100 Books

Since the time I got started on this blog, I have kept a list of books I have read so I remember what I was reading and when, and reference the ones I have reviewed. Despite my long lapses in posting here, I have kept this books list updated for fear that if I don’t, I will forget having ever read the book. And so it was that when I made my most recent entry, I decided, perhaps out of a mix of vanity and wanting to know how many books on average I read per year, to count the books read so far over the last 10 years. A hundred. I had to count again.

This is the kind of milestone that makes one take a pause and reflect back on all those hours, afternoons, late nights, long flights and entire weekends spent reading where one might have alternately gone for a run, tinkered, planted trees, bungee-jumped, pranced, cavorted, or simply enjoyed the honey-heavy dew of slumber as Shakespeare puts it. Was it worth it? That is a question for another day, but yes, it has given me much pleasure and maybe a little agony.

Since it is also the time of the year for best-of lists, I will use this milestone to extract some more juice for the rest of this post, posed as a series of questions which I am sure you are frantically  waiting for me to answer.

Best book? 

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. I have reviewed it here. The prose is poetic. The imagination is out of this world. It has made me want to learn Italian so I could read it in the original.

Best non-fiction?

A much harder genre since it covers so many areas, and I can’t claim to have read enough books on each. Since I am on a history reading spree, I will call out Rubicon by Tom Holland, for introducing me to Roman history and explaining what the big fuss around Julius Caesar was about.

Most read author?

Italo Calvino – 8 of his books, thanks to Invisible Cities, though imo, none match up to it

I wish I had not read..

Descartes Secret Notebook by Amir D. Aczel. That I managed to finish it suggests it wasn’t terrible, or maybe I was stubborn, or hopeful it would get better. But this was bad; like clickbait-masquerading-as-a-book bad. I would have got more in less time by reading about Descartes on Wikipedia.

Best book about India

The Last Mughal by William Dalrymple. I felt like a kid in a candy store visiting the Red Fort recently, having reading this book. The 1857 revolt is portrayed in all its macabre glory, and Dalrymple manages to narrate it without taking sides.

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That’s it for now, or until the next 100 books. Wish me luck! Or sunshine.