Formative books of my early education

Growing up in India, the most important exams for an engineering school aspirant were the entrance exams for engineering schools, like the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). These exams were unlike the grade 10 and grade 12 "board" exams because they tested deep understanding and creative thinking, as opposed to rote learning. Here's a list of books that I tried to master from cover to cover in my own time (outside of school) in order to prepare for these exams. That's a huge amount of dedication relative to what kids in North America might put in, for example, for SAT exam preparation.

  • Grammar by Wren & Martin
  • Trigonometry by SI Loney
  • Physics by Resnick and Halliday
  • Inorganic Chemistry by Lee
  • Algebra by Hall & Knight
There were probably more. But the above titles are seared into my brain because of the amount of time I spent reading and learning from them.

Since we're on the topic of books, perhaps I should also mention some of the non-academic books I read during my youth that made an impression on me.

  • Opus 100 by Isaac Asimov
  • Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
  • The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth
  • Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
  • The Way Things Work: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Technology (1967)
  • Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
  • J Krishnamurti
  • IEEE Spectrum

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