On Recommendations

a guide to recommending books, movies, films, podcasts etc

I don’t want to brag but I have a lot of friends. It’s good to have friends. You don’t have to go to restaurants alone.

I lean on aforementioned friends to get recommendations for that perfect lazy Sunday afternoon film, or my next read. But with great privileges come great responsibilities. Sometimes a friend reaches out asking for a recommendation.

Now I don’t want to sound preachy … I just had not written anything in a long time and wanted an excuse.

A friend reached out asking for non-fiction book recommendations to get out of a reading slump. I am going lay down some assumptions, and a baseline based on what I know about them and then will recommend some books.

I can only recommend English language books. That’s my bad. But I don’t think they would mind.

This friend, lets call him ‘A’, mentioned reading a book recently that took him ages to finish. Now it wasn’t a tome by any measure. And I know from personal experience - finishing books is very satisfying, especially in an otherwise shitty year. So I would filter for slim, pacy reads. ~200-250 pages or thereabouts?

‘A’ is not a fan of podcasts and is averse to trying out audiobooks. So that is out of my toolbelt. I have a lot of audiobook recommendations on the ready. But alas.

Moving on. I know ‘A’ to be a connoisseur of Indian classical music. So I would recommend a book on classical music. I can probably get away with pushing the self-imposed length-limit there.

So given all that, here is a list of recommendations. A boutique recommendation list:

1. The Checklist Manifesto : How to Get Things Right [2014, Dr. Atul Gawande, 240 pp]

   • This is my go to gift for people and one of my favourite books. The title kind of explains what it is about. The doctor talks about how checklists are used in his field - surgery and in other fields- construction, aviation and what not

2. Round Ireland With A Fridge [1999, Tony Hawks, 272 pp]

   • The skateboarder is Tony Hawk. This is Tony Hawks

   • 'I hereby bet Tony Hawks the sum of One Hundred Pounds that he cannot hitchhike round the circumference of Ireland, with a fridge, within one calendar month' - and that’s it - Tony hitchhikes round Ireland with a fridge on a little trolley. It is one of the funniest things I have ever read and you WILL laugh out loud

3. The Music Room [2009, Namita Devidayal, 320 pp]

   • This book is a memoir -cum- oral history on the founder of the Jaipur gharana, it’s most famous exponent - Kesarbai Kelkar and their only remaining student - Dhondutai. The author trained under Dhondutai and she interweaves thoughts about her relationship with music. This is an excellent read, and I can confidently say that people who have never heard Hindustani music will also enjoy this

4. Bill Bryson

   • I would recommend any Bill Bryson book, because they are fun and there is something for everyone in his catalogue

   • I have particularly enjoyed Down Under and A Short History of Nearly Everything

5. Chinmay Tumbe’s excellent books

   • India Moving : A History of Migration [2018, 304 pp]

   • Age of Pandemics (1817-1920): How They shaped India and the World [2020, 268 pp]

6. Tamal Bandopadhyay’s easy reads

   • easy but greatly informative books on Indian banking by the famous business journalist

   • I would recommend that one start here : Bandhan: The Making of a Bank [2016, 304 pp]

I have included some long books but only when I feel they don’t require to be read at once.

Note: These are associate links and I potentially get a commission? I don’t know - I saw a link to sign up for Amazon’s associate program and I did it for the heck of it.

Ok. Bye.