More than 110 books which Wowed me...

This post is dedicated to my dear , dear and never-met friend Mrs. Rebecca Saenz; she has been a great support for so many years past … and a TRUE LOVER OF LITERATURE. Thank you so much, Mrs. Saenz.

Some of my present and ex-students as also some of you who read my blog regularly has asked me offline for a book-list. Here goes… & I have indeed read every single one — blush, blush

(Do a Google on each and get hold of them…all the major book chains and libraries stock them except for a few of the religious books. For them contact the nearest Hindu and Catholic monasteries…Enjoy…don’t trust in Gurus; these books will guide you and they are just paths for you to further explore. )

1. Siddhartha Herman Hesse
2. The Buddenbrooks Thomas Mann
3. The Stand Stephen King
4. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers
5. Women in Love D H Lawrence
6. The Pillars of the Earth Ken Follett
7. The Doomsday Conspiracy Sidney Sheldon
8. Nicholas Nickleby Charles Dickens
9. The Pickwick Papers Charles Dickens
10. Far from the Madding Crowd Thomas Hardy
11. Lord Jim Joseph Conrad
12. Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad
13. The House of the Spirits Isabel Allende
14. Salem’s Lot Stephen King
15. Interview with a Vampire Anne Rice
16. The Prayer of the Frog ( 2 vols ) Anthony D’Mello
17. Sophie’s Choice William Styron
18. Under the Greenwood Tree Thomas Hardy
19. Cider with Rosie Laurie Lee
20. How Green was my Valley Richard Llewellyn
21. Everything that you can lay your hands on by Jorges Luis Borges
22. Areopagitica John Milton
23. The Shining Stephen King
24. Odd Thomas Dean Koontz
25. Short Stories Saadat Hasan Manto
26. Ecclesiastes or Quoheleth Old Testament
27. The Stars Look Down A J Cronin
28. Vanity Fair W.M. Thackeray
29. 2001: A Space Odyssey Arthur C Clarke
30. Bonfire of the Vanities Tom Wolfe
31. Elephant Song Wilbur Smith
32. Works by Cicero
33. Meditations Marcus Aurelius
34. First Jesuit: St. Ignatius Loyola Mary Purcell
35. Hamlet Shakespeare
36. Michelangelo Freud
37. Poetry by: Blake (start with Auguries of Innocence), Coleridge, Shelley, Keats’ Lamia, Every poem Yeats, the verse translation of Beowulf by Seamus Heaney.
38. A Moveable Feast Hemingway
39. Poems by Whitman and Sylvia Plath ( also read her letters)
40. Texas James Michener
41. Something Wicked this Way Comes Ray Bradbury
42. Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury
43. Works by Edgar Allan Poe and Sheridan Le Fanu
44. Dracula Bram Stoker
45. All works by Kalidasa
46. The Original Mahabharata ( P.Lal’s Translation)
47. Katha Upanishad translated and annotated by Swami Gambhirananda
48. Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte
49. A Room of One’s Own Virginia Woolf
50. Brighton Rock Graham Greene
51. The Heart of the Matter Graham Greene
52. All the Pretty Horses Cormac McCarthy
53. Chronicles of Barsetshire ( series ) By Anthony Trollope
54. The Lord of the Rings JRR Tolkien
55. Everything by Loius L’Amour
56. As the Crow Flies Jeffrey Archer
57. Come be My Light Brian Kolodiejchuk
58. Writings of St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila. Also Juliana of Norwich’s works. Include The Philokalia (Anonymous) and Thomas of Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ.
59. Canterbury Tales ( full ) by Chaucer, The Duchess of Malfi by Webster & Timon of Athens by Shakespeare
60. Inferno Dante ( translation by Dorothy L Sayers)
61. The Name of the Rose Umberto Eco
62. Poems by John Donne, TS Eliot, Wilfred Owen, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow & Emily Bronte
63. Moby Dick by Herman Melville & The Lat of the Mohicans by James F. Cooper
64. The Call of the Wild Jack London
65. The Seven Storey Mountain Thomas Merton
66. The Rule of St.Benedict and The Spiritual Exercises by St.Ignatius of Loyola
67. Death Comes for the Archbishop Willa Cather
68. Narcissus and Goldmund Herman Hesse
69. The Rise of the Third Reich William Shirer
70. The Penguin Classic edition of The Crucible Arthur Miller
71. The Origins of the Second World War A.J.P. Taylor
72. Lord of the Flies William Golding
73. Rising Sun Michael Crichton
74. Vyadha Gita (Hunter’s Gita) (any Ramakrishna Mission translation); Narada Bhakti Sutras, Asthavakra Gita & Karma Yoga by Swami Vivekananda. Also read Swami Turiyananda’s Letters.
75. The Berlin Trilogy by Christopher Ishwerwood.
76. 1984 & Animal Farm George Orwell
77. The Historian Elisabeth Kostova
78. Seven habits of Highly Effective People Stephen R Covey
79. The Success Principles Jack Canfield
80. Emma, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
81. Poems by Sir Walter Scott, Robert Burns and A.K. Ramanujan
82. A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell; The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant, the whole 8 volumes on the History of Philosophy by Frederick Copleston, the two volumes on Indian philosophy by Radhakrishnan
83. The War of the End of the World Mario Vargas Llosa
84. The Good Earth Pearl S Buck
85. Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
86. Zorba the Greek, Saint Francis & the Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis.
87. The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty
88. Every single critical work by Frank Kermode; every single book length work by Harold Bloom, Kathleen Raine, Rene Girard, Michel Foucault and Edward Said. Also read up everything by Romila Thapar, Karl Rahner, Karl Barth, Rudolf Bultmann, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Roland Barthes, Victor Frankl
89. Read every single book written by Agatha Christie (this includes her romances), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (also his sci-fi novels).
90. The Far Pavilions by M.M. Kaye; Bhawani Junction by John Masters, In this House of Brede by Rumer Godden
91. All philosophical works by Iris Murdoch including The Sovereignty of Good. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie & The abbess of Crewe by Dame Muriel Spark.
92. Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro; Circle of Friends by Maeve Binchy; Catholics by Brian Moore, The Heather Blazing by Colm Toibin; The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris; A History of God by Karen Armstrong, Cannery Row by John Steinbeck; the Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore; Lonesome Dove Larry McMurtry; The Man Who Knew Infinity Robert Kanigel; I Leap over the Wall by Monica Baldwin
93. The Rule of the Carthusians & The Story of a Soul by the Little Flower of Jesus
94. Doctors and The Class by Erich Segal.
95. Browning’s’ poetry including Pippa Passes. Tennyson’s In Memoriam; A Portrait of the Artist as a young man by James Joyce, Asterix and Obelix comics.
96. Don’t sweat the Small Stuff by Richard Carlson and books by Suze Orman. Also read Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad, Poor Dad.
97. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
98. The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer; American psycho by Bret Easton Ellis and The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith.
99. Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, Raymond Chandler’s the Long Kiss Goodbye and The Big Sleep. Include The Laughing Policeman by Sjöwall and Wahlöö. Also tuck in The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson and James Clavell’s Shogun.

100. Bibhuti Bhushan Bandopadhyay’s Aranyak and the first two parts of the Apu Trilogy; throw in all of Tagore’s songs (no exclusions), Sarat Chatterjee’s Srikanta series and Devdas. Bankim Chatterjee’s Anandamath and Kapal Kundala, Tara Shankar Bannerjee’s Dhatri Debata; Jibananada Das’s poetry 9 both in English and Bengali); Manik Banerjee’s Padma Nadir Majhi; Tagore’s Gora Atin Bandopadhyay’s Neel Kantha Pakhir Khonje. ( all of these books are available in English)

101. Elie Wiesel Night

102. Nancy Klein M. An Infinity of Little Hours.

I have written this in one sitting tonight so that the best books come a-knocking to me…

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