A running shelf of the 203 books I’ve finished, grouped by genre. Within each shelf they’re ordered by how much I liked them, then by when I read them.
Science Fiction & Fantasy 29
- Words of Radiance (Stormlight Archive)
The second entry in a vast saga of magic, politics, and ancient oaths.
- The Way of Kings (Stormlight Archive)
Multiple characters struggle across a war-torn world where ancient magic resurfaces.
- Circe
Reimagines the story of Circe, the mythological witch from The Odyssey, tracing her transformation from a scorned nymph to a formidable sorceress.
- The Ocean at the End of the Lane
A man returns to his childhood home and remembers a series of fantastical and terrifying events involving a mysterious girl and ancient, otherworldly forces.
- The Three-Body Problem
A secret military project in China sends a signal into space, and the alien civilization that receives it is on the brink of collapse.
- Nexus (The Nexus Trilogy Book 1)
A near-future thriller where a brain-enhancing drug sparks political and ethical upheaval.
- Children of Time
Humanity encounters an uplifted spider civilization.
- Rhythm of War (Stormlight Archive)
The fourth installment deepens character conflicts amidst world-altering events.
- Klara and the Sun
An android observes human life while serving as a companion to a sick child.
- Death’s End (The Three-Body Problem Book 3)
Final installment of the Remembrance trilogy where humanity faces extinction-level decisions.
- The Dark Forest (The Three-Body Problem Book 2)
Facing an impending alien invasion, humanity develops a desperate defense plan based on a dark, game-theory-inspired view of cosmic sociology.
- The Wandering Earth
Earth is moved across space to escape the dying sun.
- The Memory Police
On an island where objects — and memories of them — vanish by decree, resistance forms.
- Sea of Tranquility
A time-bending exploration of humanity across centuries, following mysterious anomalies that link distant lives.
- Only Forward (Voyager Classics)
A man journeys through bizarre neighborhoods to find a missing person in a strange future city.
- The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
Award-winning collection blending sci-fi and folklore with emotional depth.
- Dawnshard (Stormlight Archive)
A short tale set between Stormlight books featuring a perilous sea voyage.
- Oathbringer (Stormlight Archive)
Highking Dalinar confronts his past while uniting warring nations.
- Semiosis: A Novel of First Contact
Human colonists encounter sentient flora.
- Exhalation
A collection of science fiction short stories exploring profound philosophical questions about humanity, consciousness, free will, technology, and time.
- The Handmaid's Tale
In the totalitarian society of Gilead, a woman is forced into sexual servitude as a Handmaid and must navigate a world of oppression to survive.
- The Fifth Season: The Broken Earth, Book 1
In a continent wracked by cataclysmic seismic events, three women with earth-shattering power navigate the end of the world and a society that fears them.
- Blindsight (Firefall Book 1)
A transhuman crew investigates a mysterious alien signal and confronts the limits of sentience.
- Edgedancer (Stormlight Archive)
A young girl learns to use her powers while helping the forgotten.
- Recursion
A mysterious affliction drives its victims mad with memories of lives they never lived, unraveling a vast, reality-bending conspiracy.
- Dark Matter
A physicist is abducted into a dizzying multiverse of alternate lives, forcing him to battle his way back to his own reality and family.
- Project Hail Mary
An amnesiac astronaut awakens on a lone mission in deep space to find he is humanity's last hope for survival.
- Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives
A set of whimsical speculative visions of what happens after death.
- Upgrade
A man discovers he's been genetically enhanced and must confront those behind the experiment.
Literary & Contemporary Fiction 27
- Siddhartha
A young man's spiritual journey toward enlightenment in ancient India, exploring the nature of wisdom and self-discovery.
- The Dutch House: Longlisted for the Women’s Prize 2020
A brother and sister navigate decades shaped by the home they lost.
- Homegoing
Traces the descendants of two half-sisters in 18th-century Ghana through 300 years of history, one who marries an Englishman and one sold into slavery.
- The Overstory
Interwoven stories centered around forests and ecology.
- Normal People
Follows the complex and tender relationship between two Irish teenagers as they navigate social class, family, and love from school to university.
- Em and the Big Hoom
A poignant novel about a young man's coming of age in Bombay while navigating his mother's bipolar disorder and its profound impact on his family.
- The Catcher in the Rye
A cynical teenager wanders New York after being expelled from school.
- Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Follows two friends who build a hit video game empire while navigating ambition and emotional complexity.
- Anxious People: The No. 1 New York Times bestseller, now a Netflix TV Series
A failed bank robber accidentally takes an apartment viewing hostage.
- Little Fires Everywhere
The intertwined fates of a picture-perfect family and an enigmatic mother-daughter duo are upended by secrets, art, and a contentious custody battle.
- Men without Women: Stories
Murakami's collection of melancholy stories about men navigating life without the women they loved.
- After Dark
A young woman wanders through Tokyo at night encountering strange happenings.
- Babel, or the Necessity of Violence
Students at a magical translation institute uncover the cost of empire.
- Ghostwritten
A series of seemingly unrelated lives intersect through mysterious forces.
- Beautiful World, Where Are You
Two friends navigate relationships and purpose in modern Ireland.
- Dear Edward: The heart-warming New York Times bestseller
A boy is the sole survivor of a plane crash and must rebuild his life.
- A Gentleman in Moscow
An aristocrat is sentenced to house arrest in a grand Moscow hotel in 1922, where he discovers a new, richer world within its walls.
- Ayako
A dark portrait of a family's corruption in postwar Japan.
- A Passage to India
Explores cultural tensions between Indians and British during colonial rule.
- Falling Walls
A young man's struggle for success in pre-independence India amid social decay.
- 2034: A Novel of the Next World War
A speculative account of how a future U.S.-China conflict spirals into global war.
- Wild Dark Shore
A mysterious woman washes ashore on a remote island where a family guards precious seeds, uncovering dark secrets as storms intensify.
- Cloud Cuckoo Land
Multiple timelines connect through a mysterious ancient text.
- Carrie Soto is Back
A retired tennis champion returns for one last shot at greatness.
- Apeirogon
Two fathers—one Israeli, one Palestinian—bond over shared loss.
- Love in the Time of Cholera
A man waits decades to reunite with his lifelong love.
- Memories of My Melancholy Whores
A 90-year-old man seeks intimacy and confronts his past.
Thriller, Mystery & Crime 24
- Battle Royale: Remastered
A class of students is forced by a totalitarian government to fight to the death on a remote island.
- The Godfather
Follows the rise of the Corleone crime family and its reluctant heir.
- The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
A man wakes up in the body of a different guest at a party each day and must solve a murder before the day resets again.
- The Shadow of the Wind
A boy discovers a mysterious book that draws him into a decades-old literary mystery.
- Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
The gripping inside story of the massive fraud at the blood-testing startup Theranos, detailing its rise and fall orchestrated by its charismatic CEO.
- The Firm
A young lawyer uncovers criminal activity at his prestigious firm.
- First Lie Wins
A woman living under false identities must outplay her enemies before being exposed.
- Age of Vice
A fatal accident reveals the dark underbelly of power and privilege in India.
- Hostage
A tense narrative revolving around confinement and negotiation.
- The Chestnut Man
A psychological thriller where two Copenhagen detectives hunt a serial killer who leaves behind a small chestnut doll at each gruesome crime scene.
- American Dirt: The heartstopping story that will live with you for ever
A Mexican mother and son flee a drug cartel and attempt a dangerous journey to the U.S. border.
- Dark Echo
A group of explorers on a salvage mission discover a long-lost luxury liner, only to find themselves haunted by the dark secrets within the ghost ship.
- The Silence of the Lambs
FBI trainee Clarice Starling seeks help from imprisoned killer Hannibal Lecter to catch another murderer.
- Salvation of a Saint (Detective Galileo Series)
A seemingly perfect wife becomes the prime suspect in her husband’s death, with a scientist aiding the investigation.
- Out
Four factory workers get entangled in a brutal murder cover-up.
- The Bullet That Missed: A Thursday Murder Club Mystery
A quirky group of seniors investigates a journalist’s disappearance with charm and wit.
- The Decagon House Murders
Mystery club members are picked off one by one on a remote island.
- The Silent Patient
A psychotherapist becomes obsessed with his new patient, a famous painter who has gone silent after allegedly murdering her husband.
- Newcomer (The Detective Kaga Series Book 2)
A detective solves a neighborhood mystery through patient questioning and empathy.
- Verity
A struggling writer uncovers disturbing truths while finishing another author’s novel.
- MW
A corrupted man enacts vengeance with chilling precision.
- What Have You Done
A man is drawn into a murder investigation linked to his past.
- Six Stories
An investigative journalist re-examines a twenty-year-old cold case through a series of six podcast interviews, uncovering dark secrets and conflicting truths.
- Of Love and Other Demons
A girl believed to be possessed becomes the center of a tragic romance.
Business & Economics 23
- Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail
Analyzes historical patterns of rising and declining world powers to predict future trends.
- The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons in Creative Leadership from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company
Former Disney CEO Robert Iger shares leadership principles and stories from his career, including his role in acquiring Pixar, Marvel, and Lucasfilm.
- Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making
Lessons from the creator of the iPod on building world-changing products.
- The Nvidia Way: Jensen Huang and the Making of a Tech Giant
Chronicles Nvidia’s rise under Jensen Huang and its domination of AI hardware.
- The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age
Predicts the decline of the nation-state and the rise of autonomous individuals empowered by new technologies like cryptography.
- Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction
Examines the methods and traits of ordinary people with an extraordinary ability to predict future events with remarkable accuracy.
- It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work
Advocates for a low-stress, distraction-free work culture.
- Let's Talk Money: You've Worked Hard for It, Now Make It Work for You
A practical guide to personal finance for Indians, offering a simple system for managing money, from banking and insurance to investing for life goals.
- Measure What Matters: OKRs: The Simple Idea that Drives 10x Growth
Venture capitalist John Doerr introduces the goal-setting system of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) that has helped drive success at companies like Google.
- The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley are Changing the World
Chronicles the parallel rise of Uber and Airbnb, detailing their disruptive strategies, controversies, and the intense ambition of their founders.
- The Cold Start Problem: How to Start and Scale Network Effects
Explains how to overcome the early phase challenges of building network-based products.
- Manage Your Day-to-Day
Essays from creatives on building consistent workflows.
- High Growth Handbook: Scaling Startups From 10 to 10,000 People
A playbook for navigating the challenges of scaling a high-growth technology startup, offering practical advice on management, recruiting, and fundraising.
- Facebook: The Inside Story
A deeply reported account of Facebook's rise, detailing its internal culture, pivotal decisions, and the controversies that shaped its global impact.
- What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture
Argues that a company's culture is defined by its actions, not its stated values, using historical examples to illustrate how to build a lasting culture.
- The Culture Map (INTL ED): Decoding How People Think, Lead, and Get Things Done Across Cultures
Provides a practical framework for navigating the complexities of cross-cultural communication in the global business world.
- Principles
Ray Dalio outlines his personal and organizational principles.
- The Tatas: How a Family Built a Business and a Nation
Chronicles the Tata family’s rise and impact on India’s economy.
- How to Day Trade for a Living: A Beginner’s Guide to Trading Tools and Tactics, Money Management, Discipline and Trading Psychology
Teaches beginner traders the tools and mindset required for intraday trading.
- Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman
The founder of Patagonia shares his unconventional business philosophy, emphasizing environmental responsibility, employee welfare, and quality.
- A Bank for the Buck
The inside story of HDFC Bank’s rise in India.
- Bulls, Bears and Other Beasts
A gripping account of the Indian stock market's journey through its most turbulent phases, told from the perspective of a veteran market insider.
- Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies
Presents a set of strategies for growing a startup at a breakneck pace to achieve market dominance, even at the cost of efficiency.
Memoir & Biography 23
- Kitchen Confidential: 25th Anniversary Edition
Anthony Bourdain exposes the chaotic and addictive world of professional kitchens.
- The Code Breaker
Follows Jennifer Doudna and the race to harness gene editing.
- From Third World to First: The Singapore Story
Singapore’s founding prime minister recounts its rapid economic rise.
- Educated: A Memoir
A woman escapes a survivalist upbringing through learning.
- Open
A candid memoir of the tennis star’s struggles and triumphs.
- Steve Jobs
Biography of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, covering his visionary rise, failures, and lasting impact on technology and culture.
- When Breath Becomes Air
A moving memoir by a young neurosurgeon who, diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, confronts mortality and explores what makes life worth living.
- Elon Musk
Biography of Elon Musk’s relentless pursuit of innovation across electric cars, rockets, and AI.
- What It Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence
The Blackstone founder shares principles of success and resilience.
- The Lion Tracker’s Guide to Life
Lessons on presence and purpose inspired by tracking lions in the wild.
- On All Fronts: The Education of a Journalist
A CNN correspondent recounts her life covering wars worldwide.
- Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
A therapist chronicles her own experience undergoing therapy.
- The Diary of a Young Girl
The journal of a Jewish girl hiding from Nazis in Amsterdam.
- Half - Lion: How P.V. Narasimha Rao Transformed India
Biography of the prime minister who liberalized India's economy.
- Burn Rate
The Bonobos founder recounts building a startup while secretly battling bipolar disorder.
- In My Time of Dying
Sebastian Junger's exploration of his near-death experience and what it revealed about mortality, consciousness, and the nature of existence.
- Mortality
Final essays written by Hitchens during his battle with cancer.
- Man's Search for Meaning
A psychiatrist's memoir of his experiences in Nazi concentration camps and his development of logotherapy, a therapy based on finding purpose in life.
- That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix by the first CEO and co-founder Marc Randolph
The inside story of Netflix's creation, told by its co-founder and first CEO, covering the initial idea, early struggles, and entrepreneurial spirit.
- Our Moon Has Blood Clots
A Kashmiri Pandit recounts his community’s forced displacement.
- Shahrukh Khan: Legend, Icon, Star
Traces Shah Rukh Khan’s ascent from outsider to one of the world’s biggest film icons.
- The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution
The story of secretive mathematician Jim Simons, who pioneered quantitative investing and built Renaissance Technologies into the most successful hedge fund in history.
- Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built
An insider's account of how Jack Ma, a former English teacher, founded and built Alibaba into one of the world's largest e-commerce companies.
Graphic Novels & Comics 17
- Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth
A graphic novel following a lonely man reconnecting with his estranged father while exploring themes of isolation and generational trauma.
- Munnu: A Boy from Kashmir
A coming-of-age graphic novel about a boy growing up in conflict-ridden Kashmir, where the inhabitants are depicted as endangered hangul deer.
- Maus
A son depicts his father’s Holocaust survival using mice and cats as allegory.
- The Complete Persepolis
A woman’s coming-of-age in revolutionary Iran.
- Daytripper
Follows multiple versions of a man’s life across different pivotal moments.
- The Best We Could Do
Family’s escape from Vietnam and rebuilding in the U.S.
- The Arab of the Future: Volume 1
Cartoonist recounts growing up in Gaddafi-era Libya and Assad’s Syria.
- Rolling Blackouts: Dispatches from Turkey, Syria, and Iraq
Graphic narrative documenting journalists covering war-torn regions.
- Burma Chronicles
Cartoonist recounts life in military-ruled Myanmar.
- Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations
Dialogues exploring identity and motherhood in America.
- Logicomix: An epic search for truth
A graphic exploration of Bertrand Russell’s quest to ground mathematics in logic.
- Watchmen (2019 Edition)
A deconstruction of the superhero genre set in an alternate 1985 America, where a murder mystery uncovers a vast conspiracy with world-altering consequences.
- Asterios Polyp
A fallen architect reexamines his life after losing everything.
- The Arab of the Future 2
The author's experiences growing up in Syria and France.
- Alex + Ada: The Complete Collection
A man falls in love with an android he awakens beyond her programming.
- Alone
A silent tale of a man living alone in a lighthouse and the meaning he finds in solitude.
- The Incal: Digital Omnibus
A detective finds a mystical artifact that thrusts him into galactic conflict.
Science & Technology 15
- The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human
Explores the story of the cell and how understanding it reshaped modern medicine.
- The Emperor of All Maladies
A biography of cancer tracing humanity’s battle against it.
- Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies
Explores universal scaling patterns across organisms and companies.
- The Beginning of Infinity
Argues that human knowledge can expand indefinitely through reason.
- The Gene: An Intimate History
A comprehensive history of the gene, weaving scientific concepts with the personal stories of scientists and families affected by genetic diseases.
- The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations
Examines how energy systems shape world politics and future conflicts.
- Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology
Explores the global struggle for control over microchip manufacturing.
- Lifespan: Live Longer and Healthier
A geneticist presents his theory on why we age and argues that aging should be treated as a disease that can be slowed, stopped, or even reversed.
- Human Compatible: AI and the Problem of Control
Proposes redesigning AI systems to be provably aligned with human values.
- The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health and Disease
An evolutionary biologist explains how the human body evolved and why this legacy contributes to many modern chronic diseases.
- Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality
Proposes that reality itself is a mathematical structure.
- The Selfish Gene
This book frames evolution from the perspective of the gene, arguing that organisms are "survival machines" for these replicating molecules.
- The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language (Penguin Science)
Argues that humans are born with an innate capacity for language.
- Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future
Explores China’s aggressive push toward high-tech dominance.
- Gene Machine: The Race to Decipher the Secrets of the Ribosome
A memoir by Nobel laureate Venki Ramakrishnan about the decades-long scientific race to uncover the structure of the ribosome, a key component of life.
Essays, Journalism & Other Non-fiction 9
- On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction
A classic manual on writing clear, engaging nonfiction.
- Masala Lab: The Science of Indian Cooking
Breaks down Indian cooking through scientific method and kitchen physics.
- The Obesity Code
Argues obesity is driven by hormonal imbalance, not calories.
- Born to Run
Investigates a reclusive tribe of superhuman runners and the secrets of endurance.
- The Inner Game of Tennis: The Ultimate Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance
A classic guide to mastering the mental side of any activity, focusing on overcoming self-doubt and distraction to achieve peak performance.
- Bottle of Lies: Ranbaxy and the Dark Side of Indian Pharma
An investigative exposé on the fraudulent practices at the Indian generic drug manufacturer Ranbaxy, revealing its systemic data fabrication and public health consequences.
- The Silent Coup: A History of India’s Deep State
Investigates the hidden political machinery in India.
- Read This If You Want to Take Great Photographs
A jargon-free introduction to the fundamentals of photography, offering simple explanations of key concepts illustrated with iconic images.
- The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable
An essay examining why modern society, particularly in literature, history, and politics, has failed to adequately address the urgency of climate change.
Psychology & Self-Improvement 9
- The Power of Now
A guide to spiritual enlightenment that emphasizes living fully in the present moment and transcending the pain-body and egoic mind.
- The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
A compilation of Naval Ravikant's wisdom on building wealth, finding happiness, and living a meaningful life through clear thinking and leverage.
- The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom
A social psychologist examines ten "Great Ideas" from ancient wisdom through the lens of modern science to explore the nature of happiness.
- The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
Explores why moral intuitions lead people to different political beliefs.
- The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life
Explores the unconscious, self-interested motives behind our behavior, arguing that we often conceal our true intentions from ourselves and others.
- The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer
Science-based strategies for achieving extreme performance.
- The Courage To Be Disliked
Uses dialogues to explain how embracing personal responsibility leads to freedom and happiness.
- Thinking, Fast and Slow
Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman explains how our minds operate with fast intuition and slow logic.
- No Limits: The Art and Science of High Performance
A guide to achieving peak performance across life domains by integrating principles from health, psychology, and business, written by the founder of Myntra.
Politics & Society 8
- The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter
Argues culture—not genes—is the primary driver of human success.
- The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution
Explores how political systems emerge across civilizations.
- Democracy on the Road: A 25 Year Journey through India
A journalist's account of covering two decades of Indian elections on the road, offering a unique, ground-level perspective on the country's vibrant democracy.
- Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society
Argues that our genes predispose us to build societies with common positive traits like love, friendship, cooperation, and learning.
- Juggernaut: The BJP Before Modi
Chronicle of BJP’s rise before Narendra Modi’s leadership.
- 10 Judgements That Changed India
Highlights landmark judicial decisions shaping Indian society.
- ANNIHILATION OF CASTE: with a reply to mahatma gandhi
Radical critique of caste-based oppression in India.
- Virtue Signaling
A critique of performative moral posturing in public discourse.
History 7
- The Lessons of History
Summary of historical patterns across civilizations.
- India After Gandhi
A sweeping history of India from 1947 to the present.
- India’s Struggle for Independence
A detailed history of India's fight against British rule.
- Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
Argues that Genghis Khan's Mongol Empire fostered trade, religious tolerance, and cultural exchange, laying groundwork for the modern world.
- Careless People
Investigates the real-life events that may have inspired The Great Gatsby.
- These Truths: A History of the United States
A comprehensive, one-volume narrative history of the United States that grapples with the nation's founding principles and its struggle to live up to them.
- India Unbound: from Independence to the Global Information age
A narrative history of India's economic journey from post-independence socialism to its rise as a global economic player in the information age.
Philosophy & Spirituality 5
- Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing
A provocative account of spiritual awakening that challenges conventional beliefs about enlightenment through raw, irreverent storytelling.
- Awareness
A guide to breaking free from unconscious living through radical self-awareness.
- The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse
A philosophical illustrated tale about unlikely friends discovering life’s gentle truths.
- A Little History of Religion (Little Histories)
An accessible overview of the history of world religions, explaining the origins, beliefs, and practices of major faiths in a clear and engaging manner.
- The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself
Guides readers to free themselves from inner limitations.
Other 7
- Do No Harm
- Flesh
- The Borrowed
- Crux
- The Essentials of Street Photography
- Culpability
- The Last Economy