So I finally completed my Goodreads challenge to read 50 books in 2017 two weeks before the end date. And we have two more weeks to go.

Before I give you a list of books I also want to tell you that as a kid I was dead against reading books. I watched TV  day in day out and was in the world of movies and celebrity glitter and never read. When my parents asked me to read, I would read a film magazine, mostly looking pictures and not reading.

But somewhere I guess when I was nearing thirties I started buying books. I found my reading was not like many and I had lost the ability to appreciate many writing. I did not have any touch of enjoying fiction. So most reading has Non Fiction. For fiction and the world classics I read, were not in English, but in their Malayalam translations be it Maxim Gorky, Dostoevsky, Marques or Malayalam writers… So English fiction was never something I got into. This pretty much summarizes what I about to say next.

The other day during a discussion someone spoke of “2001: A Space Odyssey”, I jumped and uttered the name Stanley Kubrick because I always connected it with the movie and never with the book. In fact it did not even strike me that it was a book written by Arthur C. Clarke. I think this has two reasons to it, my complete ignorance of Sci-Fi Books as well as my lack of knowledge of classics and Must Read books.

I know its not a thing of pride, but I think it is very relevant to tell especially when I am writing a post about the 50+ books I read in 2017. The point I am making is that reading 50 books in no way makes me more read than many people who have been reading or read, while they were younger. I can never recover from what I lost ‘not reading’ books in my young age. It also brings me to a point that for 2018 I am probably going to select at least 25 books that I want to read, all books that have become milestones in world literature and I have not read. And I assure you that there are so many classics that I have not read, but the majority of readers and book lovers have.

That said here is the list of the books I read in 2017. I might have a few more to add End of the year, but this is for now.

1. Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World by Adam M. Grant
2. Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation by Sally Hogshead
3. When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
4. Born for This: How to Find the Work You Were Meant to Do by Chris Guillebeau
5. Everyman by Philip Roth
6. Grit: Passion, Perseverance, and the Science of Success by Angela Duckworth
7. Open Letter: On Blasphemy, Islamophobia, and the True Enemies of Free Expression by Charb
8. Simple Is the New Smart by Rob Fazio
9. The Lean Product Playbook: How to Innovate with Minimum Viable Products and Rapid Customer Feedback by Dan Olsen
10. Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger
11. Living the Secular Life: New Answers to Old Questions by Phil Zuckerman
12. High-Hanging Fruit: Build Something Great by Going Where No One Else Will by Mark Rampolla
13. Meaningful: The Story of Ideas That Fly by Bernadette Jiwa
14. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg
15. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain
16. Makers: The New Industrial Revolution by Chris Anderson
17. Countdown by Amitav Ghosh
18. The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson
19. Carpe Diem: Seizing the Day in a Distracted World by Roman Alexander Krznaric
20. Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El-Saadawi
21. An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist by Richard Dawkins
22. Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel García Márquez
23. The Tale of the Unknown Island by José Saramago
24. Bossypants by Tina Fey
25. And Furthermore by Judi Dench
26. Chords & Other Poems by Ruth Lisa Schechter
27. The World’s Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette’s, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family by Josh Hanagarne
28. The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America by David Whyte
29. Bathing In The River Of Ashes: Poems by Shaun T. Griffin
30. The Same-Different: Poems by Hannah Sanghee Park
31. Love Wins: The Lovers and Lawyers Who Fought the Landmark Case for Marriage Equality by Debbie Cenziper
32. The Power of a Plant: A Teacher’s Odyssey to Grow Healthy Minds and Schools by Stephen Ritz
33. Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War by Fred Kaplan
34. Sarajevo Blues by Semezdin Mehmedinović
35. The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography by Sidney Poitier
36. Nostalgia, My Enemy by Saadi Youssef
37. Hiroshima by John Hersey
38. The Festival of Insignificance by Milan Kundera
39. The Woman Who Can’t Forget: The Extraordinary Story of Living with the Most Remarkable Memory Known to Science by Jill Price
40. Intimacy: das Buch zum Film von Patrice Chéreau by Hanif Kureishi
41. The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession by Allison Hoover Bartlett
42. Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life by Edward O. Wilson
43. My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Journey Through Chile by Isabel Allende
44. Tristia: Poems by Osip Mandelstam
45. Gen Z @ Work: How the Next Generation Is Transforming the Workplace by David Stillman
46. Books for Living by Will Schwalbe
47. Roman Poems by Pier Paolo Pasolini
48. Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
49. A Season in Granada: Uncollected Poems & Prose by Federico García Lorca
50. An Appeal to the World: The Way to Peace in a Time of Division by Dalai Lama

I did write reviews on some of these books on the blog here, but the interesting thing that happened was last month I also started doing Video Reviews of the books on the Youtube Channel

Will come up with another post with my Challenge for 2018 before the new year.

Categories: Book Reviews, Books, Reviews

Tags: 2017 Goodreads Challenge, Books, Goodreads