2019 Reading List

2019 reading list.

1) The Anarchy - William Dalrymple

2) Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a silicon valley start up - John Carreyrou

3) Black Edge - Sheelah Kolhatkar

4) Yugandhar (English Translation) - Shivaji Sawant

5) Mudrarakshas (Hindi Translation) - Vishkhadatta

6) It doesn't have to be crazy at work - David Hansson and Jason Fried

7) What you do is who you are - Ben Horowitz

8) Rise and Kill First - Ronen Bergman

9) How will you measure your life - Clayton Christensen

10) The Vedas and Upanishads for children - Roopa Pai

11) The Verdict - Prannoy Roy and Doran Sopariwala

12) Trillion Dollar Coach - Eric Schmidt & others

13) We should all be feminists - Chimamanda Adichie

14) The greatness of Saturn - Robert Svoboda

15) Towards the silver crest of the Himalayas (English translation) - GK Pradhan

16) The Barefoot Coach - Paddy Upton

17) Thinking in bets - Annie Duke

18) India's War: World War 2 and the making of Modern South Asia - Srinath Raghavan

19) Talent Wins - Ram Charan, Dominic Barton, Dennis Carey

My favourite read of the year? It was a three way fight between Bad Blood, The Anarchy and Yugandhar.

The Anarchy convinced me that in the 1700s and 1800s no one believed that one day a trading organisation with its own army could rule the sub continent. Each player in the power struggle (kings, princes, generals, mercenaries and merchants) were driven by their own self interests. The concept of a nation state was not yet born.

Reading Yugandhar in English made me feel terrible about the fact that I have not honed my ability to read Marathi to a degree which helps me to attain fluency in reading and appreciating literature. The work depicts Sri Krishna as a gifted human being who attained divinity through His deeds and beliefs. It weaves together mythology, religion, spirituality, geography and history to present the fallible human behind the God in His roles as a son, friend, king, father, husband, philosopher and warrior.

Bad Blood presents to us the dark side of human behaviour in Silicon Valley. It is a story that is all too familiar in business, politics and history and cautions us from taking everything at face value ! Be a sceptic and keep questioning - and more importantly create a culture around you that encourages such behaviour.

This is my favourite pick of 2019.