2017 year-end book recommendations

It is time for Christmas, New Year, holidays and, of course, reading intellectually stimulating books. In continuation of earlier years’ reading lists, attached is my recommendation for 2017 year-end reading. The list spans various genres from non-fiction current affairs with a hint of science, politics, business and fiction; Pulitzer winning stuff to the daily humdrum. Fundamental selection criterion is relevance to today’s world. I have read through each one of these, found it matches my quality thresholds before incorporating in the list.

The list has been capped at the magic number of ten; keeping in mind that December got its name from the Latin word decem (meaning ten); being the original tenth month of the year in the Roman calendar.

Enjoy!

1. The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen. Great book on the tragic dilemma of Vietnamese exiles stuck between parallel worlds unable to forego either one of them. The war features in each of the pages leading to the unanswered question of who actually won and who lost. Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

2. The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee. The thing that stands out is its human content. Starting with the emotionally-charged personal connection to the detailing of personalities or anecdotes involving famous scientists, the human component gets emphasized. A lot of concepts have been explained in a simple manner. Siddhartha Mukherjee is a favourite author of mine and, this book, like his other book, The Emperor of Maladies, keep the reader engaged till the last page.

3. Breakthrough: Elizabeth Hughes, the Discovery of Insulin, and the Making of a Medical Miracle by Thea Cooper and Arthur Einsberg. A thrilling tale of the race to unlock the secret of converting dying and starving children into healthy cheerful youngsters. For those of you interested in insulin, directly or indirectly in various roles be it patient to caregiver to concerned citizen, this book is worth reading for a context to the discovery of a modern miracle.

4. Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS by Joby Warrick. Another winner, this time the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. A fascinating book that helps to connect the dots in current middle eastern affairs, somewhat of a story of missed opportunities and misunderstandings…. this book provides an overview of the beginning of ISIS. The author does a great job of letting the reader decide for themselves who did what wrong and where.

5. Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville. A noteworthy study by an external observer of American institutions and culture. The book left me with a much better understanding of how the U.S. evolved from the Revolution to the modern day. Even though some of the ideas may be way off the mark, still a worthy investment of time. Note that this book was written in 1835 and 1840 (in two volumes) and stands the test of time.

6. The Decisive Moment by Jonah Lehrer. This 2009 book was recommended to me by a neurologist as practical application of neuroscience to decision making. Great story-telling such as how fluctuations of a few dopamine neurons saved a battleship during the Persian Gulf War.

7. The Starbucks Experience: 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary Into Extraordinary by Joseph A. Michelli. An execution oriented read, it made me pause and think on my business goals and practices. The thinking points at the end of each chapter and the call-out boxes that help readers relate Starbucks' practices to their own situations are helpful.

8. Stories that Inspired Satyajit Ray by Bhaskar Chattopadhyay. A translation of short stories that inspired the famous films of Satyajit Ray and in the process capturing the vagaries of human character. The book picks fourteen stories that Ray had turned into films. It includes stories written by his grandfather Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury, who wrote Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne, Premchand’s classic Shatranj Ke Khiladi and Rabindranath Tagore’s short story Postmaster that became the movie Teen Kanya. In a way the book contextualizes the predicament that face modern West Bengal.

9. How to Lie with Statistics? By Darell Huff. A primer on how numbers can be manipulated. This was published way back in 1954 but worth reading once in a while especially in an era of social media trends and charts.

10. Good Strategy Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt. I like to read books about strategy and this book is one of the winners. Great background read for a leadership team as a prerequisite for strategy discussions.

Feel free to drop a message on your views of reads you recommend.