I am maintaining the following reading list online to avoid procrastination

History, Culture and International Politics.

Interesting Concept 1: Narcissism of Small Differences (My friend Abhishek Shetty helpfully pointed out this Key and Peele video)

Interesting Concept 2: Hedonic Adaptation  I would rather state it as: “People overestimate the long term emotional impact of life-changing events”. An interesting statistic to look at: average happiness in various countries – the countries which are developing/ under-developed reported lowest level of happiness (in a certain precise statistical sense). (related topic: Happiness Economics )

Currently Reading:

The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower by Michael Pillsbury

Migrations and Cultures by Thomas Sowell

SPQR : A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard 

Finished Reading:

1. The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide by Gary J. Bass : Acclaimed book about the Bangladesh War in 1971 in the backdrop of the cold war, concentrating on the role of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. It analyzes declassified documents and secret recordings maintained by Nixon to uncover shocking events.
2. The Trial of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens : <will write about this later>

Classics

Currently Reading:

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Finished Reading:

1.  Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Economics

Trying to study original texts in Economics (its hard because of archaic English!)

Currently reading: Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith

Ancient Languages

I have a long term project to learn the following ancient languages: Sanskrit, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Mandarin, Japanese and Arabic.