Feb 21, 2023
🌿 Sprout

I put this list together on an overcast day broken by brief patches of sunlight fading in and out on the lawns. The air is strangely balmy, and I feel nostalgic for some reason. You will forgive me if that, and the weather, affects my choices. I have, however, tried to shake off recency bias and dig deep into years of reading voraciously to make accurate recommendations.
This isn't a curated Goodreads list; it's more like me writing down the names that have been caught in the cobwebs of my mind for goodness knows what reason. But I think that's a good enough reason to recommend something: This stuck with me, that's it. I usually buy my books from Champaca, Bookworm, Blossom Book House, Walking Bookfairs and surprise bookfairs that show up in convention halls.
Note: Books with * involve triggering topics explained in quite some detail. I don't recommend them any lesser for it — they are still masterclasses in storytelling.
Fiction
Standalone novels
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr
A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles
A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara *
Sea of Poppies, Amitav Ghosh *
Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller
Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie *
Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
And the Mountains Echoed, Khaled Hosseini
The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy *
Shantaram, Gregory David Roberts
The Overstory, Richard Powers
The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt *
The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
White Teeth, Zadie Smith *
Classics
The premise of 'classics' and 'canon' is heavily contested in literature. Who is it a classic for? Who is the list catering to? Who is it alienating? Short note on this forthcoming, but the long and short of it is that these are my classics.
Malgudi Days, R.K. Narayan
The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
Little Women (and the lesser-known Little Men), Louisa May Alcott
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
Persuasion, Jane Austen
Nagamandala, Girish Karnad
Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens
Demian_ Herman Hesse
Dracula, Bram Stoker
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
Series
The Winternight Trilogy, Katherine Ardern
The Stormlight Archives, Brandon Sanderson
Six of Crows Duology, Leigh Bardugo
The Song of Ice and Fire, George R.R. Martin
Gentleman Bastards, Scott Lynch *
Shades of Magic, V.E. Schwab
The Earthsea Cycle, Ursula K. Le Guin
Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel
The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
The Sandman, Neil Gaiman
Backlinks to this note
Inspiration
A collection of writing and other sensory experiences that I keep returning to.