A Book-lover’s Paean to Books and Reading

it comes to what reading is, none other than E.B. White has put it best –

“Reading is the work of the alert mind, is demanding, and under ideal conditions produces finally a sort of ecstasy.”

This has been another great year of books and reading and I am thankful to all the books that somehow found a way to reach me. As a year-end ritual, I am going to leave you all with five top picks of the year that impacted me the most.?

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman | Genre: Nonfiction

This one to me has been one of the most significant books of the year.

A huge book that it is and to absorb the wisdom it has to offer, it took me a few months to get through it, and I’d say that reading it once is simply not enough. Nobel laureate, Daniel Kahneman, through his groundbreaking work reveals to us the dual systems of our brain, their pitfalls, and their power. He takes us through an evidence-based tour of two systems – System 1 and System 2 – that drive the way we think.

Just to give you a teaser, System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control, whereas System 2 allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations.?When we think of ourselves, we identify ourselves with System 2, but most of the times it’s the System 1 that is occupying the driver’s seat. Nevertheless, each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems work together to shape our judgements and decisions.

Thinking, Fast and Slow has ended my search for one go-to book on thinking and decision making, and I’m sure it’ll end yours as well.?

Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines and Habits of Billionaires, Icons and World-Class Performers by Tim Ferriss | Genre: Self-Help, Productivity. Nonfiction

When I learn about any book for the first time, my intuitive response is to check on the internet its preview and then reviews. Upon which I decide to go either for a paperback version or for a kindle one or to skip it completely. When I read the preface of Tools of Titans, I knew this one was going to be on my desk right there to refer to whenever I want to.

Tools of Titans is a compendium of the brilliant advices from hundreds of guests – from Scott Adams to Arnold Schwarzenegger, from Sam Harris to Jack Dorsey – who have appeared on Tim’s podcast. He calls it the compendium of recipes for high performances. This book is a buffet to choose from and he has arranged his guests in three categories: Healthy, Wealthy, Wise. In addition to this there are a few non-profile chapters. To be able turn to something super specific, at any point in time, and draw a parallel between related philosophies of multiple stalwarts, is the salient feature of this tome. And the choice of quotes that he has used wherever relevant? Mind-blowing!

For the gold mine that the tome is, you have to experience it yourself.

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu | Genre: Fiction, Short stories

As much as good nonfiction directs our thinking, great fiction bumps up our creativity quotient. Though one of my reading goals for this year was to read a few classics, I had not turned to fiction for a good part of the year. It was only during the last quarter that I thought of it, and wondered if short stories would be a good start. They proved it could. ???

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories is a collection that features Ken’s award-winning and award-finalist stories. The Paper Menagerie, the titular story of this collection, is the only story to have won Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards, and the story that brought me to his collection. This was my first experience with Ken’s written words and with speculative fiction, but his powerful stories that teach and entertain in equal measure will ensure I read more of his works in the year to come.?

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse | Genre: Philosophy

This one comes straight from the list of recommendations by Naval Ravikant in his book The Almanac of Naval Ravikant. Naval is a big-time advocate of reading and in his book, he says, “Reading science, math, and philosophy one hour per day will likely put you at the upper echelon of human success within seven years.”

Intrigued by this directive, I decided to go with Siddhartha, one of his recommendations in philosophy section. Though apprehensive exploring this genre, Siddhartha had a lot to contribute positively to me and my reading experience. This is a novel by Hermann Hesse, that deals with the spiritual journey of self-discovery of a man named Siddhartha during the time of the Gautama Buddha. Set on the Gangetic Plain some 2,600 years ago,?the main topic of this allegory is the search for spiritual enlightenment, inner guidance, and the wisdom of indirection. Even though the novel plays in India, the author synthesizes disparate philosophies to evoke universal enlightenment ideas. A short beautiful read it was.?

Jallianwala Bagh: A Groundbreaking History of the 1919 Massacre by Dr. V.N. Datta and Dr. Nonica Datta | Genre: Historical Nonfiction, Nonfiction

?Around end-August this year, prime minister Modi inaugurated the renovated the Jallainwala Bagh memorial complex that came under criticism. While a handful acknowledged the revamp, historians accused the planners of ‘Disneyfying’ the monument and erasing the gruesome memories of the horrific day of April 13, 1919, when General Dyer opened up a fire on a group of peaceful protestants killing more than 1,000 of them.

In the updated edition of his 1969 book Jallainwala Bagh, late V.N. Datta crafts an unique first-hand narrative of the most violent event in the history of modern India. When asked upon why we wrote the Jallainwala Bagh, he said, “Both, the massacre and the partition violence wrecked the city of Amritsar and the palpable destruction propelled him to trace the history of the 1919 carnage as a kind of starting point to understand the vortex of imperial violence and the subsequent decline of Amritsar.”

This work is a scholarly perspective on the racial and military violence in the 20th century and must be a part of every Indian reader’s repertoire.?

Though I have picked only five books as a part of this year-end reading wrap-up, there are many more that amplified the pleasures of reading. I will be writing some more individual recommendations, but for now here are some –

1. A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins

2. The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War by Malcolm Gladwell

3. Before the Coffee Gets Cold series by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, Geoffrey Trousselot (Translator)

4. Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know by Adam Grant

5. How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life by Scott Adams

6. The Great Mental Models (Volume 1-3) by Shane Parrish

With that, I am back to A Child of Books that had gently nudged you to take a dive into the world of reading. Here’s what she has to leave you with –?

“I am a child of books, I come from a world of stories, I have sailed a sea of words.. to ask if you will come away with me. We will travel over mountains of make-believe…

…For this is our world, we’ve made from stories…”?