Saturday, September 6, 2014

Book Challenge- list of 10 books that have influenced your life

This is the latest challenge that is doing rounds on social networking sites these days. Today I have a lot of time and so thought maybe should pen down my own list though 10 books would never do justice to lifetime of reading. And this would also help in reviving my blog which have been neglected for almost 5 years now. So here it goes:

1.Childhood Mystery Novels: Famous Five (Enid Blyton), Hardy Boys and Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators- Thanks to these intriguing stories, my reading habit took off.

2.Teenage Mystery Novels: Sherlock Holmes entire collection (Sir Arthur Conan Doyale), Dan Brown Novels (Angels and Demons, Da Vinci Code, Deception Point, Digital Fortress, Lost Symbol) and Agatha Cristie Novels especially featuring Hercule Poirot- These Novels provided solace during the time of preparation for engineering entrance exams.

3.Harry Potter Series- JK Rowling: Need I say more?

4.Cold Steel: LN Mittal and the mutli billion dollar battle for a global empire- Tim Bouquet, Byron Ousey- A takeover story couldn’t have been described in a more exciting way

5.When Genius Failed- Roger Lowenstein: Story about rise and fall of the biggest hedge fund in 90s, truly sensational.

6.A Random walk down wall street- Burton G Malkiel: Depicts remarkable nature of investing. Really fascinating especially the idea that a blindfolded monkey throwing darts at a newspaper’s financial pages could select a portfolio that would do just as well as one carefully selected by experts

7.Habit of Winning- Prakash Iyer: Very inspirational book showing how different people have behaved in numerous atrocities and how you can do the same

8.Michael Lewis Books- Liar’s Poker, The Big Short, Boomerang: Definitely the most breathtaking non fiction novels are written by this author

9.Breakout Nations- Ruchir Sharma: Tells you what is next after BRICS and views on Emerging Markets

10.Autobiographies/Biographies- Losing my Virginity (Richard Branson), Jobs (Walter Issacson), Rafa(Rafael Nadal), Simplifly (Capt. Gopinath), Open (Andre Agassi): All of them really inspirational and provides an insight on how great people think

Special mention to Five Point Someone- Chetan Bhagat since it reminded so much of our own college life in Goa during that time.