Books of 2024
WIP: Remains a work-in-progress for the year 2024.
K
My daughters are fascinated by strange things. Of course, the younger one is influenced by what her sister does. Five years ago, the elder one asked me to get Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things by Lafcadio Hearn. I started reading it, and left it. This year, I decided to finish reading the stories. Kwaidan (怪談) is a 1904 ghost storybook that features several Japanese ghost stories. It gave birth to the Oscar®-nominated 1964 Japanese anthology horror film, Kwaidan by Masaki Kobayashi. It was a quick read and easy to sneak in between other books and finish off in a couple of days.
L
Little Women is a coming-of-age semi-autobiographical novel by Louisa May Alcott. The story is loosely based the lives of the author and her three sisters. It details their passage from childhood to womanhood. The novel address three major themes — domesticity, work, and true love, all of them interdependent.
T
The Tatas: How a Family Built a Business and a Nation by Girish Kuber, and English translation by Vikrant Pande. This was a quick and fast read for me. The book is not Walter Isaacson style writing of a person or a family, but more of a time-series snapshots of the family of the Tatas involved with the business empire. An interesting read-it-once book.
Reading Plans
- Raising An Emotionally Intelligent Child The Heart of Parenting by John Gottman, and Joan DeClaire
- The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read: (and Your Children Will Be Glad That You Did) by Philippa Perry
- First Principles by Thomas E. Ricks
- Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey
- Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making by Tony Fadell
- Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology by Chris Miller
- How Asia Works: Success and Failure in the World’s Most Dynamic Region by Joe Studwell
- Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty by Abhijit V. Banerjee, and Esther Duflo
- Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away by Annie Duke (a former professional poker player).
- Reframe Your Brain: The User Interface for Happiness and Success by Scott Adams (creator of the Dilbert comic strip)
- The End Of The World Is Just The Beginning: Mapping The Collapse Of Globalization by Peter Zeihan
- Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming by McKenzie Funk
- Dieter Rams: The Complete Works by Klaus Klemp