On Books, Music, and Other Things

This should have been technically published in Jan earlier this year but life was busy.  I was on a Sherlock Holmes binge - because once you reread one you feel you have to reread the rest. - The Valley of Fear (Sherlock Holmes, #7) - The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock Holmes, #9) - His Last Bow (Sherlock Holmes, #8) - The Return of Sherlock Holmes - The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock Holmes, #4) - The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock Holmes, #3) - The Sign of Four (Sherlock Holmes, #2) - A Study in Scarlet (Sherlock Holmes, #1)   Business/Marketing/Startups - The Automatic Customer: Creating a Subscription Business in Any Industry - Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You - Getting Real: The Smarter, Faster, Easier Way to Build a Web Application - The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1) - After all this while, I read it. I'm not ashamed to admit it was for the first time. It has also triggered a rewatch of the movies ...

The Left Hand of Darkness - After years of owning this and one failed past attempt, I finished this classic. I should have done so earlier. Rework - Excellent exposition from the founders of 37 Signals on how to be lean and succeed in a boostrapped startup. Epilogue of Mahabharata - A collection of academic essays on how the Mahabharata came to us in its current form which challenges many of the ideas that we have taken for granted. The Stranger - My first taste of Camus. I've a few more lined up this year. Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup -  2024 saw me reading quite a few books on starting up a software company because I launched my own . The SaaS Playbook: Build a Multimillion-Dollar Startup Without Venture Capital - similar to the previous one. Stradivari's Genius One Cello, Five Violins, and Three Centuries of Enduring Perfection - Engaging story of 6 Stradivari instruments across the centuries.  The Almanack of Naval Ravikant...

These are the books I read so far this year. Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier Learn Like a Pro - I finally finished this. The Priceless Gift of a Rich Cultural Education - An extremely inspiring book on how one man gave himself a wide-ranging education by reading good books. The book suggestions are out of date but that is irrelevant. Learn Like a Polymath: How to Teach Yourself Anything, Develop Multidisciplinary Expertise, and Become Irreplaceable - Avoid. Zen in the Art of Archery - Avoid. Why ? Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner - Reread this after ages. Not as inspiring towards the end as it seemed earlier. Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair Siddhartha   The Odyssey - Did not finish, dropped off at 70% Steppenwolf - One of my best loved books of this year. A Man Called Ove - My best loved book of this year so far.  The Return of Vaman: A Science-Fiction Novel - I had to reread this for a paper I was writing fo...

These are the books I read in the second half of last year Arabia and the Arabs: From the Bronze Age to the Coming of Islam : An informative summary of Pre-Islamic Arabia. The dearth of available sources shows but it manages to throw good light on a few areas. It's a dry read unless you are interested in a specific aspect - e.g. architecture, or religion, or social life, of the period.   The Yamas & Niyamas: Exploring Yoga's Ethical Practice : A great exposition on how to apply Yoga's philosophical principles to our daily lives. It's targeted at Western readers, which I felt was unnecessary, but that does not take away much from it. Early Indians: The Story of Our Ancestors and Where We Came From :  A very readable popular science book dealing with how new genetic research is uncovering the true nature of human migration across millennia, and in the process, how this research is settling the Aryan migration question. The House of Jagat Seth : A history o...

These are the books I have read this year (so far) Iran - Empire of the Mind - I was looking for a good, readable history of Iran, and this was not it. Islam - A Short History - Again, I was looking for a good history of Islam, and Karen Armstrong's book was definitely not it. Mastery - The Keys to Success and Long Term Fulfillment - A good treatise on what it takes to master something.  The Arabs - A History - This is a very readable narrative of Arab political history  from the Ottoman conquest of the 16th century to the first couple of decades of the 21st century by Eugene Rogan Mindset - The New Psychology of Success - Carol Dweck's book on how adopting a growth mindset over a fixed one is the key. The Quest for the Historical Muhammad - A collection of articles on the early history and historiography of Islam, focused on the Revisionist school. Meta Learning: How To Learn Deep Learning And Thrive In The Digital World - This book was a misnom...