My Favourite Books

I am a (happy) victim of the reading bug which Simon Leys described, as I wrote in one of my blog posts, as “an illness and a joy”. 

Below is a list of some of them that have stood out in my (very subjective) assessment. It is somewhat like a very personal list of best books of all time.

I have used two criteria while identifying this list: (1) I intend to re-read the book at least once more and/or (b) I have been taking notes either in the book itself (whether physical or digital) or collecting some interesting, thought-provoking in a “commonplace book” - akin to the 14th century Italian merchants' zibaldone - I have kept beside me over several decades. 

 (This table  will be updated now and then.)
Genre Author Book Title Comments
Art E.H. Gombrich The Story of Art  
Biography, Intellectual History Christopher Norris Derrida  
       
Biography, Intellectual History Sarah Bakewell At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being & Apricot Cocktails  
       
Consciousness/Mind Marilynne Robinson Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self  
Essays, Lit. Criticism George Steiner No Passion Spent  
       
Essays, Lit. Criticism George Steiner At the New Yorker  
       
Ethnic relations Michael Ignatieff The Warrior's Honor  
Fiction Graham Greene The Power & the Glory  
       
Fiction Graham Greene A Burnt-Out Case  
       
Fiction Paul Scott A Division of the Spoils Scott deserves to be as well-known as Forster.
Fiction Christopher Isherwood A Meeting by the River  
Fiction E.M. Forster A Passage to India  
Fiction Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Cancer Ward  
Fiction Arthur Koestler Darkness at Noon  
Fiction J.M. Coetzee Disgrace  
Fiction Marilynne Robinson Gilead  
Fiction W Somerset Maugham Razor's Edge  
Fiction Margaret Atwood The Blind Assassin  
Fiction Mario Vargas Llosa The Feast of the Goat  
Fiction John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath I will recall the last scene in this book till the day I die.
Fiction Amitav Ghosh The Hungry Tide  
Fiction Haruki Murakami The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle  
Fiction/History Vasily Grossman Life and Fate Grossman is as good as – if not better than – Solzhenitsyn.
Fiction/Non-Fiction Jorge Luis Borges Labyrinths*
* and anything and everything by JLB		 This is my all-time favourite writer
Fiction/Philosophy Hermann Hesse Damian  
Fiction/Science Fiction Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451  
Fiction/Science Fiction Philip K Dick Human Is? (and other stories)  
Fiction/Science Fiction Isaac Asimov The Robots of Dawn  
History Anne Applebaum Gulag: A History  
       
History Geoffrey Blainey A Short History of the World  
History Norman Davies Europe East and West  
History Aldous Huxley The Devils of Loudun  
History Barbara Tuchman The March of Folly One of the best and most perceptive history books I have ever read
History/Memoirs Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn The Gular Archipelago  
History (WW2) Ian Kershaw Fateful Choices  
       
Literary Criticism Alberto Manguel The Library At Night Manguel’s book will turn a bibliophobic into a bibliophile.
Memoir Vasily Grossman An Armenian Sketchbook  
       
Music Jonathan Biss Beethoven's Shadow  
Music/Psychology Anthony Storr Music and the Mind  
Music/Psychology Daniel J Levitin This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession  
Neuroscience Eric R Kandel In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind  
Neuroscience/Philosophy Maxwell Bennett and Peter Hacker Neuroscience and Philosophy:  
Brain, Mind, and Language
 
Non-Fiction Primo Levi The Periodic Table  
Non-Fiction/Autobiography W. Somerset Maugham The Summing Up  
Non-Fiction/India Paul Scott My Appointment With the Muse  
Non-Fiction/Memoirs Primo Levi If This is a Man & The Truce  
Non-Fiction/Memoirs Primo Levi Moments of Reprieve  
Non-Fiction/Memoirs Primo Levi The Drowned and the Saved  
Philosophy Karen Armstrong A Short History of Myth  
Philosophy Albert Einstein Ideas and Opinions  
Philosophy Jan Westerhoff Reality: a Very Short Introduction  
Philosophy S. Radhakrishnan Religion and Society  
Philosophy John Gray Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals  
Philosophy Joseph Campbell The Myths We Live By  
Philosophy Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth  
Philosophy Erwin Schrondinger What Is Life? A book from one of the best minds in history.
Philosophy/ Ethics & Moral Philosophy Hannah Arendt Eichmann in Jerusalem: a Report on the Banality of Evil  
Philosophy/Art Arthur Koestler The Sleepwalkers  
Philosophy/Cognitive Science Douglas Hofstadter & Daniel C Dennett (eds) Mind's I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul Challenging, absorbing, intelligent
Philosophy/Comparative Philosophy Aldous Huxley The Perennial Philosophy If you have time for only one book on comparative philosophy, this is the one.
Philosophy/Religion J-F. Revel and Matthieu Ricard The Monk and the Philosopher  
Philosophy/Science Douglas Hofstadter Godel, Escher, Bach  
Philosophy/Science Jim Holt Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story  
Political Science /Essays Simon Leys The Hall of Uselessness  
Psychology / General Raymond Tallis Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity See my blogpost
Psychology/Buddhism The Dalai Lama and Francisco J Varela Sleeping, Dreaming, and Dying  
Religion / Biblical Studies / Exegesis & Hermeneutics Karen Armstrong The Bible  
Science Stephen Hawking A Brief History of Time  
Science Carl Sagan Broca's Brain  
Science James Gleick Chaos  
Science Timothy Ferris (ed) World Treasury of Physics, Astronomy and Mathematics  
Science / Cognitive Science Iain McGilchrist The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World  
Science / Cognitive Science/Philosophy Stephen S. Hall Wisdom: From Philosophy to Neuroscience  
Science/ Philosophy & Social Aspects Henry Margenau and Abraham Varghese Cosmos, Bios, Theos  
Science/Philosophy Freeman Dyson A Many-Colored Glass: Reflections on the Place of Life in the Universe  
Science/Philosophy Paul Davies Mind of God The book that made me fall in love with popular science books.
Science/Philosophy/Buddhism Matthieu Ricard and Trinh Xuan Thuan The Quantum and the Lotus: A Journey to the Frontiers Where Science and Buddhism Meet  
Science/Philosophy/Psychology Ken Wilber Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World's Greatest Physicists  
Science/Tibetan Buddhism B. Alan Wallace Choosing Reality  
Travel Colin Thubron Behind the Wall  
Travel/Autobiography Wilfred Thesiger Arabian Sands  
Travel/India/Religion William Dalrymple Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India A number of authors have written about India over the years, but not many are both empathetic and balanced. Dalrymple is one of the exceptions.
Travel/Philosophy/Mysticism Peter Matthiessen Snow Leopard  

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