His journal serves as an important account of life in mordern-day Russia/Middle east and the areas in between. Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness: Arab Travellers in the Far North: Travel log of Ibn Fadlan , a tenth-century diplomat who, in 922 AD, was sent on a mission from Baghdad to the far north by the caliph Muqtadir. On hindsight, this book is probably best enjoyed via an audio book while on the treadmill. The plot and premise was great here but it did slow down towards the end. The Long Walk by Stephen King: Big fan of the king. A personal journal left behind serves as the narrative and tons of interesting sasquatch legends abound including this one of Roosevelt’s own” encounter” with the sasquatch. Hell breaks loose in the form of rampaging sasquatches who ( thankfully in some cases) start taking out the characters one by one. Obnoxious characters dealing with first-world problems in their isolated eco-friendly community encounter an even more ominous situation with Mt.Rainier erupting and get blockaded. Seven years in Tibet by Heinrich Harrer: Heinrich Harrer’s discovery of Tibet deserves it own post.ĭevolution by Max Brooks: Anyone who has read World War Z knows the doom-laden nightmarish scenarios that the author can generate and this one is no exception. Not his finest hour and I could not wait to finish this as it felt as slow as drug-induced slow-motion sequences in Dredd which were way more enjoyable. I had huge hopes for Tesseract but it ended up being a random story of disparate characters linked together by the thinnest of chances and a shallow plot. On top of it all, he slam dunked the best version of Dredd on us innocent fans and immortalized Keith Urban in that role. Tesseract by Alex Garland : I’m a big fan of Alex Garland’s works – 28 Days Later, The Beach, Sunshine and Ex-machina. The nexus between politics, Bollywood, business tycoons are all deciphered out and connected together to explain the irony of situations like a ~2 Billion dollar personal home in Mumbai towering over a squalor of a million people in a nearby slum. James Crabtree’s detailed tome on the lifestyles of the rich and famous in India helps decrypt the inequalities and the “crony capitalism” that ensures the system stays that way. You don’t understand it till you see it and even when you see it, your understanding is peripheral at best when confronted with the magnitude of the problem and the inequality at scale. The Billionaire Raj: A Journey Through India’s New Gilded Age: India is a land of skewed levels of haves and have nots at an unprecedented scale. As a huge music fan and an immigrant who traveled halfway around the world to chase dreams built on the foundational goals of exposing myself to new cultures/thinking and seeing my favorite musicians in live arenas in the flesh,the book resonated with me on the universality of music across cultures. It also took me to pilgrimage of the boss’ older catalog and some of his late 80s/early 90s work that I love.(Think Tunnel of Love/ Human Touch era). The book is set in a “non-linear” timeline mode which may put off some readers but I found it a wonderful read albeit with some cliched moments probably dramatized. Greetings from Bury Park by Sarfraz Manzoor: A Springsteen tribute along with an immigrant experience? Sign me up! After enjoying the Blinded by the night with my better half, I had to get my hands on Sarfraz Manzoor’s ode to the boss amidst the backdrop of immigrant life in 80s Luton. Some notable ( and not so notable) reads this year: The results were mixed thanks to massive mood swings through the year and I ended up with a random mix of tech, biographies, music, non-fiction and horror/sci-fi tomes that helped distract me from a depressing year. I tried to veer myself away from my usual mix of management/leadership books this year to reignite fiction reading. goodreads is great for maintaining some accountability and I’m in awe of some of my friends who seem to knock out 80-100 books easily every year despite their hectic work lives. I usually set reading goals at the beginning of the year to counter the array of distractions that have dented my reading habit over the last few decades.
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