Bookshelf

Jul 1, 2023

Dad visited my Bangalore apartment a while ago and he complimented me on the books I’d been reading. This made me feel rather warm. It’s common for friends to gloss over the contents of your shelf, but it’s special when your dad, who taught you what Yeah means and laughed when you told him you’d been skipping over that word in dialogues, finds himself genuinely interested in a couple of your favourites and delivers a smile of approval.

Grouping my now-made-memorable-shelf by author:

• Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates

• Liars in Love, Richard Yates

• Eleven Kinds of Loneliness, Richard Yates

• Beloved, Toni Morrison

• Jazz, Toni Morrison

• Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace

• The Pale King, David Foster Wallace

• Consider the Lobster, David Foster Wallace

• Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, David Foster Wallace

• A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace

• Play It As It Lays, Joan Didion

• Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion

• Outline, Rachel Cusk

• To The River, Olivia Laing

• The Lonely City, Olivia Laing

• The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage, Sydney Padua

• The Sea, The Sea, Iris Murdoch

• The Summer Book, Tove Jansson

• Eve’s Hollywood, Eve Babitz

• Slow Days, Fast Company, Eve Babitz

• The Stupid Hour, Rachel Kroll

• In Love, Alfred Hayes

• The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs

• Who Gets What and Why, Alvin Roth

• Dataclysm, Christian Rudder

• The Design of Everyday Things, Don Norman

• Masters of Doom, David Kushner

• Rules of Civility, Amor Towles

• A Writer’s Diary, Virginia Woolf

• Total Competition, Ross Brawn and Adam Parr

• The Years, Annie Ernaux

• Compass, Mathias Enard

• The Soul of a New Machine, Tracy Kidder

• The Innovator’s Dilemma, Clay Christensen

• How Will You Measure Your Life, Clay Christensen, James Allworth, and Karen Dillon

• Wish Her Safe at Home, Stephen Banatar

• Nocilla Lab, Agustín Fernández Mallo

• How To Build a Car, Adrian Newey

• Hacker’s Delight, Henry S. Warren, Jr.

I think this could be a lot more interesting. I seem to enjoy books in which I can find (or shoehorn my imagination of) an instruction manual for living my life, because I think I do get it wrong sometimes. I realise that most people turn to the self-help/non-fiction section for that, but I just find those titles horribly boring; the ones I’ve been unfortunate enough to read (not included above) have been reductive, insecure, and consistently dishonest. I hope I find the exception to my experiences’ rule soon.