In my growing-up years, I wasn’t a big reader. Just read some short stories here and there. Champak and later on Tinkle I used to read a bit. When I got to college then started reading “Agatha Christie” novels. That got me hooked on reading. Then when I started working I started exploring more genres and haven’t looked back since then.
Two weeks back I revisited a few of “Agatha Christie” novels along with a few new ones. It was since the Audible collection of 8 books in a single set.
That made me wonder how far I have come in my reading journey and how much it has given me.
It has opened up so many worlds to me and the pure joy of just navigating those as you read along is something amazing.
Just imagine how powerful words are that they can make you so invested in various characters and their lives, without ever meeting them physically. That’s true for any form of art be it movies, music, or books. Reading opens up access to many more stories because not everything is made into a movie or web series.
Slowly I have started to understand and appreciate how great some writers are.
Some of my favorite books are -
Sci-fi
- Three-Body Problem Trilogy - Liu Cixin
- Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir
- Exhalation - Ted Chiang
- Dark Matter - Blake Crouch
- I Robot - Isaac Asimov
Mystery
- Then There Were None - Agatha Christie
- Murder on the Orient Express
Fantasy
- Mistborn Era 1 Trilogy - Brandon Sanderson
- Stormlight Archive - Brandon Sanderson
- Six of Crow - Leigh Bardugo
Nerdy
- Soul of a New Machine - Tracy Kidder
- Blood Sweat and Pixels - Jason Schreier
- Humble Pi - Matt Parker
- Dealers of Lightning - Michael A. Hiltzik
- An Immense World - Ed Yong
Fiction
- Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami
- Paper Menagerie - Ken Liu
Non-fiction
- Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! - Richard P. Feynman
The above list is quite limited, there are many great ones! Check out my Goodreads for more.