Reading List - You've got to read these books!

Shantaram by Gregorgy David Roberts:

One of the best books I have ever read. Beautifully written and based on the author's own life. Made me cry several times. Soon to be made into a major motion picture - bought by Johnny Depp's production company. About an Australian kid who is a heroin addict, commits a bunch of armed robberies, goes to prison. Escapes from prison, somehow gets on a plane to India and lands in Bombay in about 1979. Spends the next 10 years living in the slums, running a free health clinic, working with the mafia, working in Bollywood, fighting with the Mujaheedins against Russia in Afghanistan ... and much more. Its almost 1000 pages long - and I am looking forward to reading it again.

The first page of the book opens beautifully as such:

"It too me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choice we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realised, somehow, through the screaming in my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn't sound like much, I know. But in that flinch and bite of the chain, when it's all you've got, that freedom is a universe of possibility. And the choice you make, between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.

In my case, it's a long story, and a crowded one. I was a revolutionary who lost his ideals in heroin, a philosopher who lost his integrity in crime, and a poet who lost his soul in a maximum-security prison. When I escaped from prison, over the front wall, between two gun-towers, I became my country's most wanted man. Luck ran with me and flew with me across to India, where I joined the Bombay mafia. I worked as a gunrunner, a smuggler and a counterfeiter. I was chained on three continents, beaten, stabbed and starved. I went to war. I ran into enemy guns. And I survived, while other men around me died. They were better men than I am, most of them: better men whose lives were crunched up in mistakes, and thrown away by the wrong second of someone else's hate, or love, or indifference. And I buried them, too many of those men, and grieved their stories and their lives into my own.

But my story doesn't begin with them, or with the mafia: it goes back to that first day in Bombay. Fate put me in the game there. Luck dealt me the cards that led me to Karla Saaranen. And I started to play it out, that hand, from the first moment I looked into her green eyes. So it begins, this story, like everything else -- with a woman, and a city, and a little bit of luck."

I love that line ... so it begins, this story, like everything else -- with a woman, and a city, and a little bit of luck! Love it! And there are so many other lines in this book - over time maybe I'll talk about a few more ... better still - go read the book!

Freakanomics by Stephen Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner:

Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? What kind of impact did Roe v. Wade have on violent crime? Do parents really matter when it comes to how kids will turn out?

Levitt looks at data. Distinguishes correlation from causation. And validates some very eye-opening hypotheses. I really liked this book a lot and have been talking about it ever since I read it. Quoting it. Over and over. Ask the people I hang out with!

I have a few more but no time to write about them. Later. Hopefully it will be sooner than 6 months from now. (And isn't that how most bloggers end every single post!) :)