12 Books I read in 2022
Here I summarize the books that I read in 2022. You can refer to this Excel sheet where I consolidate all the books that I read so far (and feel free to pick some books for your 2023 to-read list!)
This year I experimented with different formats by reading a manga, a graphic novel.
Here are links for previous years in case you would like to see:
Fiction books in 2021, Finance books in 2021, Non-Fiction books in 2021, Books I read in 2020
Title: Blink
Author: Malcolm Gladwell
Book suggestion credits: Indu.
This basically tells the power of “gut feeling”, why it’s useful and how it helps in taking decisions. Sometimes, I get this “gut feeling”, but usually I don’t follow it. I try to take lot of info, analyze, weigh pros and cons and decide on whether to take the action or not. Usually it works fine, but this book discusses about instances where this method might not work well.
The power of judging something by looking/hearing/feeling in the first 2 seconds is pretty cool and it’s a learnable skill. Neverthless, the decision taken by this process has it’s own flaws and the author discusses those as well in detail.
Title: Maus — A Survivors Tale (Part 1 and 2)
Author: Art Spiegelman
Book suggestion credits: Kiru
This book describes about the struggles faced by a merchant in World War II. It chose a comic style and is funny at times as the conversation is between a son and his father where the father is an old person with his idiosyncratic actions which irritates son. Few episodes of father-son questions ourselves as we all have these sort of conversations with our grandparents who we feel are bit old-fashioned and are insane because the hardships they had seen are way more different from the hardships we face now.
I personally feel that our parents and grandparents faced more difficulties than us. That doesn’t mean that we don’t have any difficulties. Ours are not existential ones while most of our parents/grandparents had existential crisis which is definitely more tough to live.
Also, the author conveys the series of incidents occurred in WW II including Auschwitz holocaust which might be one of the world’s horrible experience. But his writing style is bit relaxing and we won’t feel that trauma when reading it.
Books on a similar line are: “The Diary of a Young Girl”, “Man’s search for Meaning”
Title: Myth = Mithya, Decoding Hindu Mythology
Author: Devdutt Pattanaik
The book tries to interpret meaning behind several fables associated with Hindu mythology. While it’s a good read, I expected a lot more to learn based on the title.
Title: Meditations
Author: Marcus Aurelius
Book suggestion credits: Lots of people, especially Randheer
One of the best books I have read so far. Just to the point. I made a detailed blog and highly recommend to read the blog and book!!!
Marcus shares his thoughts which are very much relevant to the present day world. To any generation for that matter. His idea on life, death, work, nature, feelings, relationships, the way to live are just mind-boggling. There are instances I can resonate a lot in this book.
Title: The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Adversity to Advantage
Author: Ryan Holiday
Book suggestion credits: Randheer
Ryan talks about three things that we need to incorporate to make our lives easier:
See clearly → Perceive, Act correctly → Actions and Endure and accept the world as it is → Will
Basically, one needs to inculcate the philosophy that life is full of obstacles (physical, emotional, mental etc;) and one has to see these obstacles as an opportunity, and improve selves rather than brooding over.
Title: Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales
Author: Yoko Ogawa
Book suggestion credits: Kiru and Riana
Dark, intertwined stories. Bit horrific and terror at places and kind of difficult to follow and to connect the dots, but it’s a good read. I’ve not explored this genre much, saw this book from my friend’s Goodreads list and thought to pick it up. And I am not disappointed by the exploration.
Title: I Sold My Life For Ten Thousand Yen Per Year (3 volumes Manga series)
Author: Sugaru Miaki
Book suggestion credits: Debarshi Deka
Wow!! Just wow.. This manga is just heart-touching.
Experiencing love is different. But even while reading, I sort of connected with Miyagi and Kusunoki. The feel good moments that they had is pretty cool.
Kusunoki finds that his life is worthless (around 10000 yen/year which is very cheap) when he tries to sell it to a company that gives cash in return for life. His life is valued low because he is sad most of the time, didn’t achieve much in his life, didn’t contribute anything to society (metrics used to determine value). So, he sells his remaining 30yrs and lives the rest of the 3 months he has. To assist him, the company appoints Miyagi as the “observer” to take care of Kusunoki, the “subject”.
What he does in these 3 months, how their interactions evolve and to what extent people can go for love is something this manga has portrayed beautifully.
The metrics defined in the manga for determining the value of life are:
- How happy you are?
- How many goals you have achieved?
- What good did you do to the society?
They use these metrics to calculate the price of a person.
“I am ok even if he gets hurt. Infact, I want him to get more hurt. So, there’ll be no one with him. No one to support him. He can have my shoulders to cry on. Atleast by this way, he can stay with me” — Dialogue from book
Title: Tuesdays with Morrie
Author: Mitch Albom
Book suggestion credits: Indu
Nice, heartfelt and warm book. This is in to-read shelf for a long time before I picked up.
Morrie, a professor suffers from ALS which makes him paralyzed. How he view his life, his thoughts on death, relations, love, suffering etc; is something we need to remind ourselves.
Title: Lying
Author: Sam Harris
Whatever information is given by the author, we all know that. Nevertheless, it’s important to know the psychology of lying.
The author goes on explaining the different types of lies, different situations where we tend to lie, why we maintain secrets, integrity, deception etc;
Eg: Denying to tell the truth is different from telling a different version that even you won’t believe. Suppose you are at place A and when someone asked where you are — You can tell you are not comfortable sharing your location (denying) rather than telling that you are at place B (a different version). Because the moment you lied, you need to remember the lie, keep track of it and basically manage everything after that which is tough.
In one sentence: Don’t lie
Title: Antifragile (Still in progress!)
Author: Nassim Nicolas Taleb
Book suggestion credits: Randheer
What’s the book about: We know about fragility i.e breaking when force are applied. Or our lives shattered when chaos occurs. So, the best suggestion we might have heard till now is to be ‘resilient’ i.e be indifferent to the force/chaos.
Taleb introduces a new idea named as “Antifragile” which goes beyond the resilient. It’s using this chaos/force as strength. So, instead of succumbing to chaos (fragile) or being indifferent/resisting it (resilent), use it for your own growth. He explains in detail how this philosophy helps not only individual but also the governments and economy. More details in a future blog!