I love books. This is what I’ve read lately:

2023

The Painter of Signs, RK Narayan

The Wind from the Plains, Yesar Kemal

The Third Reich, Roberto Bolaño

Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell

2022

Culture Warlords, Talia Lavin

Platitudes, Trey Ellis

Dr Brodie’s Report, Borges

Dr. No, Percival Everett

Lies Our Mother Told Us: The Indian Woman’s Burden, Nilanjana Bhowmick

Brothas Be, Yo Like George, Ain’t That Funkin’ Kinda Hard on You?, George Clinton Memoir

Swann’s Way, Marcel Proust

Cousin Bette, Balzac

Pere Goriot, Balzac

Mythologies, Roland Barthes

7th Function of Language, Laurent Binet

In the City of Pigs, André Forget

A Hero of Our Time, Naben Ruthnum

Against the Day, Thomas Pynchon

Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood

Erasure, Percival Everett

Cutting Lisa, Percival Everett

The Idiot, Elif Batuman

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Olga Tokarczuk

Anna Karenin, Leo Tolstoy

Policing Black Lives, Robyn Maynard

1619, Nikole Hanna-Jones

Caste, Isabel Wilkerson

Curry, Naben Ruthnum

2021

Travelling Soul: The Life of Curtis Mayfield, Todd Mayfield

Indian Horse, Richard Wagamese

Take Back the Fight: Organizing Feminism for the Digital Age, Nora Loreto

The Breakup Suite, Trevor Abes

In Search of Lost Time Vol II, Marcel Proust

Underworld, Don Delillo

Radium Girl, Sofi Papamarko

2666, Roberto Bolaño

2020

Under a Hoodoo Moon, The Life of the Night Tripper (Dr John’s autobiography)

Juneteenth, Ralph Ellison

Harbert, Nabarun Bhattacharya

The Dean’s December, Saul Bellow

More Die of Heartbreak, Saul Bellow

All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy

The Crossing, Cormac McCarthy

Cousin Bette, Balzac

John Coltrane and the Jazz Revolution of the 1960s, Frank Kofsky

Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Exit Ghost, Philip Roth

They Burn the Thistles, Yeshar Kemal

2019

Red Cavalry / collected stories–Isaac Babel

We–Yevgeny Zamyatin

Therese Raquin–Emile Zola

Sula–Toni Morrison

Our Gang–Philip Roth

Tar Baby–Toni Morrison

Pere Goriot–Honore de Balzac

Foucault’s Pendulum–Umberto Eco

The Savage Detectives–Roberto Bolaño

Hater–John Semeley

The White Tiger –Aravind Adiga

2666–Roberto Bolaño

Motherless Brooklyn–Jonathan Lethem

The Plot Against America–Philip Roth

Bleak House–Charles Dickens

The View from Flyover Country–Sarah Kendzior

2018

Petersburg–Andrei Bely

The Lives of Girl and Women–Alice Munro

Seven Fallen Feathers–Tanya Talaq

Ceremony–Leslie Marmon Silko

Across the Great Divide: The Band and America–Barney Hoskins

Testimony–Robbie Robertson

The Namesake–Jhumpa Lahiri

Interpreter of Maladies–Jhumpa Lahiri

Ten Little Indians–Sherman Alexie

The Beautiful and Damned–F Scott Fitzgerald

American Pastoral–Philip Roth

Operation Shylock–Philip Roth

Against Everything–Mark Greif

Why I Supported Emergency–Essays and profiles–Khushwant Singh

Burial At Sea–Khushwant Singh

The End of India–Khushwant Singh

Money–Martin Amis

Bhagavad Gita

Gideon’s Spies–Stephen Gordon

To The Wedding–John Berger

2017

Drumming at the Edge of Magic–Mickey Hart / Jay Stevens

Hamburger–Daniel Perry

This Wheel’s on Fire–Levon Helm

How Music Works–David Byrne

Based on a True Story: A Memoir–Norm Macdonald

A Passage to India–EM Forester

The Secret Agent–Joseph Conrad

Catch 22–Joseph Heller

The Sellout–Paul Beatty

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn–Mark Twain

Swing Time–Zadie Smith

The God of Small Things–Arundhati Roy

A Suitable Boy–Vikram Seth

I Am A Troll–Swati Chaturvedi

Memed, My Hawk–Yashar Kemal

2016

The Nothing Man–Ajay Khullar

The Annihilation of Caste–BR Ambedkar

Life and Fate–Vasily Grossman

A House for Mr Biswas–VS Naipaul

Making Sense of Modi’s India–Various essays

Two Years Eight Months and Twenty Eight Nights–Salman Rushdie

Snow–Orhan Pamuk

The Financial Expert–RK Narayan

Lucknow Boy–Vinod Mehta

A Case of Exploding Mangos–Muhammad Hanif

The Snowden Files–Luke Harding

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man–John Perkins

The Tenth Man–Graham Greene

The Ginger Man–JP Donleavy

2015:

Home of the Gentry –Ivan Turgenev

Shantaram–David Lee Roberts

Old Man and the Sea–Ernest Hemingway

Vera–Stacy Schiff

Volkswagen Blues–Jacques Poulin

Envy–Yuri Olesha

The Ghost Writer–Philip Roth

Mystery and Manners–Flannery O’ Connor

Short stories–Flannery O’ Connor

Dead Souls–Nikolai Gogol

Death of the Liberal Class–Chris Hedges

Empire of Illusion–Chris Hedges

The Great Book–Northrop Frye

Love and Advertising–Jeff Halperin

2014

Gravity’s Rainbow–Thomas Pynchon

Mao II–Don Delillo

Siddhartha-Herman Hesse

Hellgoing–Lynn Coady

White Teeth–Zadie Smith

City of Thieves–David Benioff

The Orenda–Joseph Boyden

Government Inspector–Nikolai Gogol

Gogol–Vladimir Nabokov

2013

The Annotated Lolita–Nabokov/Appel Jr.

A Farewell to Arms–Ernest Hemingway

As I lay Dying–William Faulkner

After the Quake–Haruki Murakami

Lucky Jim–Kingsley Amis

Arabian Night–Richard Burton/Jack Zipes translation

The Real Life of Sebastian Knight–Vladimir Nabokov

War and Peace–Leo Tolstoy

Some Great Idea–Edward Keenan

The Guide–R.K. Narayan

Bend Sinister–Vladimir Nabokov

Pantagruel–Francois Rabelais

Jitterbug Perfume–Tom Robbins

Native Son–Richard Wright

Saul Bellow’s Letters

Orlando–Virginia Woolf

The Eye–Vladimir Nabokov

Humboldt’s Gift–Saul Bellow

Adventures of Kavalier and Klay–Michael Chabon

Blood Meridian–Cormac McCarthy

The Corrections–Jonathan Franzen

A Complicated Kindness–Miriam Toews

The Sound of Waves–Yukio Mishima

Tropic of Cancer–Henry Miller

The Enchantress of Florence–Salman Rushdie

A Voice From the Chorus–Abram Tertz (Andrey Sinyavsky)

The Architecture of Happiness–Alain de Botton

How Proust Can Change Your Life–Alain de Botton

2012

Adventures of Augie March (Saul Bellow)

Henderson the Rain King (Saul Bellow)

Anna Karenin (Leo Tolstoy)

Death of Ivan Ilyich/Happily Ever After (Leo Tolstoy)

Dead Souls (Nikolai Gogol)

The Overcoat/The Nose/The Government Inspector (Nikolai Gogol)

Fathers and Sons (Ivan Turgenev)

Hunting Sketches (Ivan Turgenev)

Ulysses (James Joyce)

Ulysses as a Comic Novel (Zach Bowen)

The Trial (Franz Kafka)

How Fiction Works (James Woods)

Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert)

Moby Dick (Herman Melville)

Dead Babies (Martin Amis)

The Moronic Inferno (Martin Amis)

The Gift (Vladimir Nabokov)

The Guide to the Gift (Yuri Leving)

Invitation to a Beheading (Vladimir Nabokov)

Ada (Vladimir Nabokov)

Speak, Memory (Vladimir Nabokov)

Lectures on Russian Literature (Vladimir Nabokov)

Marathon Man (William Goldman)

Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad)

A Hero of our Time (Mikhail Lermontov)

Waiting for Godot (Samuel Beckett)

The Misanthrope (Moliere)

Cannery Row (John Steinbeck)

Slaughter House Five (Kurt Vonnegut)

Orwell and the Left (Alex Zwerdling)

Why I write (George Orwell)

Paris Review Interviews Volume II

The Selected Essays of Gore Vidal

Love, Poverty, War (Christopher Hitchens)

The Inferno (Dante)

The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)

Selected works of Cicero

Essays (Montaigne)

The Waste Land (T.S. Eliot)

Essays (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne)

The Loved Ones (Evelyn Waugh)

Swann’s Way (Marcel Proust)

Joshua Then and Now (Mordecai Richler)

Pale Fire (Vladimir Nabokov)

No Logo (Naomi Klein)

Strong Opinions (Vladimir Nabokov)

Go Tell it on the Mountain (James Baldwin)

A Confederacy of Dunces (John Kennedy Toole)

Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)

Gargantua (Francois Rabelais)

2011

Sophie’s Choice (William Styron)

Lonesome Dove (Larry McMurtry)

Dubliners (James Joyce)

Herzog (Saul Bellow)

Visiting Mrs. Nabokov (Martin Amis)

The Critical Muse (Henry James)

Exiled in Paris (James Campbell)

Broadsides (Mordecai Richler)

Belling the Cat (Mordecai Richler)

Shovelling Trouble (Mordecai Richler)

Story (Robert Mckee)

Which Lie Did I Tell? (William Goldman)

Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx)

Fanny and Zooey (JD Salinger [the other JD])

Barney’s Version (Mordecai Richler)

Mordecai (Charles Foran)

On Writing (Stephen King)

Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky)