Books I've Read

This is a list of books I've read over the years. Needless to say, these are books of general interest and excludes all scientific and technical books of a professional nature. The list is taken from my memory and is therefore somewhat incomplete. I've arranged them chronologically in 5 year blocks - which seems to be a reasonable coarse graining of the time to allow for my unreliable memory. It's not intended to be a list of all the books I've read, rather a list of books worth mentioning. For each book I have written a couple of sentences from memory, to convey how I remember them. They are not summaries of the books nor are they critical reviews.



2021-2026
  1. Masud Husain, Our Brains, Our Selves
  2. Christopher Summerfield, These Strange New Minds
  3. Venki Ramakrishnan, Why We Die
  4. Eric Kandel, The Disordered Mind
  5. Dhirendra K. Jha, Gandhi’s Assassin
  6. Aakar Patel, The Price of the Modi Years
  7. Benjamin Labatut, When We Cease to Understand the World
  8. Benjamin Labatut, The Maniac
  9. Ray Monk, Inside the Centre: The Life of J. Robert Oppenheimer
  10. Paul Davies, Quantum 2.0
  11. Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice
  12. Ed Douglas, Himalaya: A Human History
  13. Dervla Murphy, Full Tilt
  14. Andrew Solomon, Far From The Tree
  15. Ray Monk, How To Read Wittgenstein
  16. Robert Sapolsky, Determined
  17. Jim Holt, When Einstein Walked With Godel.
  18. Jennifer Doudna & Samuel Sternberg, A Crack in Creation.
  19. Noam Chomsky & Ilan Pappe, Palestine.
  20. Pankaj Mishra, The World After Gaza.
  21. Andre Agassi (and J R Moehringer), Open. An enjoyable and human telling of a tennis life. Agassi's father pushing him relentlessly and Agassi's physical pain during a lot of his career, and a fairy tale ending with his finding eventual contentment in family is heartwarming. It must be said that the subject contributes a lot to the story. Moehringer other famous biography of the British Royal Harry in Spare portrays an unhappy and petulant young man growing in privilege with the attendant baggage of crushing publicity, and somewhat boring to read.
2016-2021
  1. Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air
  2. Lijia Zhang, Socialism is Great
  3. Douglas Murray, The Madness of Crowds
  4. Pranay Lal, Indica
  5. Andrew Duff, Sikkim
  6. Robert Boyers, The Tyranny of Virtue
  7. Roger Penrose, Fashion, Faith and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe
  8. Katherine Rundell, Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Dunne.
  9. Katherine Rundell, Why You Should Read Children's Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise. This is a nice little book, and the title always brings a smile.
  10. Margaret Busby, New Daughters of Africa.
  11. Lawrence Anthony, The Elephant Whisperer.
  12. Lawrence Anthony, Babylon's Ark'.
  13. Elizabeth Pisani, The Wisdom of Whores. This was recommended by Paul Joseph who visited me from Boston and during our many night long conversations brought up this book. It describes the politics and policies - national and international - surrounding the control of AIDS. Sympathetically and well written it gave me a window into areas that I knew nothing about.
  14. Diarmaid McCullough, A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. A very enjoyable history from the ground in which Christianity arose through the many disputes both political and spiritual to the present day with its numerous subsections and fringe sects.
  15. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, is a splendid books that brought me sort of up-to-date on thinking about economics and fairness in distribution. His scrupulous use of data to present his arguments is a great pleasure to read.
2011-2016
  1. Verrier Elwin, The Tribal World of Verrier Elwin: An Autobiography
  2. Ramachandra Guha, Savaging the Civilized
  3. Malala Yousufzai, I am Malala
  4. Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow
  5. Stephen Kinzer, A Thousand Hills
  6. M.G.Vassanji, The Assassin's Song
  7. Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis
  8. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi, Half of a Yellow Sun
  9. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi, Americanah
  10. Zadie Smith, White Teeth
  11. Amitav Ghosh, In An Antique Land
  12. Amitav Ghosh, Dancing In Cambodia
  13. Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies and the rest of the series
  14. Mark Levi, The Mathematical Mechanic
  15. E T Bell, Men of Mathematics
  16. Jean Dreze & Amartya Sen, An Uncertain Glory.
  17. Maryanne Wolf, Proust and the Squid.
  18. Debra Satz, Why Some Things Should Not Be For Sale.
2006-2011
  1. Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains
  2. Paul Farmer, Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights and the New War on the Poor
  3. Joe Sacco, Palestine
  4. Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety
  5. Apostolos Doxiadis, Christos Papadimitrou, Alecos Papadatos, Logicomix
  6. Doris Lessing, African Laughter
  7. V S Ramachandran, Phantoms in the Brain
  8. Michael Sandel, The Case Against Perfection.
  9. Jordan Ellenberg, How Not To Be Wrong.
  10. Ayan Hirsi Ali, Infidel. This book and her Heretic: Why Islam Needs A Reformation Now could not have been written by a better person. Ayan Hirsi Ali life is a testment to her writings, and I wish this could have been written without her having to suffer at the hands of people who would drag us to a murky, violent and unhappy past.
  11. Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe. A nice book on modern physics and cosmology.
  12. Michio Kaku, Physics of the Future. Nice book - Michio Kaku is too much of a storyteller that the physics reads a bit too much like science fiction with speculation too readily mixed with what is known.
2001-2006
  1. John Keay, India Discovered
  2. Nigel Walker, Why Punish?
  3. M.G.Vassanji, The In-Between World of Vikram Lal
  4. Roger Penrose, The Large, The Small and the Human Mind
  5. Ian Stewart, The Problems of Mathematics
  6. Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
  7. David Edmonds & John Eidinow, Wittgenstein's Poker.
  8. David Edmonds & John Eidinow, Rousseau's Dog.
  9. Christina Lamb, House of Stone: A very well written, balanced and deeply disturbing book about racism and de-colonization in Zimbabwe.
  10. Louis L'Amour, The Walking Drum. While I had read my share of Louis L'Amour in my childhood period of laddish books, I wish I had read this interesting and well-written novel set in the middle ages. Also, The Lonesome Gods, Last of the Breed, Fair Blows The Wind and How the West was Won are all good stories well told by a witer very much of his time and place, but intelligent, sympathetic and reflective.
1996-2001
  1. Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius
  2. Ray Monk, Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude
  3. John Keay, The Great Arc
  4. Oliver Sacks, A Leg To Stand On
  5. Oliver Sacks, Hearing Voices
  6. Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
  7. J M Coetzee, Disgrace
  8. Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion.
  9. John Allen Paulos, Mathematics and Humor.
  10. Schlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People.
  11. Arthur Koestler, The Lotus and the Robot
  12. William Dalrymple, From The Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium.
  13. V S Naipaul, Among The Believers. A surprisingly opinionated and bigoted book right from the first page. While Naipaul writes engagingly and brings in a fresh perspective, the fact of his starting out with prejudice is especially vivid in this book. His novels gave me the same impression - unabashed misogyny in >A Bend in the River. His early books, A House for Mr Biswas, are much pleasanter reading.
  14. Peter Danielson, Modeling Rationality, Morality and Evolution. A set of articles mainly about moral behaviour and game theory. The basic idea being that altruistic behaviour is beneficial for the group and therefore genetically selected in a population. Hence the evolution of moral sense. One of the many approaches to understand and explain moral behaviour, and particularly to say that it has a firm biological basis without requiring mystical beliefs or structures.
  15. Dilip Hiro, Blood of the Earth. A nice book about the politics of the petroleum industry.
  16. Leonard Katz, Evolutionary Origins of Morality. A set of articles on evolutionary selection for cooperation, fairness, punishment, etc. And these form the basis for moral behaviour in groups.
  17. Amos Tutuola, The Palm Wine Drinkard. A nice telling of an African story in a very culturally specific way. Reads like an unfamiliar dialect of English and an unfamiliar world-view is used. I squirmed when I first read it, and had to look at some of the glowing reviews before I could fully grasp it.
1991-1996
  1. John Gribbin, In Search of Schrodinger’s Cat.
  2. Michael White and John Gribbin, Stephen Hawking: A Life in Science.
  3. Nelson Mandela, The Long Walk To Freedom
  4. Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines
  5. Amartya Sen, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation
  6. Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel
  7. Frantz Fanon, Black Skins, White Masks
  8. Jane Gardam, Bilgewater
  9. Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind
  10. Francis Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis
  11. Douglas Hofstadter & Daniel Dennett, The Mind's I
  12. Stephen Jay Gould, The Burgess Shale
  13. Albert Einstein, Relativity
  14. Susan George, Ill Fares The Land
  15. Richard Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out
  16. Richard Feynman, QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter.
  17. Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
  18. Chinua Achebe, Arrow of God
  19. Chinua Achebe, Anthills of the Savannah
  20. Nadeem Aslam, Maps for Lost Lovers
  21. Konrad Lorenz, King Solomon's Ring.
  22. Konrad Lorenz, Man Meets Dog.
  23. Karl Popper, John Eccles, The Self and Its Brain.
  24. Nevil Shute, Trustee in the Toolroom. I came to read Nevil Shute rather late - unfortunately. But certainly better late than never. This is one of his very memorable books for the splendid inclusion of engineering detail in the book. His autobiographical Slide Rule is another splendid book which I hope every engineer gets to read. The books have aged very well in the last 100 years.
  25. Martin Amis, London Fields is the best of his always well-written, darkly comic and often disturbing books. Also, Money is a funny and excellent period piece, while The Information is a somewhat unsettling commentary on literary rivalry.
  26. Paul Feyarabend, Science in a Free Society. My memory of this is rather hazy and my recommendation lukewarm.
1986-1991
  1. W.P. Kinsella, Dance Me Outside.
  2. Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye.
  3. Margaret Atwood, The Edible Woman.
  4. Alice Munro, Friend of My Youth
  5. Nick Herbert, Quantum Reality.
  6. Katherine Tait, My Father Bertrand Russell.
  7. James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
  8. James Joyce, Exiles.
  9. James Joyce, Dubliners.
  10. Anthony Burgess, Enderby's Dark Lady.
  11. Anthony Burgess, Language Made Plain.
  12. Anthony Burgess, The Malayan Trilogy, A Clockwork Orange, The Enderby books, The Napoleon Synphony, Any Old Iron, The End of the World News...
  13. John Roemer, Free To Lose.
  14. John Maynard Smith, Evolution and the Theory of Games.
  15. Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.
  16. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth.
  17. Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
  18. Doris Lessing, Martha Quest, and T>he Children of Violence Series
  19. C L R James, The Black Jacobins
  20. Marvin Minsky, The Society of Mind
  21. Seymour Papert, Mindstorms
  22. Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man
  23. Susan George, Food For Beginners
  24. Alexandra Kollontai, Selected Writings
  25. Richard Feynman, Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman
  26. John LeGrand, Equity and Choice
  27. Elie Wiesel, Dawn.
  28. Dilip Hiro, Black British, White British: A History of Race Relations in Britain. A very good book about the Brixton riots and tumultous race relations in Britain.
  29. Peter Gibbins, Particles and Paradoxes.
  30. Soren Kierkegaard, Either/ Or. The yin and the yang of the ascetic moralist set against the hedonistic aesthete brings to mind Hermann Hesse's Naricssus and Goldmund.
1981-1986
  1. Leo Huberman, Man’s Worldly Goods.
  2. Langdon Winner, The Whale and the Reactor.
  3. Neil Postman, Entertaining Ourselves to Death.
  4. Saul Bellow, The Last Analysis.
  5. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
  6. Frank Herbert, Dune
  7. R D Laing, Knots.I was introduced to this book by my friend Kailasam who said that he wanted to make a short film based on this. Delightful book that opens an interest to Laing's other work.
  8. Douglas Hofstadter, Escher, Godel, Bach
  9. Alan Paton, Cry, The Beloved Country
  10. Alan Paton, Too Late The Phalarope.
  11. Par Lagerkvist, Barrabas
  12. Ernest Nagel & James Newman, Godel's Proof.
  13. Theodore Dobzhansky, Mankind Evolving.
  14. Jacques Monod, Chance and Necessity.
  15. B F Skinner, Walden Two
  16. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy
  17. Gloria Kaufmann, Pulling Our Own Strings A hilarious and always thought provoking collection of feminist humour. Needs to be better known.
  18. Arthur Peacock, Creation and the World of Science. One of the best works of Christian apologetics that I've read, and opened me to the books of Ernan McMullin and others. An intelligent and reasonably well argued book a welcome relief from the idiotic writings of many creationists, intelligent-design and the other mental contortionists. In the end while clearly in the club of John Eccles and others like him, with strangely discontinuous arguments that try to bridge science and religion, Peacock like Eclles at least writes well. The lunatic fringe of creationists are unreadable.
  19. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy. Definitely the lazy person's quick guide to the European philosophers. But done very well, and if you aren't going to read Plato, Rousseau, Hume and the rest in their original works, you could do worse than read this.
  20. Henrik Ibsen, A Doll's House. Is it really such an old book? An important book historically, socially and in many other ways. His other books, Ghosts, Hedda Gabler are all worth reading.
  21. Hermann Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund is my favourite of his books, followed by Demian. I read Magister Ludi or the Glass Bead Game and Steppenwolf rather less enthusiastically, perhaps because of the translations. Siddhartha was very popular among some people when I was reading Hesse, so having heard too much chatter about it, I never read it.
1976-1981
  1. Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene.
  2. David P. Barash, Sociobiology and Behaviour.
  3. Edward O. Wilson, Sociobiology.
  4. Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift.
  5. Bertrand Russell, ABC of Relativity.
  6. Bertrand Russell, The Good Citizen's Alphabet.
  7. George Gamow, One, Two, Three,...,Infinity.
  8. Michael Crichton: Congo is probably one of his first books that I read and I hugely enjoyed the mix of science and fiction. Terminal Man is another wonderful book mixing science and technology into the fiction. A thriller but suprisingly true to a lot of brain research and medical engineering of the 1970s and early 1980s. I read most of his other novels with considerable enjoyment. Rather later, I read his autobiography, Travels which has the same fast-paced story telling of his novels but also shows him as a person with warts and all.
  9. Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead and most of the other books (Atlas Shrugged, Anthem, The Romantic Manifesto, We The Living, ...). I liked them at the time, but a few years later I realized that her understanding of economics, philosophy, science and politics was laughably negligible. I was then ashamed to have enjoyed her books earlier, but nevertheless it was a part of my growing up.
  10. Yakov Perelman, Physics for Entertainment, Physics Can be Fun
  11. Rudolf Carnap, Meaning and Necessity
  12. Benjamin Lee Whorf, Language, Thought and Reality.
  13. B F Skinner, Science and Human Behavior
1971-1976
  1. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The First Circle.
  2. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
  3. Edgar Rice Burroughs, Almost all the Tarzan books, and most of the John Carter books
  4. R.K. Narayan, The Bachelor of Arts.
  5. Raja Rao, Kanthipura.
  6. Willard Price, All the Adventure books
  7. George Orwell, Animal Farm.
  8. Frank Buck, Bring 'em back alive.
  9. Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
  10. R.M.Ballantyne, Coral Island
  11. Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
  12. Wernher von Braun, First Men to the Moon. I have a rather vague memory of this, but one thing that stayed in my memory is a machine that generates oxygen to make a habitable atmosphere.
  13. The Bible: When I was 12, my cousin, Sabu, asked me if I had read the Bible... in its entirety. Answering in the negative, I felt somehow that it was a serious omission, so I read it over the next few months. I read it as a book, from cover to cover, not knowing at the time the history of how its contents were selected, first by Anthansius and then at the Council of Trent. It occured to me soon after, that reading the Bible as a book is rather different from the way many people use it; they take strings of words from it and believe them to have talismanic significance.
  14. C S Lewis, I read The Screwtape Letters at the suggestion of my schoolmate Russell Weesner, and much later I read The Great Divorce seeing my college friend Raja Kalidas reading it. I found them interesting but not hugely so. Sometime around this time, I read Mere Christianity which I found to be a rather good exposition of moral ideas from a Christian perspective.
1966-1971
  1. Jim Corbett, The Man-Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag.
  2. Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan.
  3. Kenneth Andreson, Nine Man-eaters and One Rogue.
  4. கடலோடி சிந்துபாத் - (Seafaring Sindbad or Sindbad The Sailor) - I was 8 years old and in Manimuthar. This was, I think, the first full length book that I read. The local library had this and I read it with enjoyment through an illness.
1961-1966