutable data and insights that I suspect very few are even capable of mentally arrriving at.
As an experiment, I tried to “read” this book by listening as an audiobook. Some worthwhile use of commute time to my office during internship. Would I do it again? Yes, perhaps. It’s better than just letting the mind wonder but I’m not sure how retentive it really is. But then, is there any reason to believe that read material is more retentive?
Men of Mathematics | E. T. Bell
Slightly racist, slightly provocative, and maybe not exactly the kind of humour a lot of people in the 21st century will approve of and easily take offense with but still, this book remains a definitive account of around 30 of the best mathematicians that mankind has to offer. It’s written in a challenging prose but that only goes on to establish the command and authority of the author over words. He takes care to vet the mathematically inclined reader with a few doses of formulae and symbols - overall, his explanations remain accessible with a bit of insight and serious thought.
Besides, the author tries to glorify the mathematicians somewhat and takes the high-ground snobbery approach of considering other humans as lowly even. It’s hilarious at time, the kind of insults and low-blow attacks that the author writes about (Sadly, I cannot reproduce them anymore because an earlier draft of this review which did contain those chosen extracts was lost due to an OS system crash, apologies!)
I have fond memories of picking this book up at a local library and being intimidated by the lofty language and the hard sentece construction and yet being intrigued by the feats of these extraordinary men that the pages talk about. It was fascinating and I’m sure some part of that went into conditioning me into beginning to love the “sciences” and books, in general, more than enjoy the company of people because unlike books, people get messy.
I’m happy I was able to read (re-read?) this book. It has spawned my somewhat dormant pursuits of the natural sciences, espeically application of pure mathematics to physics. All that remains now, is to master the books on analysis, mathematical physics, projective geometry, and European history that I have downloaded as an impulsive side-quest. Ah, the hunger to know everything, it’s maddening but oh so destructively seductive.
The Polyester Prince | Hamish McDonald | 1998
A book that was allegedly banned in India due to muscle power of the Reliance Corp must have some substance for the conglomerate to take such a defensive and desperate step. And for good measure. This is one hell of a book. It is jammed packed with dense finance lingo thrown casually at the reader as if the author assumes that the reader are accounting and finance graduates by default and yet under the shroud of impregnable financial lingo lies the thrilling and grey world of the Ambanis and their mastery and subsequent tales of exploitation of the Indian bureaucracy and markets. For any budding enterpreneur, Dhirubhai Ambani’s story from “rags to riches” is both an inspiration and a glaring warning for the challenges and routes to be taken - some of which are questionable and definitely not for the faint-hearted.
Recommended by a friend, I enjoyed every single chapter of this book. I finished it in 3 sittings, completing half of the book in the first sitting itself. I think this should be required reading in finance and biz schools. And I suspect every enterpreneur worth their name has probably read it. Deffo recommend.
Letters From A Self-Made Merchant To His Son | George Horace Lorimer | 1903
A set of 20 letters written by Mr. Graham, the owner of the meat packing house, Graham and Co. in Chicago, to his son as he is coming-of-age and entering the family business, can be counted among some of the most potent and candid and well-articulated collection of advise and teaching from a father to his son ever put to paper. I enjoyed reading each letter with great interest and loved how each piece of advice was accented with an anecdote from Graham’s life. Although, the language is very 1800s and pretty thick on the American slang of that era which sometimes makes it difficult to get the hang of what’s going on but with sufficient persistence (and some generous Googling), I could make out what the intent of these letters were.
In any case, these letters contain what most people will call “timeless” wisdom but then I’m also wary of what mostly happens with such timeless wisdom - they tend to be locked between pages rather than see themselves practised by men. The challenge is not to know what Mr. Graham tells us but to see through that they get implemented in our walks of lives.
Want to Read
- The Burden of Democracy
- Everybody Loves a Good Drought
- Children of Dune (#3)
Unfinished
Anything read more than 5% but less than 100% is noted here. I have to keep a running tab of how reckless I am with my books. sigh.
Cyberpunk: Science Fiction Anthology | Edited: Victoria Blake
Sex At Dawn | Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha
The art of manipulation | R. B. Sparkman
101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think | Brianna Wiest
A Creative Approach To Music Fundamentals | William Duckworth
Beautiful Code | Edited: Andy Oram and Greg Wilson
Man’s Search For Meaning | Viktor Frankl
How not to be wrong | Jordan Ellenberg
Coding the matrix: Linear Algebra for Computer Science Applications | Philip Klein
Checklist Manifesto | Atul Gawande
The Art of Game Design | Jesse Schell
Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintainence | Robert M. Pirsig
The man who knew infinity | Robert Kanigel
Poems on Love and Other Difficulties | Rainer Maria Rilke
The art of electronics | Paul Horowitz and Winfield Hill
Crafting Interpreters | Robert Nystrom
The 4 Hour Body | Tim Ferriss
Permutation City | Greg Egan
The Brothers Karamazov | Fyodor Dostoevsky
In the Footsteps of the Prophet | Tariq Ramadan
Infinite Powers | Steven Strogatz
Broken Ladders | Anirudh Krishna