As I was telling D one day, books are probably the only constant in my life. The earliest ones I have is from the 80s – Amar Chitra Katha. The books I read and the person I am have a correlation, though it’s difficult to establish the direction of causation. And so, continuing from 2019, 2020, and 2021, we have this year’s list. The shortlisting gets tougher as the years go by, so I will add my other favourites on the theme in [these]! From the 56 books I read this year…
This is not Propaganda: I think if there is one book you should read to understand the sociopolitical information warfare on social media happening daily, this is it. There’s a clear playbook that is being used by autocrats to distort facts and thus gain and hold power. Across the world – Brazil, Philippines, Latin America, EU, Russia’s in Ukraine (2014) and Crimea, all are examples of new instruments of information are being used to break people. Peter Pomerantsev uses his first-hand experience and personal stories to write an extremely well-researched book whose narrative and language is easily accessible.
[On this broad theme, I also read two other books – This is How they tell me the world ends in which Nicole Perlroth goes into the history and alleys of cyberwarfare, and AI 2041, in which Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Quifan write entertaining and thought-provoking ‘scientific fiction’ on the scenarios that AI advancement will bring about.]
The Stranger in the Woods: In 1986, when he was twenty, Christopher Knight eschewed everything that was non-essential to himself, and in his first road trip, he drove till he nearly ran out of gas. “I took a small road. Then a small road of that small road. Then a trail off that.” And then he disappeared for the next twenty-seven years, in the woods of “the maine land of New England”, Maine. Living less than three miles from society, and yet inhabiting a world that was his only. He didn’t really know why he chose to do this, but he was an introvert who found interactions with society and its rules tedious. Michael Finkel writes this deeply poignant book about a person whose response to the way of the world was to quietly withdraw from it.
[Nomadland by Jessica Bruder is the other fantastic and heart-wrenching read on this theme. Even if you’ve seen the movie, do read the book for the real people on whom the movie is based.]
Rumours of Spring: Remember the early days of Covid and the curfew, when we ran to shops to stock up on food and essentials? The fear and the uncertainty that came from having no idea when it would end? This was a foe we didn’t understand and didn’t even have an intent. Now imagine doing this intentionally to an entire population. That’s the 90s Kashmir Farah Bashir writes about through the lens of her teen self. The upheaval and transition of Kashmir runs parallel to the changes in her own life. It is impossible not to feel for those whose entire lives have been disrupted in the name of a notional line. Says a lot about humanity, and our lack of it. The book is not just an important perspective that needs to be heard, but also a reminder of the several things we take for granted.
The Bells of Old Tokyo: The second part of the title – Meditations on Time and a City – gives a very good idea of the book’s focus. It talks about both the changes in Edo (before it came to be called Tokyo) with time, as well as its changing relationship with time itself. Like many other concepts, the Japanese have many words for time according to the context. Before its citizens started using manufactured devices to tell time, Edo’s time was told by the ringing of bells. At first, there were three, but by 1720, as the population touched a million, six more were added. And these bells are what the narrative follows – their origins, and their journeys through times good and bad – victories, wars, earthquakes, fires and so on. Anna Sherman does in this book what my favourite travel books do – let me travel in time and space.
The Fear of Freedom: If I had to choose one favourite in 2022, this would be it. Towards the end of the book, Erich Fromm writes, “The cultural and political crisis of our day is not due to the fact that there is too much individualism but that what we believe to be individualism has become an empty shell“. An insightful remark for today, but here’s the kicker – this book was published in 1941! I have always thought that our current condition is unique because of the technological advances we have made. This book, and the quote above, has made me realise that the roots actually lie deep within us, and the conflicting nature of the freedom we have acquired with time. Fromm’s key perspective about freedom is that while we focus on “freedom from” (nature, Church etc), it can be destructive if not balanced by a “freedom to”. The key to being human is discovering the latter.
Blueprint: The book that gave me a great start to the reading list of 2022. It picked up on a couple of my favourite reads from last year – Behave & The Dawn of Everything. From the preface onwards, there is a focus on balancing a couple of diverse ideas – the universality of our shared inheritance and the uniqueness of the culture we have built and the individuals we are. Using robust evidence, Nicholas A. Christakis shows that irrespective of the origins of any particular society, it follows a blueprint that evolution has provided, and this can be used for our collective progress. If you can get through the first hundred pages, you will find some remarkably interesting material on mutual co-operation, exophenotypes, and the relationship between genes and culture.
[I really agonised over this one because David Graeber is a favourite and Debt: The First 5,000 Years is an important book. Starkly original, thought-provoking, earnest and empathetic]
The Molecule of More: The ‘molecule of more’ whose machinations make you desire what you don’t have, and drives you to seek new things. That which offers rewards when you obey it, and punishes you when you don’t. Dopamine, whose fingerprint is visible in most of the thoughts and actions we do on a daily basis, is the subject of the book. Discovered in 1957 by Kathleen Montagu, and first thought of as a pleasure molecule, only .0005% of brain cells produce it, but it has a disproportionate influence on us. Daniel Z. Lieberman and Michael E. Long use seven themes to showcase the influence of dopamine in various facets of life, at an individual and species level. If you’re interested in human motivations and behaviour, this is a must-read.
[While on motivation, I finally managed to read James Clear‘s Atomic Habits and if you’ve not read it yet, you simply must!]
Wanting: This book is also about motivations! Schopenhauer is believed to have said “A man can do as he wills, but not will as he wills.” We can replace will with ‘want’ and it still holds. But we have convinced ourselves otherwise – that we desire things independently. Based on the work and philosophy of René Girard, and his own experiences, Luke Burgis sets about dismantling this notion – what the book calls the Romantic Lie – self delusion. Girard postulates that most of what we desire is mimetic (imitative) and not intrinsic. We want what other people want. These desires are different from basic needs. And our choice of these desires are courtesy models – people or things that show us what is worth wanting. Look hard enough, and in all of your consumption and behaviour – from the choice of travel destinations to life partners, you will discover them. Mimetic desire can lead us to destructive or productive cycles, and the book explores both paths.
The Complete Maus: Based on his father Vladek Spiegelman’s life, Art Spiegelman writes a single survivor’s narrative of the horror of the Holocaust in this absolutely brilliant graphic novel. Done in minimalist style, the book represents Jews as mice, Nazis as cats, and other Germans and Poles as pigs. Beyond that theme, the book is also a telling view of the survivors. An important facet of this is the author’s troubled relationship with his father – arguments, uncomfortable visits, and dealing with the travails of old age. In this case, old age with all of the baggage of what Vladek had gone through, and in many cases, no one around who could really understand.
The Coming of Age: I’m at that stage of life when old age is no longer a concept, but something that I am forced to confront, and a reality that I know will hit me in a couple of decades. Simone de Beauvoir methodically explores what it means to be old , going from an outside in perspective – biological, ethnographic, and societal (historic and current) to an inside out – one how does it feel to be the person physically, mentally, emotionally and as a member of a family and society. Published in 1970, this is definitely not a cheerful read, but the narrative is strong and impassioned, and the subject even more important as we age. She is quite right in presuming that in general, we don’t treat our elders well, and we don’t really want to talk about it either. Old age exposes the failure of our entire civilisation. So it’s important to remember that at some point, we will all end up saying “in my time” – about the time we looked upon ourselves as first-class individuals, doing our best work, feeling like we belonged in this world. That window is bound to close, and twilight is inevitable.
P.S. Not by design, but turns out this entire list is non-fiction, despite it being only 50% of my reading. To make amends, here are a few favourites – The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman, Parva by SL Bhyrappa, The Ladies’ Delight by Émile Zola, The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, Ghachar Ghochar by Vivek Shanbhag, and The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles. And a final one – a book I really thought was amazingly well-written – Andre Agassi‘s Open.
And that’s the end of the page. Follow me on Goodreads for more frequent updates.
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