Books I Read This Year

Last two years I have been on a reading spree. I managed to read on an average one book every week and that included any thing that I could lay my hands on, Literature, Science, Arts, Religion, Politics, Current Affairs, Economics, Cinema. This year however was quite different. I spent more time catching up with all those European movies that I had missed watching in film societies and festivals. And I spent most of the rest of the time reading their reviews on the internet. For some reason that I can not fathom now, I also spent a lot of time this year just staring in the blankness through my window in the room, doing nothing, not even thinking anything. This is slowly becoming a habit now. I have started to prefer sitting idle than sitting with a book folded over my face, as I used to do earlier. Hopefully this will change soon.

This exercise should have been better last year when I read more books with more variety but in any case here is the list of non-fiction books I read this year. Will write about the fiction list later.

Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov: I was trying not to make a top ten list. It still is not; but couldn't resist naming my book of the year. And it is absolutely no contest whatsoever. The book of the year is definitely Speak, Memory, the autobiography of Nabokov. I have rarely felt this sad and this exhilarated at the same time after reading a book (last time it was when I had read Swann's Way). Reading the account of Nabokov's first love, which he lost like everything else of his childhood and adolescence, in a chapter left me paralysed with sadness. His account of his attempts to string together words to form a poem in Russian and then his struggle as an emigre writer in Germany and France contains some of the best prose descriptions I have ever read. I wrote about the book in my humble capacity here. Can't recommend the book highly enough.

The Extended Phenotype by Richard Dawkins:A very technical book, very unlike your regular Steven Pinker or even Dawkins's own classic, The Selfish Gene, but eye-opening nevertheless. Like The Selfish Gene, this book also makes you see the world and yourself in a new light. Dawkins's defence of his earlier book against his confused critics and the afterword by Daniel Dennett are alone worth the price of the book.

The Logic of Scientific Discovery by Karl Popper: The most high-brow book of the year which I read, or actually not read. This book was so high-brow that I could finish only the first two chapters of it and left the book totally exhausted. I have often been appalled by the general ignorance of how science works even among educated and enlightened people and I thought reading this book would give me some good insights with which I can argue on behalf of science in a more intellectual and rigorous sort of way. But I guess, this particular book was enough for that purpose, which I read last year.

The Roaring Nineties by Joseph Stiglitz: A very informative account of how those capitalist crooks looted innocent people's money in that free-for-all age, the nineties. Much better than his previous and more widely celebrated work, Globalization and its Discontents.

Rosebud : The Story of Orson Welles by David Thomson: A rather irritatingly written book which didn't enlighten me about Welles's work in any special way (which is what I demand from an artist's biography). If you like smart-assy journalistic writing you may like this book. I didn't find any value in reading it whatsoever.

A Lover's Discourse by Roland Barthes: Not sure if I understood what Barthes's aims were in writing this book, but as the title says it's a good account of the "language" of love, how trivial words and concepts acquire new meanings and become complex, imbued as they become with the subjective experience of being in love. In fact, I don't have the book right now, otherwise I could have written down a few excerpts from the book. They are funny and quite enlightening (enlightening as in to those who have been through all the crap of "romantic love"!).

Love by Stendhal: Now this was one book I really liked. Stendhal knew how to balance the cool, analytical and "scientific" side of his personality with the swooningly romantic side. The result is this book. Very amusing and very enlightening again. I wrote about the book here.

Why We Love? by Helen Fisher: Now in hindsight it appears, I spent too much time trying to understand love this year! Bad decision! This book wasn't that good. Fisher is an anthropologist and this book is a scientific and physiological account of the symptoms of romantic love. Yeah, this book treats love as a disease and quite rightly so! I wrote a post after reading this book here.

Will write about the fiction books later.