December 11, 2009

Read and To-Be Read

2009 was the year when i read the maximum number of books in a year - probably, more than when i was in college. Books coupled with a hectic schedule at work, loads of movies and some occasional travels/treks kept me occupied for bulk of the time. The worst hit was my feed reader, which has tonnes to be read.

#1. "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" by Haruki Murakami
2. "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time" by Mark Haddon
#3. "Hard-boiled Wonderloand and the End of the World" by Haruki Murakami
#4. "Blind Willow , Sleeping Woman" by Haruki Murakami
#5. "Dance Dance Dance" by Haruki Murakami
*6. "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad
#7. "The Calculus Wars - Newton,Leibniz & the Greatest Mathematical clash of All Time" by Jason Bardi
8. "The Mind's I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self & Soul" by Douglas R. Hofstadter, Daniel C. Dennett, and Daniel C. Dennett
*9. "My Uncle Oswald" by Roald Dahl
*10. "The Stranger" by Albert Camus
#11. "The Eye of the Needle" by Ken Follet
*12. "Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness" by William Styron
13. "Watchmen" by Alan Moore
14. "Surely You're Joking Mr.Feynman!" by Richard P.Feynman.
#15. "The Fermata" by Nicholson Baker
#16. "Disney War" by James B. Stewart
#17. "McMafia - A Journey through the Global Underworld" by Misha Glenny
#18. "Warlock" by Wilbur Smith
19. "How the Universe Got Its Spots: Diary of a Finite Time in a Finite Space" by Janna Levin
#20. "Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book" by Gerard Jones
#21. "The Swiss Account" by Paul Erdman.
#22. "Den of Thieves" by James B.Stewart

My wish list for the year 2010(below) is more ambitious and i hope that i would be able to complete them. Bulk of them are not available in the Indian markets and if available are priced exhorbitantly. So, if you happen to be in Chennai/Bangalore , then I would like to swap some books.

And also, by the way, i whole heartedly accept gifts :)

1. "Vurt" by Jeff Noon
* 2. "Norwegian Wood" by Haruki Murakami
* 3. "Sputnik Sweetheart" by Haruki Murakami
* 4. "Kafka On the Shore" by Haruki Murakami
* 5. "After Dark" by Haruki Murakami
* 6. "Pinball 1973" by Haruki Murakami
7. "Blue Octavo Notebooks" by Franz Kafka
8. "The Trial" by Franz Kafka
9. "Collected Stories" by Franz Kafka
#10. "Promise and Power: The Life and Times of Robert McNamara" by Deborah Shapley
#11. "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World" by Alan Greenspan
*12. "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" by Roald Dahl
*13. "Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator" by Roald Dahl
#14. "The Fourth Protocol" BY Fredrick Forsyth
*15. "In Search of the Miraculous" by P.D.Ouspensky
*16. "Darkness at Noon" by Arthur Koestler
17. "Invitation to a Beheading" by Vladimir Nabokov
18. "Man and His Symbols" by Carl Gustav Jung
19. "Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" by Oliver Sacks
20. "Satan Burger" by Carlton Mellick III
21. "The Sack of Rome: How a Beautiful European Country with a Fabled History and a Storied Culture Was Taken Over by a Man Named Silvio Berlusconi" by Alexander Stille
22. "Gomorrah: A Personal Journey into the Violent International Empire of Naple's Organized Crime System" by Roberto Saviano
23. "The Pursemonger of Fugu: A Bathroom Mystery" by Greg Kramer
24. "The Brothers Karamazov" by Feodor Dostoevsky
#25. "On wings of Eagles" by Ken Follet
#26. "Man from St.Petersburg" by Ken Follet
#27. "Every Man a Speculator: A History of Wall Street in American Life" by Steve Fraser
28. "Night" by A. Alvarez
#29. "Gates to Alamo" by Stephen Harrigan
*30. "The Gulag Archipelago - An Experiment in Literary Investigation" by Solzhenitsyn
#31. "Cryptominicon" by Neal Stephenson
#32. "How the Mind Works" by Steven Pinker
*33. "Food of the Gods" by Terence McKenna
34. "Microserfs" by Douglas Coupland
*36. "Fateful Triangle - The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians" by Noam Chomsky

The starred ones(*) above are eBooks. Though i hate to read books in my computer, but given the unavailability of the books in the Indian markets and also the high prices, reading it online is not a bad proposition.
The hashed(#) books are the ones that i already have as hard copies.

4 comments:

_ said...

Interesting list. I see you have a lot of Murakami. Haven't tried any of his works.

I made a list some days back, while cleaning up my shelf. We have Haddon in common, and a book on Calculus, but nothing else.

Finished

1. A Deepness in the Sky, Vernor Vinge
2. A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
3. A Spot of Bother, Mark Haddon
4. A Tour of the Calculus, David Berlinsky
5. Devdas, Saratchandra Chattopadhyay
6. Fooled by Randomness, Nassim Taleb
7. Fury, Salman Rushdie
8. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
9. Legionnaire, Simon Murray
10. Liar's Poker, Michael Lewis
11. Life of Pi, Yann Martel
12. My Life as a Quant, Emanuel Derman
13. One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey
14. Our Game, John LeCarre
15. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, Mark Haddon
16. The Golden Gate, Vikram Seth
17. The Idea Factory: Learning to Think at MIT, Pepper White
18. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
19. Vernon God Little, DBC Pierre
20. Weight Loss, Upamanyu Chatterjee
21. Wide Saragasso Sea, Jean Rhys

Unfinished

1. Getting Things Done, David Allen
2. Gödel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter
3. Notes to Myself, Hugh Prather
4. Phantoms in the Brain, VS Ramachandran
5. Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Short Stories (Volumes 1 & 2), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
6. The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins

Venkat said...

Murakami rocks! I want to finish all his books by 2010.

ladygarfield said...

landmark has a few murakami, in the 'literature' section.

Venkat said...

@ladygarfield : is it!? Am struggling with Satre's Being and Nothingness for now. Also, gotta see some Miyazaki's . Sigh!!