Bassam Saeed

Books

There was a period of time in my life where I used to read a lot. I’d regularly go through 3 or 4 books a month. Unfortunately that time is long passed and I’m now lucky if I get through 3 or 4 books a year. This is my attempt to boost that number by cataloging what I’ve read and potentially keeping notes on them as well. I will also try to add to this all the books I’ve ever read as accurately as possible.

2020

March

  • How to Have Impossible Conversations, Peter Boghossian & James Lindsay

2019

October

  • Rubicon, Tom Holland

June

  • Clojure for the Brave and True, Daniel Higginbotham
  • Atomic Habits, James Clear

February

  • Anna Karenina, William Golding

2018

October

  • Oathbringer, Brandon Sanderson

September

  • Words of Radiance, Brandon Sanderson
  • The Way of Kings, Brandon Sanderson

June

  • The Three-Body Problem, Liu Cixin

March

  • Hyperion, Dan Simmons

January

  • Frankenstein, Mary Shelly

2015

August

  • Byzantium, John Julius Norwich

To read / re-read (★)

Fiction

  • Lord of the Flies, William Golding
  • Animal Farm, George Orwell
  • The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
  • *To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

Science Fiction

  • The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
  • ★ Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
  • ★ Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
  • The Last Man, Mary Shelley
  • Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro

Fantasy

  • The Once and Future King, T.H. White
  • Grendel, John Gardner
  • The Sundering, Jacqueline Carey

Horror

  • ★ Dracula, Bram Stoker
  • House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski

Myths and Legends

  • Robin Hood, James Clarke Holt
  • Folk Tales of Britain, Katherine M. Briggs

Non-Fiction

Politics and Political History

  • ★ Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes
  • Utopia - Thomas Moore
  • When the People Speak, James S. Fishkin

Religion and Philosophy

  • The Bhagavad Gita
  • The Analects, Confucius
  • City of God, Saint Augustine
  • The King James Bible
  • ★ The Quran
  • The History of the Church, Eusebius
  • Meditation, Marcus Aurelius
  • The Book of Common Prayer
  • The Dead Sea Scrolls
  • A History of God, Karen Armstrong
  • The Anatomy of Melancholy, Robert Burton
  • Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu
  • Strangers Drowning, Larissa MacFarquhar

History

  • Between Silk and Cyanide, Leo Marks
  • The Campaigns of Alexander, Arrian
  • Tallyrand, Alfred Duff Cooper
  • The Campaigns of Napoleon, David G. Chandler
  • Feudal Society, Marc Bloch
  • ★ The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon
  • The Birth of Nobility: Constructing Aristocracy in England and France, 900-1300, David Crouch
  • The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy, Kenneth Pomeranz

Science and Technology

  • ★ On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin
  • Relativity, Albert Einstein

Biography

  • Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman!, Richard Feynman
  • The Baburnama, Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur
  • An Ordinary Man, Paul Rusesabagina

Poetry

  • The Epic of Gilgamesh
  • Beowulf
  • The Song of Roland

Self Help

  • The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, John C. Maxwell