Like I have been saying for a few years now, twas a good year for reading. Around the start of 2019 I kind of resolved to spend more time & money consciously on reading - book lists & setting up targets and building up the habit of reading all played a role and happy to note that this is the 5th year where I clock close to or more than the goal of 50 books a year. This year I set myself a target of 56 books for the year and tracked it properly with Goodreads app. I consume books through digital ( kindle) version primarily but last few years I have been reading a lot of physical books too ( from local public library) and I do a lot of audiobooks as well - with proper effort through the year of logging my reading into Goodreads app this year it was much easier to track and prepare this list.
When I started the year, one thing I wanted to work on was reading more fiction than I usually do and other thing I wanted to read more of was about the natural world around us - plants & animals and stories of conversationists who are trying their best to save them. Along the way I did a deep dive on Birds and their lives about which I had almost no idea so far. 10 books later I'm still barely scratching at the surface,
I have resisted the temptation to write about every book I read - though its tempting to add some sort of notes - mainly to avoid making this already long post totally unreadable. I have marked audiobooks with '*' in list below as some folks have asked me about which ones are audio versions.
So without much further ado, here is the actual list - this is more or less in the order I read them through the year though I have split them into categories to make it easier to follow
Fiction
1. The Bullet That Missed ( Thursday Murder Club #3) by Richard Osman
This is the 3rd book with same characters. As it progresses, while the chemistry between the group still is good but its slowly getting to a stage where it moves from really good read to pretty ok read.
2. A Murder of Crows ( Nell Ward, #1) by Sarah Yarwood-Lovett
Picked this up as it was available in Kindle Unlimited. Serviceable murder mystery set in England
3. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott *
One of those classics - with female protagonists ( March sisters) - so I never really got around to it. This year I wanted to put an effort and try it - used audible version.
4. A Cast of Falcons ( Nell Ward, #2) by Sarah Yarwood-Lovett
5. Folktales from India by A.K.Ramanujan
6. Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q Sutanto *
Was in mood to try something outside usual - this was somewhat hilarious and at the same time life lesson type one. This was an audiobook and worked really well with Voiceover of primary character - an old nosy Chinese mom the highlight.
7. The Easy Life in Kamusari ( Forest, #1) by Shion Miura translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter
8. Kamusari Tales Told at Night ( Forest, #2) by Shion Miura translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter *
These were two books which Amazon recommended to me based on some other recent reads and it fit the mood perfectly. Young college grad in busy Tokyo struggling to find a job gets placed in a rural forestry management job in a remote village without technology & even cellphone signals. Its about how he reluctantly starts life in rural village with rich history, traditions and a set of folks who have been living there for generations and how it slowly wins him over.
9. Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
Rewatched the Miyazaki adaption again recently and thought of checking out the source material
10. A Rising Man ( Sam Wyndham, #1) by Abir Mukherjee
11. A Necessary Evil ( Sam Wyndham, #2) by Abir Mukherjee
Murder Mystery/Detective series set in 1920s Kolkata with Police inspector Capt. Wyndham assisted by a really smart and sharp Watson in a local who Brits call Surrender-not Bannerjee
12. Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Gramus *
13. This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar, Max Gladstone
Beautiful beautiful book,
Non-Fiction
Nature related
14. Around the World in 80 Birds by Mike Unwin - 1-2 pages for each bird with a selection across all continents. Really wonderful introduction to birds across the world with some fantastic illustrations too.
15. The Next Great Migration : The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move by Sonia Shah
16. A Most Remarkable Creature : The Hidden Life and Epics Journey of the World's Smartest Birds of Prey by Jonathan Meiburg *
17. The Glitter in the Green : In Search of Hummingbirds by Jon Dunn
Lot of my interests in birds was driven by hummingbirds which occasionally visit my garden late in summer so picked this up. Author starts his journey from northernmost point where Hummingbirds visit ( Alaska) and winds his way down to South America covering numerous species of hummingbirds and the challenges facing them.
18. What It's Like to be a Bird : From Flying to Nesting, Eating to Singing - What Birds Are Doing, and Why by David Allen Sibley
19. Beaks, Bones and Bird Songs : How the Struggle for Survival has Shaped Birds and their Behavior by Roger J Lederer
20. On Animals by Susan Orlean - wonderful set of essays published in New Yorker
21. Around the World in 80 Plants by Jonathan Drori
22. How to Know the Birds : The Art and Adventure of Birding by Ted Floyd
23. One Man's Wilderness : An Alaskan Odyssey *
24. Beyond Words : What Animals Think and Feel by Carl Safina *
25. Summer World : A Season of Bounty by Bernd Heinrich
26. In the Company of Crows and Ravens by John M Marzluff *
27. Around the World in 80 Trees by Jonathan Drori
28. The Cry of Kalahari by Mark and Delia Owens *
29. Secrets of Savanna by Mark and Delia Owens *
30. The Eye of The Elephant by Mark and Delia Owens *
Three books covering a period of around 10-15 years - wonderfully cronicled by Mark & Delia Owens who started out in Southern Africa as totally broke college grads looking to do further research for their Phd. and they started in pristine wilderness of Kalahari in Botswana studying Hyenas and then Lions. Books vividly detail their struggle, progress and give you a nice ring side seat into Africa of 1980s and the animals themselves from detailed field notes Owens' had during that period. These books were like being transported right there in Africa with them. They highlighted conservation issues and brought to notice of the world mass deaths of wild animals and subsequently got expelled from Botswana and the next two books are set in Zambia where they focused more on studying Elephants and played an active role in conservation of Elephants tackling head on poaching gangs in face of immense personal danger.
31. Bird Sense : What It's Like to be a Bird by Tim Birkhead *
32. A World on the Wing : The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds by Scott Weidensaul
33. How to Babysit a Leopard by Ted and Betsy Irwin - smallish book filled with lot of interesting anecdotes from their wildlife viewing across the world and some really good sketches.
34. Under A White Sky - The Nature of the Future by Elizabeth Kolbert
35. Life on Earth by David Attenborough *
36. Leopard Diaries by Sanjay Gubbi
37. Ten Birds That Changed The World by Stephen Moss
38. Wilding by Isabella Tree *
39. A Year with Nature - An Almanac by Marty Crump
This book perhaps is a fitting entry to close out all the list of Nature related books. This is a book to savor over a period of time. It has 365 entries for each day of the year with every day getting 1-2 pages and filled with lots of information & facts focused on plants, animals, natural history and conservation. I had a library copy so did not have luxury of reading it over the year but did read it gradually over 2 months.
Biographies
40. A Very Punchable Face by Colin Jost * - Really funny book, listened to the audio version read by Colin Jost and it did have so many genuine LOL moments as you can expect from someone who was frequently hosting SNL
Technology
43.Chip War by Chris Miller - Really good read on a very important geo-political topic of this decade - the control of Chip making.
44.The Metaverse by Mathew Ball
45. The Exponential Age : How Accelerating Technology is Transforming Business,Politics and Society by Akeem Azhar
46. Stolen Focus by Johann Hari *
Sports
47. The Miracle Makers : Indian Cricket's Greatest Epic by Bharat Sundaresan
Ind-Aus 2021/22 test series during pandemic covered by Australia based reporter who had good access to both camps. Was great to relive one of the best series in recent times for India & its cricket fans.
48. Crickonomics : The Anatomy of Modern Cricket by Tim Wigmore and Stefan Szymanski
49. Coaching Beyond : My Days with Indian Cricket Team by R Sridhar with R Kaushik - picked this up for some insider stories of one of the most successful periods for Indian team under coach Ravi Shastri from one of his assistant coaches.
Self improvement / books I read to get better at my day job
50. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*uck by Mark Mason
51. Radical Focus by Christina Wodtke - Really great read on OKRs
52. Laws of UX by Jon Yablonski
53. Swipe to Unlock : The Primer on Technology and Business Strategy by Parth Detroja
54. Introduction to Design Thinking for UX by Uijun Park
General topics
55. Savin Main Street : Small Businesses in the Time of Covid-19 by Gary Rivlin
Story of a small town in USA with a set of businesses and the author chronicles how they were faring leading unto the pandemic, how they dealt with crippling restrictions of pandemic and how they eventually fared in the next one year.
56. A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived : The Stories in Our Genes by Adam Rutherford *
Genetically we are all pretty much one and the same is what science says as we fight other races, countries who we think are different.
57. Factfulness : Ten Reasons We are Wrong About the World - and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling. - very interesting book. In this era of twitter & other social media where you get bombarded with certain facts and lot of anecdotes this is a much needed exercise in looking at the bigger picture and viewing the world with a larger timescale. Much needed mental filter to view the huge amounts of information we process on a daily basis where bad news and events get amplified a lot more.
58. The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
59. Shop Class as Soulcraft : An Inquiry into the Value of Work by Mathew B Crawford
60. Where the Water Goes : Life and Death Along the Colorado River by David Owen
Water is always mired in conflicts, quite a read despite what I initially thought was not super interesting subject - this is a global constant - River water usage conflicts.
61. Work : A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots by James Suzman
62. A Trucker's Tale by Ed Miller *
Just like the book below, this is an invisible aspect of modern life where our stores are stocked with stuff brought in by someone ( in a truck ultimately). This was a somewhat funny set of stories on the road of a trucker in his 5 decades of trucking experience in US.
63. Ninety Percent of Everything by Rose George
Its an inside look into a totally hidden world of Shipping which puts 90% of stuff we touch on daily basis in our live. Author spends some time in a Mersk ship traveling and looks at lives of people who make this happen. The book is filled with a lot of facts and information which are pretty mind blowing but core of it is actual human story of people in the Merchant shipping industry.
So it was 63 this time which did exceed my target for the year - 56. There was a time when I was reading consistently and I did feel like I could hit 70 books but towards the end of the year it kind of tailed off. I did pick up a few really lengthy tomes which kind of slowed down the reading pace and restarting Netflix in late November slowed reading down even further during holiday stretch.
Overall between fiction and non-fiction the split was 13 vs 50 which is sort ratio I have been doing for a few years now. I had audible subscription for a while this year and did 19 audiobooks to 44 physical/digital books. With regular visits to local library this year as well I did read more physical books than digital ones.
I hope to continue the same in 2024 and cover more fiction and especially science fiction. Also hope to continue reading more on nature in general and conservation also. Another target for me is to start adding small reviews in Goodreads app after every book so I don't struggle to come up with this post at the end of the year. That's about it, happy reading everyone!
