For the sixth year[1] in a row, I am turning to silk listers for book recommendation this holiday season.
What have you read over the last year that has left a mark on you? What are you eagerly looking forward to reading over the Christmas/NewYear's holidays? Past silk list recommendations have included such gems as: * Alice Albina's Empires of the Indus * Samanth Subramaniam's Following Fish * Sarnath Bannerjee's Barn Owl's Wondrous Capers * Devdutt Pattanaik's Myth=Mithya. * Nilanjana Roy's Wildings * Aman Sethi's A Free Man Books that are easy to get a hold of in India (and more difficult elsewhere) preferred (but not required). Fiction and non-fiction recommendations are equally welcome. The books that I enjoyed reading <https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/646599?shelf=read> the most this year: * The Works: Anatomy of a City by Kate Ascher. Beautiful illustrations and great details about how a city (in this case, New York City) works. How is water brought to the city? What happens to the sewage? How were the Subways built? The book answers them all. * A Strange Kind of Paradise: India Through Foreign Eyes by Sam Miller. As Sankarshan said in another thread, "More engaging than expected". * This Divided Island: Stories from the Sri Lankan War by Samanth Subramaniam. Not as great as Following Fish, but quite fascinating anyway. A compassionate, beautifully written book about the War and it's aftermath in Sri Lanka. * Gandhi Before India by Ramachandra Guha. Simply one of the best biographies of Gandhi that I have read. Instead of deifying a man (who was worshipped in his own lifetime) like many biographies of Gandhi do, this book tries to explore how a mediocre student from a poor backwater ended up going to London to study barristry and thence to South Africa to practice Law, hang out with Left-leaning Jews, Vegetarians, Coolies and Quakers and hone his message of Abstinence and Non Violence. Thaths [1] Someone jumped the gun by starting the thread on Silk list in mid-nov last year, but I am going to count it anyway
