These are books which are dearest to me. Each of these books have influenced me a good deal.
| Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid | Douglas Hofstadter |
| The Art of Computer Programming Series | Donald Knuth |
| Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman | Richard Feynman |
| To Kill a Mocking Bird | Harper Lee |
| The Call of the Wild | Jack London |
| Metamagical Themas | Douglas Hofstadter |
| Roots | Alex Haley |
| (All of Enid Blyton's stories) | Enid Blyton |
These books are among my all-time favourites
| The Diary of Anne Frank | Anne Frank |
| Jonathan Livingston Seagull | Richard Bach |
| A Bridge Across Forever | Richard Bach |
| Pride and Prejudice | Jane Austen |
| Far From the Madding Crowd | Thomas Hardy |
| White Fang | Jack London |
| Fountainhead | Ayn Rand |
| Sherlock Holmes | Arthur Conan Doyle |
| The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan | Robert Kanigel |
| Thornbirds | Colleeen McCullough |
| Cosmos | Carl Sagan |
| Martin Gardener's books | Martin Gardener |
| To Sir, With Love | E.R. Braithwaite |
Assorted good ones
| The Bourne Identity | Robert Ludlum |
| Midnight's Children | Salman Rushdie |
| The Hobbit | J.R.R. Tolkien |
| What do you care what other people think? | Richard Feynman |
| The Bridges of Madison County | Robert James Waller |
| The Ladies of Missalonghi | Colleen McCullough |
| The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian | Nirad C. Chaudhuri |
| Far Pavillions | M.M. Kaye |
| A Town like Alice | Nevil Shute |
Excellent Short stories
| No Comebacks | Frederick Forsyth |
| Collected short stories | Roald Dahl |
| Twelve Red Herrings | Jeffrey Archer |
| A Quiver Full of Arrows | Jeffrey Archer |
| A Twist in the Tale | Jeffrey Archer |
| Short stories | O Henry |
These books were different
| Siddharta | Herman Hesse |
| The Outsider | Albert Camus |
| Animal Farm | George Orwell |
| The Little Prince | St. Antoine De Exupery |
| The story of my experiments with truth | M.K.Gandhi |
| The catcher in the rye | J.D. Salinger |
| Freedom at Midnight | Dominique Lapierre & Larry Collins |
Good Fiction (with my ratings)
| Jeffrey Archer | |
| Not a penny more, Not a penny less | **** |
| Kane and Abel | **** |
| The Prodigal daughter | *** |
| Shall We tell the President | *** |
| As the crow flies | **** |
| The Fourth Estate | * |
| Erich Segal | |
| Love Story | **** |
| Doctors | **** |
| The Class | **** |
| Oliver's Story | **** |
| Man, Woman and Child | **** |
| Acts of Faith | **** |
| Prizes | *** |
| Arthur Hailey | |
| The Final diagnosis | **** |
| Wheels | **1/2 |
| Hotel | **** |
| A.J.Cronin | |
| The Citadel | **** |
| The Spanish Gardener | **1/2 |
| Dr. Finlay of Tannochbrae | *** |
| Roald Dahl | |
| Switch Bitch | ****1/2 |
| Kiss, Kiss | ****1/2 |
| Irving Wallace | |
| The Second Lady | **** |
| The Seventh secret | ***1/2 |
| Mario Puzo | |
| The Godfather | **** |
| Sidney Sheldon | |
| If Tomorrow comes | **** |
| Rage of Angels | **** |
| Memories of midnight | - read most of these long ago; so i don't remember individual stories - |
| Sands of time | |
| The other side of midnight | |
| The stars shine down | |
| Morning, noon and night | |
| Master of the game | |
| Bloodline | |
| Nothing lasts forever | |
| A Stranger in the mirror | |
| The naked face | |
| Windmills of the Gods |
| Robin Cook | |
| Mutation | ***** |
| Coma | *** |
| Outbreak | **** |
| James Hadley Chase | |
| Believe this you'll believe anything | ***** |
| The dead stay dumb | *** |
| John Grisham | |
| The Firm | *** |
| The Chamber | *** |
| Michael Crichton | |
| Jurassic Park | **** |
| The Lost World | **** |
| P.G. Wodehouse | |
| Galahad at Blandings | *** |
| Uneasy money | **** |
| Eggs, beans and crumpets | *** |
| Ken Follett | |
| A Place called Freedom | *** |
| The Eye of the Needle | *** |
| Mary Higgins Clark | |
| Loves Music, Loves to Dance | * |
| Death on the Cape & Other Stories | * |
| Erle Stanley Gardner | |
| The Case of the Grinning Gorilla | ** |
| The Case of the Dangerous Dowager | ? |
Warm and humorous animal stories
| All Things Bright and Beautiful | James Herriot |
| All Things Great and Small | James Herriot |
| All Things Wise and Wonderful | James Herriot |
| The Lord God made them all | James Herriot |
| Menagerie Manor | Gerald Durell |
Once upon a time I used to read these ...
| Enid Blyton | |
| Famous five | ***** |
| Five find outers | ***** |
| Adventure Group (River of Adventure, Valley of Adventure, Mountain of Adventure) | ***** |
| Secret Seven | *** |
| Fantasy stories | ***** |
| Galliano's circus stories | ***** |
| St. Claire's and Mallory Towers | ***** |
and these ...
| Westerns by Louis Lamour and Max Brand |
| Action novels by Nick Carter and Berkeley Gray |
| Mysteries by Hardy boys and Nancy Drew |
These classics I've read mostly in abridged format
| 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Pacemaker Classics) | Jules Verne |
| Swiss Family Robinson | Johann David Wyss |
| Robinson Crusoe | Daniel Defoe |
| The Coral island | Robert M. Ballantyne |
| Ivanhoe | Sir Walter Scott |
| Treasure Island | R.L. Stevenson |
| Kidnapped | R.L. Stevenson |
| The Three musketeers | Alexander Dumas |
| Man in the Iron mask | Alexander Dumas |
| Wuthering Heights | Emily Bronte |
| Rebecca | Daphne Du Maurier |
| Tom Sawyer | Mark Twain |
| The adventures of Huckleberry Finn | Mark Twain |
| Tom Brown's schooldays | Thomas Hughes |
| Oliver Twist | Charles Dickens |
| A Tale of two cities | Charles Dickens |
| Great Expectations | Charles Dickens |
| Animal Farm | George Orwell |
| Hamlet | Shakespeare |
| Romeo and Juliet | Shakespeare |
| A Midsummer's Night's Dream | Shakespeare |
| The Canterbury tales | Geoffrey Chaucer |
| Julius Caeser | Shakespeare |
| Little Women | Loisa May Alcott |
| Macbeth | Shakespeare |
| Jane Eyre | Charlotte Bronte |
| David Copperfield | Charles Dickens |
| Don Quixote | Miguel Cervantes |
| The thirtynine steps | John Buchan |
| Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde | R.L. Stevenson |
| Sense and Sensibility | Jane Austen |
| Gulliver's travels | Jonathan Swift |
| The Merchant of Venice | Shakespeare |
| The Taming of the Shrew | Shakespeare |
| Tempest | Shakespeare |
| As you like it | Shakespeare |
| The picture of Dorian Gray | Oscar Wilde |
| Twelfth night | Shakespeare |
| Counte of Monte Cristo | Alexander Dumas |
| Prisoner of Zenda | Anthony Hope |
| King Solomon's mines | H. Rider Haggard |
| Alice in Wonderland | Lewis Caroll |
| Around the world in 80 days | Jules Verne |