Thursday, December 31, 2015

2015 - Year in Books

The year started well with 'Start with why' by Simon Sinek (watch his TED talk) which is a fine book on leadership and communication. But I like the fact that I could read some writers and works that I always wanted to read. From Manto, Khushwant Singh. John Kennedy Toole, Wilbur Smith and the wonderful short works of the masters in the Penguin classics collection (Chekov, Gogol, Wilde, Kenko, Shen Fu, Maupassant...) it has been an enriching experience reading them.

1. Start with Why - Simon Sinek
2. Leaders Eat Last - Simon Sinek
3,Invincible thinking - Ryoho Okawa
4.Guts and Glory - Makarand Waigankar
5.Devdas - Sharathchandra Chattopadhyay
6.One Minute Manager - Ken Blanchard
7.48 laws of Power - Robert Greene
8.Choukathi Bahercha Cinema - Ganesh Matkari
9.It's a Matter of Attitude -Justin Herald
10.Lolita - Vladimir Nabakov
11.Train to Pakistan - Khuswant Singh
12.Sputnik Sweetheart - Haruki Murakami
13.How Google Works - Eric Schmidt and Jan Rosenberg
14.Stillness Speaks - Eckart Tolle
15.Chanakya in You - Radhakrishnan Pillai
16.10 Second Miracle - Gay Hendricks
17.Sole Sisters Run
18.Connecting the Dots - Rashmi Bansal
19. Chronicle of a Death Foretold - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
20. Tao of Leadership - John Heider
21.A Confederacy of Dunces - Kennedy O'Toole
22. Leadership at Infosys -
23. The Leader Who Had no Title - Robin Sharma
24.Those in Peril - Wilbur Smith
25.How to Win any Argument - Robert Mayer
26.When God Bowls a Googly - Aswhath Aiyappa
27.Aarushi - Avirook Sen
28.Tinderbox and Other Stories - Hans Christian Anderson
29.The Heat and Dust Project - Devapriya and Saurav Jha
30.A Simple Heart -Gustave Flaubert
31.A Pair of Silk Stockings -
32.A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Tree - Kenko
33.Gooseberries - Anton Chekov
34.The Nose - Nikolai Gogol
35.Il Duro - DH Lawrence
36. The Art of thinking clearly - Rolf Dobbelli
37.Lord Arthur Savile's Crime - Oscar Wilde
38.Pitch it - Dev Prasad
39.Traffic - John Ruskin
40.Dolphins, Whales and the Gudgeon - Aesop
41.Kasyan from the Beautiful Lands - Ivan Turgerev
42.Femme Fatale - Guy de Maupassant
43.Steel Flea - Nikolay Leskov
44.Mottled Dawn - Saadat Hasan Manto
45.Great Fire of London - Samuel Pepys
46.Old Man of the Moon - Shen Fu
47.Miss Brill - Katherine Mansfield
48.A Slip Under the Microscope - H.G. Wells
49.The Robber Bridegroom - Brothers Grimm
50.How to be a Literary Sensation - Krishna Sastry Devulapalli
51.The Tao of Coaching - Max Landsberg
52. Cracking the Code - Ayushman Khurana
53. And Then one Day - Naseeruddin Shah

The books that made an impact are - Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Train to Pakisatn, Manto's stories, Tao of Leadership, A Confederacy of Dunces, Devdas, Steel Flea, Old Man and the Moon, Aarushi, Start with Why, One Minute Manager, How Google Works.

I loved Krishna Sastry's 'How to be a Literary Sensation' which is a delightful piece of funny non-fiction writing and something new. Ashwath Aiyappa's book 'When God Bowled a Googly' is a cry of anguish from young people of today's world as they try to cope with too much. It was moving to hear of this youngster's expereinces - and of his subsequent, untimely death.

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