I got back into a regular reading habit after few years. Here are the books I read:

1. India after Gandhi

Author: Ramchandra Guha ---- Goodreads

My best and longest read of 2025. I've written a separate blog about my reflections here.

2. Brave new world

Author: Aldous Huxley --- Goodreads

Dystopian fiction is one of my favourite genres thanks to Orwell. Here Huxley creates a distopian society with factories producing humans with precise qualities and intelligence for particular jobs, their emotions engineered since childhood, and adults consuming a drug called "soma" to suppress all emotions except happiness - so everybody is happy all the time - dystopia perceived as utopia.

But there is another world which is the opposite of this, and this story is about a man from that "other" world coming over into this one.

3. Darkness at noon

Author: Arthur Koestler --- Goodreads

Ajay Shah recommended this book in Everything is Everything podcast. The story behind this book is fascinating. Koestler was an ex-communist in his early days and later wrote about the horrors of communism in Soviet Russia. He wrote the original version in 1930s in German and his girlfriend loosely translated it into English. They lived in France and had to flee during war. Koestler sent his German copy to a publisher which got lost. The English version was published in 1940 and became a huge hit. So much that it is believed to have influenced 1946 France elections and the communist party lost. 80 years later the original German version was found in 2015 and we now have the properly translated version with its original essence preserved.

This book dives deep into the mind of a senior party leader Rubashov (fictional names for obvious reasons of those times) who turned from driven and faithful party leader to doubting party motives, and being eliminated for that. An absolute chilling portrayal of totalitarianism.

4. The diary of a young girl

Author: Anne Frank --- Goodreads

After Darkness at noon, I wanted to read more world war books. Anne Frank is a young Jewish girl in Amsterdam who has to stay hiding in an attic for many months. We see war from the eyes of this young girl along with all her emotions, coming of age, relationships and family. This book is very raw which makes it extremely emotional and moving read.

5. Ghachar Ghochar

Author: Vivek Shanbhag --- Goodreads

I was very sad after reading Diary of a young girl. I needed some light read so I picked up this book. It is about how an Indian family's fortune changes and how the family dynamics change along with that. It is a nicely written compact short read.

6. My boyhood days

Author: Rabindranath Tagore --- Goodreads

Browsing through the collected works of Rabindranath Tagore, I came across this story. This is Tagore reminscing over his boyhood days. It is a beautiful description of his home, trees and all the small joys of a child's life.

7. Days at Morisaki bookshop

Author: Satoshi Yagisawa --- Goodreads

Recommended by my wife, I thought a light read of Japan would be calming for me - and it was. Set in Jimbocho, a locality of bookshops - this book will make you fall in love with books, coffee and Japan.

8. And then there were none

Author: Agatha Christie --- Goodreads

This was a monthly read by my local bookclub. I missed the meetup but had absolute fun reading this book. The plot - 10 strangers in a huge house on an island. I'm sure nobody could've seen the end coming - a perfect murder mystery - regarded as the best of Agatha Christie. I'm pretty sure I'm going to read more of her.

9. Eleventh hour

Author: Salman Rushdie --- Goodreads

I came across this latest from Salman Rushdie somewhere on Goodreads and decided to give it a try. This was my first from Rushdie and it did not live upto expectations. It is a collection of short stories. It contains some great sentences and analogies, but except one (Musician of Kahani), I found the stories themselves very uneven. One story Oklahoma even mentions itself being uneven. I have mixed emotions because in some places I liked the writing. I will not let this deter me though. I have heard much about Rushdie and I'm looking forward to reading Midnight's children soon.

10. I who have never known men

Author: Jacqueline Harpman -- Goodreads

Another read from my local bookclub and for me another one influenced by world war. This Jewish author had to flee during world war and this book is clearly inspired by the Nazi concentration camps. A group of 40 women are kept in a bunker and nobody knows how or why they ended up there. They have vague memory of their past normal lives - except author who was a small girl when she ended up there and has no memory from the past - so in a way she is a bit different from the rest women. By accident they set free, again nobody knows why. Are they even on Earth or some other planet? This is a story of hope for these women in general and the girl in particular.

That's all. I am looking forward to more reading in 2026. Cheers!