Starting from August 2014, I have decided to keep a record of the books that I have read or am currently reading. This list is just for my own personal recollection, but once in a while if I find the book very appealing I may post a review somewhere.
The books which are marked with a ** are the ones that I am either currently reading or have not read completely but plan to do so in the future.
All the books that I read are rated on Goodreads.
Non-Fiction
- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot, Pan Macmillan, 2011. (review)
- Erwin Schrodinger and the Quantum Revolution, John Gribbin, Transworld, 2013.
- A masterful spirit: Homi J. Bhaba (1909 – 1966), Indira Chowdhury and Ananya Dasgupta, Penguin India, 2010.
- Littlewood’s Miscellany, John E. Littlewood and Bela Bollobas, Cambridge University Press, 1986. (review)
- Math Bytes: Google Bombs, Chocolate – Covered Pi, and other cool bits of Computing, Tim Chartier, Princeton University Press, 2014. (review)
- Letters to a Young Scientist, Edward O. Wilson, W. W. Norton and Company, 2013.
- Feynman’s Rainbow: A search for Beauty in Physics and Life, Leonard Mlodinow, Warner Books, 2003.
- Alan M. Turing: Centenary Edition, Sara Turing, Cambridge University Press, 2012.
- what if?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions, Randall Munroe, John Murray (Publishers), 2014. (mini review)
- ** “Most of the Good Stuff”: Memories of Richard Feynman, Laurie M. Brown (ed.) and John S. Rigden (ed.), American Institute of Physics, 1993.
- The Art of Richard P. Feynman: Images of a Curious Character, Michelle Feynman (ed.), Routledge, 1995.
- ** John von Neumann: Selected Letters, Miklos Redei (ed.), American Mathematical Society/London Mathematical Society, 2005.
- The Apprenticeship of a Mathematician, Andre Weil, Brikhauser, 1992. (mini review)
- Tuva or Bust!: Richard Feynman’s Last Journey, Ralph Leighton, W. W. Norton and Company, 1991.
- Bourbaki: A Secret Society of Mathematicians, Maurice Mashaal, American Mathematical Society, 2006. (review)
- The Polya Picture Album: Encounters of a Mathematician, George Polya (Ed. G. L. Alexanderson), Brikhauser Boston, 1987.
- Birth of a Theorem: A Mathematical Adventure, Cedric Villani, The Bodley Head, London, 2015. (review)
- Mathematical Apocrypha Redux: More Stories and Anecdotes of Mathematicians and the Mathematical, Steven G. Krantz, Mathematical Association of America, 2005. (short review)
- Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein, Mario Livio, Simon and Schuster, 2013. (review)
- Mrs. Funnybones: She’s Just Like You and a Lot Like Me, Twinkle Khanna, Penguin India, 2015. (review)
- The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation, Jon Gertner, Penguin Press, 2012. (review)
- My Search for Ramanujan: How I Learned to Count, Ken Ono and Amir D. Aczel, Springer Switzerland, 2016. (review)
- A Mathematician’s Lament, Paul Lockhart, Bellevue Literary Press, 2009.
- In Other Words, Jhumpa Lahiri, Hamish Hamilton (Penguin), 2016.
- Black Holes: The Reith Lectures, Stephen Hawking, Bantam Books, 2016.
- Man’s Search For Meaning, Viktor E. Frankl, Beacon Press, 2006.
- The Difference: when good enough isn’t enough, Subir Chowdhury, Portfolio (Penguin), 2017.
- The Clothing of Books, Jhumpa Lahiri, Penguin, 2017.
- The Mathematics of Love: Patterns, Proofs and the Search for the Ultimate Equation, Hannah Fry, Ted Books, 2015.
- Landour Days, Ruskin Bond, Penguin Books, 2016.
- The Last Lecture: lessons in living, Randy Pausch and Jeffrey Zaslow, Two Roads, 2012.
- Roads to Mussoorie, Ruskin Bond, Rupa Publications India, 2013.
- Party time in Mussoorie, Ruskin Bond, Rupa Publications India, 2016.
- Kohinoor: The Story of the World’s Most Infamous Diamond, William Dalrymple and Anita Anand, Juggernaut Books, 2016.
- City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi, William Dalrymple, Flamingo, 1994.
- The Great Derangement, Amitav Ghosh, Allen Lane (Penguin), 2016.
- Useless Facts Vienna, StadtBekannt Wien, Holzbaum Verlag, 2014.
- Eurekas and Euphorias: The Oxford Book of Scientific Anecdotes, Walter Gratzer, Oxford University Press, 2002.
- The Accidental Scientist: The Role of Chance and Luck in Scientific Discovery, Graeme Donald, Michael O’Mara Books Limited, 2017.
- Secret Vienna Stories: Legends, facts and locations for the true explorer, Fabio M. Aromatici, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016.
- Journey Down the Years, Ruskin Bond, Rupa Publications India, 2017.
- The Good, the Bad and the Ridiculous, Khuswant Singh with Humar Quarishi, Rupa Publications India, 2013.
- Pursuit of Genius: Flexner, Eisntein and the Early Faculty at the Institute for Advanced Study, Steven L. Batterson, A. K. Peters, Ltd., 2006.
- Is That Even A Country, Sir!: Journeys in Northeast India by Train, Bus and Tractor, Anil Yadav (Translated by Anurag Basnet), Speaking Tiger, 2017.
- Indira: India’s Most Powerful Prime Minister, Sagarika Ghose, Juggernaut Books, 2017.
- Aurangzeb: The Man and The Myth, Audrey Truschke, Penguin Viking, 2017.
- Vikram Sarabhai: A Life, Amrita Shah, Penguin India, 2016.
- Exact Thinking in Demented Times: The Vienna Circle and the Epic Quest for the Foundations of Science, Karl Sigmund, Basic Books, 2017.
- Perpetual City: A Short Biography of Delhi, Malvika Singh, Aleph, 2013.
- Death in the Bunker, Ian Kershaw, Penguin Books, 2000.
- Scenes from a Writer’s Life, Ruskin Bond, Penguin India, 1997.
- Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India, William Dalrymple, Bloomsbury, 2015.
- Mathematicians of the World, Unite!: The International Congress of Mathematicians – A Human Endeavor, Guillermo P. Curbera, A. K. Peters, Ltd., 2009.
- Variety of Men, C. P. Snow, Penguin Books, 1969.
- The Age of Kali: Indian Travels and Encounters, William Dalrymple, Bloomsbury, 2017.
- The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge, Abraham Flexner (with a companion essay by Robbert Dijkgraaf), Princeton University Press, 2017.
- Wise and Otherwise: A Salute to Life, Sudha Murty, Penguin Books, 2006.
- Cranks, Quarks, and the Cosmos, Jeremy Bernstein, Basic Books, 1993.
- ** The Quotable Feynman, Michelle Feynman (ed.), Princeton University Press, 2015.
- Growing the Tree of Science: Homi Bhabha and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Indira Chowdhury, Oxford University Press, 2016.
- The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA, James D. Watson, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997.
- What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery, Francis Crick, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989.
- Academia Obscura: The hidden silly side of higher education, Glen Wright, Unbound, 2017.
- No Full Stops in India, Mark Tully, Penguin Books, 1992.
- Vienna Mixed Set, T. H. Enge, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2018.
- What Little I Remember, Otto Frisch, Cambridge University Press, 1991.
- Strangers of the Mist: Tales of War and Peace from India’s Northeast, Sanjoy Hazarika, Penguin Books, 1995.
- Strangers No More: New Narratives from India’s Northeast, Sanjoy Hazarika, Aleph Book Company, 2018.
- Blood On My Hands: Confessions of Staged Encounters, Kishalay Bhattacharjee, HarperCollins Publishers India, 2015.
- ** The G. H. Hardy Reader, Donald J. Albers (ed.), Gerald L. Alexanderson (ed.) and William Dunham (ed.), Mathematical Association of America – Cambridge University Press, 2015.
- ** The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks, Picador, 2011.
- ** India: From Midnight to the Millennium and Beyond, Shashi Tharoor, Penguin Books, 2007.
- Great Feuds in Mathematics: Ten of the Liveliest Disputes Ever, Hal Hellman, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2006.
- ** Indiscrete Thoughts, Gian-Carlo Rota (Edited by Fabrizio Palombi), Birkhauser Boston, 1997.
- The Accidental Prime Minister: The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh, Sanjaya Baru, Penguin Books, 2017.
- The Merely Personal: Observations on Science and Scientists, Jeremy Bernstein, Ivan R. Dee, 2001.
- The Life It Brings: One Physicist’s Beginnings, Jeremy Bernstein, Penguin Books, 1988.
- Who Got Einstein’s Office?: Eccentricity and Genius at the Institute for Advanced Study, Ed Regis, Simon and Schuster, 1988.
- Three Degrees Above Zero: Bell Labs in the Information Age, Jeremy Bernstein, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1984.
- Serendipity: Accidental Discoveries in Science, Royston M. Roberts, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1989.
- Great Feuds in Science: Ten of the Liveliest Disputes Ever, Hal Hellman, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1998.
- Bookless in Baghdad and Other Writings about Reading, Shashi Tharoor, Penguin Viking, India, 2005.
- Things That Can and Cannot Be Said: Essays and Conversations, Arundhati Roy and John Cusack, Juggernaut Books, 2016.
- Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Carlo Rovelli (Translated by Simon Carnell and Erica Segre), Penguin Random House UK, 2016.
- Khushwantnama: The Lessons of My Life, Khushwant Singh, Penguin Books, 2014.
- Non Stop India, Mark Tully, Penguin Books, 2013.
- A Mind At Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age, Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman, Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2018.
- Adventures of a Mathematician, S. M. Ulam, University of California Press, 1991.
- Countdown, Amitav Ghosh, Penguin Books, 2010.
- Florence: A Delicate Case, David Leavitt, Bloomsbury, 2015.
- Five Past Midnight in Bhopal, Dominique Lapierre and Javier Moro (Translated by Kathryn Spink), Scribner, 2002.
- The Last Mughal: The fall of a dynasty, Delhi, 1857, William Dalrymple, Penguin Books, 2007.
- Oppenheimer: Portrait of an Enigma, Jeremy Bernstein, Ivan R. Dee, 2004.
- Quantum Profiles, Jeremy Bernstein, Princeton University Press, 1991.
- ** India’s Unending Journey: Finding Balance in a Time of Change, Mark Tully, Rider, 2007.
- Essentials of Mathematical Thinking, Steven G. Krantz, CRC Press, 2018. (review)
- The Cost of Living, Arundhati Roy, Modern Library, 1999.
- The Algebra of Infinite Justice, Arundhati Roy, Penguin Books, 2014.
- King of Infinite Space: Donald Coxeter, the Man Who Saved Geometry, Siobhan Roberts, Walker, 2006.
- Assam: The Accord, The Discord, Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty, Ebury Press, 2019.
- We Should All Be Feminists, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Fourth Estate, 2014.
- Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 4th Estate, 2017.
- S. Chandrasekhar: The Man Behind the Legend, Kameshwar C. Wali (ed.), Imperial College Press, 1997.
- Liber Amicorum Richard “Dick” Allen Askey (2nd ed.), Howard S. Cohl and Mourad E. H. Ismail (ed.), eBook, 2019.
- The Bookseller of Kabul, Åsne Seierstad (Translated by Ingrid Christophersen), Virago, 2004.
- Godman to Tycoon: The Untold Story of Baba Ramdev, Priyanka Pathak-Narain, Juggernaut Books, 2017.
- We are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast, Jonathan Safran Foer, Hamish Hamilton, 2019.
- No One is Too Small to Make a Difference, Greta Thunberg, Penguin Books, 2019.
- The Last Man Who Knew Everything: The Life and Times of Enrico Fermi, Father of the Nuclear Age, David N. Schwartz, Basic Books, 2017.
- Einstein’s Luck: The Truth Behind Some of the Greatest Scientific Discoveries, John Waller, Oxford University Press, 2002.
- C.V. Raman: A Biography, Uma Parameswaran, Penguin Books, 2011.
- The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the Future, David Wallace-Wells, Penguin Books, 2019.
- The Hunt for Vulcan: How Albert Einstein Destroyed a Planet and Deciphered the Universe, Thomas Levenson, Head of Zeus, 2015.
- Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, Penguin Books, 2015.
- Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors, Matt Parker, Penguin Books, 2019.
- Things I don’t Want to Know: A response to George Orwell’s 1946 essay ‘Why I Write’, Deborah Levy, Penguin Books, 2018.
- The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (Translated by Samuel Moore), Penguin Little Black Classics, 2015.
- How to Bullsh_t Your Way to Number 1: An Unorthodox Guide to 21st Century Success from the World’s #1 Fake Restaurateur and Paris Fashion Week’s #1 Fake Designer, Oobah Butler, Oobah Butler, 2019.
- ** The Mathematics of Various Entertaining Subjects: Volume 3: The Magic of Mathematics, Jennifer Beineke and Jason Rosenhouse (eds.), Princeton University Press, 2019. (review)
- Azadi: Freedom. Fascism. Fiction., Arundhati Roy, Penguin Books, 2020.
- The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: The Untold Story of a Lost World, Steve Brusatte, Picador, 2019.
- From Raj to Rajiv: 40 Years of Indian Independence, Mark Tully and Zareer Masani, Universal Book Stall, 1988.
- Packing My Library: An Elegy and Ten Digressions, Alberto Manguel, Yale University Press, 2018.
- Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, Neil deGrasse Tyson, W. W. Norton & Company, 2017.
- The Weil Conjectures: On Math and the Pursuit of the Unknown, Karen Olsson, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019.
- Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, Brenda Maddox, Harper Collins Publishers, 2003.
- The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus, Owen Gingerich, William Heinemann, 2004.
- Think Like a Freak: How to Think Smarter About Almost Everything, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, Penguin Books, 2014.
- Charles Darwin’s Barnacle and David Bowie’s Spider: How Scientific Names Celebrate Adventurers, Heroes, and Even a Few Scoundrels, Stephen B. Heard, Yale University Press, 2020.
- The Curious Life of Robert Hooke: The Man Who Measured London, Lisa Jardine, Perennial, 2005.
- SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, Penguin Books, 2010.
- When to Rob a Bank: …And 131 More Warped Suggestions and well-intended Rants, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, HarperLuxe, 2015.
- Allahu Akbar: Understanding the Great Mughal in Today’s India, Manimugdha S. Sharma, Bloomsbury India, 2019.
- The Cost of Living: A Working Autobiography, Deborah Levy, Penguin Books, 2018.
- Letters of Note: Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience, Shaun Usher (Compiler), Unbound & Canongate Books, 2016.
- More Letters of Note: Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience, Shaun Usher (Compiler), Unbound & Canongate Books, 2015.
- When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time, Michael J. Benton, Thames & Hudson, 2003.
- Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty, Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo, Public Affairs, 2011.
- The Scientist as Rebel, Freeman Dyson, New York Review Books, 2006.
Fiction
- Half Girlfriend, Chetan Bhagat, Rupa, 2014. (review)
- Dead Meat, Ankush Saikia, Penguin India, 2015. (review)
- Mightier Than The Sword, Jeffrey Archer, Pan Macmillan, 2015. (review)
- All My Friends are Superheroes, Andrew Kaufman, Telegram Books, 2006. (review)
- Scion of Ikshvaku, Amish Tripathi, Westland Books, 2015. (review)
- Cometh The Hour, Jeffrey Archer, Pan Macmillan, 2016.
- Jonathan Livingston Seagull: A Story, Richard Bach, Element, 2003.
- Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, Edwin A. Abbott, Penguin Books, 1998.
- Uncle Petros and Goldbach’s Conjecture: A Novel of Mathematical Obsession, Apostolos Doxiadis, Bloomsbury USA, 2010.
- The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes, Alfred A. Knopf, 2011.
- The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Mohsin Hamid, Penguin Books, 2007.
- Jonathan Livingston Seagull: A Story, The Complete Edition, Richard Bach, Harper Thorsons, 2015.
- One Indian Girl, Chetan Bhagat, Rupa, 2016.
- This was a Man, Jeffrey Archer, Pan Macmillan, 2016.
- Remember Death, Ankush Saikia, Penguin India, 2016. (review)
- The Vegetarian, Han Kang (Tranlated by Deborah Smith), Portobello Books, 2016.
- Strangers, Omair Tarique, Moments Publications, 2017.
- Falling in love again: Stories of Love and Romance, Ruskin Bond, Rupa, 2016.
- The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Om Books International, 2016.
- Revelations of an Imperfect Life, Sankhya Samhita, Readomania, 2017.
- The Pregnant King, Devdutt Pattanaik, Penguin Books India, 2008.
- Red River, Blue Hills, Ankush Saikia, Westland ltd., 2015.
- The Girl from Nongrim Hills, Ankush Saikia, Penguin India, 2013.
- The Outsider, Albert Camus (Translated by Sandra Smith), Penguin Classics, 2013.
- The Tobacconist, Robert Seethaler (Translated by Charlotte Collins), Picador, 2017.
- No Direction Rome, Kaushik Barua, Fourth Estate, 2015.
- The Spy, Paulo Coelho (Translated by Zoë Perry), Vintage, 2016.
- Tell Tale, Jeffrey Archer, Pan Macmillan, 2017.
- Chess, Stefan Zweig (Translated by Anthea Bell), Penguin Classics, 2017.
- More Bodies Will Fall, Ankush Saikia, Penguin Books, 2018.
- Twilight in Delhi, Ahmed Ali, Rupa, 2017.
- ** A Horse Walks into a Bar, David Grossman (Translated by Jessica Cohen), Jonathan Cape, 2016.
- The Old Man and The Sea, Ernest Hemingway, Arrow Books, 2004.
- Heads You Win, Jeffrey Archer, Pan Macmillan, 2018.
- Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck, Penguin Books, 1993.
- Candide, Voltaire (Translated by anonymous), Dover Publications, 1991.
- Lot No. 249, Arthur Conan Doyle, Penguin Little Black Classics, 2016.
- How Much Land Does A Man Need?, Leo Tolstoy, Penguin Little Black Classics, 2015.
- A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines, Janna Levin, Anchor Books, 2006.
- Origin, Dan Brown, Corgi Books, 2018.
- The Palace of Illusions, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Picador, 2009.
- The tattooist of Auschwitz, Heather Morris, Zaffre, 2018.
- Nothing Ventured, Jeffrey Archer, Pan Macmillan, 2019.
- Life Over Two Beers: And Other Stories, Sanjeev Sanyal, Penguin Random House, 2018.
- Next Door: Stories, Jahnavi Barua, Penguin Books, 2008.
- The Thing Around Your Neck, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, W. F. Howes Ltd., 2009.
- A Good Hanging and other stories, Ian Rankin, Orion Books Ltd., 1998.
- Fräulein Else: A Novel, Arthur Schnitzler (Translated by Robert A. Simon), Simon and Schuster, 1971.
- The Cuckoo’s Calling, Robert Galbraith, Sphere, 2014.
- The Fourth Estate, Jeffrey Archer, HarperCollins, 1996.
- As the Crow Flies, Jeffrey Archer, BCA, 1991.
- The Last Juror, John Grisham, Arrow Books, 2004.
- Chinatown Days, Rita Chowdhury, Macmillan, 2018.
- The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, Arundhati Roy, Hamish Hamilton, 2017.
- Murder on the Orient Express, Agatha Christie, HarperCollins, 2017.
Graphic Books
- Feynman, Jim Ottaviani and Leland Myrick, First Second, New York, 2011. (review)
- All my friends are still dead, Avery Monsen and Jory John, Chronicle Books, 2012.
- All my friends are dead, Avery Monsen and Jory John, Chronicle Books, 2010.
- Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth, Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou (Art by Alecos Papadatos and Annie Di Donna), Bloomsbury, 2009.
- Peanuts: The misfortunes of Charlie Brown, Charles M. Schulz, Hodder and Stoughton, 1978.
- Trinity: A Graphic History of the First Atomic Bomb, Jonathan Fetter-Vorm, Hill and Wang, 2013.
- A boy named Charlie Brown, Charles M. Schulz, Brockhampton Press, 1970.
- The New Yorker 1950-1955 Album, Hamish Hamilton, 1955.
- Masters of Abstraction, Peter Badge, Heidelberg Laureate Forum Foundation, 2015.
- Tragidoodles, Ben Cameron, Unbound, 2016.
- The Very Best of The Common Man, R. K. Laxman, Penguin Books India, 2012.
Poetry
- Away from Shore, Mary McCormack Deka, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016.
- Nonsense, Edward Lear, Penguin Little Black Classics, 2016.
- The World’s Best Limericks, Richard Floethe (Illustrator), The Peter Pauper Press, 1951.
- The Eve of St Agnes, John Keats, Penguin Books, 2015.
Mixed
- Not a Nice Man to Know: The Best of Khushwant Singh, Khushwant Singh, Penguin Books, 1993.
- I love you madly, Helen Exley (ed.), Liz Smith and Caroline Gardner (Illustrators), Helen Exley Giftbooks, 2005.