📚 BOOKS OF 2024 (Special Edition 🗞️) - Issue 206

Hi, I am JOE and I write on "Mindful Productivity & Cerebral Happiness". My endeavour is to share life lessons, some thoughts, quotes & links to articles/podcasts/books, I discover during the week.

Hey Friends,

This week, I have thought of writing a special newsletter for the Year 2024 to bring out, what I have read or listened to during the year. Reading as such is becoming an extincting habit especially with Gen -Z & Gen Alpha . Around the world, parents are making special effort to get them started in to reading. In my case, things were different, I was too busy in finding a stable career and majorly engrossed myself into an academics and anything else that would gives me an upper edge in my competitive exams. This dedicated efforts with an extremely narrowed & sustained focus did give away it's dividend to me. After finding a stable career and getting my feet 👣 stable in my work space, I started diversifying my readings. Also the credit goes to my humble parents who have always encouraged and supported me unconditionally to read and explore the literary world.

I must say there is too much to read and too little time. It’s easy to think that this conflict is a distinctive feature of contemporary life, caused by mass literacy, the printing press and the internet. But in the past, historian have observed that the feeling of information overload surprisingly has an ancient origins. There were many places and regimes around the world where knowledge was in abundance but sadly the access to it was not available to everyone who lived in those times/eras.

Today's time is different and we must consider ourselves fortunate to be living in this time. And, I make an endeavour to use every platform and opportunity to engage in reading. Primarily my reading is a mix bag wherein I do read in print, digitally on my I-Pad / Kindle, listen to them on Audible and few other similar platforms. Trust me, if you can use some of these platforms and create a structure around them as per your liking and you too can spike your reading rate ( just a honest advice ).

When I say - There is too much to know and there is too little time. By this, I indicated my interest in Non- Fictional / Fictional/ Biographies/ Essays, Human Psychology and their interaction with the environment, and Certain Unconventional work. Broadly, I try to orient my favorite readings which tends to focus on:-

• What to do with the restless intellectual energies within you.

• How to move through time with dignity, curiosity and new learnings.

• How to commit to love but not self-flattering delusions.

As a gracefully aging “Young Man”, I have a kind of smooth, patient yet restlessly observant everydayness that makes it easy, interesting and entertaining to indulge in reading. I do have a special affection for scholarly research work/books.

Let me tell you , the best ones are not difficult to read, they’re very structured and therefore easy to scan and they deliberate with deep focus on one topic which can be immensely rewarding. I have found that a really good monograph uses its constrained focus to draw more principled, substantiated conclusions on topics of broader concern.

If you want monthly roundups of books worth reading? subscribe—you’ll also receive occasional posts about art, philosophy, spirituality, psychology, creativity, golf ⛳ and technology ✦✧

With a hope that this brief motivational talk will help you to pick up reading habit, let me start with some of my this year’s readings. If I write synopsis of every book then it will make the Special Edition of this Newsletter a very long read. Hence, I might give away few snippets which really resonated with me. Do let me know , if you find some of them interesting enough to pick up for yourselves.

I would like to start with a special research work because this young person with a brilliant mind has made the prediction well before it all began -

An Extraordinary Work

• Lipika Kharab’s : The European Union’s Response to the Ukraine Crisis ( 2004 - 2021). ( A Dissertation Submitted to Jawahrlal Nehru University towards fulfilling her qualification mandate) .

• It's an absolutely amazing research work and every aspect which otherwise appears to be so complicated and jumbled up in geopolitical dynamics and state craft, has been so well thought and interwoven with her diligently linear writings for easy absorption. I loved it to the Core.

Non-Fiction

( Queue of my reading Library..☝️ )

1. Dan Davies’s : The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions – And How The World Lost its Mind (2024), which seems like a book about the sometimes-catastrophic consequences that technological and economic systems have had on society. And it is! But it’s also: a very accessible and engaging history of cybernetics; an insightful analysis on why research into AI explainability might not fix anything. It’s very possibly the most intellectually original (nonfiction) book I’ve read this year, and the conclusion includes an unexpected and delightful interest in cybernetics.

2. Ash Ali’s : The Unfair Advantage.

3. Simon Sinek’s : Leaders Eat Last.

4. Patty McCord’s : Powerful.

5. Seth Godin’s : Tribe

6. David Shiffman’s : Why Shark Matters.

7. Om Swami’s : Mind Full To Mindful.

8. Yuval Noah Harari’s : Sapiens and Homo Deus.

9. Bernd Brunner’s : Extreme North

10. Mikel Krogerus’s : The Communication Book.

11. Michelle Gelfand’s : Rule Makers, Rule Breakers.

12. Barry Schwartz’s : The Paradox of Choice.

13. Chris Walton’s : The Gamma Mindset.

14. David Brooks’s : The Second Mountain.

15. Marshall B Rosenberg’s : Non-violent Communication.

16. MJ DeMarco’s : The Millionaire Fastlane

17. K Annamalai’s : Stepping Beyond Khakhi.

18. Prince Harry’s : Spare

19. Rajiv Malhotra’s : Snakes in the Ganga.

20. Chris Miller’s : Chip War

21. Tara Zahra’s : Against the World

22. S Jaishankar’s : India Way

23. S Jaishankar’s : Why Bharat Matters.

24. Hanah Arendt’s : Eichmann in Jerusalem

25. Kash Patel’s : Government Gangster…………..

Fiction

Although, I am not a fiction guy but I do like to read some good work. I would like to give credit to my beloved son Yuvraj for pushing me towards Historical/ Fantasy Fiction . He is a great fan of Brandon Sanderson’s writings & Frank Herbert ( especially Dune Saga).

By no means it's an exhaustive listing but some of my fictional reads goes like this :-

1. Helen DeWitt’s : The Last Samurai (2000) is one of the greatest English-language novels of the 21st century. It’s about a brilliant and strange woman raising her unusually gifted son alone, and the story is inspired by Akira Kurosawa’s film Seven Samurai which reflects on the influence of our parents and how geniuses are raised.

2. Brandon Sanderson’s : Elantris.

3. Brandon Sanderson’s : Emperor Soul.

4. Manini J Anandani’s : Mandodari.

5. George Orwell’s : Animal Farm ( I have read this one multiple times and it's absolutely hilarious 😂).

6. Simon Hayha’s : The White Sniper.

7. Corinne Michael’s : Keep the Promise

8. Veronica Raimo’s : Lost on me

9. Pierce Brown’s : Red Rising…….

Golf

Golf is my passion and I do write a BLOG POST ON GOLF ⛳ 🏌️( Click here) Or you can copy this 👇 link 🔗 🔗(https://simplifiedgolflearning.wordpress.com/ ) in search 🔎 engine of your favourite device to learn more.

For me, it has been an interesting journey into this sport and I have always preferred to remain as a ‘true student’ and followed an incredible disciplined work ethics of this Life Altering Sport called ‘GOLF ⛳ 🏌️’. Probably, this could be one of the reason - Why my early critics might be meditating to find piece for their over jealous selves and संकुचित mindset.

You must be thinking - What kept me going ?. There is this one Question, I had always asked to my authentic self - “ If people around Tiger Woods would not have been over jealous & mean minded in their words and deeds, probably, he would not have become, what he finally became..?” that was and is the fuel which makes me work even harder on daily basis. Anyways, God has always been kind and some wonderful people became part of my support system which led me to exceed my own expectations in this sport. So Thank you everyone ( all inclusive) for continuously fueling the fire 🔥 in my belly.

So having shared a quick peek into my golfing journey, here are some of my reads on Golf ⛳ among countless prints …

1. Lynn Marriott’s : Every Shot Must Have a Purpose.

2. Byron Nelson’s : Autography

3. James Sieckmann’s : Shor Game

4. Raymond Prior’s : Golf Beneath the Surface.

5. Harvey Prnick’s : Little Red Book ( It's my all-time favorite)

6. Bob Harig’s : Driver

7. Bob Harig's’s : Tiger & Phil

8. Tiger Woods’s : How I Play Golf ( it's kind of a reference book for all those who play this beautiful sport)

9. Ben Hogan’s : Five Lessons

10. Bob Rotela’s : How Champions Think & (Every book he has written on golf )…………

11. ……& Many many more …….

A big thank you for reading this newsletter!

_ Joe….

With this I am ending the year with this special-edition End of Year newsletter and will return with some interesting & diversified writings in the new year 🕛.

I do have some plans which I will roll out in due course. But in the meantime, leave a comment or chat message if you want to let me know what brings you here and what will keep you engaged in the year to come.

🌱🌿Happy New Year 2025🎋🪅

Take good care & hope you have enjoyed reading this week's dose of ‘Mindful Productivity & Cerebral Happiness’.

Joe

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