I had a fantastic month of reading to close the year out.
For last months update, please go here.
I’ve taken some downtime and found some extra time to read at leisure this month.
I ended up reading 8 books this month, falling slightly short of 70 for the year (I’m at 68)
The books I read were:
- Remains of the day — Kazuo Ishiguro
This book had been on my list for a long time, this is one of Jeff Bezos’s favourite books, which is how I came to know of the book and it’s author.
Incredibly moving read, books like this are the anti-pattern to traditional fiction. By my estimate close to 80% of the book is in the narrators mind itself which is so incredibly hard to pull off as a writing style and still bring about the theme of self-discovery. Incredible.
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Originals — Adam Grant
While I found this book interesting and in some ways validating, I may be suffering from some cognitive bias, I did not find it too insightful, I have a feeling this is because of maybe a lack of experience on my part, I intend to revisit this book sometime in the next 10 months and try to see if things have changed. -
The Daily Stoic — Ryan Holiday
As a part of my exploration of the stoic brand of philosophy I picked this up and finished it all too quickly, will be restarting this from the new year and read it the way it was meant to be read day by day. -
Where angels fear to tread — E.M. Forster
I’d been meaning to read this authors books for a long time and finally took the plunge. The book takes some interesting, some morbid turns and for me finishes a little too quickly. Lovely read. -
70 Policies that shaped India — Gautam Chikermane
As someone who is continually trying to understand India better, this was a fantastic introduction that helped fill in several gaps of knowledge with regards to Indias legislative past. -
The Sovereign Individual — James Dale Davidson, Lord William Rees-Mogg
I’d read excerpts from this book online in the past and found them interesting so I decided to take the time out and actually read the book this month.
I think this might be one of the most important books written for the 21st century already.
- Letters from a Stoic — Seneca
What started as a reading of ‘On Philosophy and Riches’, a letter by Seneca online, led me to this incredible series of letters written to Lucilius on how to be a better stoic.
As I explore this concept better, I intend to go further back and try to understand its roots better. I also love the parallels with Hindu philosophy which I will be exploring further over the next few months.
This was a slightly hard read.
- The Prophet — Kahlil Gibran
I initially started reading Thus Spoke Zarathustra, but, tabled it for the time being since Nietzsche’s style is a little different to the ones I am used to.
I picked this up in the meantime since this was on my reading list as well.
I can see why this is so highly regarded, has given me a lot to think about.
I love books that give me more questions to think about rather than ones that spell out the answer for me.
I did my best to close out the year with some philosophical books.
This was a fantastic year of reading, we’ll see how this helps me in the future and how the next year goes.
Thank you for reading
Sainath