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Bookshelf - 2019

January 11, 2020

In the second half of the year, I did not read much books and when I did, I abandoned the endeavours in the middle (or almost at the end on one case) for the lack of interest. As a guilty pleasure I did listen to Harry Potter (for the second time).

I immersed myself in podcasts. I discovered new ones and continued with some old ones. What I also did was that I almost cleared my Pocket backlog thanks to the Kindle that was gifted to me.

Some books which I did read -

  1. Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
  2. How to Live on 24 Hours a Day

I have never been a big fan of self-help books but once in a while I do read a few but they never make a deep impact on me. I would rather read biographies and autobiographies to get ideas and inspirations.

Here are my favourite podcasts or podcast episodes from the year gone by -

Fighter Pilot Podcast -

  1. B-52 Stratofortress
  2. Mig-29 Fulcrum
  3. SR-71 Blackbird


The Seen and The Unseen -

  1. Our Colorful Past
  2. The 2019 Elections
  3. The India-Pakistan Conflict
  4. Kashmir and Article 370


Lapham’s Quarterly -

  1. William Dairymple


The Joe Rogan Experience -

  1. Edward Snoweden


NPR Throughline -

  1. The Dark Side Of The Moon


Podcast series -

  1. 13 Minutes To The Moon
  2. The Chernobyl Podcast


Out of all these The Seen And Unseen Podcast has been the most impactful and enlightening. I would compare each episode with a well written long-form article/ essay that doesn’t skim the top but goes deep into a topic and comes out with detailed understanding and explanations. It is good to see an India focused podcast of such quality.

The favourite books of the year were definitely The Emperor of All Maladies and Midnight’s Children. I wrote about these two in the half-yearly post.

For the year 2020 I plan to write more on this blog and get rid of the half-yearly bookshelf post and write monthly detailed reviews/ thoughts of books, articles and podcasts that I come across.