Saturday, March 20, 2010

Some books that I liked

There have been various lists of Assorted links about influential books. I find that I have not read most of these but started thinking about books I read and keep remembering some parts or themes from them. Since I have not read on any topic systematically and am an off and on reader ( Some I start and cannot finish like books of R.K. Narayan and Salman Rushdie), the books I remember seem to be odd collection and possibly varies from time to time. Here is a first list.
The first books I remember are Telugu books and translations in to Telugu of Indian fiction. Some of these I remember and still read :
1" Gurajada Apparao: Mutyalasaraalu, Kanyasulkam and many other writings.
2)Srisri: Mahaprasthanam,
3) Tripuraneni Gopichand: Asamarthuni Jeevayaatra.
4)Sarat Chandra Chatterjee: Paderdhaabi (Bharati in Telugu), Seshprasna, Mahesh.
5)Premchand: Nirmala, Godan.
6) Various books of Nehru and Gandhi's "My experiments with Truth".
Other books.
1) Tolstoy: War and Peace, supplemented by "The Hedhehog and the Fox". Short stories by Tolstoy.
2) The Brothers Karamazov
3) The Communist Manifesto
4) SCience books like E.T. Bell's "Men of Mathematics", Eddington's "The Nature of the Physical World" and various books of James Jeans, Faraday's 'Experiments with Electricity and Magnetism"
5) Various books of B. Russell , V.S. Naipaul, paricularly " Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy", "The History of Western Philosophy", "A House for Mr. Biswas", "A Million Mutinees Now". Orwell's essays.
Recent (last ten years) readinga:
1) Pankaj Mishra : "Edmund Wilson in Benares", Review of Jhumpa Lahiri's " The Namesake" and "Temptations of the West".
2) Bernard Cohn's Omnibus
4) Cynthia Talbot's "History of Medieval Andhra:
5)Amitav Ghosh:" In an Antique Land"
6) Sheldon PollocK: "The Language of Gods in the World of Men"
7) Velcheru NarayanaRao, David Shulman, Sanjay Subrahmanyan : "Textures of Time"
8) Heilbronner: "The Worldly Philosophers" ,Leo Huberman's "Man's Worldly Goods", Partha Dasgupta's primer on economics.
9) Alice Albinia "The Empires of The Indus"
And books on cognitive dissonance, haphazard mind , evolution like
1) Dan Gilbert: "Stumbling on Happiness"
2) David Linden: "The Accidental Mind"
3)Matt Ridley: Nature Via Nurture,
4) Boyd and Richerson "Not by genes alone"
And blogs like 3quarksdaily, Chhapati Mystery. Still waiting for a book to the cure the disease of trying to understand the world. David Linden's comes closest.

No comments: