Just Books

I will always regret one thing about my life. That is I took to books very late in my life. After graduating, to be precise. What started as sporadic dabbling with Sidney Sheldon, Dale Carnegie and Sherlock Holmes then, in about five years it grew to diverse authors and numerous books. I still remember pocketing my first book. It was the, "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie. It saw the cover ogling at me from the corner shelf at a book stall in Bhubaneswas book fair. I reciprocated.
The kind of skewed, confused, and a loner teenager I was, the title promised me with my life's solutions. I gingerly grabbed it and turned the pages, and bought the book.

Never before had I purchased a book other than my subject books then. Its usually the first book that you pick in life which makes or breaks your reading habit. I devoured the book. Made notes as I read, referred to dictionary for a lot of unknown words, highlighted statements that I felt were important. I fell in love at it at that impressionable age that I was. My love affair with books had begun. I gradually started reading self help books, the likes of Carnegie, Shiv Khera and Robin Sharma.

Then I gradually opened up to other books thanks to some of my well read friends. With time the appetite for books has grown steadily and I cant imagine life without them. I might not get time these days, but no matter how pressed I am atleast a few pages before switching off guarantees a good sleep. I was listing my life's priorities this new year and reading featured at the top close second to body building.

There are some kids who are like 10 years younger mock at my collection. They have them all read and far too many more. I envy them. They average one book a week. I dont get time. I wish I could be paid to read books. I am sure there are some who are. Till then, I will play catch up at my own pace.


The following are the books I have read. And there is also a list of books that I have been pursuing to read

BOOKS READ

Fiction:


City Of Joy; Catcher in the Rye; Doctors; Love Story, Man, Woman and Child; Jonathan Livingston Seagull; Inscrutable Americans; Da Vinci Code; Papillon; Animal Farm; Alchemist; Fountainhead;Old Man and the Sea; 11 minutes;Catch-22; To Kill a Mocking Bird; The Guns of Navarone; Such a Long Journey:Rohinton Mistry;Inheritance of Loss;The Jungle Book: Rudyard Kipling; Interpreter of Maladies-Jhumpa Lahiri; SeaBiscuit Like the flowing river-Paulo coelho; KiteRunner:Khaled hosseini; Thousand Splendid Suns; Sidhartha ; Bachelor of Arts: RK Narayan; Almost Single: Advaita Kala





Non-Fiction:


Edward De Bono;Tuesdays with Morrie;World is Flat;Art of War;Maximum City-Suketu Mehta; Who won the Oil Wars-Andy Stern; The High Performance Entrepreneur-Subroto Bagchi; The Long Tail; Guns Germs and Steel; Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid; Banker to the Poor: Md Yunus; Shantaram; My experiments with truth; Mein Kampf; Banker to the Poor: Md Yunus, The power of your subconscious mind: Joseph Murphy; The Google Story: David Vice; The Autobiography of a Yogi: Swami Yogananda Paramhansa; The Secret: Rhonda; Freakonomics; Blink: Malcolm Gladwell;





Books that are in my wish list:


The unaccustomed earth by Jhumpa Lahiri;

1984


It's not about the bike - Lance Armstrong;


The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga;


The Diary of a Young Girl: anne Frank;


Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry;


Lolita;


Crime and punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky;


Shame - Taslima Nasrin;


Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen;


Reluctant Fundamelist;


Moth Smoke


A Million Little Pieces - James Frey


A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
War and Peace: Leo Tolstoy


A House for Mr.Biswas - V. S. Naipaul


Family Matters - Rohinton Mistry


An Equal Music - Vikram Seth
Calcutta Chromosome - Amitav Ghosh


Gone with the wind - Margaret Mitchell


Also all the books here:

http://www.time.com/time/2005/100books/the_complete_list.html
http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1.Best_Books_Ever

Will keep updating this post....