For the longest time, i’ve mostly focused on reading sci-fi. This year, i want to try and change – i want to read older books still relevant for today, regardless of the genre.

I asked for suggestions on twitter, linkedin and here are the books i was recommended.

It’s a long list, and hopefully a worthy one

• Management: High Output Management, Mythical Man Month
• Psychology: Influence (Robert Cialdini), Thinking Fast and Slow (Dan Kahneman)
• Money: Freakonomics, Lying for Money
• Dystopian: Animal Farm (Orwell), Brave New World (this one is a classic but I found it ok)
• Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
• Siddhartha (Herman Hesse)
• Fantasy: The Bartimaeous Trilogy (Johnathan Stroud – I love these books because of the narration style)
• Flowers for Algernon (1959) – an absolutely readable classic.
• Raag Darbaari (1968) – Srilal Shukla
• On Photography (1973) – Susan Sontag
• Yuganta (1967) – Irawati Karve
• Anything by Saadat Hasan Manto
• old travelogues by Dervla Murphy and Eric Newby
• brave new world
• silent spring
• Sophie’s World
• The Catcher in the Rye
• Jed Mckenna’s theory of everything
• Anna Kareninna – León Tolstoi
• Stephan Wolf- Hermann Hesse
• Cien años de soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude)- Gabriel García Márquez
• The Gene for Bio
• Carlo Rovelli for Physics
• Das Kapital… Karl Marx
• Wealth of Nations…Adam Smith
• A brief history of time… Hawking
• Uses of literacy… Hoggart
• Origin of species … Darwin
• Orientalism…Said
• The republic… Plato
• War and peace… Tolstoy
• Swami and his friends
• Siddhartha, Herman Hesse
• Zen mind beginners mind, Shunryu Suzuki
• The second sex, Simone de Beauvoir
• Bhagvad Gita
• Thirukurral by Thiruvalluvar
• Yuganta (1967) – Irawati Karve
• Mahaswetha devi’s After Kurukshetra
• Valmik’s women (based on Ramayana women)
• Aranyak by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay

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