Reading list: January 2025 to January 2026

1. In Custody (Anita Desai)
2. Beautiful World, Where Are You (Sally Rooney)
3. Breasts and Eggs (Mieko Kawakami)
4. Agency (William Gibson)
5. Lords of the Deccan (Anirudh Kanisetti)
6. Neuromancer (William Gibson) [reread]
7. Pattern Recognition (William Gibson) [reread]
8. The Ivory Throne (Manu Pillai)
9. Spook Country (William Gibson) [reread]
10. Zero History (William Gibson) [reread]
11. Taliban (Pavneet Singh)
12. प्रतिनिधि कविताएं (विनोद कुमार शुक्ल)
13. The Diamond Age (Neal Stephenson)
14. Nietzsche: A Very Short Introduction (Michael Tanner)
15. Mrs Dalloway (Virginia Woolf)
16. प्रतिनिधि कविताएं (नागार्जुन)
17. The Odessa File (Frederik Forsyth)
18. Lord of the Flies (William Holding)
19. Spy Hook (Len Deighton)
20. Children of Time (Adrian Tchaikovsky)
21. Spy Line (Len Deighton)
22. Intermezzo (Sally Rooney)
23. No country for Old Men (Cormac McCarthy)
24. Spy Sinker (Len Deighton)
25. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain)
26. False Alarm (Bjorn Lomberg)
27. Savarkar: Echoes From a Forgotten Past (Vikram Sampath)
28. पंचतंत्र (पंडित विष्णु शर्मा)
29. Against the Day (Thomas Pynchon)
30. The Chekhov Collection of Short Stories (Anton Chekhov)
31. The Economics of International Development (William Easterly)
32. Faith (Len Deighton)
33. Hope (Len Deighton)
34. Hayek: A Life (1899-1950) (Bruce Caldwell, Hansjoerg Klausinger)
35. Charity (Len Deighton)
36. Hegel: A Very Short Introduction (Peter Singer)
37. Mildred Pierce (James M Cain)
38. The Warden (Anthony Trollope)
39. Impossible People (Julia Wertz)
40. We, The Citizens: Strengthening the Indian Republic (Khyati Pathak, Anupam Manur and Pranay Kotasthane)
41. The Curse of Chalion (Lois McMaster Bujold)
42. Dharma Democracy: How India Built the Third World's First Democracy (Salvatore Babones)
43. Double Star (Robert Heinlein)
44. Money and Empire: Charles Kindleberger and the Dollar system (Perry Mehrling)
45. Palestine (Joe Sacco)
46. Paladin of Souls (Lois McMaster Bujold)
47. Chandrakanta (Devakinandan Khatri) [reread]
48. The Prophet (Khalil Gibran)
49. The Blindfold (Siri Hustvedt)
50. The Loverboy of Bahawalpur (Rahul Pandita)

Excellent sentences series's next entry

Asad Zaidi on the demise of Gyanranjan. "How Gyanranjan shaped the world of Hindi literature."

Gyanranjan, Doodhnath Singh, Kashinath Singh, Ravindra Kalia, Mahendra Bhalla, and Vijay Mohan Singh brought with them a spirit of rebellion. Their language was sharp, irreverent, unostentatious and charmingly cynical. Emerging tensions in social and interpersonal relationships, feelings of abandonment, disillusionment, loneliness of the younger generation, existential angst and frustration emerge as major themes. All this was a major change from the dull realism of earlier generations of Gandhians and progressives, the abstract, airy and artificial prose of Sachchidanand Vatsyayan “Agyeya” as well as the arthouse lyricism of writers such as Nirmal Verma. 

That part about Nirmal Verma is spot on!

Full link here: https://www.hindustantimes.com/opinion/how-gyanranjan-shaped-the-world-of-hindi-literature-101768318487055.html.