Saturday, January 08, 2011

Reading in 2010

I had a fairly satisfactory year in terms of my reading list last year, especially when compared to the year before that. Here's a roundup:
First up are the books that I strongly recommend - books that I probably will re-read at some point.
  • Sceptical Essays - Bertrand Russell
  • Listening to Grasshoppers: Fieldnotes on Democracy - Arundhati Roy
  • Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
  • The Blind Watchmaker - Richard Dawkins
  • The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory - Jorge Luis Borges
Here's the  second tier of recommendations
  • Lessons in Journalism - T.J.S. George
  • Guns, Germs, and Steel - Jared Diamond
  • On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft - Stephen King
  • Superfreakonomics - Dubner & Levitt
  • Anansi Boys - Neil Gaiman
  • The Future of Life - Edward O. Wilson    
  • Reading Lolita in Tehran - Azar Nafisi
  • The True Believer - Eric Hoffer
  • The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
  • Shah of Shahs - Ryszard_Kapuściński
This year I made a concerted effort to improve my knowledge of economics, which I may add, is still close to zilch. Here are the books I read in that endeavour.
  • The Economic Consequences of the Peace - John Maynard Keynes (Didn't complete)
  • How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy - Raghuram G. Rajan
  • The Cartoon Introduction to Economics - Yoram Bauman & Grady Klein
I was made to read a couple of books as part of a course in office
  • The Long Tail - Chris Anderson
  • Happiness at Work - Srikumar Rao
Some books hardly left an impression
  • Private Lives of Trees - Alejandro Zambra
  • The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemmingway
  • The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson
And finally, I just didn't manage to finish these books, for various reasons.
  • The Black Swan - Nassim Nicholas Taleb (The arrogant tone of the author was irritating)
  • Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace (I was proceeding too slow) 
  • Ishmael - Daniel Quinn (Lost my book!)

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Deppe, nice, how do you manage to get the time to read so many with your schedule:)was having a tough time choosing something good to read...thanks this helps, will try something from the first category:)

Shobha said...

Deepu, that is impressive! Thanks for the recommendations. I too shall look at this list when I want to read something next! I am curious how you select books that you read? Where do you get your recommendations from?

Deepak said...

@a: Not having a TV makes a huge difference

@S: Two biggest sources; friends and blogs

Swathi Sambhani aka Chimera said...

impressive list. I'm disappoint that you did not like 'The girl with the dragon tatoo' , i love the series.

Deepak said...

@C: I think it was mostly because I had watched the movie, and hence the tautness was gone.