What to read?

I read Ceridwen Dovey’s piece ‘Can reading make you happier?’ in The New Yorker while trying to know more about bibliotherapy. “Reading fiction is one of the few remaining paths to transcendence,” she says, “that elusive state in which the distance between the self and the universe shrinks.”

Needless to say, for self-confessed book lovers and enthusiasts, and for people who have been newly introduced to the world of literature, a perennial question is: what should I read when there is so much stuff out there?

If you are one of those who want to read but haven’t been able to cultivate a habit yet, this post might definitely offer some important tips.

If you are just starting to read, make sure you start with something light. A lot of books (fiction) are very easy to read, and are interesting enough to keep you glued. It will definitely improve your attention span.

Suggestions: One day by David Nicholls, The fault in our stars by John Green, The perks of being a wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, The help by Kathryn Stockett, etc.

Another proven method is to start with fantasies, murder mysteries, and thrillers.

Suggestions: Harry Potter series by Joanne Kathleen Rowling, Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, stories of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple by Agatha Christie, The girl with the dragon tattoo by Stieg Larsson, etc.

Once you read these, your interest in reading will start to grow. Now you will need variety.

Suggestions: Slumdog millionaire by Vikas Swarup, The white tiger by Aravind Adiga, English, August by Upamanyu Chatterjee, Tales from Firozsha Baag by Rohinton Mistry, The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, The god of small things by Arundhati Roy, Nectar in a sieve by Kamala Markandaya, The inheritance of loss by Kiran Desai, Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil, Maximum city by Suketu Mehta, The Calcutta chromosome by Amitav Ghosh, etc.

Apart from being extremely popular, these works have helped the western world notice the writers from this part of the world. For selected Indian writing, read ‘Mirrorwork: 50 Years of Indian Writing 1947-1997’ selected by Salman Rushdie.

Time to expose yourself to international fiction.

Suggestions: Pride and prejudice by Jane Austen, The old man and the sea by Ernest Hemingway, The great Gatsby by Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, One hundred years of solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, Animal farm by George Orwell, To sir, with love by Edward Ricardo Braithwaite, The museum of innocence by Orhan Pamuk, An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro, The kite runner by Khaled Hosseini, Life of Pi by Yann Martel, The sense of an ending by Julian Barnes, The reluctant fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, etc.

Moving to the non-fiction genre (Indian authors).

Suggestions: Wings of fire and Ignited minds by Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam, It happened in India by Kishore Biyani, A better India by N. R. Narayana Murthy, The winning way by Harsha Bhogle, India Unbound by Gurcharan Das, Games Indians play by Viswanathan Raghunathan, Following Fish by Samanth Subramanian, Amul’s India by GCMMF, High-performance entrepreneur by Subroto Bagchi, etc.

In the next set, you can read anything from the subjects you have complete knowledge about, or read something you know zilch about. Books can really change the way you think and look at the world. These will definitely make you scratch your head.

Suggestions: Fooled by randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The tipping point by Malcolm Gladwell, Only the paranoid survive by Andrew S. Grove, Quiet by Susan Cain, Bill & Dave by Michael S. Malone, Surely you’re joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard P. Feynman, Crowdsourcing by Jeff Howe, Freakonomics: Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, The emperor of all maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee, The one minute manager by Kenneth H. Blanchard, Lateral thinking by Edward de Bono, Predictably irrational by Dan Ariely, The art of thinking clearly by Rolf Dobelli, Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance, The selfish gene by Richard Dawkins, etc.

A dash of philosophy and poetry, perhaps?

Suggestions: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, The unbearable lightness of being by Milan Kundera, Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore, All you who sleep tonight by Vikram Seth, Twenty love poems by Pablo Neruda, etc.

The books and the authors mentioned in this post are indicative. For example: I haven’t mentioned Virginia Woolf, Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, Chinua Achebe, Michael Ondaatje, etc. Nothing should stop you from exploring, reading, and discovering your favorites. It always helps to read more about what others are reading so that you can pick and choose. BBC’s Big read list; TIME’s list of the 100 best novels; Le Monde’s 100 books of the century; The Man Booker prize winners, longlist and shortlist; and joining Goodreads or The Library Thing will help you understand what you should read and what others are reading. Thanks to Project Gutenberg, you can read books without spending anything. So what’s your excuse for not reading?

With my little experience of reading about two hundred books over the last few years, I have come to a conclusion that I don’t read enough and there is so much to know in the world, so many new roles to play and lives to live, and so much to explore. I don’t think one lifetime is enough to do that.