Books I Recommend

"Anyone who says they have only one life must not know how to read a book."
Anonymous

Please do yourself a favour. Read all or at least some of these books. And please do me a favour by suggesting more fabulous, timeless books which you know about and are not mentioned in this list. 
These are my personal favourites (in no particular order). 
Which are your favourites, the books you'll not tire of reading again and again? 



The Mahabharata by VedVyas (everyone, everything, every situation is covered in this epic, including The Gita.)

The Ramayana by Valmiki (epic tale of Aryan-Dravidian conflict)

Macbeth by William Shakespeare (Ambition, greed, crime and punishment)

Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare (everything about true love)

All the works of Jane Austen. (They still hold true! Pride & Prejudice is the most entertaining, Emma is the most mature.)

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Most loved, nerdy, taciturn, chivalrous and brilliant detective ever, period.)

At least some books by Rabindranath Tagore. (I recommend all...Nobel Prize!)

Palgrave's Golden Treasury (the best collection of Romantic-era English poetry)

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (it is way deeper and metaphorical than you think)

The Diary of A Young Girl by Anne Frank (a child's courage and hope against the Holocaust)

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (A book about the Great Depression that is not depressing. You will love Atticus Finch.The theme of human prejudice is still very relevant)

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (the most heart warming tale ever...of four sisters, their lives and loves, triumphs and tragedies on the backdrop of the American civil war)

Devdas by Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay (the iconic story of everlasting love, ego, unending devotion and tragic loss)

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (the author got it scarily right about our future!)

Paths of Glory by Lord Jeffrey Archer (Was the first one to scale Mt. Everest really Edmund Hillary? Or...the man whose body was discovered in 1999, 75 years after his expedition - George Mallory?)

All the Harry Potter books by J.K.Rowling (What? That's the greatest literary work of our times. Friendship, love, bravery, courage and honesty face off with dark ambition and hatred...with a lot of magic thrown in)

Animal Farm by George Orwell (Pigs rule a farm of hard working, long suffering animals. The most iconic line "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." Current political scenario, anyone?)

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (Rich symbolism....guilt, revenge, reward, hopes, "expectations"...some dearly beloved characters, Miss Havisham, an old spinster who is always wearing a wedding dress)

The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck (Pulitzer Prize! Nobel prize! Enough said!) 

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (tale of romance, willpower, changing loyalties, lush plantations and beloved lands, turbulent times...all woven together against the fabric of the American Civil War)


The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (iconic bestseller about choosing disgrace over compromising or giving up your ideals, with a dash of romance)

Dracula by Bram Stoker (read in 8th grade at school and I still can't sleep in a dark room at night without clutching my quilt all around me as if it were a shield of some sort. A sad streak of romance runs through the book.)

Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy (ideals of feminine purity, strong Christian symbolism, parallels between women and the Nature's bounty and the fertile Earth, injustice, abusive men, man falling from grace when he turns his face away from the bountiful Nature)

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (a man too busy for his family, too tied down by routine, a beautiful suffocating woman, a lecherous opportunist and a doomed romance that can only end in either shame or death)

Short Stories of O.Henry (with gems like Gift of the Magi and The Last Leaf, you'll miss something in life if you don't read O.Henry)

Short Stories of Maupassant (a master with a knack for heartrending sudden twists to his short stories....you will be left wanting to know more..notable works, The Diamond Necklace, Ball of Fat, Useless Beauty, The False Gems etc)

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Either the translation by Edward Fitzgerald or by Richard Le Gallienne (Sufi myticism in easy to understand, lyrical quatrains, on the mortal and transient nature of everything)

Heidi by Johanna Spyri (One of the most beloved works of fiction to come out of Switzerland, tale of a little orphan girl, living on the Swiss Alps and winning everyone over with her friendly nature, love and intelligence)

A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking (How did the universe begin?Where are its boundaries? What is the time and how does it flow? In a language we can understand)

Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard Feynman (Nobel Prize winning physicist with a great sense of humour and love for adventure and thrills narrates the funniest, most memorable incidents of his life.)

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (satire, dark comedy about an unsolvable logic loop/puzzle on the background of World War II, so famous that the English language took up the phrase "a Catch-22 situation" for problems that cannot be solved due to a rule built in the problem itself")

Lord of the Flies by William Golding (dystopian, disturbing, fallacies of human nature, confusion, individual gain vs common good, human nature for and against an ordered existence. Nobel Prize winning author. Enough said!)

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (tales of growing up along the banks of the Mississippi river, childhood classic, friendship, free-spirit, befriending a dark slave on the run, little adventures)

Lipstick Jungle by Candace Bushnell (three friends, New York's glamorous, ruthless, dog-eat-dog media and fashion world, three powerful women who have earned their well-deserved positions and will now do whatever it takes to stay on top...while juggling affairs, love, marriage, scandals, near bankruptcy and life...from the author of Sex and the City)

Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann (Three young, beautiful strugglers in New York City, the hard path to success, aided by bottles upon bottles of mind-numbing pills "dolls"....the terrible fall downwards)

Tales from Firozsha Baag by Rohinton Mistry (How endearing can a book get? 11 touching short stories about the residents of a Parsi-dominated apartment in Mumbai.)

India: A History by John Keay (sweeps across five millenia and tells the tale of the oldest and arguably the "most civilized" civilization...from forgotten beginnings on the banks of Indus to modern times..an epic portrait of the great land that is India)

The Queens of England by Agnes Strickland (the women behind the most powerful empire in the world, the hands that held the real reins as wives, mothers, sisters, daughters and independent monarchs...history, power, conspiracy and regal women in a cocktail...what more can you ask for?)

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling (Mowgli the boy raised by the mother wolf Raksha, Baloo the kind sloth-bear, Bagheera the strict Panther, Bandar log the unruly monkey people, Kaa the sleepy Python and Shere Khan the Royal Bengal Tiger antagonist...on the background of the days of the British Raj)

The Kite Runner & A Thousand Spendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini (betrayal and redemption, love and greed, affluence and poverty, fathers and sons, co-wives who are friends...the background is a troubled Afghanistan. When are they awarding a Nobel prize to Hosseini?)

A Passage to India by E.M Forster ( time and circumstances test the friendship and camaraderie of  a young Indian doctor and his English friend when in 1920s British-ruled India, the doctor is charged with sexually assaulting an Englishwoman.)

The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee-Divakaruni (rendition of the timeless Indian epic, Mahabharata...re-told from Draupadi's perspective)

The Shopaholic Series by Sophie Kinsella (Ok! I can see you smirking. But come on, you must allow a girl her share of Chick-lit. Girls, if you want to savour the genre that is for the girls, by the girls and of the girls I request you look no further than the charming Becky Bloomwood who is deliciously addicted to shopping!A series of books for those times when you don't wish to analyse or think much but simply relax and laugh till your sides ache.) 


The Final Question "Shesh Proshno" by Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay (Kamal - Arguably the most eloquent, free thinking, independent and bold heroine to be authored by a male writer! Radical for its time and way ahead, this book was highly controversial when it was released..a time when young women kept their thoughts and opinions to themselves. Kamal questions the traditional norms of patriotism, womanhood and social rules.Extremely stimulating!)


Love in the Times of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (a love story of epic proportions from the Nobel winning master story teller! The endurance of love for "fifty years, nine months and four days" through ups and downs and an impossible number of affairs.)


The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (the most inspiring book you will ever read...it might very well change your notions about God, fate, destiny, love and adventures...as you travel across the Sahara with young shepherd Santiago who considers his recurring dreams prophetic)

Yes, Minister! by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn (originally scripted as a sitcom, it became so popular that they had to publish a book! H-I-L-A-R-I-O-U-S is the word. Laugh till you cry as the simple-minded, good-at-heart bumbling buffoon minister Jim Hacker is craftily manipulated by his shrewd bureaucrat, Civil Servant Sir Humphrey Appleby- as they manage the Ministry of Administrative Affairs)

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (teenagers Hazel and Augustus are in love....the only problem is, both are struggling with cancer and parting by death seems inevitable...but written words survive mortal humans...and Hazel finds out that Augustus had been corresponding with their favourite author to compose an eulogy for her)

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (Passion! Passion! Some more passion! The destructive, obsessive love of Heathcliff and Catherine and the constant struggle between passion and culture finally results in death and tragedy. Heathcliff is one of literature's most iconic anti heroes!)


Malgudi Days by R.K. Narayanan (A collection of stories that never age or fade.Who can forget Swamy and his group of friends? Set in the fictional south Indian village of Malgudi, this book chronicles the charming, simple lives of the villagers - from rich landowners and mighty police officers to the street-side astrologer in the market place. It is scented with the very essence of India. Would it be wrong to name this book the most appealing, most timeless classic to emerge from modern India? I think not.)

Agree with the list? Disagree with my compilation? Some book  to add? Some title mentioned here you think is not worth it? Please feel free - it will be my pleasure and honour to hear from you about your favourite books.
I will be waiting for your comments! 

(in the meanwhile, go and read these books)


Love,
Pallavi

P.S Books you have suggested.

Srikanta by Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay  (19th century Bengal scrutinized by the experiences of an impressionable aimless drifter Srikanta who will not be tied down by any worldly attachment. He meets and idolizes exemplary, bold women throughout his wanderings and their lives and struggles make him and us question the prejudices of society.)  

All books of P.G Wodehouse (or at least the Jeeves collection...The World of Jeeves!)  If you missed out on Wodehouse in your childhood or teenage, you should get on the wagon now! Because clear, sharp humour is not restricted by age. And Wodehouse's effortless writing style will leave a lasting impression on your mind.