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Cacoethes scribendi, though sounds like a spell out of some wizard's mouth, is ancient greek for 'insatiable desire to write'. Kind of, but not exactly hypergraphia, and No! I am not going to have an epileptic seizure. But I certainly was on the borderline this evening. After running through my daily chores I was back in my room in the evening. Only to find that the better half of my bed, usually strewn with all the current, future and the long past reading, was as all clear. Certainly someone had bulldozed through my room and deemed it fit to rid me of those mental manacles. But they really are like those tiny little wormholes that transport you to another dimension. Some that did transport me to another space are here in my list of 10 Best Books I read in 2014
I wouldn't disagree with The Guardian when they call it a meditation on writing. The plot or rather the plots are such that one is riled up at the authors audacity to play with the reader's patience but at the same time Calvino weaves such a narrative that this book is an absolute page turner.
I bought this book from an old and much loved bookshop in Bangalore and perks of buying from a bookshop; it turned out to be a collector's edition. The book goes by the subtitle of 'In Search of the Sacred in Modern India' and indeed does help us find that. It traces the lives of a Jain nun, a Buddhist Monk from Tibet, a bibi in Pakistan among the 9 lives that this beautifully brings to life as one flips through the pages.
This is another of my books from the days in Bangalore and is specially relevant in gory times as now, in the aftermath of the terrorist attack on a school in Peshawar. It is a real story in which Greg Mortenson, by a terrifying turn of circumstances while trying to climb K2 had a near death experience only to be nursed back to life by a village in Pakistan. What follows is the story of one man's resolve, defying all threats to his life, to build schools in tribal areas of Pakistan.
4. Disgrace by J.M Coetzee
This was a book a friend had suggested me to read and it was quite unlike others that I read this year. It did not have a central message or a philosophical idea that one could extract but instead was a reflection of society as it exists. This book by the 2003 Nobel Prize winner Coetzee captures the vicissitudes of a lascivious professor of Romantic Poetry at the University of Cape Town living in a South African society that had still not recovered from the apartheid era. 
One question that has intrigued the thinking being for the longest of time is that about the purpose of life. What is the motivation for us to live? What is the purpose of our lives? Are we of any significance in the cosmic puzzle? These are questions that one can spend a lifetime trying to find answers to, yet no one has come near the ultimate truth. Frankl was an Austrian professor of neurology and psychiatry and a survivor of the Holocaust. In this book he expounds on the human need to find meaning in life. He liberally quotes Nietzsche in his quest to understand the 'motivation to live' of those incarcerated in the concentration camps. Quoting Nietzsche he says ' He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how'. 
This chronicle of Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara's through Latin America is an innocent background to Che's ideological foundation. A bike adventure through Latin America brought Che closer to the reality of his land and his diaries beautifully capture his feelings of the time.
As the title suggests, this tome of over 700 pages, gives us an insight into India's History after Independence. I became an admirer of Guha's writing when I first read his collection of essays Patriots and Partisans, the writing was such that I inevitably followed his work in India After Gandhi. To make sense of the times that we live in, an insight into history has become a necessity if we are to save ourselves from the propaganda being spun all around us. In a non-partisan manner, the book talks about the democratic foundations of our nation and how various threats to its existence were bravely fought by a united yet diverse Indian society. If you want to understand the politics of today in a non-cacophonous way then this is the book to read. 
There are few people in History who have influenced the present as much as Henry Kissinger has. He was and remains an enigma to most. The former US Secretary of State was one of the most influential diplomat of his times, one whose popularity surpassed that of President Nixon under whom he served. This book also introduces one to the grim reality that the ideological war between the Soviet Union and USA led to millions of deaths across the world. I cannot help but recall 'When two elephants fight, the grass underneath gets trampled'.
This is the most incredible book on equations I have read to date, yes of course other than my book on differential equations. If quantum mechanics or Einsteins relativity have always befuddled you, then this is the book that you definitely don't want to miss reading. Those who had some problem understanding Interstellar this book may be of some help. The section on the Bell curve is so brilliantly written that I could make sense of Normal Distribution that I studied two years ago only recently. I loved it so much that I gifted this book to many this year.
10. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Yes, it is quite a disgrace that I read this epic novel only this year. No other book left me in so much of a haze as this one. The whole philosophy of Ayn Rand, makes you a rebel for sometime and stays with you forever. However, the power of the book is such that months after having read it I am still trying to give it a place in my life. This is a book that one must read, no matter how much one agrees or disagrees with the author's philosophy.
Happy Reading and a very Happy New Year. Don't forget to share your best reads in the comments below. Would love to populate my list for 2015!
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