Books, books, books...

A friend recently asked me about my reads.  Going through my past reads mentally, I realized they are a ‘peculiar’ list of fiction & non-fiction.

• I seem to be big on Coelho - have read up at least half his, including the latest ‘Manuscript Found in Accra’ (which I found a bit ‘light’ compared to his other/earlier ones).  I find Coelho's unique combination of storytelling+philosophy+hint of theology an enticing mix.  
• I finished about half of ‘Dharma – The Difficulty of Being Good’ by Gurcharan Das.  His drawing of lessons from Mahabharata episodes is interesting.  
• I also adore the ‘Fish’ series.
• And ‘Who Moved My Cheese’.
• And books by Malcolm Gladwell, who seems to come up with surprising and unique perspectives on social phenomena – ‘Outliers’, ‘Tipping Point’, ‘Blink’, ‘What the Dog Saw’.
• Some of Edward de Bono (I heard about ‘Six Thinking Hats’, but read up ‘Six Action Shoes’) are inspiring and thought-provoking.
• ‘Jonathan Livingston Seagull’ gave me something to think about.

On economic/financial topics 

• I’m a fan of Nassim Nicholas Taleb, one of the most cerebral writers in my opinion (I devoured ‘Black Swan’, read up part of ‘Fooled by Randomness’).  Surprising to know he was a ‘quant’ i.e. a financial market trader!
• I also read up ‘The Big Short – Inside the Doomsday Machine’ by Michael Lewis on the 2008 US banking crisis, which reads like a thriller! (I also started on 'Freefall' by noted economis Joseph Stiglitz on the same subject but found it too dry!).
• ‘The World is Flat’ by NYT columnist Thomas L. Friedman, about interpreting the global economic liberalization and ‘connectedness’.
• Some others like ‘Economic Naturalist’, and ‘Freakonomics’, giving an everyday twist to seemingly complex economic phenomena.  
• My readings on business topics include books like ‘Execution’, ‘Good to Great’, ‘Rich Dad Poor Dad’, ‘24 Carrot Manager’,etc.
• Books on general interest topics like 'Eats Shoots & Leaves' (a hillarious take on incorrect language & punctuation) and by the same author 'Talk to the Hand' (on the prevailing general misbehaviour patterns), 'The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari', etc.

On fiction, during my college/early career days, I used to read authors like

• Mark Twain  - 'Tom Sawyer' & 'Huckleberry Finn' of course, but also ‘A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court’.
• And collections of O Henry short stories, with their 'twist in the tail' - so many of them have been made into movies including some Hindi movies (the recent 'Lootera' had allusions to 'The Last Leaf') which I watched later.

Then, after a longish hiatus, I again took up some classics 

• ‘War and Peace’, which somehow I hadn't been able to finish during college days (but this time some parallels with Indian thought processes got me hooked - I finished it during my travels over a period of two years!).  Other Tolstoy works also attacted me a lot, including some of his short stories.
• 'My Experiments with Truth' by Gandhi.
• I still haven’t finished ‘Freedom at Midnight’ (though I've read other Collins/Lapierre books like the nuclear thriller 'The Fifth Horseman' and -started on - 'City of Joy'...)
• Big fan of Thomas Hardy (‘Far From the Madding Crowd’, ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’)
• And lately the Jazz era novel ‘The Great Gatsby’ (saw the movie too, but after having read the book)
• Started on Gorky (‘Mother’).  

But I also read up

• ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy (after having watched the movies) - (a) found the books contained far more content than the movies, and (b) the allusions to human nature and behaviour were timeless.
• Almost all of Sherlock Holmes, the cerebral detective of early 20th century London.
• Quite a few Agatha Christie detective stories, including a large collection of 'Hercule Poirot' and some of 'Miss Marple'.
• The 2nd and last three of Harry Potters series (have watched the full series of course).
• Quite a few of Dan Brown’s - ‘Da Vinci Code’ of course, ‘Angels & Demons’, ‘The Lost Symbol’, ‘Digital Fortress’, ‘Deception Point’ - before I lost interest in the genre.
• Siva trilogy by Amish - I think the last one ‘Oath of the Vayuputras’ was somewhat of an anti-climax, though perhaps in line with the created mythology.
• A few of the 'Ramayana' (e.g. 'The Vengeance of Ravana') and 'Mahabharata' (e.g. 'The Forest of Stories') series of Ashok Banker
• Sci-fi series by Isaac Asimov - reading one of the ‘Foundation’ series these days.
• And Arthur C. Clarke - a couple of the ‘Odyssey’ series, and his ‘Rama’ series which starts with pure science fiction but by ‘Rama Revealed’ metamorphoses almost into theology (the same can perhaps be said of '3001: The Final Odyssey')
• Amitav Ghosh’s ‘Sea of Poppies’ (which alludes to the Opium Wars around China in 19th century); also started on the sequel ‘River of Smoke’ but couldn’t finish, before I had to return it to my online library)
• A few of Jhumpa Lahiri's books ('Namesake' - also watched the movie, 'Unaccustomed Earth'), including the Man Booker longlisted 'Lowland'
• Also Booker winner 'Life of Pi' (recently made into a movie).
• A few thrillers like 'The Fourth Protocol', the first two of 'The Girl...' millennium series (got put off later) and the first of the Japanese 'Ring' trilogy.
• Some Indian 'chiklit' novels, including a few by Chetan Bhagat - 'Five Point Someome', 'One Night at the Call Centre', 'Three Mistakes of My Life' (the three made into Hindi movies, with 'Three Idiots' partially based on the first one a huge hit, and 'Kai Po Chhe' based on the last one also a moderate hit); 'The Incredible Banker'.

Apart from ‘series’ books, I’ve read a whole lot of others, for instance

• The hillarious ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ (also watched part of the movie).
• ‘The Palace of Illusions’ - on Mahabharata through Draupadi’s eyes.
• ‘Hullaballoo in the Guava Orchard’ - about so called social misfits

and so on,  which I’ve lost count!

That's for English. I also used to be an avid Hindi reader, though not necessarily established tomes, but in olden times I've read a few of Munshi Premchand.

And in Bangla, I've read up

• Satyajit Ray's series of 'Pheluda' detective stories - very evocative of the place where the stories are set (for instance, even 20 years later I found Kathmandu to be quite similar to the place described in 'Joto Kando Kathmandu-te'!).
• Ray's 'Professor Shonku' stories - about the eccentric scientist dealing with strange inventions and phenomena.
• A few by noted litterateur Bibhuti Bhushan Bandhopadhyay - 'Pather Panchali' (made into the famous trilogy of movies by Ray), 'Adarsha Hindu Hotel', 'Ichhamati' (started) - simple stories but incredibly evocative of early 20th century rural Bengal/Bangladesh.
• Nihar Ranjan Gupta's 'Kalo Bhromor' stories featuring the intrepid detective 'Kiriti'.
• And Sharadindu Bandhopadhyay's detective 'Byomkesh Bakshi' (made into a popular TV series and also a few movies recently).
• Stories of well-known Bangla novelist Sunil Gangopadhyaya (including the ones serialized in 'Desh' magazine).

These are the ones I can recall right now.  Doubtless, there are countless other books I'd have read over the years and lost track of.

When my interests 'bent' towards a certain direction, I started with 'Autobiography of a Yogi' (an international bestseller) and a host of other books by the same author (including interpretations of Bhagwadgita and 'Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam' which come up with quite surprising insights).  But then that's a completely different journey...