2019 in Books
--
I set a goal to read a book a week in 2019 and pushed past that goal around November. I took a leaf out of Bill Gates’ book in taking a ‘think week’. I loaded up the Kindle and went to Portugal to walk the Fishermans trail. This was hugely productive in terms of catching up on all those books I’d set aside for so long and also a great opportunity to reset professionally. I also took part in Matt Clifford from EF’s reading group which followed a course put together by Peter Thiel at Stanford called ‘Sovereignty and the Limits of Globalisation and Technology’. This was a great exercise to not only cover some topics which were not in my direct book backlog but also to reflect and debate these topics in a group. We are starting this again next month with a topic set out by Matt called ‘Organising Genius’ based on the book of the same name by Warren Bennis.
Some of my highlights from reading in 2019:
A scientific deep dive into the relationship between IQ and EQ. To be fair the author spends most of this book outlining examples and analogies of how EQ goes unnoticed in the work place and in academia over IQ. That being said, to be able to harness this knowledge and play it to your advantage when challenges arise puts us in good stead.
Rory Sutherland, for those of you who don’t know him is a behavioural scientist and a vice chairman of the ad agency Ogilvy. I have followed him for some time on Twitter and his creativity of thought and humorist outlook comes across well in 142 characters, for those interested in a bit more this book is just that. He talks a lot about change vs perception of change. One of my favourite passages outlines that Eurostar spent billions shortening the trip from London to Paris (2.5 hrs) by 20 minutes when really they could have put wifi on the trains and that would have improved the customer journey tenfold.
I can’t remember who recommended this to me, however, whoever did I owe some thanks to. This is one of the most moving books I’ve ever read. Robert Kurson is one of the bravest and full of life people I’ve ever come across and I recommend this book to anyone, period. In short, Robert Kurson spent 43 years as a blind man and one day was told that there was a new treatment which could restore his sight… An amazing, inspirational story of how one goes about gaining an additional sense.
A story of the pursuit of happiness and enlightenment. One book I will hope to read many times in the years to come. The book takes the protagonist through a spiritual journey of capitalism, poverty, reflection, and old age. A reflection on the important things in life.
I feel I read this, or someone read this to me, as a child, however, the messages within this book are so relevant to adults that I suggest anyone who read this when they were younger pick it up again. The messages within the text around not growing up, not taking life too seriously. Some main messages in the book: look after the planet, don’t judge people by what they say, but rather what they do, relationships are what make life worthwhile, and don’t forget to look up at the stars.
Some notable mentions from the reading group were:
Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens the Global Economy — Sarah Chayes 05/19
The End of History and the Last Man — Francis Fukuyama 02/19
Some others that i’d recommend:
Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage — Alfred Lansing 11/19
The Revolt of The Public — Martin Gurri 09/19
HhHH — Laurent Binet 07/19
Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life — William Finnegan 06/19
Let My People Go Surfing — Yvon Choinard 03/19
The idea of documenting ones reading list came from Art Garfunkel. He’s been doing it since 1968.
The idea of doing this is so that I will be able to look back and see which books stood the test of time in my eyes. I look back on some of these posts I’ve done in previous years and already I would not recommend many on the texts on those lists which I find interesting. I have also established that many books do not age well and so this year, I will *try* to read books that have stood the test of time, or as Nassim Taleb puts it, have a “Lindy Effect” (they will get better over time). So any recommendations of things that are >10 years old and still relevant today I’d be very keen to hear more.
See you in 12 months. Happy reading.
2019
Matchmakers — Richard Schmalensee 12/19
The Ride of a Lifetime — Bob Iger 12/19
The Success Equation — Michael J Mauboussin 12/19
Churchill & Orwell: The Fight for Freedom — Thomas E Ricks 12/19
The New Silk Roads — Peter Frankopan 11/19
Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage — Alfred Lansing 11/19
Red Flags: Why Xi’s China is in Jeopardy — George Magnus 11/19
The Rape of Nanking — Iris Chang 11/19
Breathe — Tim Winton 10/19
Ultralearning — Scott Young 10/19
Range: Why Generalists Succeed in a Specialised World — David Epstein 10/19
The Accidental Superpower — Peter Zeihan 10/19
Super Thinking: The Book of Mental Models — Gabriel Weinberg and Lauren McCann 09/19
Lee Kuan Yew — Graham Allison 09/19
The Revolt of The Public — Martin Gurri 09/19
Blowing the Doors Off — Michael Caine 08/19
Made in America — Sam Walton 08/19
Rise of Robots — Martin Ford 08/19
Emotional Intelligence — Daniel Coleman 08/19*
Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas that Don’t Make Sense — Rory Sutherland 07/19*
It Doesn’t Have to be Crazy at Work — Jason Fried 07/19
The Forgotten Highlander — Alistair Urquhart 07/19
Trillion Dollar Coach — Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg 07/19
HhHH — Laurent Binet 07/19
The Paris Architect — Charles Belfoure 06/19
Born Standing Up — Steve Martin 06/19
Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life — William Finnegan 06/19
Good to Great — Jim Collins 05/19
The Wright Brothers — David McCullough 05/19
How Asia Works: Success and Failure in the World’s Most Dynamic Region — Joe Studwell 05/19
Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens the Global Economy — Sarah Chayes 05/19
Radical Candor — Kim Scott 05/19
The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat — Oliver Sacks 05/19
Influence — Robert Cialdini 04/19
The Diary of a Young Girl — Anne Frank 04/19
The Prophet — Khalil Gibran 04/19
Hackers and Painters — Paul Graham 04/19
The Virtue of Nationalism — Yoram Hazony 04/19
The Fourth Industrial revolution — Klaus Schwab 04/19
Crashing Through — Robert Kurson 04/19*
Siddhartha — Hermann Hesse 04/19*
Neither Here nor There — Bill Bryson 04/19
Brief Answers to Big Questions — Stephen Hawking 04/19
The American Challenge — J J Stevan-Schreiber 04/19
China’s Great Wall of Debt — Dinny McMahon 04/19
Genghis Khan — The Making of the Modern World — Jack Weatherford 03/19
A Few Lessons From Sherlock Holmes — Peter Bevelin 03/19
Down Under — Bill Bryson 03/19
The Bush — Don Watson 03/19
Let My People Go Surfing — Yvon Choinard 03/19
Genome — Matt Ridley 03/19
Land and Sea — Carl Schmitt 03/19
Why Nations Fail — Daron Acemoglu, James Robinson 02/19
The Future is Asian — Parag Khanna 02/19
The Lion and the Unicorn — George Orwell 02/19
Future Politics — Jamie Susskind 02/19
The End of History and the Last Man — Francis Fukuyama 02/19
The Laws of Human Nature — Robert Greene 02/19
Has the West Lost it? — Kishore Mahbubani 02/19
The Little Prince — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 01/19*
Creativity Inc — Ed Catmull 01/19
Guns, Germs and Steel — Jared Diamond 01/19
Charlie Munger, The Complete Investor — Tren Griffin 01/19
