2023 List of Books

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

41. Behind Bars in Byculla by Jigna Vora

This has been made into a TV series now, its the story of how an editor got trapped in a high profile murder case and ended up behind bars for a long time only to get acquitted in the end.

42. Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Issacson *

This was a super long back, but a really fantastic one. I tried reading this a while ago but it was a huge huge book, so switched to Audiobook from Audible and it helped me plough through. Though I had difficulty at times with this because there were references to Paintings which while listening is hard. There was an accompanying PDF which I did refer to, but its still a bit clunky. That aside this was a great effort by Walter Issascon and I'm so glad I spent time with this one.

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 *

A timely read on how digital devices and social media is making us totally unfocused and what can be done.

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! 

Wren & Martin

 Birds are all around us and so are many other small animals but we hardly notice them so busy in our day to day lives. Ok, I don't know about y'all but it was certainly true for me - I lived close to 30 years in various parts of India scarcely noticing any birds and same in US for a long time. In US, one thing I did notice was the scary congregations of huge flocks of blackish brown birds in supermarket carparks. It did seem straight out of Hitchcock's 'Birds' movie. I started living in a proper residential area in suburban Dallas in early 2020, not living in apartments meant being surrounded by lot of trees and greenery. I also started doing my morning walks around the neighborhood and a wooded park area with a lake. This meant I started seeing a lot of birds and as the seasons changed, the birds I heard (happened more than seeing) changed as well. Naturally there was some curiosity and then by chance I happened upon a book in my local public library about birds of Texas. This seemed to be a great chance to go over this with my then 3-4 year old daughter. We continued to be somewhat cooped up at home with very limited outings because of the lingering pandemic. So I used to take her out for walks around my neighborhood and we would try to spot various birds and animals ( which means squirrels, rabbits or someone's pet dogs).

Colorful birds ofcourse were easy to spot, so we would easily spot a somewhat common Northern Cardinal which had a brilliant red color - males ofcourse, with females somewhat drab in comparison which irritated my little girl a lot. Its kinda obvious perhaps but initially I could not explain these things, but reading more about bird life makes it easier to explain some of these adaptations clearly and one can't help but marvel at evolution and nature in general. There was also Blue Jay which was very common and the color makes it easy to notice, we ofcourse noticed crows and an odd Robin or two ( with reddish orange on chest) and mourning doves but hardly saw anything else that easily. I did notice something strange once where a lot smaller birds were making a huge ruckus and a really big bird eventually flew away from a tree near my house. Later figured out this was 'mobbing'. Another major birding moment was when sitting in the backyard of house, I have a patio area which has roof and a wall on one side but is open otherwise and sometimes I sit there and work or read books. One evening, I noticed very small flicker/movement and realized it was a hummingbird visting flowers in the garden.The sight of a hummingbird is very hard to put into words but it is one of those moments when you just marvel at nature for producing something so delicate but so full of life and capable of so many outstanding feats. Just seeing something so tiny and fragile fluttering wins so rapidly, hovering and moving forward and backward just takes your breath away. As I read more about it and learnt about a few different species that visits my area and that this tiny speck of a bird migrates super long distances - it was mind blowing.

Sometime last year I chanced upon this book - Around the world in 80 birds - despite the title or perhaps because of it, I picked it up from library. The author like Phileas Fogg, takes us on a tour around the globe through the pages with each page ( or two at times with illustrations) covering some really interesting birds from North America, various countries in Central, South America, Africa, Europe, Asia and Oceania. That literally was the take off point for me to dive into more details on life of birds in general and to understand them more. 

I considered joining an organized bird walk with my daughter but schedules didn't work out and I figured I'm not that crazy enough to go traipsing around various fields or forests long rides away. So armchair bird reading would do for now and I dived into some well known books like David Sibley's "What's it like to be a bird", "The Genius of Birds", "Bird Sense : What its like to be a bird" among several others to give me varied perspectives of various things related to their anatomy, how they live, migration and to even an exploration of whats probably going on inside their head. The only surprise for me as I look back at this is the total lack of knowledge I had so far and the realization that I'm still scratching at surface as I take all of this in and find out there is lot more stuff out there which is super fascinating. 

I also downloaded a super handy and neat app called Merlin from Cornell Lab of Ornithology, you can upload a pic or sound recording and app identifies with satisfactory accuracy the bird. This helped a lot with bird sounds, it helped me understand and map the sound I hear when I'm outside with the bird and infact several times helped me spot the bird better among the tree canopy now that I knew what I was looking for.  It was possible to spot Chickadees, Starlings, Barn Swallow, Finches, cowbirds, tufted titmouse  and the fantastic Scissor tailed fly-catcher during my morning walks in neighborhood and a tree filled park / lake trail nearby. Lake also was a place to see several types of ducks ( Mallard was the most common), white heron and Great blue Heron. 

So why refer to a high school English grammar book in the post title? Kinda hiding in plain sight it is of course also names of a couple of birds seen North America - purple Martin and Wren. I did spot/identify two different types of Wrens ( only thanks to the app which told me what the bird was from sound and then I was able to cross-check it later with description and the big fat bird book I have of birds of America) but the Purple Martin was elusive though I did read about in some of books this year. All the time spent reading about birds and developing a surface level understanding of them was among the best moments of this year for me.

It takes one day

 Such is life ... its the morning after the 2023 ODI WC final, where the serial champions yet again took the crown on which the utterly dominant home team almost had their hands on. Its the morning after the final and you wake up early morning at 5am as has been the case for last 6 weeks. As you pick up the phone to check the score to get a sense of the action in that day's cricket match you flinch as you realize its all over and once again its all over without the cup of joy. A familiar feeling for kids of 90s who habitually used to wake up early in the morning to watch the men in yellow/green overwhelm us. Multiple decades has passed, you are much older and are in another corner of the world where you wake up super early in the morning to watch action unfolding at home ( India). 

For the last 6 weeks, early mornings were spent this way - half awake from 4-4:30 am onwards checking score on cricbuzz, sometimes following ball by ball action for a bit. Then slowly getting out of bed by 5 am to go and make filter coffee and then spend another hour or so watching the match on TV while parallely catching up with all the online chatter around the match so far. By then a small college WhatsApp group will be active with match related chat. My current job as of now is fully remote with lot of folks I work with on west coast of US which means I can start my day/work a bit later than usual. So when cricket happens in India its much easier to follow it as you slowly start the work day. I'm no longer a big fan of ODI format and feel it has lost its relevance except for bigger tournaments. However even the sceptic in me had to admit that this WC was super fun and I found myself watching the action lot more than I ever expected.  

One thing that came with World Cup viewing this time was the hope, it gradually kept increasing with every match that Team India played somewhat like some of the past campaigns ( 2011, 2019) but unlike in the past there was no defeats to recalibrate the expectations to allow room for caution or to ground you to reality as the hopes soar. Even back in 2003 - with a team had so many large gaping holes we had high hopes of a win when the title round against reigning top dogs materialized. We just hoped our talismanic wunderkid/man plays another of those epic knocks to cover lot of the gaps/holes in the team and pulls us across. It was not to be, we - the Indian fans - learnt that day that you can beat most teams by putting on a good consistent show but when you face a mighty all conquering juggernaut who have all bases covered its very hard to consistently deliver your A game across both innings. Sooner than later something will crumble and they will overwhelm you, a lesson repeated to another unbeaten Indian team in 2015 when they squared off against a mighty titan. All those lessons were painfully absorbed and 2019 was explained away to tough conditions / top order collapse / Dhoni falling short by an inch or so from a miracle. 

So when the tables got turned and all conquering squad emerged which was clad in yellow jersey but in fact were Men in Blue, it was scarcely believable. Of course we all lived through a joyful 2011 campaign but we did lose one match and just about managed to tie another one - the SF win was also not really a cakewalk. From there to seeing a team just about dismissing everyone else from presence, with every single person in the XI firing and firing well, it was just unreal. One can be excused for thinking or rather believing this is it - this one is a done deal. It was not just die hard fans, it was the whole chorus of pundits on the popular Pavilion show, writers on cricinfo, widen and most youtubers/podcasters. Memes were running riot on how its all inevitable and there was lot of scorn as well on how its all almost 'engineered' and the excess of it. 

Then the final arrived at that stadium and pitch where things are always dicey.  The challenger who were written off initially as a hastily put together team with minimal thought and who had horrendous campaign at the start and looked ripe for an upset was finally looking ready. They were looking happy to have somehow made it past so many fires and reaching the finals was almost a miracle. But as they say what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger, so here they were. But we knew from so many past campaigns how this script was to play out, the plucky challenger will throw several punches try to put on their A game but somehow against the all mighty dominant team they will falter at some point. And then the script flipped, they all declared there was almost no weakness for Team India - except the 4 no:11s once you get past 6 batters - but no one really could so far so that was not an issue except when it happened in the finals. The challengers played a near flawless A game and kept India to a clearly under par score. Next when they had to bat, for a while it looked like things were happening as expected until it stopped and then one man stood up and played an innings for ages. Everything we or for that matter the fans of losing finalists of 99, 03, 07 expected actually ended up happening. The good challenger played at their best and then some individual brilliance of all time to top it off and the mighty dominant team got felled for once breaking the usual script and breaking lot of our hearts with it. 

Such is life and sport but there is always hope and good times are just around the corner and we continue to hope for that one day again!

 

 

Watching cricket in USA

 Cricket is not something you would associate with the USA. When I moved here more than a decade ago, had heard from my couple of cousins about the thriving cricket scene among desi 20-30 somethings working in Software companies all over the US. Wherever you had a sufficient number of young ones, there were cricket matches and stuff. Sure there were attempts made to bring in the Indian team to play some matches in Florida, but still watching a match in a stadium was not something I expected I would do in the US. 

And then, here we were in Grand Prairie stadium outside Dallas, Texas watching/cheering for Super Kings. It was a bit surreal to suddenly hear about a league being planned and lots of uncertainties and then the first season gets underway with half of the teams owned by IPL franchisees who bring the same brand name, identity and some of those players. Then comes the news that there is going to be a team based out of your city and that team is owned by your fav team from the IPL. Then to compound your joy, it is announced that 70% of matches in season one of Major League Cricket ( MLC) is going to be played in your city. But then there is this small matter of 100+ degree heat and of course the stadium is far away and the whole thing is a lot of unknown.

Yet there was no hesitation when a friend reached out asking if I would be interested in attending a few matches during the first weekend of the league. We planned to watch a double header  - a day game and night one. July typically is super super hot and this was no different, I felt it was going to be a tough experience sitting in an open stadium. So yeah it was an open stadium as this was a Baseball park converted into a cricket ground, so the stands don't have shade. If you need shade you go up to concourse above where you can stand and watch the action - consume some food and drinks or you can get pricey tickets in the stands above which are covered and have option of sitting inside with AC as well and even rubbing shoulders with or seeing up close the franchisee owners / core supporters.

On the match day there was a stroke of luck as it rained heavily in the morning, unseaonally heavy rains early in the morning. I was thinking about the usual cricket and rain jokes - here I'm going to watch my first cricket match in 11 years in the middle of summer and out of nowhere there is heavy downpour. My friend was not easily discouraged and he felt that things would work and we can probably still go at 3 pm as planned. The rain did stop around mid day and as I was driving to that place I saw that instead of 100F as is usual that time of the day - it was showing 85F which meant good conditions to watch the match if the outfield had dried. There was a huge huge line of cars waiting to get to the parking - so it turned out to be 30-40 wait to get to parking area from near the stadium. The match had already started and we rushed in. There was not much of line or rush to get inside - the usual check for guns ( it is texas) and after a quick scan of our mobile tickets we were in. The Stadium looked pretty nice - it was my first time ever inside a stadium of any kind in USA. My previous experience of stadiums were from Kerala ( football stadiums), Mumbai and Chennai - all much older stadiums and not been through any major renovation when I visited long back. So this looked pretty neat and well set-up in comparison though much smaller ( 7-8k capacity).

The crowd predictably was heavily desi and we had seats right at edge just behind the fence/concrete wall. The boundary rope was like 10 yards in front of that and it was square of the wicket  with a fielder from Super kings not very far from where I was seated. We watched a couple of overs and were settling in when someone came to check our tickets to confirm folks were sitting on right seats. We were told we were in wrong section and had to go to the next one, so we walked a little further to the right. Now these seats were properly near deep square leg fielder, but someone else was already sitting there - two gentlemen wearing South African green jersey of 92 WC - took a while to explain and once they realized they apologized and moved away as they also got confused with numbering just like us. Right behind us were a couple wearing Sri Lankan colors and there were a few odd Pakistani, some Bangladeshis but 90% of the crowd seemed like Indian. Before the match when I read various stories/reports on cricinfo and a few other portals the stories were about white Americans discovering cricket ( there were some whites too) and folks from different places in USA visiting for cricket. I guess these stories make it more readable, but for sure bulk of the folks came from this area and were desis! 

After watching till 20th over, got up to take a look around, I wanted to see if we could get near commentary box to see if we could spot Sunil Gavaskar and other commentators, but no luck. Security was present and was checking anyone who tried to go to the area near commentary box. Walked around for a while to see what else was around and got some flags handed out by Knight Riders team for the next match - I was late for the first match so missed getting Super Kings yellow flags which would have been cool. Restrooms were neat and clean and food & water while certainly priced above usual was still reasonable which made the whole experience good. There was a Lions mascot of Super kings posing for pics with kids and they had face painting and some games for kids going on in the side. The crowd had lot of young men as expected but lot of families were there as well with young kids who were looking to get autographs of the players. Now this was a different experience for me, I have been to matches in India in 2000s and in general we have some big mesh barrier separating the crowd from players and interactions are very hard from what I remember. It was very different here and it was like grounds in England or Australia maybe - the player is like 10 yards in front of you. Soon every over break kids would run over and stand pretty near my seat trying to grab the attention of the fielder at deep square leg to get autographs. After a while the players - initially it was US local team players fielding there - would come and sign. It did make it hard to see the action and got a bit annoying after a while but at the same time it was a fun experience as crowd kept trying to talk / encourage the fielder to make them notice you/smile and then come and sign some flags or paper or pose for selfie. 

Some of the big name players I was hoping to see like Faf, Devon Conway flopped with bat and it did look like the match was going to be one sided until Dwayne Bravo decided to take charge with bat. My friend and I were talking about how Bravo bats arching his body and the next seconds he hit a six the way we were describing from our memories of his batting in t20I and IPL games. Bravo tonking several sixes and keeping TSK in hunt till last few balls made it a good match to watch though the home team lost in the end. The next match was between Mumbai Indians NY ( weird name) and LA Knight riders - so the famous West Indian stars were there - Pollard, Sunil Narine and Andre Russell. We also spotted Lasith Malinga as bowling coach conducting the warm up drills somewhat near where we sat. When Knight Riders started bowling in the next match, Dre Russ was pretty near where I was sitting and crowd really went wild trying to catch his attention. But he said clearly I'm not gonna pose for pics or autographs for now. After a few overs he went to bowl and after that he didn't come this side to field and others who came were quite ok with signing autographs leading to made scramble. Here we were spending a bit of money and half of Sunday to drive all the way to watch some action live and view was totally blocked by autograph seekers. With little kids, I found it somewhat ok as they were somewhat well behaved and after explaining to them that I cannot see they would duck a bit when a ball was being bowled and only at end of the over they would stand to try and engage their target. But after a while bigger names started fielding there and grown men pulling children along started crowding around in front of us it just got a bit too much. Sri Lankan lady right behind me lost her cool with these guys crowding and told them off properly and marched them back to their seats. Order was restored for another 5 mins or so then again repeat. 

Once MI NY team started fielding, they put Tim David over there and he started talking to the crowd and was ok to sign autographs and then after a while Trent Boult after finishing his spell got moved there and it was proper pandemonium as Boulty seemed super nice and keen not to disappoint kids seeking autographs and selfies. It got so bad for us that we had to abandon our seats and move elsewhere. I had quick look around to see if I can spot any other jerseys and spotted a few England ( 2019 I think) t-shirts, some Aussies  and a few WI jerseys as well and a small group of Afghans in their traditional gear with Afghan flag wrapped around them. There were some nice moments as well with an Indian, Pakistani supporter taking a pic together and then someone called out and got a SL and Bdesh guy to join them in the pic. This was also the first time I was seeing DRS in action, something would happen and fielders would celebrate and a review would happen and we all watch the screen and wait for the replay and umpire to make a decision. Without the commentary  - though there was a screen over there showing replays - and viewing this from side of the wicket it was a different experience all together. Best part was sitting among a diverse crowd and seeing players super super close right in front. But at the same time, it was hot and tiring and there was a lot of effort in getting into the stadium and exiting as well plus some annoying fans. So it was a mixed bag but with lot of positives for a totally unexpected chance to watch somewhat good quality cricket right where you live without too much effort. Seeing top WI cricketers lot of SA players and assorted Aussies, Kiwis live in action was for sure worth it. Overall the league seemed to be set-up well for success for this market at least. Looking forward for year 2!

2022 List of Books

Twas a good year for reading began my 2021 book list blog. The same applies for 2022 as well, it took me a while to get reading added as proper habit. While talking to a close friend about reading during the year he noted that I had successfully assimilated reading into daily life as a strong habit. That is so true, I used audio books again a lot this year ( close to 1/3rd of the books) and combined it mostly with long walks outside. Most of the summer I would get up early and go for a long walk with the intention of listening to a book and end up improving my general fitness level as a bonus. This year I started frequenting the library a lot mainly to take my daughter there for her to pick up books and in the bargain started borrowing and reading a lot of physical books from the library as well.  

In terms of what I read in 2022, there were some of my usual interests - countries/people around the world, cricket biographies and productivity/improving myself genres but this year I covered a lot of nature books which were among the ones that gave me the most joy. Lot of reading this year was also driven by chatter on a few book review/recco groups I frequented - which were close to half of the books I read and some picked up from other book lists from previous years.

So without much further ado here is the actual list. I have sorted it into Non-fiction ( with sub categories of my own) and Fiction

Non Fiction

1.Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing by Lauren Hough

I read this somewhat viral essay - 'I was a cable guy and saw the worst of America' and then proceeded to pick up this book which is a sort of memoir but more of collection of essays covering her childhood growing up in a cult, how she got ill-treated when folks in airforce figured she was gay and her subsequent life living paycheck to paycheck and of course the Cable guy one which again is a superb read on how it is like for female blue collar worker. 

2.War Minus The Shooting : A journey through South Asia during the 1996 Cricket World Cup by Mike Marquesee

This was one of those classics which almost went out of print and then got back into circulation recently and was covered passionately by a lot cricket podcasts and followers. Was a good trip down the memory lane as he tours the subcontinent and not only covers the game but also its a commentary on these nations. 

3.100 Things We've Lost to the Internet : by Pamela Paul

4.This is How They Tell Me the World Ends : The Cyberweapons Arms Race by Nicole Perloth

Really scary read! Super long read though. The author takes a highly technical field and lays out in somewhat easy to understand language and very frightening. Change your passwords asap and add multi-factor authentication! 

5.Four Lost Cities : A Secret History of Urban Age by Annalee Newitz

6.Arriving Today : From Factory to Front Door -- Why Everything Has Changed About How and What We Buy by Christopher Mims 

Pandemic brought into focus supply chains and how extended they are. The author starts from a factory in Vietnam where the parts that make up a humble cell phone charger are assembled and packaged into a box. He follows this phone charger box through the supply chain from Vietnam factory to port to ships that transport most of the stuff we buy, ports in US, 18-wheeler trucks to Amazon's somewhat automated warehouses/ fulfillment center till the last mile UPS truck which drops a package at customer's doorstep. He follows the entire journey and takes a look at the lives of all these folks who make instant gratification happen.  

7.No Spin : My Autobiography by Shane Warne

One of the all time greats passed away suddenly, so picked this one up to read.

8.Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh : India's Lonely Young Women and the Search for Intimacy and Independence by Shrayana Bhattacharya

This was one of those books someone had recommended last year to get a sense of real India. It was very illuminating read. Its not SRK the actor but the concept/myth of the ideal partner which gets examined as the author walks us through her own story and stories of several young women across social strata and how they fared in their relationships/marriage. SRK appears as a totem for most of these women. Very interesting read.

9.Life is Short And So Is This Book by Peter Atkins

10.Mrs Funnybones by Twinkle Khanna

11.Whole Numbers and Half Truths by Rukmini S

Very interesting read, the author uses numbers to probe further some common questions/opinions and helps us understand the complex country that is India. 

12. Half Lion : How P.V.Narasimha Rao Transformed India by Vinay Sitapati

Another book I totally enjoyed as kid who grew up in 90s India and Rao govt is one the earliest ones I can remember as I started listening to TV news daily around this time. My memory of the man was that he was a controversial figure who presided over some tough times and miraculously managed to survive ( corruption allegations aside) with a minority Govt for a full term. Though I sort of knew PVNR was some sort of scholarly person, it was only when I read this book I learnt more about the man who was a polymath with wide range of interests ranging from literature, philosophy to even computer science . The author got access to Mr.Rao's personal papers and uses that plus interviews among other sources for this biography and paints a very vivid picture of a man of two parts. PVNR perfected the art of running with hare and hunting with hound while running his minority Govt and managed to usher in some remarkable reforms in the economy. Book is a good read to revisit and see how he managed to pull this off and in a sense its a lesson in management too. The book like all biographies with inputs from well wishers of a remarkable person is slanted in his favor. The author to his credit does look at several taints in PVNR's legacy as well. I really loved this book. 

13. The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

14. How China Sees India and The World by Shyam Saran

15. Line and Strength by Glenn McGrath 

I'm not sure how I ended up reading this, but it was good read as a sporting tale. One of the greatest fast bowler ever was dismissed as an untalented bowler in his youth. He grew up in rural Australia and so easily could have just given it up and stuck with farm work. Instead it was sheer willpower to prove himself coupled with incredible hard work day and night that managed to turn him into a power house.

16. The Untold Story of the Talking Book by Mathew Rubery

This probably will be a post on its own, the story of audiobook at a personal level. I keep telling a lot of people how awesome audiobooks are and have had several conversations on this medium. This book goes back to the roots and is a detailed account of how this medium evolved over last 100 odd years.

17. The Cryptopians : Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze by Laura Shin

Crypto stories are usually wild, this is an account of how Ethereum one of the top cryptocurrencies / framework/platform which underpins a lot of innovation in this space came to be. While Vitalik is the main name, there is a foundation / group which sort of manages it. This is the behind the scenes account of the chaotic rise of this platform and various factions trying to get close to the power center.

18. Like, Comment, Subscribe : Inside Youtube's Chaotic Rise to World Domination by Mark Bergen

Our favorite time sink - Youtube. This is a very neat book chronicling its origin as a video sharing platform to getting bought by Google and the subsequent evolution into what it is now. Unlike some other business stories that we read, this feels different because a lot of us had seen/used this product for a long time now and sort of saw how it slowly but firmly entered our daily lives. This is no dry read, this is an interesting behind the scenes look which pretty much rips into the company with at times harsh lens. The book also looks at the key part of Youtube's rise - Creators and how often they get the short end of the stick and how despite its commitment for being a force of good - the drive for profits/poor decisons led Youtube/Google into becoming a place for violent, racist and harmful content as well and how they struggled to deal with it. Felt the author was a bit harsh sometimes towards a company which seemed to make mistakes by inaction or misplaced ideals rather than any malice.

19. Nothing Like I Imagined by Mindy Kaling

Set of light hearted personal essays by Mindy Kaling which was a fun read.

20. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami

Friend of mine had mentioned this earlier and I wanted to pick up a running related read this year. This covers the celebrated authors thoughts on running in general and what it means to him and his notes in general for a period of over an year and half as he runs a few marathons and competes in triathlon. 

Travel / Countries / Cultures

21. The  Nine Lives of Pakistan : Dispatches from a Precarious State by Declan Walsh

A look into a nation full of contradictions ( which to me is not a bad thing per se) by a foreign correspondent who spent several years in the nation. He paints a portrait of the nation through life/stories of 9 personalities from Pakistan. Was an interesting read but again I'm sure most Pakistanis will think its superficial. It was like reading multiple well written long form articles and the author ultimately got expelled from the country for his reporting which rubbed the military rulers the wrong way. 

22. Sovietistan : Travels in Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Krygyzstan and Uzbekistan by Erika Fatland

I really like this genre of a traveler who explores far flung corners of the world and documents life in these countries. This was written almost 10 years back and this is an English translation of the original - but its great to learn about Stans about which I almost knew nothing until I read this book. One minor quibble is that she looks at country from western lens for most part and doesn't get to understand the culture / some strange practices in some of these countries from a a local perspective. 

23. Radio Shangri La : What I Learned in the Happiest Kingdom on Earth by Lisa Napoli

Started with great hope and was a bit let down mainly because of my expectation didnt match. Nevertheless a ring side account of Bhutan as it started opening up to outside world and impact it had on its people. The author is a TV/radio show host from US who gets a chance of visit Bhutan and train folks at a new semi private radio station set-up to cater to younger crowd. It turns out to be a healing journey for her in some part but its also about globalization and western influence. These are like flames before moths and their lure is so hard to resist. Perspectives matter, for the author who was from US the visits were an escape from commercialism but for the Bhutanese she meets the peaceful, tranquil life is also filled with lot of hardships and the commercial life in western world is what many aspire for.

24. Cool Japan Guide : Fun in the Land of Manga, Lucky Cats and Ramen by Abby Denson

Super light book I picked up from library mainly because the cover looked catchy and the fact that this was a travel and cultural guide book written in comics format. Seemed so apt for Japan. Was a breezy read but realized as I read that this must be pretty outdated by now as it was written in 2013. 

Nature / Animals / Plants

25. The Inner Life of Animals : Love, Grief, and Compassion : Surprising Observations of a Hidden World by Peter Wohlleben

I have been reading his books last couple of years which were focused on trees & forests, this one was on animals. Equally good.

26. The Songs of Trees : Stories from Nature's Great Connectors by David George Haskell

Haskell tells us stories about trees across the world covering various types of trees and his connection with some of them which co-exist with human population.

27. Cities and Canopies : Trees in Indian Cities by Harini Nagendra

Decided to try an Indian equivalent of the book just above this one to learn more about trees in Indian cities.

28. The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman

We use words like bird brain without realizing how wrong it is. The author travels around the world and brings some truly remarkable accounts of intelligence of various bird species. She primarily covers what scientists have uncovered from research but also includes several anecdotal tales too which make it interesting. Its a truly comprehensive book on bird intelligence. This has inspired me to add several other related books into my reading list for next few years. 

29. Whatever You Do, Don't Run : True Tales of a Botswana Safari Guide by Peter Allison

This was a truly delightful account of some interesting incidents from his life as safari guide in South Africa and Botswana. Love for animals and nature combined with loads of humor made this a wonderful read. 

30. The Elephant Whisperer by Lawrence Anthony 

A South African game park owner decides to accept into his private game reserve a group of 'troubled' elephants who were deemed nuisance and close to being shot. He takes a lot of effort in trying to ensure this magnificent heard gets comfortable there and in the process forms an incredible bond with them. Though this is a non-fiction book, it has a very gripping and exciting plot with ill-treated and angry elephants, poachers and other problems surfacing and despite all this there are some incredible stories/incidents of intuition and trust displayed by these wonderful animals with the author. Found it really moving. 

31. Wild Lives - Leading Conservationists on the Animals and Planet They Love  by Lori Robinson

Partly as result of the 2 books above, I tried reading more on conservationists and the great work they do. This book celebrates 20 such heroes across the globe and highlights the great work they do even when faced with incredible odds and great personal danger.

32. Animals Strike Curious Poses by Elena Passerello

 This one has 16 very well written essays about different animals named by humans and in public view over various periods spanning fossils, circus animals, animals from paintings, royal palaces and some wild animals capturing public imagination and getting a name from their fearsome reputation. Her writing is something else, brings out so much color and transports you to that era where the story is set. A very different book from others in this list yet similar in the sense that while this is about animals its also equally about humans and their attitude towards nature and these animals which fascinate and terrify them until they can control and subjugate them. Was not a breezy read by any means and it takes time to get used to, plus some stories full of cruelty makes you really sad. I ended up reading this over a few months.

33. H is for Hawk by Helen McDonald

I had seen this in my cousin's list but could not remember the details and amazon/good reads kept recommending this one given what I had been reading in that time. So I basically got into this without clearly understanding it, which made it a bit hard to process this. It took a while to come to grips with this one. She covers a few things - her experiences grooming a hawk primarily. This interest in falconry was developed from reading a lot of books during her growing up years - mainly "The Goshawk". So when a tragic event happens in her life as a way to cope with grief which constants envelops her, she decides to take get a hawk and raise it. Which as we learn is very hard and the book is at once about her coming to terms with a personal loss and this hard challenge which she contrasts with how the famous author of Goshawk fared while raising his hawk ( terribly). In a sense this is a memoir plus nature book and a look at falconry in past. It was still hard book for me to process and took me while but I was glad to have stuck to it and finished it. 

34.  Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? by Frans De Waal

This matched rest of the reading this year on this theme of animal / bird intelligence and was a look at several such stories/examples.

35. Ranger Confidential : Living, Working and Dying in the National Parks by Andrea Lankford

We often complain that pay for some very important jobs ( like school teaching in US) are shockingly low and I learnt about one more such job with this book. Its a look at National Parks system which to me coming as an outsider was one of the most wonderful things I saw in US. How well set-up these parks are and how they are maintained and the role they play. This was a gut punch of sorts to realize how poor the working conditions and pay is for some of these passionate folks who help in running of these parks.  Its just incredibly unfair.

Business/Productivity 

36. Inspired : How to Create Tech Products Customers Love by Marty Cagan

Among the best books in this genre and a must read for any PM.  

37. How I built This : The Unexpected Paths to Success from the World's Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs by Guy Raz

I love the Podcast - 'How I built this' and used to often listen to this and this is like a best of version where he distills a lot of lessons and stories from the podcast as a book

38. The Making of a Manager by Julie Zhuo

As someone who manages a small team, I felt it was a good idea to turn to a good resource to pick up a few pointers and this was truly good.

39. Start With Why  by Simon Sinek

Basic point is that we get caught up with the 'What' and 'How' and don't spend enough time examining the 'Why' before we get started. 

40. Outcomes Over Outputs  : Why Customer Behavior is the Key Metric for Business Success by Josh Seiden

Was something an Agile coach recommended and decided to give it a try. Its short book and makes the point quickly and efficiently which was good. Essentially asking us to build things with focus on what we want to achieve rather than building features. Its a mindset change which gets explained well.

Fiction :

41.The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams

This was a book about books with basic plot being a book reading list that gets passed between strangers who borrow books from a library and ending up changing their life for the better. The books in the list were also a nice collection and I hope to read some of those classics again. Was a nice warm read. This is an ode to reading and to the power of books to heal and bring joy. 

42. The Quiche of Death by M.C.Beaton

43.The Vicious Vet by M.C.Beaton

These two books were part of Agatha Raisin murder mystery series. This is a successful middle aged PR woman who decides to retire pretty early and settle down peacefully in British Countryside ( Cotswolds) only to find herself solving murder mysteries in rural England. I read a few and then tried the TV series so I can watch it with my wife. The TV series were a big let down after reading the books, so maybe I might pick this series up again later. 

44. The Authenticity Project by Clare Pooley

Recco from a book reading group. This was somewhat similar to #41 - The Reading List and another of those warm reads but was tad predictable after a point.

45. Moustache by S.Hareesh ( malayalam translated into English)

This was a super interesting book which is hard to classify or slot. It was not an easy read and you need some context to understand it, plus I feel the English translation might have dropped a few things along the way which probably made it harder. This is a story of myths which as it gets passed along start ballooning and an event when it gets related can take many variations based on story tellers. Lot of hard passages as well but again found it pretty easy to read and the whole concept fascinating. Only after I read this I heard from my friend Ramki about this being a super controversial one in Kerala and can understand why.

46. The Lost Man by Jane Harper

Recco from Indukka and this was easily the best fiction book I read this year. This is set in Australian outback as two brothers catch up to look at the unnatural death of a 3rd brother and they slowly revisit their troubled past. While is was a bit dark and packed enough suspense yet the characters were very well fleshed out that you feel a sense of connection to all of them. The whole Australian outback with vast properties in harsh desert climate spread out of over a huge huge distance with chances of interacting with other humans being very low is something the author superbly sets it up and its a key part of the story. 

47. Mickey7 by Edward Ashton

I wanted to read more science fiction but ended up with just 1 this time. This is soon to be a movie/tv series I hear so don't want to spoil anything. 

48. Gold Diggers by Sanjena Sathian

Super interesting book this one. Its for most part a tale of a desi kid growing up in suburban US ( where I live) in 90s with pushy barely white collar job parents eking out a living pushing the kids to excel in academics. So it spans adolescence, weigh of expectations and social pressure from multiple sides other kids who want to break the boundaries and strict Indian parents who don't want kids to do any nonsense. The classic stuck between rock and hard place coming of age story of children of first gen immigrants. Then out of nowhere this spins into a different trajectory with introduction of dark magic/fantasy bit but still at the same time it remains a very human story of dreams, hopes, disappointments and redemption. 

49. The Bodies in the Library by Marty Wingate ( First Edition Library series)

50. Murder Is a Must by Marty Wingate ( First Edition Library series)

51. The Librarian Always Rings Twice by Marty Wingate ( First Edition Library series)

Murder mysteries set in and around a library which stocks First Edition books of murder mysteries.  The main protagonist who solves the murder mysteries is the curator of this library collection and is an everyday woman character. Was a total meta one thats what made me pick this one up from my local library. Was just okayish but since I ended up picking the Book 3 at first by mistake, I decided to read the first 2 as well. This was a pretty light read.

52. The Tales of India by Svabhu Kohli

This was another surprising find at my local library. This a collection of folk tales from India collected around late 19th century / early 20th Century and published 110 years back in British India. This edition pulls 16 stories/folk tales from 3 different books - stories from Tamil Nadu, Bengal and Punjab. There were a few stories I probably heard when I was a child but those versions very much milder than the ones in this book. That's probably what 80-90 years did to these tales. I really enjoyed this book. There were a few stories I heard as kid but in much more sanitized form than the ones here but majority were unknown stories but several were delightful reads. I look forward to trying get more such folk tales next year.

53. Fried Green Tomatoes At The Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg

Set in small town Alabama this novel starts in 1980s in a post-civil rights America which still is only slowly coming to terms with intermingling of races. The story begins in an old age home with a chance encounter between two women of different eras. Its the classic set-up of older women inspiring the younger one and most of the story is tales from rural Alabama settlement from 1930s to 1950s. You get the proper southern charm as you meet a whole host of characters that populate the small town during that period. Touches upon co-existence, non-traditional families and empowered women in a heart warming tale. Was pretty sad when the story was ending as it was such a delightful read. Another interesting thing was this being a big book and because I started when I was pretty busy with work - I took a while to finish and library loan ended. So when I renewed it, I took an audio book to continue the story and it was read in a southern accent which was very enjoyable too.  

54. The Animals In That Country by Laura Jean McKay

Lot of my non-fiction reading at one point this year was around Birds & Animals and what they do, how smart they are and then out of nowhere I came across the blurb about this book which is about a flu which hits Australia where this story is set which makes it possible to humans to understand Animals. The premise was exciting and the book takes this complex subject and deals with it ingeniously. Its not for everyone though with its mad max dystopia type treatment.

So the tally at the end of the year was 54. I did want to hit at least 52 books - 1 for every week and I'm happy that I managed to clear that easily. The split between Non-fiction - 40 and Fiction -14 is a bit uneven but that is expected.  I can't exactly pin point what/how but somehow started picking up a lot of nature related reads and that dominated my reading. By default I pick up non-fiction works and it needs some effort to pick up fiction and read for me at this point. I'm hoping I can cover more fiction reads next year.  Reading means several things to me, the primary one being a source of joy and relaxation, nothing like losing yourself in a book but at the same time I hope to learn more about the world around me, several topics of interest and improve myself to become a better human being. 

While it does look like I read quite a bit, what this list does not cover is the list of books I dropped somewhere along the lane because I got distracted with my phone and library loan period ended or I just gave up. There were periods where this publicly declared challenge of 1 book a week, spurred me to read and sometimes that lead to reading at good pace but there were equally periods where I struggled to read and got bogged down as well. As we march through 2023, I hope I can channelize the good periods and keep this up and continue to do better in 2023 in terms of reading. Last year I started using Good Reads to capture the books I read and post the progress level purely from a self motivation perspective and found it worked for me. Hope to use GoodReads more effectively this year and maybe start writing some notes/reviews so I don't need to try and remember stuff when I publish this blog towards end of the year.

Gradual Unmasking

 Mask is something superheroes in movies/comics wore or in real world people who rob banks wore and as positive example something medical professionals used. However the year 2020 totally changed all that. Masking became an integral part of life as we knew from then on. However in US right from start mask and its usage became super controversial unfortunately. So living in a Red state in USA, masks while extremely common in 2020 started becoming less common from mid 2021 when the first vaccines arrived and by the time we rang in 2022 the number of masked folks started dropping, the trend was pretty visible. Having said that as the cases started ticking up once the effects of vaccines kind of wore off, there were still a good number of people who masked up when inside a store or public building. I have been masking up throughout and even with 3 vaccines in my system I still opted to wear a mask while shopping. 

So early in August as I was trying to wrap 'back to school' shopping for my daughter, I had to go to a kids clothing store to return some clothes which were ordered online but were not of right size and get the replacement size from the store. So went to this somewhat busy area, parked there and walked past a number of shops and people in that area and walked into the store. Someone greeted me, but left me to mind my own business. I might have spent 5-10  mins browsing around the store, now shopping clothes for my daughter is something I really love. I took some time and found the right size tops for her. Bought a few more clothes for her and then went and got the size exchange done and walked out of the store towards the parking lot. Only when I was about to enter the car did I see someone who had parked nearby getting down and the person was wearing a mask. That's when it occurred to me that I had done an entire 15 minute shopping in a fairly busy store in a fairly popular shopping are without encountering a single person wearing mask! the times they are a-changin indeed, covid or no covid - people are just moving on. 

2021 List of Books

 

Twas a good year for reading. Audible and audio books played a big part in helping me stick with the reading habit and a clear goal of trying to do 52 books - 1 new book a week helped too. All of it ensured more focus on reading and using books as escape vehicle as opposed to endless social media scroll.

I had a few books earmarked from lists from previous years from friends & family but a wide majority of the books just popped up from some conversations on twitter or from various online book clubs / chat groups.

Among things I tried while reading this year was to focus on certain regions and topics. Some of it was deliberate by seeking out certain books and others just happened. There was a book about Genghis Khan which I wanted to read for a while but was putting it off because it was super long but once I completed I picked up something related to Mughals and with Taliban in news ended up reading a book about them then by sheer chance ended up reading something set in Karakoram range and followed it with a book set in Nepal and then a book written by someone who was hitchhiking in a truck across India but he sorted of ended in North east India towards the end and then I picked a book about Burma. Something similar happened when I picked up a Morocco based book but this time I think amazon algorithm pitched me a book set in Tunisia next and ultimately ended up with a Saudi book.

All in all covered books from wide range of topics this year and of course like with most lists its deeply personal interest based. I covered human behavior, psychology, geo politics, personal finance, society, sports and stories about people in various parts of the world in past and present overcoming various challenges. Lot of non-fiction paired with lighter fiction reads.

I guess thats enough talk, so without much further ado here is the list.

Non-Fiction 

 1. Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel

I usually enjoy articles by Morgan Housel, this was among the first books of the year and its something I feel I should re-read again, something elemental. Uses pretty simple language to cover an extremely complex topic - what is money and our relationship with it and makes you really think about money and wealth . I ended up recommending this to many folks and urge all to try this. 

2. Digital Minimalism - Choosing a Focused Life In a Noisy World by Carl NewPort

3. Three Cups of Tea - Totally random pick from somewhere, this is the story of Greg Mortenson a mountain climber turned humanitarian who raised funds and built schools for poor kids in remote Pakistan. The title refers to the number of cups of tea for you to be a family friend to the people in the mountainous area of Pakistan covered in the book. As I subsequently learnt there was some controversy over some of the claims made, but I could still accept that as a back story for a movement certain embellishments are necessary to make you sound cool and visionary. Keeping that in mind it is still a tale of positive changes brought in by efforts led by one man to ensure education ( schools) reach inaccessible poorer regions and also that it benefits  mainly girls as well.  Also as a story it was a good read to see that armed with a will to do good what you can really achieve and far reaching effects of philanthropy and humanitarian spirit.

4. The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen-  A classic. Happened to read this when a snowstorm was raging in my city so was very interesting and really made me feel it.

5. Stuff You Should Know - An Incomplete Compendium of Mostly Interesting Things by Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant - this was a podcast turned into a book and was a light read full of fun trivia which you forget very quickly unfortunately.

6. Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World by Fareed Zakaria

7. Truck De India - A Hitchhiker's Guide to Hindustan by Rajat Ubhaykar

A guy hitches rides with truck drivers and goes up and down the country and tells us many interesting stories of people in various parts of the country in company of several interesting truck drivers. This is an India we don't see or hear about that often in mainstream commentary.

8. Genghis Khan and the Making of Modern World by Jack Weatherford

Fascinating book giving a good view on how an orphaned boy from Mongolia steppes gradually rose up and managed to unite constantly warring nomadic clans to build an empire. Spends a lot of time on his early years and the nomadic steppe culture and also covers how his giant Mongol armies managed to be so successful.

9. The Anarchy - East India Company, Corporate violence and the Pillage of an Empire by William Darymple 

Enjoyed this book, its more of history of East India company and how a small English private corporation with no real expertise happened to successfully make it big and ended up controlling majority of a rich and ancient civilization is quite a story. As always history that we read in school or what we know is mostly a high level summary, this book sort of gets more into the weeds and its fascinating to see how things turned out this way.  Darymple builds a riveting narrative and covers several small incidents in detail while keeping us involved with the macro perspective of how a multinational trading company got so successful and why things turned out so bad for Indian people. Lot of potential 'What-If' moments in there.

10. How the Internet Happened : From Netscape to iPhone by Brian McCullough

Highly accessible backstory of how something that started with ARPANET and university research funded basic Mosaic browser birthed the key technological innovations that drive the modern society.

11. A Little History of the United States by James West Davidson

As a non-native who is settled in the country, I wanted to pick up an accessible, easy read to cover 400 odd years of history and this was good from that perspective.

12. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee : An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown

After a short version of US history, I picked up this more deep and gruesome one about how Native Americans fared once settlers from Europe started landing on North American shores. Knew it was really bad, but didnt realize how bad until you read about systematic persecution and how it ends up happening. It was really depressing read as you realize how bad things are going to get and how it keeps getting even worse than you would think every single time. 

13. Ponting : At the Close of Play by Ricky Ponting

I try to read a few books about my fav sports every year and picked up a book about one of cricketing stars I dislike. Ricky Ponting is a legend and surely ranks among the best no:3 batsmen in modern game but somehow the perception I had - mostly driven by 2008 tour of Aus by Indian test team - was a very negative one. In general when you read someone's autobiography and if its genuinely written from their heart, you sort of see their point of view and feel positively about them. So I picked this up to test that and while I can surely see where he is coming from and understand his approach I'm still unchanged in perception of him. Nevertheless as a book this was a good read to understand Australian sporting culture and Ricky Ponting as an individual and how Australian team of that golden era (which was pretty much the entire career of Ponting) worked.

14. The Puma Years - A Memoir of Love and Transformation in the Bolivian Jungle by Laura Coleman

Its a memoir of sorts by the author about how she found purpose and got transformed spending time as a volunteer in a wildlife refuge/rescue center at the outskirts of a Bolivian Jungle as an aimless twenty something. Hitchhiking across the South America, Laura who is from England chances upon a flyer asking for volunteers for an animal rescue charity and she decides to help out. The refuge cares for ill-treated and badly abused wild animals who were mostly bred in captivity and have been rescued but are badly scarred mentally and within a few days of joining she is assigned a puma to look after. The memoir takes you literally to animal sanctuary and is a joy to read but at the same time depressing as you understand what human activities are doing to jungle and wild animals.

15. The Art of War by Sun Tzu

16. Surely you are joking Mr.Feynman - Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard P Feynman

Picked up this one which I have been meaning to read for a really long time. Richard Feynman is a Nobel winning Physicist but this is more of an amazing set of quirky stories or incidents from his childhood and youth. One of the major themes from the set of anecdotes is his curious mind and willingness to try anything and apply himself at the problem - whether it be new language, skill like lock picking or musical instrument and become fairly proficient at it.

17. Napolean's Hemorrhoids  and Other Small Events that Changed History by Phil Mason

Lot of major events in history if you look closely were close calls, was very interesting. In history books we read large sweeping statements many of them could have been near miss.

18. The Wisdom of Wolves : Lessons from the Sawtooth Pack by Jim & Jamie Dutcher

Research notes from a couple who spent several years living with and studying wolves in a controlled setting in North America. Picked this up as a follow up read for a few other books I had read on similar topic.

19. The Prisoners of Geography : Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need To About Global Politics by Tim Marshall - Among my best reads of this year, this super lucid book shines light on one of the most complex topics - geo politics and one of the most under discussed topics - the role of geography itself. How all leaders are constrained and influenced by Geography - something that they just cannot control and hence have to / are forced to play their cards in a certain way. Fascinating topic and book.

20. The Scout Mindset : Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't by Julia Galef

21. The Hidden History of Burma : Race, Capitalism and the Crisis of Democracy in the 21st Century by Thant Myint U

Super informative book written by a man who had corner seat during the changes that was happening in Myanmar to sort of untangle all that was happening in a country which is mystery. Country has been in news for wrong reasons last several years after a brief period where decades of military rule seemed to have given way to a popularly elected Govt. This is an insider view of the country covering events from formation of the country to how things became the way they are.

22. The Story of English in 100 words by David Crystal

Chanced upon this and triggered a lot of further reading on origin on words, this was a fun and interesting read.

23. The Etymologicon by Mark Forsyth

This was a book someone recommended in a reading group ( social media is a delight sometimes)  when we were discussing etymology which does fascinate several people. This was a superb book if word origins really interest you like me. I now have a truckload of trivia which unfortunately I will forget most of it but just uncovering and reading about language / words was so delightful that I don't think I will ever mind not being able to bore people with language trivia.

24.  Made in America - an Informal History of the English Language in the United States by Bill Bryson

Another one I picked thanks to Amazon algorithm and it being available free on Audible Plus.

25. The Premonition by Michael Lewis - A scary book looking at how federal organizations work and move in face of a beast like covid 19 pandemic and how its ultimately up to just a few individuals going above and beyond to keep things running.

26. Why We Get Sick by Benjamin Bikman

More than just about how we fall sick, this was more about insulin resistance.

27. Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl - Again one of those age old classics, deeply moving and profound.

28. Masala Lab by Krish Ashok - got this as a gift for my wife who enjoys cooking both as an art and as science by trying to understand the flavor combos and what makes some dishes and combination work. This book fits that sort of thinking neatly and is a breezy read and at the same time super informative.

29. How I Invest My Money by Joshua Brown and Dave Portnoy - this is a set of essays edited/complied by a couple of finance/investment gurus of modern age. They basically ask some 15-20 financial experts - these are big names who feature in TV and print and run hedge funds or financial firms or are VCs on how they actually invest their own money. Very interesting because of the question and asking them to give 3-4 page answer on what money means to them and how they invest for retirement. Reveals a lot of lessons and as expected there is no one easy answer or way and investment philosophy is deeply person, all depends on your life experience growing up and what you are going through in life. However some common themes are that live well beyond your means, maintain a decent safe cash reserve / emergency fund, most of these financial gurus actually invest in simple ETF/mutual funds and don't track their portfolio at all that often. They mostly believe in investing time with their life and family and prioritize safer investments for majority of money and not letting quest for money detract you from life.

30. Korma, Kheer, Kismet - five seasons in Old Delhi by Pamela Tims

A book I had read 5 years back or so, I got this for my wife this year and then as we discussed this I realized I didn't remember most of this stuff so ended up re-reading and it was a pleasure of course.

31. The Lost Continent - Bill Bryson

Another of those long rambling books from that I totally love reading. This was a bit dated as it was written about his travels across US in 80s where we tries to visit places he visited several decades ago as kid. Totally cracked me up. 

32. Taliban by Ahmed Rashid

Story of Afghanistan and how the country came under Soviet occupation and its subsequent liberation by mujahedeen and how the subsequent squabbles gave birth to Taliban. The story here ends in late 90s. 

33.  Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki

34. Dictatorland by Paul Kenyon

Story of Africa, the natural resource rich countries everyone of which got exploited by colonial powers and had a brief period of hope where home grown leaders got them freedom and the very same folks ended up ruling brutally and siphoning off all the wealth. This was a heavy one, at times was very depressing/demoralizing to read to see the same  sad story play out again and again in every mineral rich nation. 

35. The Change Agent by Damon West

This was a physical book shipped to us by my company's CTO and she wanted all of us to read it hoping it  helps us the way it did for her. As a bonus the author was invited for a virtual session including Q&A with us. So ended up reading this book about a promising young white man who was a college football athlete from a good highly respected middle class family in Texas and all that was needed to succeed and make it big. After a career derailing football injury he picks up drug habit and while he is able to do well including getting good breaks in early career with jobs in Washington and good connections to even build a political career this addiction habit slowly starts catching up.  Long story short he attempts some changes to get things in control but he continues downward spiral into addiction and debt which drives him to world of crime leading him to commit numerous burglaries and finally he gets caught. As a high profile case because of the targets he chose he ends up getting an extremely harsh sentence which should have broken most men, the book then spends time about how he learnt even in the most adverse circumstances to turn things around and find himself and redeem himself and claw back. Life is hard and lot of us start slipping and hopefully none of us end up such bad places like him but there are times when you lose some control and this was a book about hope and inner strength and willing yourself to get back to track with self discipline and being able to learn lessons from mistakes and find the inner courage to face your demons/weakness and overcome them. I have ended up writing way beyond the 2-3 lines I wanted to but have stayed away from the best bits of his philosophy. Have to say, I really enjoyed reading this, again a book I would have never picked up but found it really good.

36. Stargazing - Players in my life - Ravi Shastri  - Well this was supposed to a book covering Shastri's observations of 20-30 cricketers he has played with/against and coached/interacted with during last 40 years. Was a total meh for me as there was nothing radically new.

37. Blood and Oil - Mohammed Bin Salman's Ruthless Quest for Global Power by Bradley Hope & Justin Scheck

Necessary and super interesting read to understand middle east and modern geo politics

38.  The Delusions of Crowds by William J Bernstein

Manias and popular delusions are all arounds us and you got to wonder how people fall for it again and again. But they do and actually we all fall for it, maybe not that badly or with catastrophic results but we all get sucked into it. Very good examination of this through various financial bubbles,  manias and cultish beliefs especially around influential messiahs and those birthed within abrahamic relions driven around end times narratives.

Fiction

39. Dresden Files - Storm Front by Jim Butcher

40. Dresden Files - Full Moon by Jim Butcher

Part of my efforts to try sci-fi/fantasy / mystery genre a bit more and branch out to stuff I usually don't try. Suggested by my sis who is into these genres a way more than me.

41. The Call of the Wild by Jack London

42. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain -  

The two books above are re-reads, having lived in US for close to a decade I get the story and several aspects much better than what I did when I read this as a kid in India.

43. Empire by Yashodaran Devi 

Fictional story set in Chola era 

44. Tokyo Zodiac Murders by Soji Shimada - Among the best mystery novels I have read in the recent past. Its a whodunit and howdunit. 

45. Convenience store woman by Sayaka Murata

This was a really different and unusual book, I just randomly picked with no idea and ended up really liking. Story of a Japanese girl/woman who is a total social misfit because of genetic reasons, this is packed with lots of dark humor. Makes you question societal expectations, stereotypes and how people get labelled. This was a short book  with a light tone but totally lands its punches makes you really appreciate what those don't fit in go through and how casually cruel society can be to those who don't conform to expected norms.

46.  Midnight Library by Matt Haig

This was among the popular fiction reccos in a neighborhood reading club, so tried it. Though this is fiction, its a little bit philosophical about the value of life

47. The Invisible Life of Addie Larue by V.E.Schwab 

something similar to the one above - a book club recco and again about value of life but this is a story of a woman whose life begins in 1700s and is blessed with immortality but cursed equally as no one can remember her after a while so she can form no bonds longer than a day.

48. Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

Another book club favorite - this was made as film by Netflix a few years back and I did check that out eventually - the movie was a disappointment for me having experienced the book which was warm and sweet World War 2 / Post war period drama

49. The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman - Easily one of the most delightful books I have read in a while. A group of 70+ year olds in a retirement home try solving cold cases from police files to keep themselves occupied and then they stumble upon a murder nearby. 

50. Hope and other dangerous pursuits by Laila Lalami

Short stories set in Morocco with a common theme of individuals trying to escape life in difficult conditions and dreaming of making it big in Europe by getting across the sea illegally. Boat people and immigration have been in news for a long time, this is really well written behind the scenes account of what makes people go for it. 

51. The Ardent Swarm by Yamen Manai -  this was amazon recco engine doing its job based on the previous book I read. This was a story set in Tunisia themed around Arab spring days.

52. My Man Jeeves by PG Wodehouse

Wife & I started watching Jeeves & Wooster series on YouTube and I thought why not revisit this and read this one.

53. The Thief by Fuminori Nakamura

Another of those haunting Japanese books about society and human psyche, this was a short one though

54. The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman - 2nd book in the Thursday murder club series

55. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams - one of my all time favs, just ended up re-reading this one and it remains hilarious

 

So I ended up with 55 books in 2021! By far the most I have managed and despite losing my way a bit towards the end - I seriously slacked off a bit in the last 2 months because we watched a lot of tv in Holiday months - this was amazing. When I tell people I aim to and usually read more than 50 books a year, I'm met with 'thats impossible' response. Its just about channeling the ample amount of leisure time that we all have from smartphone addictive past times to books is all that is needed to hit this mark. I was doing like 10-20 books until 3-4 years back and if I - with serious self control and attention issues - can manage this then I think anyone can if they put their mind to it.

I'm hoping I continue this pace in 2022 as well and I sure hope to improve the imbalance between fiction and non-fiction which continues to be lopsided.