My Love for Biographies

Chennai-Puthaga-Sangamam-Biographies-Bought

These are the books (Biographies of famous personalities – in Tamil) I bought from Chennai Puthaga Sangamam exhibition at Periyar Thidal yesterday.

Every time I visit a book fair, I am always attracted to history/biography books. That’s strange because I didn’t have much of an affinity towards History during my school days. I started reading autobiographies only from the last year of my college. And I remember liking them instantly 🙂

The first book I read was Emperor Napoleon’s biography. Then I read books about Hitler & Stalin and the Second world war. Then I read a few business biographies and biographies of Indian/World leaders.

Some of my favorite books include: I too had a Dream by Verghese Kurien (on Amul Cooperative), Biography of Steve Jobs,  Iacocca: An Autobiography (Ford & Chrysler), Dongri to Dubai: Six Decades of the Mumbai Mafia.

Some books like Straight from the Gut by Ex-GE CEO Jack Welch, although highly acclaimed, are just a collection of successful events in the author’s life meant for (their) personal satisfaction through self-praise. Some books like the one on Enron fiasco were too long to finish, and other books are written with a poor style and narrative without conveying much info.

If you want to read a non-fiction book that is as engaging as a fiction thriller novel read, ‘The Rise and Fall of Third Reich’ by William L. Shirer. This one is about the Second World War (from the German perspective) and it’s un-put-downable!

When I went to this exhibition yesterday and saw biographies, I decided to buy them instantly even though they are written in Tamil. Maybe because I’ve not been reading biographies of late and desperately want to read some.  I will try to summarize these books within 600 words in this blog so that you’ll also get an idea about the lives led by these interesting and famous personalities 🙂

Destination Infinity

PS-1: I have three books written by APJ Abdul Kalam in my shelf waiting to be read!! Note to self: Read them ASAP.

PS-2: What’s your favorite auto/biography? Whose life do you want to read about?

15 thoughts on “My Love for Biographies

  1. SG

    “Profiles in Courage” is a book of short biographies of 8 U.S. Senators. This was written by none other than the late U.S. President John F. Kennedy. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography. I loved reading this book.

    1. Rajesh K

      Thanks, will check it out 🙂

      Destination Infinity

  2. Sandhya Kumar

    Nice collection, you have!

    I too have read a few biographies but I seem to watch movies based on true stories, esp. about people who become famous with hard work. ‘Theory of everything’ on Stephen Hawking, was a favourite and many other movies. Remember reading about Maharani Gayatridevi, which was interesting. Must go to the exhibition.

    1. Rajesh K

      Movies are good, but they don’t get into the details of one’s life. So they might miss out on certain experiences that might be interesting to us. But movies do reach more people easier..

      Destination Infinity

  3. Sujatha

    That’s a lot of books that you have already read.
    You have made the Rise and Fall book a book we must read. Let me see if I will be able to soon.
    It’s nice that you still go to book fairs. It’s been ages since I went to one

    1. Rajesh K

      Find out when the next bookfair is happening in your city and go.. it’s as simple as that 🙂

      Destination Infinity

    1. Rajesh K

      Any idea to start reading books? 🙂

      Destination Infinity

  4. Jeevan

    I haven’t read only couple of biographies and the last one was kalam’s wings of fire… I got interest on history and biography only lately and I must go for books on leaders I like. You got nice collection and let me check them in future.

    1. Rajesh K

      Am reading Wings of Fire now 🙂

      Destination Infinity

  5. Avada Kedavra

    Biography of Steve Jobs is one of my favorites too. What are the books that you bought? I can’t read Tamil so can you please mention whose biographies they are.
    My most favorite – Richard Feynman’s books. He is so funny and such an interesting character at the same time. He is a Nobel prize winning physicist.

    1. Rajesh K

      The names of the people whose biographies I bought, is also mentioned on the books in English. See the photo closely 🙂

      Destination Infinity

  6. Avada Kedavra

    My other most favorite is – The man who knew infinity about mathematician Ramanujan

  7. Sapna

    Oh I love biographies. Both books and movies. These are people(heroes and villains) in flesh & blood about whom we get to read. Usually we know only some facets of their life. Knowing them as people is so interesting! These characters go from black or white to grey and then using those caricatures and trying to think of others similar people; reverse engineering the character traits/behaviours to their life events is all very interesting to me.

    1. Rajesh K

      The issue is, no one writes biographies or autobiographies that gives us the complete picture. Even obvious facts are omitted.

      Destination Infinity

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