Another year comes to an end and like all previous years, it is time for me to reflect upon the books I read this year. In all my previous years, except for 2018, the minimum number of books I would have read would be about 35, but from 2018 the number of books I read started following a negative trend. While it is easy for me to console myself, for I’m doing more academic reading these days – my reading in the past two years focused on human migration; green-grabbing/green militarization; human-wildlife conflicts; etc., my inkling to read other books have always made me hoard books. Having said that, I’m still happy that I could read seven books in 2019 and have thirteen books in the pipeline, which I may be able to finish reading in 2020.

Here’s the list of books I read in 2019:

1. Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed – Jared Diamond
2. The grazing revolution: a radical plan to save the earth – Allan Savory
3. Gun island – Amitave Gosh
4. Barking up the wrong tree – Eric Barker
5. Blacklisted in Bhutan: love lost and transformed in the country of Gross National Happiness– Rieki Crins
6. A splendid isolation: lessons on happiness from the kingdom of Bhutan – Madeline Drexler
7. Polity, Kingship, and Democracy – Sonam Kinga

And, here’s the list of books I have in the pipeline for 2020:

1. Guns, Germs, and Steel – Jared Diamond
2. The world until yesterday: what can we learn from traditional societies? – Jared Diamond
3. The uninhabitable earth: a story of the future – David Wallace-Wells
4. My year without matches: escaping the city in search of the wild – Claire Dunn
5. Democratic transition in Bhutan: political contests as moral battles – Sonam Kinga
6. Falter: has the human game begun to play itself out? – Bill McKibben
7. Catching fire: How cooking made us human – Richard Wrangham
8. Long walk to freedom: the autobiography of Nelson Mandela – Nelson Mandela
9. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the quest for a fantastic future – Ashlee Vance
10. Adventures of a young naturalist – David Attenborough
11. Sikkim: Requiem of a Himalayan Kingdom – Andrew Duff
12. Living is dying: how to prepare for death, dying and beyond – Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rimpoche
13. Governing the commons: the evolution of institutions for collective action – Elinor Ostrom

Just to feel good,  myself, I tried to recollect the books I read within the last five years and came out with the list of 56 books. Here’s the list of books I read, which I tried to categorize in three groups: Philosophy / Buddhism; Books on/from Bhutan; and Others.

Philosophy / Buddhism

1. Science and philosophy in the India Buddhist classics: the physical world – Thubten Jinpa
2. The truth of suffering and the path of liberation – Chogyam Trungpa
3. The heart of the Buddha – Chogyam Trungpa
4. Old path white clouds – Thich Nhat Hanh
5. What makes you not a Buddhist – Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse
6. Not for happiness – Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse
7. The guru drinks bourbon – Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse
8. Best foot forward: a pilgrim’s guide to the sacred sites of the Buddha – Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse
9. Cave in the Snow – Vicki Mackenzie
10. The Tibetan book of living and dying – Sogyal Rinpoche
11. The wisdom of compassion – Dalai Lama
12. The art of happiness – Dalai Lama
13. A guide to the Bodhisattva way of life – Shantideva
14. Words of my perfect teacher – Patrul Rinpoche
15. Turning confusion into clarity – Yongey Mingyur
16. Brilliant moon – Dilgo Khyentse
17. The mystic eye – Sadhguru
18. Taking the leap – Pema Chodron
19. Science and Philosophy in the Indian Buddhist Classics [Volume I] – Thupten Jinpa

Books on/from Bhutan

1. Of rainbows and clouds – Ashi Dorji Wangmo Wangchuck
2. Married to Bhutan – Linda Leaming
3. Chilli and cheese – Kunzang Choden
4. Butter tea at sunrise – Britta Das
5. Beyond the Sky and the Earth: A Journey into Bhutan – Jamie Zeppa
6. The history of Bhutan – Karma Phuntsho

Others

1. The remains of the day – Kazou Ishiguro
2. An Artist of the floating World – Kazou Ishiguro
3. Weapons of the weak – James C. Scott
4. The great derangement – Amitave Gosh
5. The circle of reason – Amitav Ghosh
6. Sapiens: a brief history of human kinds – Yuval Noah Harari
7. Homo Deus: a brief history of tomorrow – Yuval Noah Harari
8. The leader who had no title – Robin Sharma
9. The monk who sold his ferrari – Robin Sharma
10. Who will cry when you die? – Robin Sharma
11. Last child in the wood – Richard Louv
12. Rumors of rain – Andre Brink
13. Life before life – Jim B. Tucker
14. Mountains beyond mountains – Tracy Kidder
15. Gift in Rain – Sarah Joseph
16. Spillover – David Quammen
17. And the mountain echoed – Khaled Hosseini
18. A thousand splendid suns – Khalid Hosseini
19. The kite runner – Khaled Hosseini
20. The fifth mountain – Paulo Coelho
21. The alchemist – Paulo Coelho
22. Veronika decides to die – Paulo Coelo
23. I am Malala – Malala Yousafzai
24. Work hard be nice – Jay Mathews
25. Anne Frank: The diary of a young girl – Edited by Otto H. Frank and Mirjan Pressler
26. Bad things don’t just happen to other people – Michael Marshall
27. Love in the time of cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
28. Rich dad poor dad – Robert Kiyosaki
29. The inheritance of loss – Kiran Desai
30. If god was a banker – Ravi Subrahmanyan
31. A leaf in the bitter wind: a memoir – Ting-xing Ye

With this, I would like to wish everyone a very happy new year and sending my wishes to all for a year filled with success and happiness.

[Note: Blue texts indicate those books which I added to the list after I remembered]

Tashi Delek!