Four books that I gift and recommend the most
Published on Jul 4, 2026 • 9 min read
Last Saturday, after Cubbon Reads, I went to Blossom at Church Street.
I had taken a few old books to exchange. But I didn’t have anything particular in mind that I wanted to get for myself. So I was just looking for books that I have read already, which I could gift to friends in the future.
Which made me think about which books I gift and recommend to people most often.
It would probably make a vey long list, but I’m not in the mood to write too much and I want to get this published, so I’ll keep it limited to four books for now.
Books I recommend the most
Figuring
Author: Maria Popova
Popova writes about the human condition with such care and delicateness. Her prose is as elegant as it is insightful. My favourite sentence I’ve ever read anywhere comes from this book:
No one ever knows, nor therefore has grounds to judge, what goes on between two people, often not even the people themselves, half-opaque as we are to ourselves.
This is my favourite book to gift to people (especially on their birthdays) for a few of reasons:
- I know most people haven’t read it, so there’s little risk of the gift being redundant,
- her writing is accessible to a general audience who may otherwise not read a lot of non-fiction, and
- most importantly, as you can see from the quote above, her writing is often very touching and leaves you with a desire to experience more of life, with all its imperfections and oddities.
Sadly, it seems to have gotten incredibly difficult and expensive to get a hold of a fresh copy of this book. The first time I had gotten it was on Kindle for a price of ₹266. Last year, I had got a paperback copy of it — for a gift — for ₹800 and a hardcover — also for a gift — for ₹1,500…
As of today, the Kindle version costs ₹1,600, the paperback costs ₹1,829 amd the hardcover costs ₹2,600 on Amazon. Even Blossom and Bookworm do not have any physical copies of it last I checked. (Not that it will stop me from gifting it though.)
The Enigma of Reason
Authors: Hugo Mercier & Dan Sperber
I like recommending this to people because most people find the premise of this book very counter-intuitive.
Reason, we argue, has two main functions: that of producing reasons for justifying oneself, and that of producing arguments to convince others.
Mercier and Sperber’s thesis is that reasoning is not primarily a decision-making or truth-seeking tool. It is a social tool. Which we use to justify our beliefs and actions to others.
I love talking about this every opportunity I get, for nothing explains the quirks of human behaviour better. I’ve also had lovely long conversations across multiple sessions about this book with some of my best friends.
I have not yet managed to convince anyone to actually read the book itself though (it is a bit dense). But I’m an optimist. I shall keep gifting and recommnding until one of them does.
Bullshit Jobs
Author: David Graeber
You are not going to lose your job to AI (not in the long-term sense at least). Because your job is probably already “bullshit” and never needed to exist in the first place.
(In which case, LLMs making things more “efficient” becomes rather irrelevant.)
Since at least the Great Depression, we've been hearing warnings that automation was or was about to be throwing millions out of work... Automation did, in fact, lead to mass unemployment. We have simply stopped the gap by adding dummy jobs that are effectively made up.
I’ve been talking to people about this book a lot lately because the topic of the job losses because of AI comes up a lot these days. Although Greaber wrote this before LLMs were a thing, much of what he wrote applies to the current situation very well.
Even beyond that, I like talking about this book because, to some extent, we can all relate to the argument being made here. Especially those of us working in the tech sector. Most of our jobs could stop existing tomorrow and it would make little to no difference in how people in the world go about their lives.
We are all aware (consciously or otherwise) of the pointlessness of most of the things we do for “work”. Yet, there is a pretense that we have to collectively maintain. That we are doing important things; that the hour-long meeting first thing Monday morning is necessary; that those quarterly and yearly plans we are creating are of any consequence; that things need to be delivered on time. Else, something dire will happen.
It’s all, as Greaber aptly puts it, “bullshit.”
The Righteous Mind
Author: Jonathan Haidt
I like this book because it made me more tolerant, forgiving, and open-minded about other people’s political and moral beliefs.
Anyone who values truth should stop worshipping reason.
A sense of self-righteousness comes naturally to those of us with a socially liberatarian (not to be confused with the American usage of the word) and economically left-leaning world view. And we often attribute other world views as coming either from a place of ignorance or, worse, malice.
Friends and acquaintances from a former life will know how judgemental (and possibly noxious) I have been at times on Facebook and WhatsApp groups while arguing with them about the incorrectness of their political views. (I do not, however, regret my combativeness on those groups. For often, it at least made those people stop gloating about Modi and the BJP, if for no other eason than to avoid the unpleasantness of engaging with me.)
Haidt presents a framework to understand how people’s moral intuitions are formed. Some people have a greater sensitivity to certain moral foundations than others. For instance, liberals value care, fairness and freedom more than conservatives do, while conservatives value loyalty, authority, and sanctity more than liberals do.
These are innate traits that Haidt compares to taste buds. Some people have greater sensitivity for sweetnes than others. It would be a folly to say that those who don’t have a taste for sweetnes are morally inferior. Similarly, it is a folly to say that people with different moral intuitions are better or worse.
Haidt suggests that understanding these moral intuition can help us have more productive and less judgemental conversations with those we find disagreeing with.
And, what I have also found, is that it also helps in getting other people to see your perespective. Because you can try to redirect their attention from one set of moreal intuitions (say sanctity amd respect for authority) to another (say care and reduction of harm) — instead of wasting time throwing facts an arguments which rarely have any persuasive effect in these conversations.
Note: The layout for this post is inspired from Five Books, my favourite place to get book recommendations.