The Year That Was: Rich With Books

Reading-wise, this was a rich year for me. A lot of what I read was triggered by my growing interest in preventive healthcare and my attempts to get better at writing. In November this year, I had the opportunity to attend the week-long 13th edition of the Tata Literature Festival. This has reconnected me with authors of the Indian origin. I expect this “bonus” category to stand out in my reviews next year.

For now, these are my picks for this year –?

The Circadian Code: Lose Weight, Supercharge Your Energy, and Transform Your Health from Morning to Midnight by Dr. Satchin Panda | Genre: Science, Nonfiction, Health

Those who know me, know my obsession with a full 8-hour sleep. Ever since I’ve read Matthew Walker’s Why We Sleep (which was life-changing for me), I invariably keep looking for more reads in this domain. And I’m thankful I came across Dr. Panda who’s an expert in the field.

The term circadian rhythm refers to the 24-hour clock in our brains that regulates the sleep-wake cycle and that repeats roughly every 24 hours. So the title made it obvious what would the book be about, but the subtitle challenged that understanding. The basic idea of the book is TRE – Time Restricted Eating. Dr. Panda advises that we restrict our eating to a 12-hour window. Though 10 hours is better, and 9 or 8 hours is optimal.

We place disproportionate importance on “what to eat” with little to no attention on “when to eat.” This book is all about that. I was surprised to learn that every organ in our body has its own sleep-wake cycle. That’s because circadian rhythm operates at a cellular level and our body’s cells do not all operate on the same cycle! Therefore, things don’t go well for us when we don’t respect the timings they’re supposed to be optimal at and force them to work to our wills.

The author’s advice backed up with all the research is a solid plan to improve sleep, optimize exercise, and prevent and reverse ailments such as diabetes, cancer, dementia, and gut microbiome.

It’s a long read, but a must-read!

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig | Genre: Fiction, Magical Realism

“Doing one thing differently is often the same as doing everything differently.”

For all those decisions we make that shape our life, from the career we choose to the person we marry, from the city we choose to live to the friends we make, and all things around and in between, can change everything else that follows.

For an upbeat me, it took me a few pages to get along with the sad and regretful protagonist Nora Seed. But then enters the next important character, Mrs. Elm the librarian, who makes sure that everything she says makes you ponder upon. There literally were times when I would shut the book either to think about my regrets or to wonder what would have happened had I chosen paths different from what I indeed did.

The book is replete with such profound quotes, that by the time I finished it, I had tons of highlights. One of them I’d like to leave you with is: “You don’t have to understand life. You just have to live it.”

84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff | Genre: Nonfiction, Books About Books, Classics

When you spend few minutes at a bookstore, you come across titles which you would probably never come across surfing through internet recommendations even for hours.

First published on January 01, 1970, 84, Charing Cross Road is a heart-warming letter correspondence between the New York-based author Helene Hanff and the antiquarian bookseller in London, Frank Dole.

The book blurb that promises the epistolary exchanges taken place over 20 years, starting 1949, is a gateway to letters, literature, kindness, friendships, humour, wit, stubbornness, and beyond. The book has no place for bad people. It only has nice bookish people being amazing to other nice bookish people. ?

It is my last read of the year and it makes to my final five not out of any recency bias but purely because it brings back the long-forgotten joys of writing and reading letters.?

The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease by Daniel Lieberman | Genre: Science, Nonfiction, Health

Yes, our bodies have a story to be told.

“We didn’t evolve to be healthy, but instead we were selected to have as many as offspring as possible under diverse, challenging conditions. As a consequence, we never evolved to make rational choices about what to eat or how to exercise in conditions of abundance and comfort.”

Daniel Lieberman makes a compelling argument that making informed decisions about diet and lifestyle are possible only through the lens of evolutionary history. If we want to understand where we come from, we have to understand our evolutionary progress. Instead of asking questions such as why do we suffer from obesity or metabolic disorders, lets find answers to why humans stand and walk on two legs or why do we have a S-curve to our spine. For “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.”

Clear and refreshing, this book opened up for me a whole new thinking around the term ‘mismatched diseases.’ The term that simply refers to diseases that occur because our body is not adapted to excessive comforts.?

Ambedkar: A Life by Shashi Tharoor | Genre: Nonfiction, History, Biography

I happened to be at the book launch of Ambedkar: A Life at this year’s Tata Literature Festival that piqued my curiosity to know about a man I’m so incapable to talk of.

Through a concise biography, Shashi Tharoor chronicles the life and times of a truly remarkable person who played a remarkable role in shaping our constitution. The book is divided into two parts: Life and Legacy. Part one takes us through Ambedkar’s childhood and the caste and communal discrimination he faced. Part two takes us through his life in Indian politics. From being son of an untouchable subedar to rising to earn two prestigious doctorates to being a foremost figure in the generation of giants. This is a biography of a man who was larger than his life.

And finally, when Shashi Tharoor is the author, do we need to comment on the language? Simple and accessible, this a book for those who would want to be reminded of Ambedkar, be reminded of the unfair casteism, or would just want to read a good book.?

These five books are not the only ones that made my reading rich and rewarding this year. Here are five more, either recommended earlier or yet to expand on, that you could give a look at –

1. An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives by Matt Richtel (My recommendation)

2. Diagnosis: Solving the Most Baffling Medical Mysteries by Lisa Sanders (My recommendation)

3. Will by Will Smith, Mark Manson

4. Essays in Love by Alain De Botton

5. It was the Best of Sentences, it was the Worst of Sentences: A Writer's Guide to Crafting Killer Sentences by June Casagrande