My favourite books of the year

2024 was a fantastic bookish year for me. I completed two bucket list items: speaking at the Jaipur Literature Festival in January and opening an antiquarian bookstore in Bengaluru in November.

- VR FEROSE (The author is a technologist based in Silicon Valley who is gently mad about books)

On the reading front, though I did not read as many books as I would have liked, I read some outstanding ones.

Of the many books on artificial intelligence that I read, Ray Kurzweil's 'The Singularity is Nearer' and Salman Khan's 'Brave New Words' were the most notable. However, I was particularly impressed by the graphic novels 'Dream Machine' by Appupen and 'Artificial' by Amy Kurzweil. Appupen's story is about the advent of AI and its implications. Amy's book, on the other hand, deals with whether we can communicate with the dead using AI.

Other graphic novels that I enjoyed were 'Stories by Manto: A Graphic Narrative' and Yuval Harari's three-part 'Sapiens: A Graphic History', a graphic adaptation of the bestseller 'Sapiens' by renowned comics artists Daniel Casanave and David Vandermeulen. I have savoured every book by Harari, and the graphic novel is a unique way to make his work more accessible. Stories by Manto is a visually stunning publication where the author's prolific fiction finds new expression through a fusion of timeless prose and captivating illustrations.