Sunday, April 18, 2010

Books you should read

Ideally, I’d like to review books I read, particularly those I loved. However, I almost always don’t go beyond short excerpt at my online catalogue and hence here I take this opportunity to list all English books I really really loved so far and count among my top recommendations. You may, of course, go through whole catalogue of 116 books to pick other favourites and read more detailed review at librarything.

  • Fiction
    • Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri is one of the excellent collections of short stories with vivid narrative and appropriate tug of heart.
    • To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee is a classic which needs no introduction. Read it for deep dive into difference between good and evil and high dose of cathartic emotion.
    • Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino binds science with imaginative fiction to come up with most strangest set of science fiction stories.
  • Non-fiction
    • The Code Book by Simon Singh is a fascinating tale of evolution of coding and decoding interspersed with stories of people involved, incidents that changed the world and mysteries that still remain unsolved.
    • The Story of My Experiments with Truth by Mahatma Gandhi is an autobiography everyone must read irrespective of whether you agree with him or not. Not because it tells you about one of the greatest man ever lived but because it tells you what makes greatness.
    • Logic of Life by Tim Harford is among my must read books for every person for it introduces one the most important subject of Economics which governs pretty much whole world and interactions within.
    • Surely, You are Joking Mr. Feynman! by Richard P. Feynman is book which completely changes the way you would want to live your life. Even though author is noble winning Physicist, book almost brushes past Physics to introduce a character you don’t want to forget.
    • Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps by Allan Pease is perhaps one book you may be surprised to find here among list of intellectual books. I, however, found this indispensible in understanding many things and living life a little less confused. Don’t take everything as gospel and you’d be fine.
    • A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson is one book you can give to a teenager and expect him want to become scientist. If all important scientific discoveries of the world since dawn of time are rolled into a paperback, you’d have this book.

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