Ten Books Challenge - The Ten Fiction Books That Have Influenced Me Most

(I was "tagged" by a friend on Facebook as part of the "#TenBooksChallenge" that is doing the rounds of late. The idea is to list the ten books that have influenced one the most, and to "tag" one's friends in turn to get them to do the same.

I was delighted to read the names of books that others have listed, and I'm more than happy to participate.)

I have already posted my list of ten non-fiction books.

This is my fiction list.

1. There's a Hippie on the Highway, by James Hadley Chase (Panther Books)

I grew up on Enid Blyton and The Hardy Boys, but I really began to read for pleasure when I stumbled upon James Hadley Chase in high school. I think I must have read at least 50-60 of his novels, and my own creative writing at the time showed unmistakeable signs of his influence, with murder plots and car chases galore.

Some of the more memorable ones were "Miss Shumway Waves a Wand" (a supernatural-themed, very different novel from the usual Chase), "The Whiff of Money" (a gripping spy story), "The Way the Cookie Crumbles" (the story of an ingenious heist), "An Ear to the Ground" (a poignant story of a good man led to his doom by temptation), "The Flesh of the Orchid" (another sad story of a woman who could not protect the man she loved from assassins), "Cade" (perhaps the saddest Chase story of all), and many more.

But if I had to nominate one, based on the number of times I went back to read it, it would have to be "There's a Hippie on the Highway". I could identify with Harry Mitchell, the hero and Vietnam vet, who remains steadfast and straightforward in spite of the corruption and crime around him.

2. Stories from Somadeva's Kathasaritsagara, translated by CH Tawney (Jaico Publishing House)

Which Indian child has not grown up with Amar Chitra Katha comics? Indian history and mythology have been brought to life in the imaginations of so many by this unmatched collection of illustrated books.

But rarely have I come across a book (i.e., not in comic book format) on Indian mythological stories that captured my imagination with the same concoction of rich characters and heroic action. The Panchatantra was relatively tame, and the Ramayana and the Mahabharata occupied a different space in one's mind. I craved stories.

Hansa Mehta's "Adventures of King Vikrama" fit the bill excellently, and this remains one of my favourites. But even better was the 1880 translation by CH Tawney of the work of Somadeva, the "Kathaa-sarit-saagara", the "ocean of streams of story".

Many pleasant afternoons during my secondary school childhood were spent reading this book, and imagining the adventures of its many heroes.

Then single combats took place between the gods and Asuras, and Vidyutprabha, the father of Vidyuddhvaja, rushed in wrath upon Indra. Indra found himself being gradually worsted by the Daitya in the interchange of missiles; so he flung his thunderbolt at him. And then that Daitya, smitten by the thunderbolt, fell dead. And that enraged Vidyuddhvaja so that he attacked Indra. And, though his life was not in danger, he began by discharging at him the weapon of Brahma; and other great Asuras struck at him with other weapons. Then Indra called to mind the weapon of Pasupati, presided over by Siva himself, which immediately presented itself in front of him; he worshipped it, and discharged it among his foes. That weapon, which was of the nature of a destroying fire, consumed the army of the Asuras; but Vidyuddhvaja, being a child, only fell senseless when smitten by it; for that weapon does not harm children, old men, or fugitives. Then all the gods returned home victorious.

Intoxicating stuff! And best of all, that wonderful collection is free to read and download here!

3. The Collected Short Stories of Saki, by HH Munro (Wordsworth Classics)

Humour is one of my favourite genres, and PG Wodehouse and Richmal Crompton have had me in splits on several occasions. But there is one person whose humour has just that extra dash of wicked wit, and that is Saki (the pseudonym of HH Munro), who unfortunately was cut down in his prime during the First World War.

[...] Her husband gardens in all weathers. When a man goes out in the pouring rain to brush caterpillars off rose trees, I generally imagine his life indoors leaves something to be desired.

And

A young lady with a confidential voice favoured us with a long recitation about a little girl who died or did something equally hackneyed, and then the Major gave us a graphic account of a struggle he had with a wounded bear. I privately wished that the bears would win sometimes on these occasions; at least they wouldn't go vapouring about it afterwards.

And the classic

I've been carefully brought up, and I don't like to play games of skill for milk chocolate, so I invented a headache and retired from the scene. I had been preceded a few minutes earlier by Miss Langshan-Smith, a rather formidable lady, who always got up at some uncomfortable hour in the morning, and gave you the impression that she had been in communication with most of the European governments before breakfast. There was a paper pinned to her door with a signed request that she might be called particularly early on the morrow. Such an opportunity does not come twice in a lifetime. I covered up everything except the signature with another notice, to the effect that before these words should meet the eye she would have ended a misspent life, was sorry for the trouble she was causing, and would like a military funeral. A few minutes later, I violently exploded an air-filled paper bag on the landing, and gave a stage moan that could be heard in the cellars. Then I pursued my original intention and went to bed. The noise those people made in forcing open the good lady's door was positively indecorous; she resisted gallantly, but I believe they searched her for bullets for about a quarter of an hour as if she had been a historic battlefield.

4. Nick Carter/Killmaster - The Amazon, by John Messman (Tandem Books)

Somewhere around the time I went to junior college (Years 11 and 12), I graduated from James Hadley Chase to Nick Carter. I think I might have read 20-30 of these outlandish spy thrillers. Chase was tame in comparison. The Nick Carter stories also had sufficient erotic content to appeal to a young male.

I liked quite a few of these, such as "Moscow", "Code Name Werewolf", and "Time Clock of Death", but my favourite would have to be "The Amazon". The action was virtually non-stop, and (ahem) the other kind of action was pretty good too.

5. Selected Stories - Konstantin Paustovsky (Progress Publishers, Moscow)

Thanks to my father's job as a professor of linguistics in the foreign languages section of the Indian Institute of Science, I had access to a steady stream of Russian, German and French books, movies and music. Especially Russian, because my father knew Russian fairly well. Through him, my mother came to read some modern (at the time) Russian authors, and one of those was Konstantin Paustovsky. Although my mother liked his stories, a Russian lady we knew at the time dismissed his work as "ochin sentimentalnyi!" ("very maudlin").

I read one of his books in English, and while I could see why someone would find his stories too sentimental, I thought they were innocently romantic and very heartwarming.

I particularly liked "Snow", "Precious Cargo" and "A Basket of Fir Cones" in that collection.

It was thanks to Paustovsky that I formed an image of the Russian people as being uniformly warm and affectionate, and it took the Russian invasion of Afghanistan (and the horror stories that came out of that war) to jolt me out of that illusion. I grew up when I learned not to believe in stereotypes, whether positive or negative.

6. The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov (Panther Books)

Science Fiction is perhaps my favourite genre by far, and one of my favourites in that genre is Asimov's Foundation Trilogy. This had so many wonderful new concepts in it. The science of psychohistory was one of them. The premise of psychohistory is this: It's not possible to predict the trajectory of a single atom, or the future of a single person. But it is possible to predict the trajectory of a ball, because it's made up of trillions of atoms. Similarly, when dealing with a society consisting of trillions of individuals, it is possible to predict the future of that society as a whole. The whole Foundation story was based on the idea that a psychohistorian predicted the downfall of the galactic empire, and proposed to shorten the coming millennia of chaos by setting up a "foundation" to store the empire's knowledge.

Foundation offered several fascinating nuggets of ideas. One was that regardless of the combinations of weak/strong emperor and weak/strong viceroy, the Foundation would never be under threat from the Empire. Then there was the unexpected spanner in the works thrown by the appearance of a mutant person whose existence psychohistory could never have predicted, and who threatened to overturn the Foundation's carefully laid plans. And finally, there was the secret "Second Foundation", made up solely of psychohistorians (the original Foundation did not have a single one), and its surprising location.

Although Asimov's Robot stories are individually more interesting, the Foundation trilogy stands alone as a classic because of its elaborate and comprehensive story.

7. The Philip K Dick Reader, by Philip K Dick (Citadel Press)

Great as Asimov was, he was not the best science fiction author, in my opinion. I think that honour goes to Philip K Dick. Dick's stories have formed the basis of blockbuster movies such as "Bladerunner" and "Minority Report".

Two stories that I love in this collection are "Second Variety" and "To Serve The Master". Both are deliciously disturbing.

8. The Stories of Ray Bradbury, by Ray Bradbury (Alfred A Knopf, Publisher)

I've written more than once about Ray Bradbury, and this post should tell you what I think of his writing. Ray Bradbury is a word-wrangler par excellence. I wish I could write like him.

As a consolation, I at least have this gargantuan collection of Bradbury's stories, and I often open it to read passages from my favourites, "A Story of Love", "And So Died Riabouchinska", "The Lake", "A Scent of Sarsaparilla", and others. The man amazes me.

9. The Complete Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Bantam Classics)

Surprisingly, I read the complete set of Sherlock Holmes stories only in my mid-twenties. I had read a few stories earlier on occasion (our English textbook in school even had "The Blue Carbuncle"), but nothing prepared me for the treat I received when I bought the whole collection and began to read them all.

I think the best thing about the stories is the consistent level of quality. With the exception of the few stories narrated in the first person by Holmes himself, all of them are excellent.

"To anyone who wishes to study mankind this is the spot. . . . Look at the magnificent types! Look at these two men who are coming towards us, for example."

"The billiard-marker and the other?"

"Precisely. What do you make of the other?"

The two men had stopped opposite the window. Some chalk marks over the waistcoat pocket were the only signs of billiards which I [Watson] could see in one of them. The other was a very small, dark fellow, with his hat pushed back and several packages under his arm.

"An old soldier, I perceive," said Sherlock.

"And very recently discharged," remarked the brother.

"Served in India, I see."

"And a non-commissioned officer."

"Royal Artillery, I fancy," said Sherlock.

"And a widower."

"But with a child."

"Children, my dear boy, children."

In my hostel at IIT Kanpur, a small group of Holmes fans tried in vain to "deduce" things about one another, but we never achieved much success beyond remarking to friends carrying empty bottles, "I deduce you are going to the mess to get water."

10. Harry Potter (all 7 books), by JK Rowling (Bloomsbury Publishing)

I don't believe the selection of JK Rowling's magnum opus should be controversial in the least. Rowling is Enid Blyton reborn, and with the karmic reward of steroids to boot.

I think Rowling's contribution goes beyond smooth entertainment. She has changed our world for the better by re-igniting the love of reading in a new generation.

---- Postscript ---

I was toying with the idea of including "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy in this list, but decided against it. While I like Tolkien very much, this is not the easiest set of books to read. It takes a supreme effort of will to complete reading "The Two Towers", for example. I believe a good book should not be an effort to read.

[If you liked this post, you might like these other autobiographical pieces as well:
Ten Things Teachers Taught Me
Ten Great Epiphanies Of My Life
Ten Books Challenge - The Ten Non-Fiction Books That Have Influenced Me Most
The Comics That Made Me What I Am]

Ten Books Challenge - The Ten Non-Fiction Books That Have Influenced Me Most

(I was "tagged" by a friend on Facebook as part of the "#TenBooksChallenge" that is doing the rounds of late. The idea is to list the ten books that have influenced one the most, and to "tag" one's friends in turn to get them to do the same.

I was delighted to read the names of books that others have listed, and I'm more than happy to participate.)

I'm going to cheat a little. Try as I might, I could not reduce the number of my favourite books to just ten. So I've created two lists of ten, one consisting of fiction books, and the other of non-fiction.

This is my non-fiction list.

1. Physics for Entertainment, by Ya. Perelman (Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow)

One of the peculiar joys of growing up in India in the 70s was the availability of ultra-cheap Russian books translated into English. Many of these were on Science and Mathematics, the first "popular science" books that most of my cohort encountered, and parents were happy to buy these for their children. "Physics for Entertainment" was in two volumes, with lots of fascinating facts, and copiously illustrated throughout. This was one of my favourites from a very young age, and I'm happy to see that it's available online. 

(Later on, I came across a similarly fascinating Russian book on Chemistry called "107 Stories About Chemistry" by L Vlasov and D Trifonov. In many ways, I liked this even better than "Physics for Entertainment", but Perelman's book remains the classic of its genre.)

2. Communism - A Study of Revolution, by Gerald W Johnson (A Pennant Student Edition)

There are three writers I admire and envy. One is Ray Bradbury, whose "prose poetry" is mesmerising (more on him in the companion post on my ten favourite fiction books). The second is the gifted young writer Aatish Taseer, who uses his twin gifts of insightful perception and an inspired turn of phrase to create unforgettable pictures of everything he writes about.

The third writer on my list is Gerald W Johnson. Johnson's skill is in his use of extremely simple English to create a narrative of such gripping intensity that even a non-fiction book becomes a page-turner. I bought "Communism - A Study of Revolution" out of idle interest and began to read it one afternoon. I could only put it down when I had finished. This happened many times. I would pick it up and start reading at some random page, and would not be able to put it down till I finished the entire book.

Consider these early paragraphs.

Karl Marx was a great man. Say that to the next person you happen to meet and the chances are more than even that he will be shocked, because that is not the light in which we have seen him. To most of us the name brings to mind some cartoonist's picture of a wild, bushy-haired creature with fierce whiskers, holding a bomb that he is about to throw. Marx in some ways was terrible, because he made some terrible mistakes. But he was a student such as the world has seldom seen. He read every book - that is, every serious book - he could put his hands on, and he not only read, he remembered what he read. More than that, when he dug up facts that most people had forgotten, or had never known, he could put them together and figure out what they meant.

That is a rare quality. It is so rare, indeed, that we have a special name for a man who can take a large number of facts, put them together, and from the whole collection bring out some important truth that nobody has seen before. We call him a philosopher.

A bit gender-insensitive (aren't there female philosophers?), but then, this was written in the 60s.

3. Ninety Minutes at Entebbe, by William Stevenson (Bantam Books)

Few books have influenced my politics like this one. I read "Ninety Minutes at Entebbe" when I was in Year 10. This is the true story of how Israel mounted a daring rescue of its citizens who were being held hostage by PLO terrorists in faraway Entebbe, Uganda, under the protection of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. Against formidable odds, after rigorous planning and training, and a 4000 kilometer flight path that circumvented hostile countries along the way, Israeli special forces stormed the aircraft and rescued almost all the hostages. The commander of the commando team (Yonatan "Yonni" Netanyahu) was killed in the fighting, and one of the passengers who was in hospital rather than at the airport had to be left behind, but other than that, the operation was a stunning success and established Israel's reputation as a country not to be messed with.

For me in particular, this marked the beginning of my admiration for Israel. With the rise in Islamist violence since Sep 2001, that admiration has also grown (tempered a bit by reports of excesses against civilians).

4. Marketing Warfare, by Al Ries and Jack Trout (McGraw-Hill)

Two books were the rage during my MBA days, both by the same duo of authors. The first was "Positioning - The Battle For Your Mind". This was a revolutionary book that introduced a number of new ideas, for instance, that the battle by competitors is not fought "out there" in the marketplace, but inside the prospective customer's head, and that placing second in a contest is as good as losing.

As good as "Positioning" was, it dragged in places and wasn't a very easy read. The book that followed, "Marketing Warfare", was an absolute masterpiece. It had all of the authors' trademark sarcastic humour, revolutionary ideas and simple writing style. Even better, this book was a breeze to read, an absolute delight. I got a number of takeaways from this book:

- A defender only needs to be 70% as strong as an attacker to thwart an attack.

- A market leader must constantly attack itself to keep ahead of its potential competitors.

- When attacking a competitor, a company must not attack a weakness that is a weakness. It must attack a weakness that is inherent in the competitor's strength.

5. Platoon Leader, by James R McDonough (Bantam Books)

McDonough's narration of his experiences as a young lieutenant during the Vietnam war affected me at several levels. At one level, this was a book on leadership, and the author's personal anecdotes of the times he had to pull himself together in spite of his fears challenged me to show courage and stand up to the many difficult situations I faced at around that time. At another level, I began to respect and admire the author for his moral position on many difficult situations that he faced during that messy conflict. But the main impact that the book had on me was in instilling in me the conviction that men in uniform must never be granted untrammelled power over a civilian populace, because atrocities are bound to occur.

McDonough writes,

Some men in combat will commit war crimes, just as some men in combat will fail to take care of themselves. They will experiment with drugs, steal property, abuse women. When this happens, it destroys the discipline of a unit, making it easier for others to follow suit. War is, at its very core, the absence of order; and the absence of order leads very quickly to the absence of morality, unless the leader can preserve each of them in its place. [...] He must allow no cutting of corners. A bottle of soda stolen from an old peasant woman leads gradually but directly to the rape of her daughter if the line is not drawn in the beginning. [...] The commander was the link to order and civility, and he had to be humane. At the same time, he had to be uncompromising to protect the lives of all. The job was not easy.

One of the heartrending incidents mentioned in the book concerns a group of American soldiers who raided a village at night and forcibly abducted a young girl before the eyes of her helpless family. (They later killed her after raping her.) As they were dragging the girl away, the girl's mother ran after them, holding out a scarf to her daughter to at least protect her from the cold.

The memory of that passage still shocks me, and the thought of that forlorn act of love and care of a helpless mother still brings me close to tears. That's why, no matter which country we are talking about, I cannot accept the standard "patriotic", right-wing rhetoric about "our boys who are risking their lives to protect our freedom". This is also why I am totally against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) that indemnifies the Indian army during its operations in Kashmir, Manipur and elsewhere. Men in uniform must always be held accountable, otherwise atrocities are bound to happen.

6. Fundamentals of Database Systems, by Elmasri and Navathe (Benjamin/Cummings)

In 1990, I enrolled for a one-year part-time diploma program in software technology (This was before I went back to school for my masters degree in Computer Science.) I had a couple of years of experience with the Ingres relational database, but lacked a knowledge of formal database theory. The diploma program taught me how to design database systems ("data modelling"), and I learnt a new skill - that of drawing Entity-Relationship Diagrams.

When I did enrol for my masters in 1992, my thesis was on "Designing for Performance in RDBMS-based Systems", and I proposed an extension to the Entity-Relationship Diagram to incorporate elements of access patterns and load. You can download my thesis from here.

Even today, after more than 27 years of experience in various IT functions, my love for Linux and Open Source, my many years of experience with Java, and the last decade of my career as an architect, I consider myself to be fundamentally a "data person".

If there is one book that has made me what I am professionally, that has to be "Fundamentals of Database Systems". Thank you, Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe.

7. The Soul of a New Machine, by Tracy Kidder (Little, Brown and Company)

Very rarely, a book comes along that makes one feel like a hero by association. Tracy Kidder's true story about the development of Data General's Eclipse MV/8000 minicomputer reads like a racy spy novel. Indeed, it has elements of espionage in it, as when Data General's Tom West (the main designer of the Eclipse) impersonates a Digital Equipment Corp (DEC) technician at a DEC customer site to sneak a peek at the insides of the early VAX minicomputer to estimate how much it must have cost to build.

All of a sudden, the computer industry was "cool", and we were all part of a brave new frontier. My employer (CMC Ltd) often used VAX minicomputers, and when I once visited a client's data centre, I saw a Data General machine there, and the thrill I felt cannot be described. It was more than a feeling of living history. I felt like I had been catapulted right into a action-packed novel. I was standing face-to-face with an Eclipse MV/8000, the main character in "The Soul of a New Machine".

8. Adventure Capitalist, by Jim Rogers (Random House)

Jim Rogers is a well-known name in Wall Street circles. He was an early partner of George Soros, and his investment style is unique. He has made at least two trips around the world using very unconventional means of transport, and has looked at countries and societies up close from the viewpoint of a potential foreign investor. I have not read his first book "Investment Biker" about his trip around the world on a motorcycle, but his second book "Adventure Capitalist" was delightful and informative, peppered with little-known facts and consequent insights about dozens of countries.

For example, I remember his contrasting pictures of China and Japan. In China, the waitress attending him at a restaurant would run, not walk, across the room when she sensed he wanted something. In Japan, the waiters claimed there was no rice on the menu even though it was a sushi restaurant and every dish had rice in it. Rogers's investment decisions followed his assessment of the countries' cultures, especially their attitudes towards customer service, as a predictor of future economic performance - buy China, sell Japan.

The book was written in 2004. In the decade since then, China has surged, while Japan has stagnated. There is quite possibly some method in Jim Rogers's idiosyncratic investing style.

9. Double Your Wealth And Halve Your Worries (without the mumbo-jumbo), by Nicole Pedersen-McKinnon (Wilkinson Publishing)

There was a phase in my life when I read many books on personal wealth, and three of them stand out. One is Robert Kiyosaki's "Rich Dad, Poor Dad". The second is "The Millionaire Next Door" by Thomas J Stanley and William D Danko. But if I had to nominate just one, it would have to be Nicole Pedersen-McKinnon's practical guide "Double Your Wealth And Halve Your Worries", written in the typically no-nonsense Aussie style and packed with common sense tips and advice. I have benefited a great deal from following her financial advice.

My heartfelt gratitude, Ms Pedersen-McKinnon.

10. The Clash of Civilizations, by Samuel Huntington (Simon & Schuster)

Geopolitics has always fascinated me, and Huntington's seminal book explains it all. It is a sobering, somewhat disconcerting book. If what Huntington says is true (and I must say I think it is more than plausible), then the idealist vision of a world where we all dance around a fire singing Kumbaya (or L'Internationale) is a pipe-dream.

The world consists of five (or perhaps six) major civilisational groups, and all of human history is a result of the competition between these civilisations. Western civilisation is the dominant one at present, although it was not always so. Even within Western civilisation, there are in-groups and out-groups, as James Bennett further details in his book "The Anglosphere Challenge".

I have been coming to a similar conclusion for years, and when I read Huntington's book, it was an awful confirmation. I now know that there can never be one world, nor even a peaceful and harmonious world. Civilisations strive to express themselves, to extend their power and to influence others. At the very least, they struggle to prevent other civilisations from dominating them. When civilisations rise, they threaten the dominance of others, and their rise will therefore not go unchallenged. This means that conflict and strife will be our companions forever.

"The Clash of Civilizations" has influenced my thinking greatly. For instance, I can no longer look at India and China as countries. I now see them as the flagship nation-states of the Indic and Sinic civilisations, respectively.

[If you liked this post, you might like these other autobiographical pieces as well:
Ten Things Teachers Taught Me
Ten Great Epiphanies Of My Life
Ten Books Challenge - The Ten Fiction Books That Have Influenced Me Most
The Comics That Made Me What I Am]