Year 2022 in Books

1. Ret Samadhi Shree, Geetanjali
2. Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It Reeves, Richard V. 

3. Carrie Soto Is Back Carrie Reid, Taylor Jenkins
4. The Art Of Conjuring Alternate Realities: How Information Warfare Shapes Your World Singh, Shivam Shankar
5. Masters of Scale: Surprising Truths from the World's Most Successful Entrepreneurs Hoffman, Reid
6. Cut Like Wound Nair, Anita
7. Tejo Tungabhadra: Tributaries Of Time Vasudhendra
8. Chums: How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK Kuper, Simon
9. The Pattern Seekers: How Autism Drives Human Invention Baron-Cohen, Simon
10. Don't Forget 2004: Advertising Secrets of an Impossible Election Victory Sundar, Jayshree
11. Behind A Sports Champion Mothukuri, Sreekar
12. The Disruptor: How Vishwanath Pratap Singh Shook India Mukerji, Debashish
13. Fiercely Female: The Dutee Chand Story Misra, Sundeep

Summary:
1 Hindi book, 12 English.
4 fiction, 9 non-fiction.

8 by Indian authors, 4 by non-Indian.
Out of 4 fiction books, 3 had a transgender character(Ret Samadhi,Cut Like Wound,Tejo Tungbhadra - all Indian writers), 1 had a lesbian character(Carrie Soto is Back).
3 books on politics, 2 on sports.

Reviews:
Tejo Tungbhadra - By far the best book I have read in a long time. Amazing historical fiction. It has one grand plot and two great sub plots. Author, being Indian and Kannadiga, has done a good job of sketching the local characters and somewhat managed to detail out the Portugese ones. It's fast paced and has a great storyline. I recently came to know that its original Kannada version is a huge hit.

One big problem though: its Kindle version is a very shoddy piece of work despite being available since October 2022(or even earlier). There are numerous complaining Amazon reviews and author/translator themselves are aware of it but are incapable/unwilling to get it fixed.

Ret Samadhi - I came to know this when its English translation got the Booker. I chose to read the original Hindi version. I don't even remember when was the last time I read a Hindi book. My memory of Hindi literature is that it primarily deals with poor/downtrodden strata of society and the heart becomes very heavy reading that. Nothing wrong with that. At the same time we need some non-sorry stories as well. Though this book tackles a story which could have definitely been told in a heart-rending way, the author chose an upbeat tone. It's a book of hope.

Coming to the construction of the book, often the smallest significant unit of a book is a chapter or even a paragraph. But here it's a sentence. Many times I had to read and re-read a sentence to understand it. Due to that it was a very slow read initially.
And yet, every sentence has a tightness to it as if it will start oscillating the moment your sight touches it.

Masters of Scale: Surprising Truths from the World's Most Successful Entrepreneurs - I believe when it comes to writing about startups, we are in the post hagiographic era. Startups are no longer the entities to be worshipped blindly but to be treated as grey things as most of the worldly stuff is. Sadly, this book doesn't get it. It's dreary and dumb and seemingly written to cement existing friendships. Among the tech/startup books which I have read, only Eric Schmidt's books are worse.

Carrie soto is back - I believe it's a very good book to read for someone who hasn't read a lot of sports books(whether fiction or not). If you have read a lot of sports stuff, you may still appreciate it but not much.

Of Boys and Men  - Best non-fiction book I have read this year. Very fast paced. Anecdotal as well as data-heavy. Tackles a very important subject. I really wish a similar book exists which analyses data from India.