Designing Data-Intensive Applications
The book that shaped how I think about distributed data. Consensus, Raft and Paxos leader election, linearizability versus serializability, and Kafka's stream-table duality are the parts I still use.
Reading & Audiobooks
The Bookshelf
Books that shaped how I think: engineering and data, world classics, and the Bengali fiction I grew up on. Hover a cover for the one-line takeaway.
Database Internals: A Deep Dive into How Distributed Data Systems Work
A close look at how storage engines are built. It made B-trees versus LSM-trees (SSTables, MemTables, compaction), page cache buffering, write-ahead logs, and replication topologies click for me.
Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems
Where I picked up error budgets, SLOs, and blameless postmortems. The main idea, that operations is an engineering problem rather than a matter of hoping, is why I take monitoring seriously.
The Pragmatic Programmer: 20th Anniversary Edition
Practical habits more than theory: fix the broken windows, keep investing in your knowledge, use tracer bullets, and keep systems decoupled.
Staff Engineer: Leadership Beyond the Management Track
About doing technical work beyond your own code: writing architecture RFCs people actually read, getting teams aligned, mentoring, and carrying initiatives that span quarters.
Building Microservices: Designing Fine-Grained Systems (2nd Edition)
A sensible counterweight to microservice enthusiasm. I got the most out of the chapters on evolving a database (the strangler fig pattern), choreography versus orchestration, and where to draw tracing boundaries.
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Two systems, one mind: the fast intuitive one is confident and often wrong, the slow one is right and lazy. I now treat my first answer as a hypothesis, not a conclusion.
Man's Search for Meaning
Meaning is not found, it is chosen, and it holds even when everything else is taken. The most useful thing I have read about enduring hard work without losing the plot.
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Large-scale human cooperation runs on shared fictions: money, nations, companies. Once you see them as fictions, you can question which ones are worth keeping.
Atomic Habits
You do not rise to your goals, you fall to your systems. Make the good behaviour obvious and the bad one hard, and consistency stops needing willpower.
A Brief History of Time
Time, space and the universe have a shape, and it can be reasoned about. It taught me to hold a big question long enough to actually think about it.
Cosmos
We are made of star-stuff, and science is a way of not fooling ourselves. The clearest case I have read that curiosity is a discipline, not a mood.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
The first book that made a whole world feel reachable. It is still my proof that ordinary curiosity can open a door nobody told you about.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
The series grows up here: memory, sacrifice and the slow cost of trusting the wrong person. The quietest book, and the one that lands hardest.
The Hobbit
A comfortable person walks out of his door and comes back changed. The adventure is small and personal, which is exactly why it works.
1984
Language is the first casualty of control: if you cannot name a thing, you cannot argue about it. I read it once for the plot and again for the vocabulary.
Animal Farm
Power drifts to whoever writes the rules, then rewrites them. A short book that explains a lot of organisations.
The Alchemist
The treasure was where you started, and the journey is what made you able to see it. Simple on the surface, and it stays.
The Old Man and the Sea
Effort and outcome are separate things, and dignity lives in the effort. The shortest great book I know about not quitting.
To Kill a Mockingbird
Real courage is doing the right thing when you know you will lose. Told so gently that the lesson lands without a speech.
Crime and Punishment
The mind can justify almost anything, and the conscience keeps its own ledger anyway. The psychological weight is the point, not the crime.
The Kite Runner
Guilt is only useful when it turns into repair. A story about cowardice that quietly becomes about redemption.
Aranyak
The forest is a character, not a setting. The clearest Bengali book I know on how a place can hold you and how clearing it costs something you cannot repay.
Pather Panchali
Childhood told without nostalgia, poverty held with dignity. The everyday is the epic if you look closely enough.
Chander Pahar
Bengali adventure at its best: the pull of the map, the desert, and a hunger to see what is over the next ridge.
Gitanjali
Devotion stripped to its simplest voice. Read a page, then sit with it; it is not a book to finish quickly.
Shesher Kabita
Love as an argument between the heart and the intellect, written with more wit than most novels dare. The last letter still stings.
Devdas
Pride and self-destruction, told so plainly that you cannot look away. A warning dressed as romance.
Padma Nadir Majhi
Life on the river is neither romantic nor hopeless, just relentless. The most honest Bengali novel about work and survival I have read.
Lalsalu
Faith, greed and fear in one village, with no heroes at all. Sharp, unsentimental, and it refuses easy comfort.
Lalsalu
Byomkesh Bakshi
Detection through reading people, not gadgets. The original Bengali rationalist, and still the best.
Feluda
Observation, deduction and mischief, wrapped in travel and warmth. The stories I reread when I want to remember why I like solving things.
Banalata Sen
Weariness, history and a single quiet face that makes the wandering worthwhile. Bengali poetry at its most modern.
Gora
Tagore's biggest question: does a country belong to you by birth or by belief? Still the sharpest thing I have read on identity.
Ghare Baire
Nationalism seen from inside a household, where the slogans are paid for by the people closest to you.
Chokher Bali
Desire, widowhood, and a woman who refuses to be a victim. Far more modern than its reputation.
Srikanta
A wanderer with no ambition to settle, and everyone he meets along the way. Bengali storytelling at its warmest.
Parineeta
Childhood love against money and social rank. Short, and it still stings.
Pather Dabi
Revolution and its cost, written before independence. The most political of Sarat Chandra.
Anandamath
The novel that gave us Vande Mataram. Religion, rebellion and sacrifice; read it for the history as much as the story.
Kapalkundala
A wild, elemental heroine and a man out of his depth. One of the earliest Bengali novels, and still strange and gripping.
Durgeshnandini
The first Bengali novel: fortresses, romance and loyalty. Worth reading for where the tradition starts.
Putul Nacher Itikatha
A doctor in a village where poverty and belief destroy people. The most unflinching Bengali novel I know.
Adarsha Hindu Hotel
An old cook's quiet ambition to run his own kitchen. A small story with enormous dignity.
Aparajito
Apu grows up and the village lets go of him. The middle book that makes Pather Panchali hurt more.
Hajar Churashir Maa
A mother refuses the state's version of her son's death. Political and personal at the same time.
Hajar Churashir Maa
Sei Samay
Nineteenth-century Bengal through the people who made it. History as a novel of appetites.
Aranyer Din Ratri
Four friends, a forest, and the shallow selves they brought with them. The best Bengali novel about pretending.
Aranyer Din Ratri
Chowringhee
A grand hotel as the whole of a city. Funny, tender and quietly devastating.
Misir Ali Samagra
A psychologist detective who solves people, not puzzles. The comfort read I keep coming back to.
Misir Ali Samagra
Himu Samagra
A yellow-panjabi wanderer with no ambition and total freedom. Pure Bengali joy.
Himu Samagra
Shonkhonil Karagar
A novel about waiting, told with such warmth that the absurdity lands. The book that made him.
Shonkhonil Karagar
Amra Ke?
Bengali science fiction from my school years, and it still holds up. Curiosity as a plot engine.
Amra Ke?
Agniveena
Rebellion at full volume. The poems I read when I need to stop being polite.
Agniveena
Sonali Kabin
Bengal as a memory that keeps dissolving. The most haunting Bengali poems I know.
Sonali Kabin
Deshe Bideshe
Kabul in 1927, told by the funniest Bengali prose stylist there has been. Travel writing plus a history lesson.
Deshe Bideshe
Kakababu Samagra
A one-legged adventurer and his nephew, digging up forbidden history. The Bengali adventure series.
Professor Shonku
A scientist's diaries: inventions, travels and quiet disasters. Ray's imagination at play.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
The blueprint for every detective who came after. Observation dressed up as magic, and the friendship underneath it.
The Hound of the Baskervilles
A rational mind against a legend, on a moor that wants you to believe it. Still the best Holmes novel.
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
Doyle tries to kill his own character and the case for deduction becomes personal.
A Study in Scarlet
Where it starts: a consulting detective, a doctor back from war, and the first impossible room.
The Sign of the Four
Treasure, betrayal and a chase across London. The novel that made Holmes a household name.
The Return of Sherlock Holmes
The resurrection, and some of the sharpest short cases in the canon.
Byomkesh Samagra
The complete Byomkesh in one shelf. Bengali detection built on reading people, not gadgets.
Chiriyakhana
A home for the broken, a locked garden, and a killer inside. Byomkesh at his most unsettling.
Chiriyakhana
Arthamanartham
Money as the motive and as the mask. A tight, sour story about what people will do for it.
Arthamanartham
Adim Ripu
Byomkesh among smugglers and old violence; the case that predates him and comes back for him.
Adim Ripu
Satyanweshi
The first appearance of Byomkesh, and the line he is built on: truth is the only thing worth chasing.
Satyanweshi
Feluda Samagra
Every Feluda story in one place. Ray's warmth and travel writing wrapped around a mystery.
Badshahi Angti
Feluda's first case, in Lucknow, with a ring, a taxi and a very patient nephew. The series opens perfectly.
Badshahi Angti
Joy Baba Felunath
Banaras, a stolen Ganesh, and Maganlal Meghraj. The best villain Ray ever wrote.
Joy Baba Felunath
Goynar Baksho
Smuggling, a diamond and a chase across Bengal. Feluda at full pace.
Goynar Baksho
Sonar Kella
A boy's past-life memory and a fortress in the desert. The story that made me want to travel.
Sonar Kella
Arjun Samagra
Arjun runs on memory and old crimes, not clever tricks. The Bengali detective who feels like a person.
Kiriti Roy Samagra
A doctor-detective who works by reasoning and nerve. The other great Bengali series.
Kiriti Roy Samagra
Jayanta Samagra
The earliest Bengali detective: disguises, secret societies and old Calcutta. Still fun.
Jayanta Samagra
Gogol Samagra
A boy detective with a bicycle and no fear. The series that made me want to notice things.
Gogol Samagra
Pandab Goyenda
Pandab and his friends solving what the adults miss. Bengali detection for the young and the nostalgic.
Pandab Goyenda
Mitin Mashi Samagra
A housewife who out-thinks the police. Bengal's best-known woman detective.
Mitin Mashi Samagra
Tarini Khuro
An old storyteller whose tall tales always turn out to be true. Tagore doing suspense, and doing it well.
Tarini Khuro
Tenida Samagra
Tenida and his four friends, blundering into adventure. The funniest Bengali series there is.
Professor Shonku Samagra
Every Shonku diary in one place: inventions, expeditions and quiet catastrophe. Ray's imagination unbound.
Professor Shonku Samagra
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
The trick that changed the genre. Christie plays fair and still gets you.
Murder on the Orient Express
A closed carriage, twelve suspects, and a moral question instead of a simple answer.
And Then There Were None
Ten strangers, a nursery rhyme, and no detective at all. The best-selling crime novel for a reason.
The Moonstone
The first detective novel, and it still reads like one written last year.
The Maltese Falcon
A detective who wants nothing and trusts no one. The book that made crime fiction hard-boiled.
The Big Sleep
Plot is not the point; the voice is. Chandler's prose is the reason to read crime.
The Innocence of Father Brown
A priest solving crimes by understanding people rather than clues.
Dracula
Fear built from diaries, telegrams and letters, so you end up believing all of it.
Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories
The stories around the novel, including the cut first chapter. Stoker is best when he is atmospheric.
Frankenstein
The question is not whether you can create life but whether you will care for it.
Carmilla
A vampire novella that predates Dracula, with desire as the horror. Short and unnerving.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
A portrait ages so its subject does not. Wilde's wit and his warning in one book.
Pride and Prejudice
Society as a puzzle of money, manners and pride, solved by paying attention.
The Great Gatsby
The parties are the noise; the point is the man who invented himself and lost the plot.
One Hundred Years of Solitude
A family, a town, and a hundred years of the same mistakes in glorious repetition.
The Diary of a Young Girl
A teenager writing while in hiding, and somehow still full of curiosity and hope.
Meditations
A Roman emperor arguing himself into calm. The oldest self-help that still works.
The Rig Veda
Hymns older than any scripture, asking the same questions we still ask. Best read a few at a time.
The Upanishads
The philosophical heart of the Vedas: who is asking, and what is being asked about.
The Bhagavad Gita
Duty, doubt and action in one conversation before a battle. The clearest argument for doing your work.
The Lies of Locke Lamora
A con inside a con inside a friendship. The most fun I have had with a fantasy heist.
Red Seas Under Red Skies
Pirates, poison and loyalty under pressure. The sequel widens the world without losing the voice.
The Republic of Thieves
Where the Gentleman Bastards came from, and what it costs to be one.
Listen
Bengali audio stories I follow
When I'd rather listen than read, these are the channels narrating Bengali fiction.
Real Mir
NarrationBengali story narration and audio fiction.
Watch on YouTube →Mirchi Bangla
Horror · DetectiveBengali audio stories — horror, detective and historical — plus Sunday Suspense.
Watch on YouTube →The Story Halt
Detective · AdventureFull-length Bengali audio stories, including detective and adventure serials.
Watch on YouTube →