Ten Amazing
Books
It is very difficult for anyone
– well-read or otherwise – to choose 10 or 20 books as the best they have read
and make it as public too. Such actions are always fraught with the danger of
one missing out prominent or popular book or even nominating less deserving
ones. But given the highly individualistic nature of action involved, the level
of subjectivity can never be wiped out. It is all the more difficult for people
like me, being in the kind of profession I am in, it is a Himalayan task.
People in my trade inevitably read thousands of words day in and day out –
covering a wide range of subjects. So, making a list of best 10 books is almost
impossible given the sheer range of subjects we are exposed to given each one
of us tend to read books in the subjects we love more than others.
Through three and a half
decades that I have been reading books on a constant basis, one thing most
irritating is people coming up, every now and then, with posts like “The 10
books that shaped my life” or some such similar mindless stuff. Can books alone
shape one’s life? Books are part of any given culture and one of the many tools
that shape a person’s life and career. Again, when the word ‘Culture’ is
uttered people tend to think of many gaseous and vacuous stuff. The habits,
mores, customs, practices, value systems, institutions, societal tools, laws
and many more comprise culture. Given all these, such claims are nothing but a
pretentious, attention grabbing techniques.
So, here I am choosing 10 books
among thousands that attracted me most – though they might not have had even 1%
impact on my life and thinking pattern and ability. I am choosing these just
for the sheer ability to arouse curiosity and interest.
1) Dialogues
of Plato –translated and edited by Benjamin Jowett
If
there is a sheer joy and happiness in written words [mention irony!], they are
in these dialogues. It is amazing to even conceive that people who lived
thousands of years ago discussed the fundamental problems of human living thread
bare and the dialogues have withstood the test of time and changing value
systems. Bertrand Russell corrupted my mind and I may tend to believe with
Russell in the superiority of Plato’s imagination and the dialogues could be a
book of fiction, yet this remains one of the foremost books that will arouse
curiosity and logical thinking in young minds.
2) Gay
Science by Nietzsche - translated and edited by Walter Kauffman
This book has become popular by
the atheists and agnostics from all over the world for about a century now for
the famous “God is Dead.” But these claims stem more from defective
understanding of the book and inability to comprehend the thread. I know people
will throw stones at me, but I stick my neck out and cling on to what I am
telling. Aphorisms, scathing assessment of luminaries and throwing light on
humanness, this book has all that and much more. Whether this was the precursor
to “Thus Spake Zarathustra” or its sequel, the book remains my favorite.
3)
Commentaries
on Living series by Jiddu Krishnamurti
If there is someone who is most
misunderstood and most underrated thinker, then it has to be JK. In this series
and throughout his lifetime, he comprehended much in advance the lives human
beings would be leading in the digital and mechanical era, rapidly declining
value systems and deterioration of reasoning and pleaded with the listeners in
one talk after another. Yet none of us seem to have listened to him – at all.
The lives we are leading is an ample testimony to that.
4)
Surely
You’re Joking Mr Feynman
This is one book from the title
to last page that captivates the imagination of the readers. As such it is a
simple book that records the adventures of Feynman through his life, his
remarkable insights in the working of physics and the laws of nature etc. But
the success of this book lies in the fact that every single reader wanted to
open the safes, drink tea with lemon and cream, investigate every disaster of
the machines and all such adventures of Feynman. Every travel junkie harried
around to find more about Tannu Tuva and yearned to visit this remote land
after reading Sure You’re Joking, Tuva or Bust and the Last Journey. Feynman broke the myth
that scientists have to be mysterious and serious and this book highlights a
fundamental truth that any proper understanding of Nature and expressions of
such an understanding have to be simple so that any layman can understand them.
5)
Godel,
Escher, Bach – An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter
If there is one book after
reading which a youngster would emerge more knowledgeable than ever before, it
is this one. Taking common themes from the works of Godel, Escher and Bach,
Hofstadter tears into the foundations of intelligence, meaning, symmetry and
almost whole of life – how cognition, intelligence and communication are
possible. As the book progresses, every page is a treat with breathtaking
paintings of Escher, koans, general puzzles and emerging new meanings and
patterns of life. After the book, every reader is bound to view every dimension
of life from a new angle. One word – Exhilarating.
6) The Self and its Brain – by Popper and Eccles
Simply
put, this is a book that talks about interaction between body and mind, how
biological and chemical processes impact thoughts, behavior etc. It would have
ended up as one of the countless boring philosophical debates but for the
individual brilliance of Karl Popper and John Eccles. Dividing the book into
three parts, Popper deals first with the world of objects – the phenomena,
Eccles, the acclaimed neurophysiologist, with the neurological understanding of
thoughts, emotions etc and the final part is the dialogue between the
philosopher and the neurophysiologist. This is a very fundamental book but a
very important one for understanding dualism that asks very significant
questions such as how life emerged from matter among others. But the sub-title of
the book “an Argument for Interactionism” gives away what is the fundamental
problem with the western thought. Unlike Hindu philosophies which treat mind,
thoughts etc as physical, whole lot of European philosophies have treated mind,
thoughts and emotions as something apart from physical world. This problem is
beyond Popper and Eccles, yet this is a very significant conversation from
about 40 years ago.
7)
The man
who mistook his wife for a hat – Oliver Sachs
In this book of 24 remarkable
essays featuring the descriptions of case histories of some of his patients,
Sachs takes us through a journey of enchanting and yet frightening world of
people with abnormal faculty functioning and yet very sad in real life. In the
centuries that went by these people would have been dismissed as possessed by
evil and in some cultures would have been beaten to death.
8)
Bhaarathiyaar
Kavithaigal
This is one of the most
captivating and energizing poetry collections that one can ever lay one’s hands
upon. To me personally it is one of the eternal fountains of creativity
compressed into few lines of poetry. Nothing more. Go read and get inspired!
9)
The
Secret Doctrine by Madame Blavatsky
There is a running joke that if
there is one book that no human ever completed including its author, it has to
be Secret Doctrine by Blavatsky. It
is a mammoth book with tall claims, with equally stunning range of subjects
covered, from philosophy to religion to occultism to science and evolution of
races, and extraordinary details. Even discounting the subjects covered in the
book, I doubt whether any human being other than Blavatsky knew so many
languages, had such in-depth knowledge of the lost civilizations and remarkable
foray into future and distant planets in the solar system and beyond. From
Atlantis and Lemuria to life in Venus this book covers a vast range of
interesting postulations with intricate details and elaborate footnotes. Major
sections are really boring but proem and those sections dealing with remote
cultures and civilizations are really interesting. But I doubt the book indeed
achieves the claim it makes – wedding religion and modern science.
10)
The
History of Dharma Shastra by P.V. Kane
Kane wrote this magnum opus of
his over three decades! This book in five volumes is a rare collection and
interpretation of evolution of social codes and laws through two thousand years
in India. From the worship of stones on the road to highest philosophies, from
the role of law texts in the lives of ordinary people to rules governing the
rulers, from the controversies concerning the existence of multiple texts and
authors to evolution and creation of modern Indian law, from greatest poetries
of India to religious schools and monasteries – there is nothing about India
that this book does not touch upon. For me the greatest strength of this book
is neutral analysis of all the topics it covers – caste system, the role of so
called scriptures in the lives of people, beef eating, astrology, astronomy, so
on and so forth. This one book has been the launch pad of thousands of books on
all the topics it covers. As Olivelle observed, it is the single most telling
contribution by any individual in India from the medieval times onwards.
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As I said in the beginning it
is inevitable that many good books would get unmentioned. May be there are 100
more such books. However, time and health permitting, I may write few lines in
near future about
1. The Emperor’s New Mind: Concerning
Computers, Minds and
the Laws of Physics by Roger Penrose
2.
The Society of Mind by Marvin Minsky
3.
Morphic Resonance:
The nature of formative causation by Rupert Sheldrake
4.
Myth of Invariance:
The origin of Gods, Mathematics and Music
by Ernest McClain
5.
Collected
Works of Baba Saheb Ambedkar
6.
The biological and
historical significance of Vedic mythology
by A.K. Bhattacharyya
7.
One Hundred Years
of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
8. Ulladu Naarpadhu by Ramana Maharshi
9. An Enquiry concerning Human
Understanding by David Hume
10.
Adi Shankara's
commentary of Bhagavad Gita
11.
The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
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