Books read in 2014

Read in 2014 (95 = 60 + 35; NF 23) 

ENGLISH FICTION (34) 

FICTION IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION --  (22): Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov [translated from Russian by David Magarshack], Scenes from Village Life by Amos Oz [translated from Hebrew by Nicolas de Lange], The Hen who Dreamed She Could Fly by Sun-Mi Hwang [translated from Korean by Chi-Young Kim], Manual of Painting and Calligraphy by Jose Saramago [translated from Portuguese], The Last Day of a Condemned Man by Victor Hugo [translated from French], The Skin by Curzio Malaparte [translated from Italian], The Rebels by Sandor Marai, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez [re-read; translated from Spanish by Gregory Rabassa], Portraits of a Marriage by Sandor Marai [translated from Hungarian], Hadji Murat by Leo Tolstoy, Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings by Firdausi [translated from Persian by Dick Davis], The History of the Siege of Lisbon by Jose Saramago [translated from Portuguese by Giovanni Pontiero], The Universal History of Iniquity and The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges [translated by Andrew Hurley], Akhenaten: Dweller in Truth by Naguib Mahfouz [translated from Arabic by Tagreid Abu-Hassabo], Money by Emile Zola [translated from French], The Story of a Ship-Wrecked Sailor by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Leopard by Guiseppe di Lampedusa [translated from Italian by Archibald Colquhuan], Esther's Inheritance by Sandor Marai [translated from Hungarian], The Beginning and the End by Naguib Mahfouz [translated from Arabic], Miser and Other Plays by Moliere [translated from French], The Professor and the Siren by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa [ translated from Italian by Stephen Twilley], 

NOVEL / FICTION IN ENGLISH (12): Home by Toni Morrison, Dust by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, Short Stories and Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling, Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides, The Lost Girl by D. H. Lawrence, The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K Chesterton, Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene, The Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri, Middlemarch  by George Eliot, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie .

ENGLISH POETRY (31) 

POETRY IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION (14): (Javednama by Mohammad Iqbal [translated from Persian by Arthur J Arberry]),  Poem of the Deep Song Poema Del Cante Jondo by Federico Garcia Lorca [translated from Spanish by Carlos Bauer], Complete Poems by Catullus, Poems by Sappho [translated from ancient Greek by Willis Barnstone], Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers and The Eumenides by Aeschylus [translated from ancient Greek by David R. Slavitt], Speaking of Siva [translated by A.K. Ramanujan], Swallowing the Sun  by Rumi [translated by Franklin D. Lewis], The Solitudes by Luis de Gongora [translated from Spanish by Edith Grossman],  Gulistan by Sa'adi [translated from Persian], Three Chinese Poets includes verses by Wang Wei, Li Bai and Du Fu [Translated by Vikram Seth], The Gypsies and Other Narrative Poems by Alexander Pushkin [translated from Russian by Antony Wood], THE NATURE OF THINGS by LUCRETIUS.

POETRY IN ENGLISH (17): A Village Life by Luise Glück, Broken Span by William Carlos Williams, Everything Begins Elsewhere by Tishani Doshi, 100 Poems: Old and New by Rudyard Kipling [Selected  and edited by Thomas Pinney], The Old Horsefly by Karl Shapiro, Selected Poems by Wallace Stevens, Selected Poems by Rudyard Kipling, Ink and Chalk by Shadab Zeest Hasmi, Seeney Astray by Seamus Heaney (based on an old Galeic poem), The Rusted City by Rochelle Hurt, All You Who Sleep Tonight by Vikram Seth, The Poems of Dylan Thomas, Jackstraws by Charles Simic, Bury My Clothes by Roger Bonair-Agard, Maybe it was So by Reginald Gibbons, Geography of Tongues by Shikha Malviya, Midnight Salvage by Adrienne Rich,

ENGLISH NON-FICTION (21)

PHILOSOPHY / RELIGION / MYTHOLOGY  (2): Mythology by Edith Hamilton, A Study of Religions by Swami Vivekananda.

POPULAR SCIENCE / ECONOMICS (7): Truth and Beauty: Aesthetics and Motivations in Science by S. Chandrasekhar, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Warmth Disperses and Time Passes: The History of Heat by Hans Christian von Baeyer, Heat and Thermodynamics: A Historical Perspective by T. Christopher Lewis, Thermodynamics of Pizza: Essays on Science and Everyday Life by Harold Morowitz, The Man Who Changed Everything: The Life of James Clerk Maxwell by Basil Mahon, Backyard Bugs by Robin K. Laughlin.


NON-FICTION - OTHER (12): In Praise of Shadows by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki [translated by Thomas J. Harper and Edward G. Seidensticker], Reading Rilke: Reflections on the Problems of Translation by William H. Gass, Black Boy by Richard Wright, Something of Myself by Rudyard Kipling, (Heretics by GK Chesterton), Mornings in Mexico and Etruscan Places by DH Lawrence, The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz, A Matter of Rats by Amitava Kumar, Salt, Sugar, Fat by Michael Moss, What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets by Michael J. Sandel, Dongri to Dubai: Six decades of Mumbai Mafia by S. Hussain Zaidi.

MAHABHARATA (by Mahrishi Ved Vyas; translated from Samskrit into English by Kisari Mohun Ganguly) (0/18):

LITERATURE : INDIAN LANGUAGES (9 = 5+4; 2)

• Hindi / Urdu / Punjabi (Fiction/Mythology: 3+ Poetry: 3+ Non-fiction: 2):  (Vishnu Puran), Jhoota Sach: Vatan Aur Desh by Yashpal, Basere Se Dour by Harivansh Rai Bachchan, Ajatshatru by Jaishankar Prasad, (Saket by Maithalisharan Gupt), Kurushetra by Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, Saaye Mein Dhoop by Dushyant Kumar, Apni Apni Beemari by Parsaain

Sanskrit (Fiction: 0+ Poetry: 1): Vishnu Puran

(If I am through more  than 50% of the book, it goes into the list of the year past, otherwise it appears in the new list next year. See here for the books read in 2013, with a selection of my favorite reads in the year past.)

Favorite reads from 2014
1) The Skin by Curzio Malaparte [translated from Italian]
2)  Jhoota Sach: Vatan Aur Desh by Yashpal
3)  Dust by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor
4)  Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty
5)  Reading Rilke: Reflections on the Problems of Translation by William H. Gass
6)  Middlemarch  by George Eliot
7)  Basere Se Dour by Harivansh Rai Bachchan
8)  THE NATURE OF THINGS by LUCRETIUS
9)  The Poems of Dylan Thomas
10) Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings by Firdausi [translated from Persian by Dick Davis] 
11)  A Matter of Rats by Amitava Kumar
12)  Money by Emile Zola
13) Leopard by Guiseppe di Lampedusa [translated from Italian by Archibald Colquhuan]
14) Portraits of a Marriage and Esther's Inheritance by Sandor Marai
15) The Beginning and the End by Naguib Mahfouz.