So, I mentioned in last months post that I went kinda nuts, well, I took it further this month.
I ended up reading a total of 14 books, which sounds unreal to me. I think I just enjoyed reading all the books I read, especially the Murkami one.
Here’s the list of books I ended up reading in May.
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Contact — Carl Sagan This is book that I read a long time ago that I used to absolutely love, but, I’ve had quite few changes in perspective with regards to some of the topics that get covered in the book. I still love it, but, not as much as I used to. It’s still one of the best science fiction books ever written. In my view, this book is the explanation for his quote about the Pale Blue dot image.
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Nudge — Thaler, Sunstein I heard about Richard Thaler sometime last year, and while the name registered, I did not go out and read anything he’d written, after he won the Nobel last year I bought this book. The fundamental principle in the book is Libertarian paternalism, which is something I find myself slightly uncomfortable with. The concept however is well explained, highly recommended.
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Reality Check — Guy Kawasaki Please buy and read this book. I’m not going to review it because I know I will do it injustice. Powerful read, super impactful.
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The One Thing — Gary Keller, Jay Papasan This book came as a recommendation from a reader of this blog (they exist! :D). Thank you for that!
The book is not about prioritising your life, it actually takes a tangential view to prioritisation and emphases the need to ask the ‘Focusing question’ at multiple levels to arrive at the fundamental truth of what you need to be doing right now. Its an interesting concept, intend to put it into practice and test it out soon.
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Women of the Arabs — Henry Harris Jessup Bought this book on Amazon since it was free a long time ago and decided to give it a read. Starts out ‘ok’ with some descriptions of women in Arab societies in the Nineteenth century, but, it takes this crazy turn and becomes a book about the christian proselytising mission to Arabia. Do not recommend this at all.
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Dark Tower — Gunsliger I love Stephen King books, and the dark tower series is something I left unfinished, I decided to start from scratch. One more magical journey to go through.
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Encounter in the Dawn — Arthur. C. Clark This isn’t really a book as much a short story.
This is supposed to be the inspiration for the first part of 2001 a space odyssey, which is a book I intend to read, having only watched the movie.
- Neither here nor there — Bill Bryson In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I love Bill Brysons writings. As someone who intends to travel quite a bit in life, I haven’t read anyone who writes about travel the way Bill Bryson does. This one is about his travels in Europe.
It is witty, hilarious and, an incredibly fun read.
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Life and times of the Thunderbolt Kid — Bill Bryson Brysons autobiography, one of funniest books I’ve read, lead to quite a few people in the airport shushing me so that they could sleep.
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Rewards and Fairies — Rudyard Kipling There’s a poem called ‘If’ by Kipling that was recommended to me sometime last month, I read it and was blown away by it, at the same time I also recognized it from Wimbledon. I decided to read the entire book to be thorough. It’s a tough read, caught in its own time, left me reeling for context quite a few times.
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The Night Circus — Erin Morgenstern A fantasy novel written during NaNoWriMo. Has some incredible imagery, the story is sans tropes which makes it interesting and harder to relate to.
Fun read.
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Wind up bird Chronicle — Haruki Murakami My lord what an amazing read. I regret not reading Murakami in the past, this is a book that has been within 30 feet of me for nearly 3 years now and I read it only now. Incredible, I read this is just two sittings and was constantly blown away by the writing. Please add this to your reading list.
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Antifragile — Nassim Nicholas Taleb My monthly Taleb read. Incredibly insightful as usual. Intend to write a separate post detailing my learning from reading the Incerto once I finish Fooled by Randomness.
If you’ve made it this far, you should know that the next book is something that was recommended to me and I picked it up later that same week.
It broke my heart to turn the pages, its such a raw emotional read, the last time I felt that when I read a book was when I read Flowers for Algernon and that was fictional.
I told the guy who recommended the book to me that I hated him for doing this me but, at the same time could not thank him enough for doing so.
Please read this book.
Its called Tuesdays with Morrie
That took some time to write, hope no typos have crept in.
Here’s what I’m reading now:
- American Gods — Neil Gaiman
- The Gene — Siddhartha Mukherjee
- Made in America — Bill Bryson
- Ethics — Aristotle Thank you for reading!
Do leave your recommendations below.
Sainath