Books (and reviews)
Here are some non-academic books that I have read and found interesting.
This list is incomplete and unsorted.
Reviews coming up slowly....
01) Sapiens (Yuval Noah Harari).
02) Homo Deus (Yuval Noah Harari).
03) Early Indians (Tony Joseph): Early Indians by Tony Joseph is a fascinating must-read book if someone is curious to find out where we Indians have come from. It is based on evidence rather than mythology or emotion. Since there is no one way to trace out our history, he explains how DNA sequencing, archaeology, linguistics, and history together help us trace old human migrations and understand how people moved from place to place over thousands of years. The book describes how the Indian population was formed through multiple layers of mixing -- the earliest humans who came out of Africa, the Harappan civilisation, later migrations, and so on. What I liked is that he makes a complex and sensitive subject quite readable, almost like following clues in a long human story. The book also challenges the idea of pure ancestry, proposing that we are all mixed, our history is shared, and India has always been shaped by the convergence of many peoples, languages, and cultures. Having said that, some objections to the book come from the sensitive Aryan migration debate and from the unease around its central message that Indian ancestry is not pure or singular, but deeply mixed and shared.
04) Brilliant Blunders (Mario Livio): Brilliant Blunders by Mario Livio is an interesting book about how even the greatest scientists made serious mistakes, and how those mistakes often helped science move forward. Livio discusses Darwin, Einstein, Kelvin, Pauling, and Hoyle, and shows that science is not a linear path of perfect ideas, but a complicated human process full of wrong turns, ego, intuition, stubbornness, and correction. What I found interesting was that sometimes a wrong idea, if pursued honestly, can open up a deeper question. The book is comforting because it reminds us that even brilliant minds struggled, doubted, and got many things wrong. In science, blunders are part of how progress happens. So one should not be afraid to try our new ideas and take risks.
05) Man's Search For Meaning (Viktor Frankl): Man’s Search for Meaning is a soul-stirring book by Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor. He writes about the horrible conditions in the concentration camps, where people were stripped of almost everything: food, comfort, family, dignity, even basic safety. He reiterates his message that one thing cannot be taken away from a human being: the freedom to choose one’s attitude and find meaning even in suffering. If suffering can't be avoided, then we must somehow find meaning in our suffering. Some moments in the book are small but unforgettable, like when he narrates the importance of a tiny piece of thread or string to tie shoes in the freezing winter, something so ordinary, but in that situation, it could decide whether someone survived another day. The book is painful to read, but it is also about resilience, hope, and the strength of the human spirit.
06) Why I am an Atheist and Other Essays (Bhagat Singh).
07) The Origin of Species (Charles Darwin).
08) 12 Years A Slave (Solomon Northup).
09) Ambedkar's India (B.R.Ambedkar).
10) Beyond Good and Evil (Friedrich Nietzsche).
11) Psychopathology of Everyday Life (Sigmund Freud).
12) Ashtavakra Gita.
13) Authentic Happiness (Martin Seligman).
14) Courage to be Disliked (Fumitake Koga and Ichiro Kishimi).
15) My stroke of Insight (Jill Bolte Taylor).
16) Forty Rules of Love (Elif Shafak).
17) Taking off the Mask (Hannah Louise Belcher).
18) Flow (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi): The basic idea of Flow is that when our skill level matches the challenge in front of us, we enter a state of deep focus and enjoyment. This can happen in anything: sports, music, math, art, science, or even regular work. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who developed this idea, says that life is basically the sum of our experiences, so the quality of our experience decides the quality of our life. I liked the simple message of the book: keep building your skills slowly, keep increasing the challenge, and try to find joy in being fully involved in what you do.
to be updated...