It’s been 3 years since Sushant Singh Rajput left us all but I still can’t get over with the fact that he’s no more with us.
Um… Honestly, I don’t know what to write in this introduction.
There’s nothing I can say that hasn’t been already said. There’s nothing I can write that hasn’t been already written.
It’s just, Sushant was a voracious reader and the only way, according to me, to continue his legacy is by reading what he loved, what he read, and what the late Sushant Singh admired.
Let’s check out the book list now.
So I watched this video of Sushant’s home tour in Mumbai on YouTube by Asian Paints.👇
In this video, you can see the way he used to live. The way he used to spend his free time. The way his eyes used to shine while showing his books.
Being an avid reader myself, I recognized most of the books in a glimpse and thus, decided to share the book list here.
Disclaimer: I couldn’t name every book on the shelf but I have tried my best to name all the ones that I can recognize and I haven’t read all the books that I have listed here, so some of the descriptions are a sum-up of the reviews and synopsis I have read on the internet.
Let’s dive into each book from the list, one by one! Here we go.
1. Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman
“You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It’s their mistake, not my failing.”
Number of Pages: 368
Considered classic, this book is an autobiography of Feynman that shows his experimental & mischievous nature right from his childhood. Much like Feynman, all the stories in this short book are so full of life.
The thing I love the most about this book is that it does not contain scientific language, calculations, or anything alike.
Even if you’re not interested in physics, this book is more than worth reading.
I can guarantee that it will change at least one aspect of your life!
2. The Psychopath Test
“I have panicked unnecessarily in all four corners of the globe.”
Number of Pages: 304
A non-fiction book where the journalist, Jon Ronson investigates psychopaths and the industry of doctors, scientists, and everyone else who studies them.
The overall feel of this book might not seem alluring to some people but let me assure you, along with being entertaining, it’s a really light and easy read.
I highly recommend this book to all the non-fiction readers out there.
3. The Singularity is Near
When Humans Transcend Biology
“Our sole responsibility is to produce something smarter than we are; any problems beyond that are not ours to solve …”
Number of Pages: 672
This book is about the UNION of Human & Machine.
An expectation that machines will allow human beings to escape the limitations of their physical bodies.
Most of its readers, refer to it as a “Work of Art”.
4. The Blind Watchmaker
“Things exist either because they have recently come into existence or because they have qualities that made them unlikely to be destroyed in the past.”
Number of Pages: 496
‘The Blind Watchmaker’ is known as the most influential work on evolution written in the last hundred years. It gives you remarkable insights into the evolution and various theories of Darwinian Evolution.
It’s written beautifully and might make you believe that the universe hasn’t been created by any God.
A must-read for everyone!
5. The Sixth Extinctio
“The current extinction has its own novel cause: not an asteroid or a massive volcanic eruption but “one weedy species.”
Number of Pages: 336
Up till now, there have been 5 Mass Extinctions that resulted in the vast extinction of the diversity on the earth. Now, scientists all around the world are monitoring the 6th extinction and that’s all I can tell you about this book.
Reading it will either awe you or bore you but for someone like me who’s a non-fiction lover, it’s a goosebump-inducing read.
6. Behavioural Economics Saved My Dog
Gain a new perspective on the inevitable problems of everyday life
“inform the waiter that you have allocated a total of fifty dollars for the tip and wine combined—so the more you spend on wine, the less you will leave as a tip. Now let’s see what they recommend.”
Number of Pages: 240
A book, written in such a way that it makes the regular events look interesting.
Basically, it is a collection of questions and answers and Dan uses his socio-economic perspective to dissect events and provide answers to rather mundane occurrences.
Informative and hilarious at the same time!
7. The Information
A History, a Theory, a Flood
“When information is cheap, attention becomes expensive.”
Number of Pages: 544
A book about the changes in the nature of human consciousness with our uprising relationship with the information in this era.
From the language of Africa’s talking drums to the invention of written alphabets; from the electronic transmission of code to the origins of information theory, into the new information age and the current deluge of news, tweets, images, and blogs, it’s an insightful journey of communication and information.
8. Brilliant Blunders
From Darwin to Einstein – Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe
“we are much better at judging other people than at analyzing ourselves.”
Number of Pages: 352
In this book, Mario has talked about the mistakes that the 5 renowned scientists have made in their journey of achieving scientific breakthroughs.
The 5 scientists mentioned are
- Charles Darwin
- William Thomson
- Linus Pauling
- Fred Hoyle, and
- Albert Einstein (a must-read for anyone with scientific curiosities)
9. Godel, Escher, Bach
An Eternal Golden Braid
“For now, what is important is not finding the answer, but looking for it.”
Number of Pages: 824
This book attempts to put forward the outline of a theory of intelligence, by drawing from an incredibly wide array of disciplines – not just the three (mathematics, art, and music), which are implied by the title – but also logical systems, computer science, genetics (there are really too many to list) as well as a considerable amount of literary flair.
Reading this book is like watching one of those Christopher Nolan movies.
10. The Great Gatsby
“I hope she’ll be a fool — that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”
Number of Pages: 200
‘The Great Gatsby’ is about this mysterious guy, Jay Gatsby, and his obsession with the beautiful Daisy Buchanan.
It is a literary classic!
11. Drawing Course
Number of Pages: 336
This book is a complete reprint of a famous, late-nineteenth-century drawing course.
It contains a set of almost two hundred masterful lithographs of subjects for copying by drawing students before they attempt drawing from life or nature.
12. In Search Of Schrödinger’s Cat
“In the world of the very small, where particle and wave aspects of reality are equally significant, things do not behave in any way that we can understand from our experience of the everyday world…all pictures are false, and there is no physical analogy we can make to understand what goes on inside atoms. Atoms behave like atoms, nothing else.”
Number of Pages: 400
This book tells the complete story of Quantum Mechanics that is so shocking, even Einstein couldn’t bring himself to accept it.
That is all I can write about this book. If you know, what ‘Schrodingers cat’ is and are even slightly interested in Quantum Mechanics or Physics, go for it.
13. The Tell Tale Brain
A Neuroscientist’s Quest for What Makes Us Human
“Indeed, the line between perceiving and hallucinating is not as crisp as we like to think. In a sense, when we look at the world, we are hallucinating all the time. One could almost regard perception as the act of choosing the one hallucination that best fits the incoming data.”
Number of Pages: 536
This book is all about that three-pound mass of jelly a.k.a. Brain and various aspects of its functions.
A very well-researched and insightful work by Ramachandran that for sure will give you a new perspective on how you view the dynamics of consciousness and health issues related to brain defects and injuries.
14. Superfreakonomics
Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance
“Most of us want to fix or change the world in some fashion. But to change the world, you first have to understand it.”
Number of Pages: 320
A treasure chest of information for anyone interested in psychology, economics, or just sheer human cussedness, is what this book is all about.
And you must have got the rest of the idea from the title of the book.
15. Norwegian Wood
“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
Number of Pages: 400
‘Norwegian Wood’ begins with Toru Watanabe, a 37-year-old man traveling to Hamburg.
☝️ After hearing the ‘Norwegian Wood’ by Beatles, he is overcome with nostalgia and begins musing about his teenage years & his first love Naoko. That leads us to his life back almost twenty years to his student days in Tokyo.
If you’re an avid reader, you must have heard of this book at least once. Haruki Murakami is a well-known author and this book is something that you’ll enjoy reading immensely.
16. Brando: The Biography
Number of Pages: 1118
Brano is a super lengthy biography of Marlon Brando, who was an American actor and film director with a career spanning 60 years, during which he won the Oscar for Best Actor twice.
Some people who have read this biography say that it’s life-changing.
17. At The Edge of Uncertainty
11 Discoveries Taking Science by Surprise
“In other words the effect of good friends is roughly similar to giving up smoking or making a significant cut to your intake of alcohol. A 2012 study, which followed 2,000 US citizens aged fifty and above, found that being chronically lonely was associated with being almost twice as likely to die over the period of the study.”
Number of Pages: 288
‘At the edge of Uncertainty’ talks about these 11 discoveries that the scientific world knows but does not clearly understand how or why exactly do they happen to be:
• Consciousness
• Animal Personalities and Animal Culture
• Chimeras
• Epigenetics
• Gender-based Medicine
• Will Power
• Quantum Phenomena in Biological Kingdoms
• Quantum Information Theory
• Alternative Creation Theories & Anomalies in the Universe
• Hypercomputer
• The Illusion of Time
This is an amazing book!
Not only eye-opening but written in a way that’s easy to understand (except for the physics, or maybe that’s just me, ha!).
18. The Moral Animal
Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology
“We are built to be effective animals, not happy ones.”
Number of Pages: 496
If you’ve read Richard Dawkin’s ‘Selfish Gene’, then you should go for this one next. While that was about how evolutionary pressures caused certain behavioral traits to be selected for in animals, ‘The Moral Animal’ is about humans on the same spectrum.
Though not up to date (it was written in the 1990s), it serves well and along with being an important read, it is thought-provoking indeed.
19. The Angry Chef
Bad Science and the Truth About Healthy Eating
Few of us over the age of six would eat a tablespoonful of sugar on its own. Few people could stomach eating a packet of butter or drinking a pint of cream. But mix the sweetness of sugar and the richness of fat together and you have a perfect combination for driving food sales. That is what a nefarious food manufacturing industry with full control of nutritional guidelines would demand impunity to sell.
Number of Pages: 336
Whatever you’re eating right now, just STOP!
This book is exactly about the lies we all are fed by companies and society about the food we have.
The main theme is scientific evidence for the benefits of various food. It also explores the origins and psychology of persistent culinary nonsense.
A really good read about the lie we’re being fed and the ones we fed ourselves.
20. The Power of Moments
“In life, we can work so hard to get the kinks out that we forget to put the peaks in.”
Number of Pages: 240
In ‘The Power of Moments’, Chip and Dan Heath explore the stories of people who have created standout moments, from the owners who transformed an utterly mediocre hotel into one of the best-loved properties in Los Angeles by conjuring moments of magic for guests, to the scrappy team that turned around one of the worst elementary schools in the country by embracing an intervention that lasts less than an hour.
Filled with remarkable tales and practical insights, ‘The Power of Moments’ proves we all have the power to transform ordinary experiences into unforgettable ones.
21. Breakfast of Champions
“We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane.”
Number of Pages: 320
This book is written to explain America to someone who has no knowledge of it, illustrated as needed.
Set in the town of Midland City, Ohio, it focuses on 2 characters: Dwayne Hoover, a Midland resident, Pontiac dealer, and affluent figure in the city, and Kilgore Trout, a widely published but mostly unknown science fiction author.
It has themes of free will, suicide, and race relations among others.
22. Post Office
“I wanted the whole world or nothing.”
Number of Pages: 208
This book is about a drunk loser protagonist who lives day-to-day in a job (mail clerk) he hates yet doesn’t have many options to do anything else but in actuality, it’s Bukowski’s autobiographical novel that covers his life from 1952 until 1969.
With the insane humor & honesty, and also, Bukowski’s attitude, this book is a must-read!
23. Collapse
How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
“The values to which people cling most stubbornly under inappropriate conditions are those values that were previously the source of their greatest triumphs.”
Number of Pages: 608
Diamond’s ‘Collapse’ is an extremely eye-opening and insightful book that looks in detail at the factors at play in the demise of civilizations in human history, using a wide range of examples.
It’s a long read but for sure, worth an effort.
24. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
“But I tell you one thing, I don’t want to be immortal if it mean living forever, cause then everybody else just die and get old in front of you while you stay the same, and that’s just sad.”
Number of Pages: 448
‘The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks’ is about a black 31-year-old woman who, in 1951 died due to cancer and how the cells taken from her body to use for research, are being worldwide used for scientific experiments to date.
“HeLa”, as they call it, is the only human cells thought to be scientifically “immortal”.
And just so you know, these HeLa cells were used to develop the polio vaccine, chemotherapy, cloning, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, and a host of other medical treatments.
It definitely is an extraordinary book but it also is shocking and tragic and dude, you should be reading it right now!
25. How to Read a Film
I don’t have much to say about this book except that it’s a treasure for cinephiles.
Number of Pages: 736
26. Selected Poems
“I learned about life
from life itself,
love I learned in a single kiss
and could teach no one anything
except that I have lived
with something in common among men,
when fighting with them,
when saying all their say in my song.”
Number of Pages: 512
A collection of poetry from the greatest 20th-century Latin American poet.
27. Where The Heart Beats
“Suffering builds character and impels you to penetrate life’s secrets. It’s the path of great artists, great religious leaders, great social reformers. The problem is not suffering per se, but rather our identification with our own ego: our divided, dualistic, cramped view of things. ‘We are too ego-centered,’ Suzuki tells Cage.’ The ego-shell in which we live is the hardest thing to outgrow. We seem to carry it all the time from childhood up to the time we finally pass away.”
Number of Pages: 496
This book is all about John Cage’s life, music, and the influence of Zen Buddhism on him.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is a minimalist or someone who wants to read about John Cage.
28. Jailbird
“I still believe that peace and plenty and happiness can be worked out some way. I am a fool.”
Number of Pages: 310
A light-hearted book that details the fascinating trials and tribulations of the fictional, Walter F. Starbuck – a somewhat serially unlucky character who finds himself locked up in prison for his accidental role in the Watergate scandal, of the Nixon government.
This book will only make you look for more Kurt Vonnegut books to read!
29. Sapiens
A Brief History of Humankind
“You could never convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas after death in monkey heaven.”
Number of Pages: 512
If you’re even slightly into reading books, then you must have heard of Sapiens before.
It’s a book about the history of humans, covering all aspects; evolution, anthropology, geography, psychology, religion, ideologies, and the future of humans.
For anyone who is a history freak or is interested in knowing the how’s, why’s, and when’s of the world, this book is a must-read.
30. The Stranger
“I felt the urge to reassure him that I was like everybody else, just like everybody else.”
Number of Pages: 144
I literally have regret for not reading this book earlier. Just one of the best reads of my life.
It raises so many questions about existentialism and I’m sure, you’ll find yourself looking at a wall or the ceiling while reading this book.
A must must must read!!!
31. Life is Elsewhere
“Yes, it’s crazy. Love is either crazy or it’s nothing at all.”
Number of Pages: 272
Kundera is one of those writers which I personally think, you’ll either love or hate. There’s nothing in between.
The story is about a young poet and his overbearing mother during the period following the Czech Communist Revolution along with the talks about art, poetry, politics, and integrity.
It’s impressive and disturbing at the same time and by no chance should you miss this novel.
32. The Selfish Gene
“We are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment.”
Number of Pages: 496
This book is a floodgate of whole new ideas on the theory of evolution.
Many of you might not agree with this book or even find it a waste of time but trust me, it’s one of the finest books a human mind has ever written.
33. Laughable Loves
“Yes, it’s a well-known fact about you: you’re like death, you take everything.”
Number of Pages: 304
‘Laughable loves’ is a collection of 7 fiction stories, rich in philosophy, eroticism, cynicism, and humor.
An excellent read!
34. The Outsider
“I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn’t.”
Number of Pages: 128
Opening Lines: My mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know. I received a telegram from the old people’s home: ‘Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Very sincerely yours.’ That doesn’t mean anything. It might have been yesterday.
Last Lines: I could only hope there would be many, many spectators on the day of my execution and that they would greet me with cries of hatred.
Set in Algiers, the book tells the story of Meursault, a man whose life seems to go by as normally as can be, after the death of his mother. And then, he commits a random act of violence in Algiers and…
This book is considered the most important psychological book of the post-war period.
It’s really a short read and a very important one.
35. The Plague
“Why should they have thought about the plague, which negates the future, negates journeys and debate? They considered themselves free and no one will ever be free as long as there is plague, pestilence and famine.”
Number of Pages: 288
Published in 1947, this book tells the story of a plague sweeping the French Algerian city of Oran that gets quarantined from the rest of the world.
It asks a number of questions relating to the nature of destiny and the human condition and what can I say more!?
It’s not an easy read and for sure a depressing one, but I assure you, it’s rewarding.
P.S. Now when I think of it, this book perfectly makes sense in these crazy times we’re living in.
P.P.S. Plague really never goes away.
36. Chaos
Making a New Science
“You don’t see something until you have the right metaphor to let you perceive it”
Number of Pages: 380
To put it simply, all I can say is that ‘Chaos’ is a tribute to the early contributors to non-linear science. Written in an episodic manner, it tries to depict the first years of the study of chaos.
You have to be a bit scientifically inclined to enjoy this book but, I would still say that this book is for everyone.
37. Pinpoint
How GPS is Changing Our World
“Houses near the tracks seem to fly by, while mountains in the distance keep pace with the train over long distances. In etak, the canoe is the train and the stars the mountains. The stars are fixed in the sky. The islands, like the houses, are in motion.”
Number of Pages: 336
A book about the history of GPS, its existence, and how it became such a vital part of our modern world.
It delves into an amazing array of subjects such as Geology, Geodesy, Meteorology, Air traffic control, Cartography, Weapons guidance, psychology, orbital mechanics, trigonometry, agriculture, etc.
Totally worth a read!
So, that was the list of books I can recognize from the bookshelf of Sushant Singh Rajput in the Asian Paints video.
Happy Reading:)
cogito ergo sum
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