Books

BOOKS

The Argumentative Indian, by Amartya Sen

Amartya Sen cites many remarkable but little-known facts about Indian history while making his favorite economic and social arguments.

In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays, by Bertrand Russell

I am a big votary of a certain degree of idleness. Gitanjali (see below) has a couple of passages close to my heart:

On many an idle day have I grieved over lost time.
But it is never lost, my lord.
Thou hast taken every moment of my life in thine own hands.

Hidden in the heart of things thou art nourishing seeds into sprouts, buds into blossoms, and ripening flowers into fruitfulness.

I was tired and sleeping on my idle bed and imagined all work had ceased.
In the morning I woke up and found my garden full with wonders of flowers.

***

Time is endless in thy hands, my lord.
There is none to count thy minutes.
Days and nights pass and ages bloom and fade like flowers.

Thou knowest how to wait.
Thy centuries follow each other perfecting a small wild flower.

We have no time to lose, and having no time we must scramble for a chances.
We are too poor to be late.

And thus it is that time goes by while I give it to every querulous man who claims it, and thine altar is empty of all offerings to the last.
At the end of the day I hasten in fear lest thy gate to be shut; but I find that yet there is time.

Gitanjali, by Tagore

Though somewhat discredited after winning Tagore the Nobel Prize, in my opinion this is an excellent spiritual work, even though it may have lost quality in translation from the original Bengali.

Eugene Onegin, by Pushkin

Vikram Seth directs the reader to this book in his Golden Gate, and believe me, this was one hell of a recommendation. If you enjoy superior wordplay in rhyme, this is the book for you. The Golden Gate was good, but this is unbelievable.

The Conquest of Happiness, by Bertrand Russell

Simplistic? Yes, if you are highbrow. Useful for all? Absolutely.

Marriage and Morals, by Bertrand Russell

Although Russell later wrote that he was by then unconvinced there was any single silver bullet of philosophy that addressed the complexity of marriage, this early work is highly thought provoking.