Books I read in 2016

This book list of what I read in 2016 in inspired by a similar list by Kishore Mahadevan (after prompts in earlier years by Ramanan Jagannathan and Jeyannathann Karunanithi )

First I list English books, by category. The Tamil books are listed at the end - a very short list, sadly.

I have blogged, recently, or in the past, about things i have learnt or enjoyed from these books. The web links marked in this essay are for such essays in my blogs NOT the books themselves.

History

• The Age of Tirugnanasambanda by Sundaram Pillai
• Ten Tamil Idylls by Sundaram Pillai
• History of the Tamils by PT Srinivasa Iyengar
• Pre Aryan Tamil Culture by PT Srinivasa Iyengar
• Augustan Age of Tamils by S Krishnaswamy Iyengar
• Origin of the Tamil Vellalas by Tamby Pillai
• 2000 Years of Mamallapuram by NS Ramaswami
• Pallava Art by Michael Lockwood
• Seven pagodas on the Coromandel Coast by Captain MW Carr
• Pattadakkal by ASI
• Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern world by Jack Weatherford
• Kanchi - The City of temples by Narayanswami
• Mamallapuram THT Site Seminar Source Book by S Swaminathan

History - (read parts)

• Madras Literary Society by NS Ramaswami
• South Indian Inscriptions Vol I
• The Ancient Art of Writing (Selections from History of Chinese Calligraphy)
• The Art and Aesthetics of Form (Selections from History of Chinese Painting)
• The Penguin Book of Modern Indian speeches
• The Story of the Stupa by AH Longhurst
• Ancient history of the Deccan by Jouveau Dubreuil
• The history of Tinnevelly by Robert Caldwell
• Madras Journal of Literature and Science
• A Short History of Russia by Mary Platt Parmele

Grammar (read parts)

• Systems of Sanskrit Grammar by Shripad Krishna Belvalkar
• Tolkappiyam by Tolkappiyar

Economics

• False Economy by Alan Beattie
• Arthashastra by Thomas Trautmann
• The Big Short by Michel Lewis

Fiction

• Around the Moon by Jules Verne
• Five Weeks in a Balloon by Jules Verne
• Five Little Pigs by Agatha Christie
• Morality for Beautiful Girls by Alexander McCall Smith
• The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
• Tales from Kathasarit sagara (Amar Chitra Katha)
• Great Sanskrit plays (Amar Chitra Katha)
• Jataka Tales (Amar Chitra Katha)
• Calvin and Hobbes (several books)
• 
  
• Panchatantra by Arthur Ryder (partly)
• The Four Million by O Henry (partly)

Biography

• Benjamin Franklin by Edmund Morgan
• My Life and Work by Henry Ford
• Edison, His Life and Inventions by Frank Lewis Dyer & Thomas Commerford Martin
• James Watt by Andrew Carnegie
• The Facebook Effect by David Kirkpatrick
• Tubes by Andrew Blum
• The Cavendish Laboratory by Egon Larsen
• Creating the Twentieth Century by Vaclav Smil

Biology

• The Panda's Thumb by Stephen Jay Gould
• The Demon under the Microscope by Thomas Hager
• Oxygen by Nick Lane
• The Fossil Hunter by Shelley Emling

Biology (read partly)

• Contributions to the theory of Natural Selection by Alfred Russel Wallace
• On the study of Zoology by Thomas Henry Huxley
• The Naturalist on the River Amazons by Henry Bates
• Life's Engines: How Microbes made earth habitable by Paul Falkowski

General

• How to Fail at almost everything and still win Big by Scott Adams
• What I saw at the Revolution - My years in the Reagan era by Peggy Noonan

General (read partly)

• Lives of the Ancient Grecians and Romans by Plutarch
• The Spirit of Japan by Rabindranath Tagore
• Dreams to Automobiles by Len Larson
• The Early History of the Airplane by Orville and Wilbur Wright

Chemistry (all read partly)

• Vital Forces by Graeme Hunter
• Familiar Letters on Chemistry by Frieherr von Justus Leibig
• Experiments and Observations on Different kinds of Air by Joseph Priestley
• Elements of chemistry by Antoine Lavoisier

Tamil (all read partly)

• Purananooru commentary by UVe Swaminatha Iyer
• Silappadikaram commentary by UVe Swaminatha Iyer
• Madrasapatnam by KRA Narasiah
• Paalarril oru Pagarkanavu - essays by Kalki
• Magaraajanai Iru - essays by Kalki
• Mamallapuram 2010 by R Nagaswamy
• Thillaiyil oru Kolllaikkaaran by Anusha Venkatesh
• Payana Katturai - Mamallapuram - by Kalki
• Pullamangai by S Vasanthi

I read quite a number of things online (several in Wikipedia), including long essays. Scott Adams' blog was perhaps the most mind-altering.