Reading
Books to Recommend
The books I would hand to someone else, and the reason I would hand them over.
Reading is where most of my writing starts. These are the books that have stayed with me — not a list of everything I have read, but the ones I keep recommending to people who ask. Some are fiction, some are about money and work, and one is a history textbook that is better than it has any right to be.
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Percy Jackson and the Olympians & The Heroes of Olympus
Putting mythology into the real world with a touch of fiction is a genius idea, and Percy — the son of Poseidon — is my favourite character in anything I have read. Start with The Lightning Thief and keep going; the Heroes of Olympus books, with their blend of Greek and Roman mythology, are the best of the two series.
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The Ram Chandra Series
The Ramayana retold as four books, each following a different person through the same events — Ram, then Sita, then Raavan — before they meet at Lanka. Seeing the war from the other side first is what makes it worth reading. Some of what is in my poem on India's history started here.
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The William Warwick series
Archer follows one policeman across a whole career rather than a single case, so the books build on each other. Read them in order and the plotting is hard to put down.
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How to Build an Epic Career
Straightforward advice about work and choices, written plainly enough to be useful now rather than in ten years. Worth reading early rather than late.
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The Richest Man in Babylon
Lessons about money told as short parables set in ancient Babylon, which is why they stick. It is a small book and the ideas in it are simple, which is the point.
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Everything You Need to Ace World History in One Big Fat Notebook
World history laid out the way a good student would take notes on it — diagrams, timelines and the bits that actually matter. Genuinely useful before an exam, and readable when there is no exam at all.
Next on the list
The Wrath of the Triple Goddess by Rick Riordan — not read yet, but I am looking forward to it.
More of my thinking about Riordan's books is in the letter I wrote him.