Books (and other items) That Sumana Would Like
Argh. Material goods. We need them, they clutter our lives, and then there is the gift thing.
If you are thinking of purchasing a gift for me, note that I support approximately everything that the Software Freedom Conservancy does, and that they can always use your donations. I am relatively well-off, compared to billions of people. So I would prefer you donate to charity rather than give me something for my birthday or a like occasion. Charity Navigator's donation guide can help you find reputable, competent charities.
However, if you wish to give me an object, here's a wishlist for you; you can't go wrong with any of the books or other items below.
My mailing address is:
PO Box 721160
Jackson Heights, NY 11372
United States of America
Non-Book Item Wishlist
This is roughly ordered so that things I want most are highest on the list.
- A 3EO molecular COVID test rig and kits
- A PlusLife molecular COVID test rig and kits
- A folding bike helmet (my head is on the small side and a children's sized helmet has worked for me during my adult life)
- A Brompton folding bicycle and travel bag
- A Costco membership
- Lavender- or jasmine-scented soap
- A vintage floor lamp
- A robust umbrella that folds up compactly
- A Walkstool
- Sewing lessons in New York City
- A grey rug that is soft on bare feet
- A gift membership in the UC Berkeley Alumni Association or the Columbia University Club of New York
- Robust headphones that connect over Bluetooth, such as Sennheiser HD 280 Pro headphones or Beats headphones
- Sewing machine needles for a Brother machine
- Stasher stand-up bags
- A gift card/certificate for housecleanings from Up And Go, a housecleaner co-op
- A yummy vegetarian (ovo-lacto) meal; gift certificates to New York City restaurants that I can use for takeout or outdoor dining would be ideal here
- A transparent pint-sized drinking glass with pretty art on it
- Subtitled recordings of Anant Nag movies
- DVDs of the British TV miniseries The Jewel in the Crown or Elizabeth (with Helen Mirren)
- A tube wringer
- A StressEraser
- Music, via DRM-free download or in compact disc form:
- "26 Scientists: Volume 1, Anning to Malthus" or its sequel by Artichoke
- Russian choral chants
- Bluegrass
- Anything by Lawsuit, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Isla Wolfe, Imogen Heap, Lacuna Coil, The Decemberists, Useless ID, DeCadence, Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas, the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Atom And His Package, Rilo Kiley, Spoon, Frisbie, The Vincent Black Shadow, Copperpot, Beautiful South, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, The Ditty Bops, Save Ferris, the Skatalites, Preston School of Industry, Rosie Burgess, Postal Service, Dropkick Murphys, 3 Mustaphas 3, or The Ataris
- After the pandemic: a vacation in, say, Helsinki or Philadelphia or Chicago or New Zealand or London or Amsterdam or San Francisco or Seattle or Portland, Oregon or Montreal or Singapore
- Sessions with a personal trainer, online, or in-person if the trainer and space follow COVID transmission risk reduction practices
- A new Boox e-reading device, or some other e-reader that uses e-ink and is not locked into a DRM system
Sumana's Book Wishlist
These are books that I would like to read, roughly ordered by my desire. When I borrow them from the library I take them off the list.
Some of these books are on a registry at Bookshop.org in case you want to purchase them for me that way. You can probably also find all of these books at Bookfinder, and many of them at Bookshop, the Powell's Books website or at any other independent bookstore.
For ordinary prose works I'm also interested in DRM-free ebook editions bought via Weightless Books (instructions); for comics or other significantly illustrated works, I'd prefer paper. Sure, I don't have enough shelf space as it is, but that's my problem.
- Rise Up Singing
- The Practical Manager's Guide to Open Source by Maria Winslow (self-published through Lulu.com)
- These novels by Diane Duane in the Net Force Explorers series: One is the Loneliest Number, The Deadliest Game, Deathworld
- Lobbyists at Work, edited by Beth L. Leech
- Engineers of Jihad: The Curious Connection between Violent Extremism and Education by Diego Gambetta & Steffen Hertog
- People Studying People: The Human Element in Fieldwork
- Managing Projects in the Real World: The Tips and Tricks No One Tells You About When You Start by Melanie McBride
- See No Stranger by Valarie Kaur
- The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business by Erin Meyer
- A Slender Thread: Rediscovering Hope at the Heart of Crisis by Diane Ackerman
- Cultivating communities of practice: a guide to managing knowledge by Etienne Wenger, Richard A. McDermott, and William Snyder
- Running the books: the adventures of an accidental prison librarian by Avi Steinberg
- Murder at the MLA by D.J.H. Jones
- City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett
- Anything by Maggie Helwig
- The anthology Someone in Time: Tales of Time-Crossed Romance
- The Secret History of Home Economics by Danielle Dreilinger
- Company Town by Madeline Ashby
- Managing the Professional Service Firm by David H Maister
- The Trusted Advisor by David H Maister
- Helen Perry Curtis and the European Trip of a Lifetime by Laura Gellott
- The Body Keeps the Score by van der Kolk
- Pamela Butler's Self-Assertion for Women: A Guide to Becoming Androgynous
- Games Criminals Play: How You Can Profit by Knowing Them by Bosta and Allen
- The Angry Heart by Santoro and Cohen
- Complex PTSD: from Surviving to Thriving by Walker
- Trauma and Recovery by Herman
- Gynaecology by Ten Teachers by Geoffrey Chamberlain, Stanley G. Clayton and Ash Monga
- Ursula Franklin's The Real World of Technology
- People Change by Vivek Shraya
- The Status Seekers by Vance Packard
- Askew: A Short Biography of Bangalore by TJS George
- Free, Fair, and Alive: The insurgent power of the commons by David Bollier and Silke Helfrich
- When We Fight We Win: Twenty-First Century Social Movements and the Activists that are Transforming Our World by Greg Jobin-Leeds and AgitArte
- The Lessons of History by Will and Ariel Durant
- Badass: Making Users Awesome by Kathy Sierra
- The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlin Starling
- How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease by Michael Greger and Gene Stone
- No Man of Woman Born by Ana Mardoll
- anything by Kristin Cashore
- Classical Indian Philosophy by Peter Adamson and Jonardon Ganeri
- Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019, edited by Ibram X. Kendi & Keisha N. Blain
- Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses by Kristen O'Neal
- Narrative Medicine by Rita Charon
- Judy McKay's Managing the Test People: A Guide to Practical Technical Management
- Programmed Inequality from MIT Press
- Testosterone: An Unauthorized Biography by Rebecca M. Jordan-Young and Katrina Karkazis
- The Smart Money Method by Stephen Clapham
- From Novice to Expert: Excellence and Power in Clinical Nursing Practice by Patricia Benner
- A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago by Ben Hecht
- Good Girls Marry Doctors: South Asian American Daughters on Obedience and Rebellion edited by Piyali Bhattacharya
- Communicating Design: Developing Web Site Documentation for Design and Planning by Dan Brown
- The Lone Arranger: Succeeding in a Small Repository by Christina Zamon
- Re Jane by Patricia Park
- Anything by Vandana Singh, such as Distances: A Novella
- The Wrench by Primo Levi
- The Hotel: Backstairs at the World's Most Exclusive Hotel by Jeffrey Robinson
- Hammer & Tickle by Ben Lewis
- Status Signals by Joel Polodny
- The Pattern on the Stone: The Simple Ideas That Make Computers Work by Danny Hillis
- Programming Language Pragmatics by Michael Scott
- The Oysters of Locmariaquer by Eleanor Clark
- Gerald Weinberg's Becoming a Technical Leader: an Organic Problem-Solving Approach or The Psychology of Computer Programming to reread -- or, heck, probably anything else he wrote on the general topic
- Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School by John Medina
- The Creation of Wealth: The Tatas from the 19th to the 21st Century by R.M. Lala
- Karen Joy Fowler's We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
- 13 Fatal Errors Managers Make and How You Can Avoid Them
- The Game Producer's Handbook by Dan Irish
- Code by Charles Petzold
- Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic by Esther Perel
- Aster Glenn Gray's Honeytrap
- A Survival Guide for New Consultants by Alvin J Alexander
- The Lucky Ones by Rachel Cusk
- A History of the Future in 100 Objects by Adrian Hon
- The Pursued and the Pursuing by AJ Odasso
- Exit, Voice, and Loyalty by Albert Hirschman
- My Life, My Body by Marge Piercy
- Raising Hell by Norman Spinrad
- Figurative Language by Barbara Dancygier and Eve Sweetser
- Evening Is The Whole Day by Preeta Samarasan
- Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America by Sarah Schulman
- Desis Divided: The Political Lives of South Asian Americans (UMN Press) by Sangay K. Mishra
- The Fear Project by Jaimal Yogis
- The Blood of Flowers by Anita Amirrezyani
- Drugs: From Discovery to Approval by Rick Ng
- Commodity Activism: Cultural Resistance in Neoliberal Times edited by Roopali Mukherjee and Sarah Banet-Weiser
- William Esper's The Actor's Art and Craft
- Dear Greenpeace by Simon James
- Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America by Vivek Bald
- An Exchange of Hostages by Susan R. Matthews
- Anything by Ruth Reichl
- Set Phasers on Stun: And Other True Tales of Design, Technology, and Human Error by S. M. Casey
- Anything by Alexis A Gilliland, with lowest preference going to the Wizenbeak trilogy
- To Engineer Is Human by Henry Petroski, or anything else by him
- Agnisakshi: Fire, My Witness by Lalithambika Antharjanam
- Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders by L. David Marquet
- Generations by Neela Padmanabhan
- The Neighbours by P Kesava Dev
- The Bird Is Gone by Stephen Graham Jones
- A Short History of Indians in Canada by Thomas King
- The Thin Blue Lifeline: Verbal De-escalation of Mentally Ill and Emotionally Disturbed People by Ellis Amdur and Sgt. John Hutching
- Chaos for Breakfast: Practical Help and Humor for Nonprofit Executives by Robert A. Hall
- Drug Discovery: A History by Walter Sneader
- Handbook of Warnings edited by Michael Wogalter
- Lessons Learned in Software Testing by Kaner, Bach, Pettichord
- Meatspace by Nikesh Shukla
- Facing the Extreme by Tzvetan Todorov
- The Warrior's Apprentice or The Spirit Ring by Lois McMaster Bujold
- The Long Voyage by Jorge Semprun
- Python Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science by John M. Zelle
- Tricks of the Mind by Derren Brown
- Learning From Museums: Visitor Experience and the Making of Meaning by John Falk and Lynn Dierking
- Doing Democracy: The MAP Model for Organizing Social Movements by Bill Moyer, JoAnn McAllister, Mary Lou Finley & Steve Soifer
- Presentation of Self in Everyday Life by Goffman
- Odds On by Michael Crichton as John Lange
- Practical Crime Scene Processing and Investigation
- Anything by Atul Gawande except Better and Complications
- Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind by V. S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee
- Bitter Angels by C. L. Anderson
- The WisCon Chronicles, any volume, from Aqueduct Press
- Any mystery novel by Katherine Howell
- Any mystery novel by Kathryn Fox
- Stasiland by Anna Funder
- The Literature Workshop: Teaching Texts and Their Readers by Sheridan Blau
- A Companion to Wolves by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette
- Banish Clutter Forever: How the Toothbrush Principle will Change your life by Sheila Chandra
- A Practical Handbook for the Actor by Melissa Bruder et al.
- The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom
- Design, Form, and Chaos by Paul Rand
- Anything in Anthony Price's Audley series, especially The Labyrinth Makers, The Hour of the Donkey, Soldier No More or Other Paths to Glory
- Up At The Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell
- Sabotage in the American Workplace: Anecdotes of Dissatisfaction, Mischief and Revenge by Martin Sprouse
- Dishwasher: One Man's Quest to Wash Dishes in All Fifty States by Pete Jordan
- Learning the Law by Glanville Williams
- The Discussion Book: 50 Great Ways to Get People Talking by Stephen D. Brookfield and Stephen Preskill
- Vernor Vinge's Marooned in Realtime
- The Pathfinder: How to Choose or Change Your Career for a Lifetime of Satisfaction and Success by Nicholas Lore
- Cameron Reed's (formerly Raphael Carter) The Fortunate Fall
- The Fate of Mice by Susan Palwick
- The Interior Life by Katherine Blake (Dorothy Heydt)
- Daniel Abraham's Long Price books
- Peter Brazeau's Parts of a World: Wallace Stevens Remembered
- Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision-Making by Sam Kaner, Lenny Lind, Catherine Toldi, Sarah Fisk, and Duane Berger
- The Money Machine: How the City Works by Philip Coggan
- Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA by Richard C. Lewontin
- Numbers by Rachel Ward
- Triton by Delany, or anything by Samuel Delany
- Jack Finney's Time and Again
- Scrum and XP from the Trenches by Henrik Kniberg
- Double Star by Robert Heinlein
- Any work by Rupert Thomson, such as Divided Kingdom or The Book Of Revelation
- Super Spy by Matt Kindt
- Lucy A. Snyder's Installing Linux on a Dead Badger and Other Oddities
- Peter Dickinson's King and Joker
- The Sounds of Poetry by Robert Pinsky
- The Artist's Complete Guide to Facial Expression by Gary Faigin
- Dave Allan's Stream Ecology: Structure and Function of Running Waters
- Robert Bringhurst's The Elements of Typographic Style
- No Trumpets or Bugles: Recollections of an Unrepentant Babu by J.B. D'Souza
- The Forest for the Trees: An Editor's Advice to Writers by Betsy Lerner
- Backwards and Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays by David Ball
- The Geography Of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler
- Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson
- Do It Marketing by Daniel Newman
- How Music Works by David Byrne
- Gender Pluralism: Southeast Asia Since Early Modern Times by Michael G. Peletz
- Better Than Before: What I Learned About Making and Breaking Habits by Gretchen Rubin
- The Brain Audit
- Solar Bones by Mike McCormack
- A Game as Old as Empire: The Secret World of Economic Hit Men and the Web of Global Corruption by Steven Hiatt, Erik Synnestvedt
- Double Your Freelance Rate
- Practical Homicide Investigation by Vernon Geberth
- The First 20 Minutes: Surprising Science Reveals How We Can Exercise Better, Train Smarter, Live Longer by Gretchen Reynolds
- Homicide by David Simon
- Trance-Formations by Bandler and Grinder
- Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This: A Guide to Creating Great Ads by Luke Sullivan
- Then We Came To The End by Joshua Ferris
- Any work by Gordon Korman. Many are out of print -- I'd specifically like those, his young adult works of the 1980s. Especially neat would be No Coins, Please or Our Man Weston. I think I own all his post-2000 books.
- The Practice of System and Network Administration by Thomas A. Limoncelli, Christina J. Hogan, and Strata R. Chalup
- The Investigative Reporter's Handbook
- Human Osteology: A Laboratory and Field Manual
- A Fly for the Prosecution
- Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights by Salman Rushdie
- Democracy and the Foreigner by Bonnie Honig
- The Devourers by Indra Das
- Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death by F.W.H Myer
- Osamu Dazai's Blue Bamboo: Japanese Tales of Fantasy
- Last Night a DJ Saved My Life
- The Mud Pie Dilemma
- Why Buildings Fall Down
- The Backstage Handbook
- Introduction to Airborne Radar
- The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
- Thinkertoys
- Acute Reactions by Ruby Lang
- Becoming The Parent You Want To Be
- The Guerilla Film Makers Handbook by Genevieve Jolliffe & Chris Jones
- Directing the Film: Film Directors on Their Art
- Scenic Art for the Theatre
- The Lie that tells a Truth by John Dufresne
- Genderqueer: Voices From Beyond the Sexual Binary, ed. Joan Nestle, Clare Howell, and Riki Wilchins
- On Becoming a Novelist by John Gardner
- Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens by James N. Davidson
- Don't Believe Everything You Think
- Archaeology: Theories, Methods, and Practice by Colin Renfrew and Paul Bahn
- Moving the Earth by Herbert L. Nichols and David A. Day
- The Norton Book of Women's Lives, edited by Phyllis Rose
- The Horse's Mind by Lucy Rees
- Stephen Pheasant's Bodyspace
- Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society by Lila abu-Lughod
- Making Shapely Fiction by Jerome Stern
- Reading The Rocks by Marcia Bjornerud
- Misquoting Jesus by Ehrman
- In Their Own Words by David Savran
- Formulas for Painters by Massey
- The Painter's Handbook by Gottsegen
- Pathologic Basis of Disease by Robbins & Cotran
- The Movie Business Book by Jason Squire
- Victor Villenueva's Cross-Talk in Comp Theory
- Architecture: Form, Space & Order by Francis D Ching
- Cliff Atkinson's Beyond Bullet Points
- Which Equalities Matter? by Anne Phillips
- Edwin Robert Anderson Seligman's Essays in Taxation (author may be mixed up there)
- Weston's Rulebook for Arguments
- [Hidden] Film Art: An Introduction by David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson
- Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts by Susan Hayward
- How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk (How to Help Your Child) by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish
- Any work by Anthony Trollope excepting The Way We Live Now and Barchester Towers and The Warden and his autobiography
- Anything by Bruce Schneier, except Beyond Fear
- The Aeneid, Robert Fagles translation
- Grady Hendrix's The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires: A Novel
- Trustee from the tool Room by Nevil Shute
- American Shaolin by Matthew Polly
- Jan Slonczewski's Still Forms on Foxfield
- Confessions: An Innocent Life in Communist China by Kang Zhengguo
- Zen Training by Katsuki Sekida
- Blue Blood by Edward Conlon
- Any work by George Eliot excepting Middlemarch or Silas Marner
Sheri Tepper's science fiction, especially The Gate to Women's Country- Deadly Meeting by Robert Bernard
- Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance by James C. Scott
- Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction by Thomas K. McCraw (Belknap Press, April 2007)
- Anything by Pratap Bhanu Mehta
- How to Design Programs by Felleisen, Findler, Flatt, and Krishnamurthi (the paper version, though I can access it for free online)
- Principles of Corporate Finance by Richard A. Brealey and Stewart C. Myers
- Stage Lighting Design: The Art, The Craft, The Life by Richard Pilbrow
- Any of Rick Cook's Wizardry series, such as Wizard's Bane, The Wizardry Compiled, The Wizardry Cursed, The Wizardry Consulted, and The Wizardry Quested
- Charles Taylor's Multiculturalism and the politics of recognition
- Made to Measure: New Materials for the 21st Century by Philip Ball
- Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World The Slaves Made by Eugene Genovese
- Castle Hangnail by Ursula Vernon
- Anything by Max Gladstone, especially the first Craft sequence book
- Teaching to Transgress by bell hooks
- Nathaniel Branden's The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem
- Thomas Gordon's Parent Effectiveness Training
- Terry Real's I Don't Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression
- Moore and Gillette's King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine
- Rachel Simmons' The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence
- John Holt's How Children Learn and How Children Fail
- The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology edited by Wiebe Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor Pinch
- Crash: Ten Easy Ways to Avoid a Computer Disaster by Tony Collins and David Bicknell (subtitle also listed as "Learning from the World's Worst Computer Disasters")
- Personal Days by Ed Park
- Immunology: The Immune System in Health and Disease by Janeway, Travers, Walport, and Shlomchik
- The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy by Robert Leleux
- The Revenge Effect by Edward Tenner
- Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences by Lawrence Weschler
- The Far Pavilions by M.M. Kaye
- Inside Putin's Russia by Andrew Jack
- Marilynne Robinson's Gilead
- Information Storage and Retrieval by Robert R. Korfhage
- The Elements of Persuasion by Richard Maxwell and Robert Dickman
- Things I've Learned From Dying by David Dow
- Treasure by Rebekah Weatherspoon
- The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation by Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas
- Social Limits to Growth by Fred Hirsch
- The Machine That Changed The World: The Story of Lean Production by James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones, and Daniel Roos
- Stuart Sutherland's Irrationality: the Enemy Within
- The Cheese and the Worms by Carlo Ginzberg
- Farewell, My Subaru by Doug Fine
- The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics by Michael Walzer
- High Crimes: The Fate of Everest in an Age of Greed by Michael Kodas
- A Book of Conquest: The "Chachnama" and Muslim Origins in South Asia by Manan Ahmed Asif
- Life's Dominion by Ronald Dworkin
- Bad Boys and Tough Tattoos: A Social History of the Tattoo With Gangs, Sailors and Street-Corner Punks, 1950-1965 by Samuel M. Steward
- Michael Blumlein's The Healer
- The Culture of Disbelief by Stephen Carter
- The Octavian Nothing books by M.T. Anderson
- The Sin Eater by Alice Thomas Ellis
- Any of the Blue Monday anthologies by Chynna Clugston-Major
- Alexander II: The Last Great Tsar by Edvard Radzinsky
- Any work by D.H. Lawrence, excepting Lady Chatterley's Lover and Sons and Lovers and the stories contained in Dover's Selected Stories anthology
- Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music by Mark Katz
- Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts
- The Family Cow by Dirk Van Loon
- My Life With the Saints by [Father] Jim Martin
- On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored by Adam Phillips
- Psychological Testing by Anastasi and Urbina
- Centuries of Childhood by Philippe Aries
- The Murder of Helen Jewett by Cohen
- The Making of the Trek Conventions by Joan Winston
- A Budget of Trisections by Underwood Dudley
- John Rawls's Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy
- Kevin Carson's Organization Theory
- Fiasco by Stanislaus Lem
- Children's letters to God: the new collection (Workman Publishing, 1991, New York)
- Mayflower Madam: The Secret Life of Sydney Biddle Barrows by Sydney Biddle Barrows
- Why churches should not pay taxes by Dean M Kelley
- Little Children by Tom Perrotta
- The Key to Metal Bumping An Instructive Manual of Body and Fender Repair Practices by Framnk T Sargent
- War Through The Ages by Lynn Montross
Last updated 7 June 2024
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