33 books I read in 2020
By: Namburi Srinath
Tags: Books, Habits, Book Recommendations, New Year, Reading

Spoiler alert: 33 is not a magical number. I tried to read frequently and ended up with that number. Fasten your seat belts as the blog is lengthy & detailed as far as possible.

As the New Year is approaching, most of us reset our regrets and start afresh. If “Reading books” is one of your “New Year Resolution” (you maybe a bookworm or casual reader), do check out this list so you might add some to your read-list.

I suggest the following method to choose a book from the below list

Based on the description, if you feel a particular book from the list is your cup of tea, check the links to Goodreads (and blog if attached) After reading those, if you still feel the same, go for it. Consider buying from the attached Amazon link as it helps me to buy, read and write new content. For you, the price remains the same, so no problem :)

Note: You can check this Excel sheet where I consolidate all the books that I read.

Before diving into the list, here are few interesting stats from the list

No of books I read across various months in 2020.

Books categorized in genres (though the categorization is not exact)

Books categorized based on the binding. Though I am a Paperback favorite, lock-down made me to choose others considerably.

Books categorized based on where I first heard about the book. Few of my favorites in this year were suggested by my friends.

The books are listed in no particular order. I categorized based on genres (though many books fall into multiple categories). In case you feel the blog is too lengthy to read in one stretch, read one genre at a time.

Feel free to click any of these to go for that genre:

1. Fiction

Title: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely fine

Author: Gail Honeyman

What’s the book about: Eleanor Oliphant is a 30-sh woman in Glasgow, whose life is pretty simple (and maybe considered as boring at the start but not actually) i.e cycle of work and sleep with a rigid, planned timetable. But she has a scarred past and the rest of the story uncovers what it is and how she feels about it, opens herself up.

Recommends for: This book is for someone who feels they are mentally depressed, has a lot of emotional difficulties and buried their emotions very deep, can’t open up to society. The only way to survive is to open up, express it to someone whom you believe instead of suppressing as the ones which are suppressed only rebounds and the life become difficult.

Read GoodReads review, or buy from Amazon.

Title: A Visit From the Goon Squad

Author: Jennifer Egan

What’s the book about: With unique writing skills, Jennifer Egan describes the story of a band from their 1960s to 2020s in a non linear fashion

Recommends for: Someone who loves complex narrations and want a challenging fictional read.

Read GoodReads review, or buy from Amazon.

Title: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Author: Mark Haddon

What’s the book about: It starts with a small child searching for the murderer who killed a dog. How he investigates, what he finds out and his reactions towards the new findings is the rest of the novel.

Recommends for: Someone who loves reading quirky novels as the child is autistic and the author’s narration is unique.

Read GoodReads review, or buy from Amazon.

Title: All the Light We Cannot See

Author: Anthony Doerr

What’s the book about: It’s such an emotional story of Marie Laure (a blind girl) and Werner (an orphan) and the book is an absolute page-turner. The author used psychological tactics and made each chapter constrained to 1–2 pages so that reader is intact and he changed the narration in multiple timelines (Something similar to Nolan’s technique in movies). The author made a gripping and heart touching fiction connecting radio, some magical stone, an orphan and a blind girl.

Recommends for: Someone who loves WW-II backdrop themes, emotional.

Read GoodReads review, or buy from Amazon.

Title: Frankenstein

Author: Mary Shelley

What’s the book about: Have you ever thought about the changes that will be bought by the advent of technology. Currently, at most of the times, we are tasting the sweet deeds by this technology (AI etc;).

But what if it got feelings and try to attain freedom? Or comes to know that we (humans) treat it as inferior ? Or desires for something but we are opposing it to acquire that? In a sense restricting it though we are inferior in all senses

Check out this 19th century gothic classic.

Recommends for: Gothic fans

Read GoodReads review, or buy from Amazon

Title: The Trial

Author: Frank Kafka

What’s the book about: What if, one fine morning when you wake up, you got arrested without revealing the nature of the crime that you have committed !!!?

Explore how the main character finds himself in a case and how he tries to come out of it.

Recommends for: Quirky fiction lovers.

Read my blog, GoodReads review or buy from Amazon

Title: Three Men In A Boat

Author: Jerome K Jerome

What’s the book about: Have you ever had a trip with your close friends? Then your ‘gang’ might have The early-planner, the late-comer, the perfectionist, the repulsive one, the chef etc; where you had great time that you would like to cherish. Then this book will make you revisit some of those memories.

Recommends for: Timepass, comedy, travel gang.

Read my blog, GoodReads review or buy from Amazon.

2. Physics

Title: Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

Author: Carlo Rovelli

What’s the book about: The seven concepts that Carlo Rovelli discusses (in brief) are:

Relativity — Einstein Quantum Mechanics — Planck, Bohr Cosmos Particles — Standard model Quantum Gravity Probability, time and heat of blackholes — Boltzmann Consciousness — How, where and why thoughts arises etc;

Recommends for: Someone who is interested in physics and want a quick introduction to some of the famous theories.

Read GoodReads review, or buy from Amazon.

Title: The Order of Time

Author: Carlo Rovelli

What’s the book about: Just assume I gave you two images of the world (not satellite images, something which talks about all the processes going on in world) which are taken at different times. How can you say which one is old one and which one is new one? Check this book to know.

P.S: The answer is Entropy

Recommends for: Someone who is interested in physics and philosophy.

Read GoodReads review, or buy from Amazon

Title: What If?

Author: Randall Munroe

What’s the book about: Randall answers some of the most common childish questions in a scientific manner. Few of them are:

What if everybody pointed out a laser to an object? Can we move it (or change it’s color)? Can we build jet packs using machine guns? (inspired from all that Power rangers cartoon; ) What happens if everyone jumps on Earth at same time and same place? If every human on earth vanished suddenly, how long will it take for man-made things to vanish (or the light to go off, electricity to turn down etc;)

Recommends for: Someone who is interested in physics and wants to get answers for some of the childish questions we might have in childhood.

Read GoodReads review, or buy from Amazon.

Title: Physics Of The Impossible

Author: Michio Kaku

What’s the book about: If someone says that robots with emotions are impossible, the layman might agree but the knowledgeable one gives a smile and says “Do our previous generation fellows thought about self-driving cars?”

Michio Kaku splits various impossibilities to 3 classes:

Class 1 impossibilities: Nothing prevents for creation of these tech and is expected to come within 200 years

Class 2 impossibilities: Our present laws defy a bit but there is promising research going in this to make it possible within the next 1000 years

Class 3 impossibilities: No current laws in physics can explain and infact defy the possibilities

Recommends for: Someone who is interested in physics and science fiction.

Read GoodReads review, or buy from Amazon.

Title: Life 3.0

Author: Max Tegmark

What’s the book about: “Almost every species that existed on earth becomes extinct. How to prevent humankind from that?” Some intricate questions discussed in the book are:

1. Consciousness and AI?

2. What happens in the next 50 yrs?

3. What happens in the next 10000 yrs?

4. What happens in the next billion yrs?

Recommends for: AI, science lovers

Read my blog, GoodReads review or buy from Amazon.

3. Economics

Title: Reminiscences Of A Stock Operator

Author: Edwin Lefevre

What’s the book about: This book is about the journey of Larry Livingstone, a common man who started as a board boy and turned to a millionaire in the US stock market in the early 1900s. He makes and loses millions of dollars couple of times and this book is a journal describing his journey, his mistakes and lessons learnt.

Recommends for: Particularly Traders, though investors can get few good points and views of US stock market

Read GoodReads review, or buy from Amazon.

Title: Let’s Talk Money

Author: Monika Halan

What’s the book about: Discusses about various financial instruments in Indian market such as stock market, insurance, Mutual Funds etc;

Recommends for: Beginners interested to learn about personal finance.

Read my blog, GoodReads review or buy from Amazon.

Title: Poor Economics

Author: Abhijit V Banerjee and Esther Duflo

What’s the book about: Undoubtedly, poverty is one of the most difficult problem to eliminate from society. And from time immemorial, there is a huge gap between rich and poor with headlines such as:

“The top X percent billionaires has money equivalent to the bottom Y percent of people in the world” with X (0,1] and Y (50,80].

But “Is it completely the fault of Government?”

“The sad truth is the poor themselves are partly responsible (unknowingly) for becoming poorer.”

Recommends for: Someone who wants to understand how the poor makes decisions, Policy makers

Read my blog, GoodReads review or buy from Amazon

4. Self-help

Title: Predictably Irrational

Author: Dan Ariely

What’s the book about: We make irrational decisions and we all know that. But only some of us know that those decisions are predictable, repeatable and can be changed (not easily though). This book by Dan Ariely explores on some of those irrational decisions we make and how we can do better by simply listening to ourselves before deciding. Do read this book to understand how human behavior works and how we can be the real owners of our decisions where author demonstrates with a series of experiments. Few behaviors we might reflect are:

1. Why did you end up taking a year membership to that gym where a 6 months might be enough?

2. Why we go for the so called free-meal though we know it’s not a great choice?

3.Might feel okay when we steal an item from a shop (or grab extra pens from office) but feel guilty when we steal cash?

4. Commit ourselves that we will reduce 10kgs or read 100 books by the end of the year but couldn’t even reach half state? and so on…

Recommends for: Someone who is interested to know about our behavior. Also for management folks

Read GoodReads review, or buy from Amazon.

Title: MindSet: The New Psychology To Success

Author: Carl Dweck

What’s the book about:

Are you a kind of person who tries to start something but give up on that easily? Are you someone who feels like you can achieve without trying so much because you are capable of? Do you believe that your intelligence is born and fixed, and there is nothing much you can do to improve or believe that it can be changed? Do you feel happy when you achieve success without much hard work or didn’t succeed though you gave your 100%?

Check this book to understand the difference between fixed mindset and growth mindset from a Stanford psychologist.

Recommends for: Someone who is interested to change their lifestyle.

Read the blog, Read GoodReads review, or buy from Amazon

Title: Deep Work

Author: Cal Newport

What’s the book about: Are you one of those who switches between Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Tiktok, Snapchat, Twitter, YouTube and mails (basically the social media) while working? Have you ever felt like “Am I working in the middle of meetings or having meetings in the middle of work?” It maybe true that you will finish your work at the end of the day but just rethink whether you have satisfaction while doing that work? Then pick this book.

Recommends for: Almost everyone (as this is digital age and everyone is distracted in the ocean of social media)

Read my blog, GoodReads review or buy from Amazon

5. Memoirs

Title: I’ll be gone in the Dark

Author: Michelle McNamara

What’s the book about: Obsessed to catch the Golden State Killer, Michelle (a normal citizen) starts collecting all the data available and starts posting in her blog for crowdsourcing. She placed all the available incidents in this book which accounts for one of the true (and unsolved) crime that America has ever witnessed.

“He can laugh and be powerful only until he is at the back of the curtains. Once we see his face, he loses his power” — Modified quote from book

Recommends for: Someone who is into thriller. Though I should warn that, it’s not a fiction, so the narration might not make you feel like a crime-thriller.

Perk: This is available as a HBO series.

Read GoodReads review, or buy from Amazon

Title: Man’s Search For Meaning

Author: Viktor E. Frankl

What’s the book about: If you had ever felt that why all the difficulties in the world on you, why God is punishing you whatsoever you do, try to read this book. you might change your perspective.

Viktor Frankl talks about his experiences from Nazi camps during the WW-II. As he’s a doctor, this eventually leads to a new branch called Logotherapy. In one sentence,

“It’s about having a meaning for life, searching for it and living for it. You need to reflect on your future with positivity, not cling on something happened at past and worrying.”

Recommends for: Someone who feels depressed/suffering and believes that the entire world’s bad-luck is with them.

Read GoodReads review, or buy from Amazon

Title: When Breath Becomes Air

Author: Paul Kalanithi

What’s the book about:

Suppose you are a highly successful, respected person in your field and there’s no one to stop you from your dreams. But one day, you came to know that you are going to die.

What’s your reaction? What about Family, friends, successful career etc. For whom will you give more importance? Will you choose a painful experience but extending life for a short duration or a silent but instant death? Now suppose, your partner or very close acquaintance is in death bed and the doctor asked you to choose whether to proceed with painful experience but extending life or a silent death. What will you choose now?

Obviously there is no one-answer-for-all. Thinking about death is very uncomfortable but trust me, books like this prove that it’s necessary.

Paul Kalanithi, a neurosurgeon fights cancer but ultimately surrendered. This memoir describes his life incidents.

Recommends for: Everyone (as one or the other day we all die)

Read GoodReads review, or buy from Amazon.

Title: Educated

Author: Tara Westover

What’s the book about: How does it feel to be the youngest among a 7 children family whose parents (are highly suspicious about Govt) didn’t care about making a birth-certificate, forget about schooling, proper vaccination, hospital treatments, license and insurances? And how does it feel if you complete PhD from Cambridge coming from such a background.

Check this beautifully crafted memoir by Tara Westover.

Recommends for: Someone who feels that they can’t achieve because of hardships.

Read GoodReads review, or buy from Amazon

Title: Hit Refresh

Author: Satya Nadella

What’s the book about: Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft talks about his journey in his memoir, how he faced hardships and the bold decisions that he took.

Recommends for: Tech folks (mostly who are interested about Microsoft)

Read GoodReads review, or buy from Amazon.

Title: Shoedog: A Memoir by the creator of NIKE

Author: Phil Knight

What’s the book about: Whenever you look at the stories of successful companies, it is exciting to see how the founders are highly passionate towards their dreams. While most of us are aware of the anecdotes like “college-dropout-making-computers” (Microsoft) or “connectivity-from-dorms” (Facebook), we might not have heard the stories of other companies. Phil Knight, made an attempt to share his journey in creating Nike with his memoir, “Shoe dog”. It’s heart touching, a fascinating journey and has philosophical aspects. His life (or maybe his narration) is somewhat cinematic where the protagonist explores the world, takes risks, has ups and downs and finally builds this huge empire that we see today.

Recommends for: Someone who seeks inspiration/wants to take risk but are not sure.

Read my blog, GoodReads review or buy from Amazon.

Title: The Diary Of A Young Girl

Author: Anne Frank

What’s the book about: Literally everyone’s inner feeling in May 2020: Currently, we are in lockdown and are in home for past 50 days or so. If anyone of you feels that “What’s this torture to me?”, then you should definitely read this book which describes about a family who goes for a hideout for weeks during WW-II. We have social media, TV, internet and a lot of other distractions yet, we feel so lonely during lockdown and feels it as a “prison” and want to go out.

Favourite lines from book:

Paper has more patience than people You only really get to know a person after a fight. Only then you can judge their true character The apple never falls far from the tree Riches, prestige, everything can be lost. But the happiness in your heart can only be dimmed: it will always be there, as long as you live, to make you happy again Deep down, the young are lonelier than the old

Recommends for: Everyone (as lockdown is one common thing that we all experienced)

Read GoodReads review, or buy from Amazon.

6. Biology

Title: The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat

Author: Oliver Sacks

What’s the book about: This book deals with the extreme bizarre neurological cases observed by Dr. Oliver Sacks in the 19th century. He claims that every case needs to be treated separately because some patients would like to have a disease (yes, it may sound strange but read it) rather than getting cured while some patients feel bad after it’s cured etc; It’s a bit technical and somewhat difficult to follow for a normal reader so choose accordingly after reading the review.

Have you ever felt that a disease is something that just destroys the person i.e the affected will be unhappy for the rest of their life?

If you think it’s a YES, definitely read this book to know why you might not be correct. If you say it’s a NO (means you already know few people with some peculiar diseases who lead happy life), then maybe this adds new perspective and lots of extra information. (I am not supporting that it’s good to have a disease but their cases teach a lot about life)

Recommends for: Someone who is interested to know about various neurological conditions.

Read GoodReads review, or buy from Amazon.

Title: She Has Her Mother’s Laugh

Author: Carl Zimmer

What’s the book about: I believed Genetics = Hereditary before I came across this book and it justifies why it’s not the same.

Most of us always think that “This is out of my scope, I cant do anything, because it’s GENES” when it comes to obesity, height, color, diseases etc; Is it true? Is heredity all about genes passing from parents from offspring (By now, you might guess it as NOT, but what else is there). Can you believe that we can eradicate malaria from earth by injecting some gene to one mosquito and give some time for it to breed with others so they effectively become potent (roughly speaking)?

Recommends for: Someone interested in genetics/biology

Perk: The recent Nobel Prize for Chemistry 2020 was awarded to scientists who worked on CRISPR (in layman’s terms it’s a gene editing technology) and this book contains a great detail about it which can be followed by a beginner till an extent.

Read GoodReads review, or buy from Amazon.

Title: Are We Smart Enough To Know How Smart Animals Are?

Author: Frans De Waal

What’s the book about: For those who feel animals are dumb because they can’t speak or read or do math, try to swim for 100s of kms without any technology. Try to fly. Or atleast try to walk 100s of kms (majority can’t do)

The main point is, “Evolution helps certain organisms to learn certain things.” Metaphorically, What’s the use of sand in a desert?

Recommends for: Someone interested in biology and animal lovers. Non animal lovers must read to understand about animals.

Perk: The Netflix docuseries “Explained” has an episode on this.

Read GoodReads review, or buy from Amazon

Title: The Brain: The Story of You

Author: David Eagleman

What’s the book about: Itoffers explanations to

Who am I? What is reality? Who’s in control? How do I decide? Do I need you? Who will we be?

Recommends for: Someone interested in neuroscience, wants to learn about brain, decision making.

Read my blog, GoodReads review or buy from Amazon.

Title: Why We Sleep

Author: Matthew Walker

What’s the book about: Assuming we sleep 8 hrs/day, on an average, we cover about 1/3rd of our life in sleep. So, have you ever thought “What are you doing in that 33% of your life time and how it is affecting the rest 67%?” which can be rephrased as “Why we sleep?” Few questions such as

Is coffee good for sleep? Why jet lag occurs? Why old people forget more often? Why do dreams occur? Is exercise before bedtime suggestible? How smartphones effect our sleep? How many hours is recommended to sleep?

are answered in this book (and my blog)

Recommends for: Someone interested in neuroscience, wants to learn about sleep.

Read my blog, GoodReads review or buy from Amazon.

7. Society

Title: Utopia For Realists

Author: Rutger Bregman

What’s the book about: Rutger Bregman offers few bold ideas such as

Universal basic income: No strings attached 15 hour work week: Enjoy leisure time Open borders for immigrants

for a utopian future. Each idea is supported with facts and experiments.

Recommends for: Policy makers, learn about world inequalities and some tools to fight.

Read GoodReads review, or buy from Amazon.

Title: Invisible Women

Author: Caroline Criado Perez

What’s the book about:

Is your smartphone not fitting properly in your hand or pocket (or) seat belt not proper (or) can’t put your leg on ABC of car seamlessly? The drugs suggested by doctors aren’t working on you Spends almost 60–80% of the time in home Travels more in public transport Gets diseases/body pains etc; at an early age Making a higher life expectancy but a suffering one Has less access to education, technology, household assets, money and less influence in making decisions Can’t lift objects with ease (though it’s written as Standards on it and your opposite gender is lifting easily) Working a lot but couldn’t make income from that work

If the answer is YES for most of the questions then probably you are a WOMAN

Pick this book to understand why this is happening.

Recommends for: Policy makers, learn about feminism and some tools to fight.

Read GoodReads review, or buy from Amazon.

Title: Why I am an Atheist

Author: Bhagat Singh

What’s the book about:

We all have few questions in our mind such as:

Does God really exist? If so, why did he create this universe? And humankind with all these miseries in the world? What about incarnations, prayers etc;

In this short book we get to see the views of Bhagat Singh who turned out from a theist to an atheist

Recommends for: Everyone

Read my blog, GoodReads review or buy from Amazon.

P.S: Do share and clap if you find something useful. And, if you have any suggestions for 2021 list, do let me know. Check this personal website to know more about me.