Reading List
Sep 9, 2018 · 3 min read

Books I’ve read
- Society of Mind: A theory of how the mind works, by Marvin Minsky, the ever-so-popular name in Artificial Intelligence. I’ll call it my Bible. Read it after supper daily for at least an year, because you won’t be able to go through three pages in a row without having to note down your thought and contemplate for a while on the mind and your life. [PDF]
- Mein Kampf: The first volume written by Adolf Hitler when in prison for the unsuccessful attempt (called Beer Hall Putsch) to seize authority by force. I like to think of this book as his Statement of Purpose for applying to the post of Führer, containing not just his principles and the rationale behind them, but also a biographical account of all he’s been through as part of the bourgeois in Vienna before learning to lead them.
- Zero to One: A startup management mantra collection plus inspirational calls-to-action by Peter Thiel, the billionaire founder of PayPal, the first investor and still a Board member at Facebook, and currently chairman at Palantir (world’s 2nd largest startup after Uber). He refers to startups that incrementally push the frontiers of an industry as going from 1 to 2 or 2 to 10. But how do you leap from 0 to 1?
- Sentic Computing: A curation of academic progress in the fields of Sentiment Analysis, emotional models and Sentic Computing. Written by Erik Cambria, Assistant Professor at NTU, Singapore. [PDF]
- The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: A list of articles, interviews, lectures and talks by Richard Feynman, the phenomenal physicist and teacher.
- Scion of Ikshvaku: The first part of a trilogy by Amish Tripathi retelling the Ramayana with minimal magic and maximal analysis. The concepts of Ram Rajya, brewing up within Lord Rama as a child, and the masculine and feminine societies, feel quite relatable and worth pondering upon even (or especially) today.
- The Alchemist: My first read after a long time. This parable by Paul Coelho is a must-read for all, and a must-write-their-interpretation too. It's the closest thing to a religious text in the modern world. Having appreciated the intricacies of story development in this 150-page forced me to consider the efforts required to come up with humongous mythological parables like Ramayana and Mahabharata.
- Mortal Engines: Philip Reeve’s steampunk classic (that’s my favorite genre) about a post-apocalyptic world where cities (like London) are giant machines moving about chasing and attacking other cities.
- Deception Point: One of Dan Brown’s, telling a story of an elaborate (fictional) conspiracy and the rush to uncover it.
- Digital Fortress: Another one by Dan Brown. An amusing tale of espionage, adventure and a race against time to prevent a technological disaster.
- Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul: The classic collection of shorts based on (mostly) real stories with a certain theme. Thoroughly insightful and inspirational.
- Oliver Twist: A Charles Dickens story I read as a child. The powerful use of English was a little too much for me in second grade.
Books I’d like to read
Hoping to fill this someday too (and perhaps make another post for movies — boy, that’ll be long!). For now, I’ll get back to work.
- Sapiens
- The Lucknow Omnibus
