2021 Top Books and How I Pick What to Read

I started reading more than I ever had last year. A silver lining in a global pandemic, but a silver lining nonetheless.

Most interesting, though, is what I learned about my own learning. After I performed an audit on everything I read in 2020 and pulled some lessons out of it, I made adjustments to my own consumption for 2021.

The results have been amazing. I’m reading just as much (if not more) than I was in 2020, but more importantly, what I’ve been reading has had a more thorough impact on the quality of my ideas and my outlook on life.

I cut out all the noise of fad books and looked for ones that resonated with me at a deeper level. I’m happy to say that out of the 8 books I’ve completed this year, there has only been one that I wouldn’t consider fantastic. Even then, it was a shorter book, so I didn’t feel like I was wasting hours of my life pushing a boulder up a hill. And I still enjoyed the book, it was actually pretty good, the others I read just set the bar incredibly high.

Here are the 8 books I’ve completed this year, ranked in order or Favourite:

1. Think Again (Adam Grant)

2. Man’s Search for Meaning (Viktor E. Frankl)

3. The Relationship Economy (John R. Dijulius)

4. Start with Why (Simon Sinek)

5. The E-Myth Revisited (Michael E. Gerber)

6. Scaling Up (Verne Harnish)

7. The War of Art (Steven Pressfield)

8. Rocket Fuel (Gino Wickman & Mark C. Winters)

Here are 3 methods I’ve been using to make sure the books I consume are more important to me.

Listen for recommendations everywhere you go, but wait for a book to be recommended multiple times before you commit. I used to try and jump on any recommendation that came from a source I was trying to impress or emulate. Now I wait to see if it has staying power – that is – will this source continue to recommend this book and will I see this recommendation pop up in other places. If the answer is yes, there’s probably a little magic tucked away on those pages that will light up your brain. (I actually appropriated this concept, and a few books from this Tim Ferriss blog post)
Have a trusted group of people to recommend for you, but ask for context. I love talking about what I’m reading with other people that are close to me. It helps solidify my thinking on the concepts I’ve read (talking means you have to turn it into a cohesive thought/narrative) but it’s pretty obvious there are some topics I love that bore others to sleep. I try not to recommend these in my circles, but it happens occasionally. Asking about the context of the book can let you know if it’s something that will resonate with you, or if it’s just something that really resonates with the other person.
Consider the timing of the book relative to what you are doing in your life. As I’ve stepped into more of a leadership role in work, I’ve found myself crushing management and leadership books in my spare time. It’s not that I’m trying to work overtime, it’s that I have burning questions which don’t go away at the end of a 8-4. The more relevant the book to what occupies my thoughts this week, the more likely I am to enjoy hearing a different perspective on the topic. Having a depth of perspectives on a core groups of concepts has been much more fulfilling than trying to spread myself across the width of documented knowledge in the universe.

My Favourite Book of 2020

Nonviolent Communication (Marshall Rosenberg)

Key takeaway: “What others do may be the stimulus to our feelings, but never the cause.”

We need to step back and consider the language we use to convey the emotions we feel. Often we find ourselves using tropes and clichés that put the blame of our internal feelings on the external world. We need to accept that although others may trigger our feelings, the cause of them is a need of ours not being met. Only then can we move forward with ourselves.

It is not some perception of strength that will help us meet our needs, it is vulnerability. Only when we are vulnerable enough to let people know what our needs are will we have the opportunity to meet them fully. We must also accept that individuals are allowed to make their own decisions, which does not always align with what we desire.

These are powerful lessons, and they’re delivered in digestible segments. I could not have asked for a better coaching segment than listening and re-listening to this book. The only other suggestion I would make is listening to some more of Marshall Rosenberg’s work.

The direct follow-up that I would recommend is Speaking Peace. Some people just get it. Marshall Rosenberg is one of those people. He sees things differently and invites you to join him. Patience, insight and a positive outlook on life seeps through every page of his writing. I found it to be an absolute joy to hear what he had to say, even when it cast light on unpleasant characteristics of myself.

And that’s because it’s an invitation to see the world through a different lens. To broaden your horizon for yourself. To love more deeply and to let that love drive positive convictions in your life.

Prepare to look deeply at yourself and your own actions if you read these books. They showed me how little I was willing to contribute to my own needs. They showed me how ineffective my communication was (and continues to be at times). They will give you literal examples of how to approach nonviolent communication. This is why they are so effective – they bring about change quickly. They are currently the #1 and #2 books on my personal list. I consider them fundamental readings for emotional intelligence.

I consider these books deeply inspiring to the core of humanity. I revisit them when I find myself low or lacking clarity with my own feelings. Perhaps most importantly, I come back to these books when I’ve fucked up and need to solve a problem of my own making. It centres me and provides a framework to take next steps.

There isn’t a band-aid solution for the human condition, but Nonviolent Communication is as close as I’ve found.

2020 Reading Audit

I read more this past year than I have in a long time, maybe the most I’ve ever read.

That’s because I changed the way I consume books. I bought a kindle (and I’m a fan), but what really increased my intake was the shift to audiobooks.

I clocked a total of 7 days and 11 hours of listening. I average 1.3x-1.5x listening speed depending on the book.

So here’s my reading list for the year, ranked in order of Favourite:

1. Nonviolent Communication (Marshall B. Rosenberg)

2. Speaking Peace (Marshall B. Rosenberg)

3. Mating in Captivity (Esther Perel)

4. No Rules Rules (Reed Hastings, Erin Meyer)

5. Traction (Gino Wickman)

6. Religion for Atheists (Alain de Botton)

7. How I Built This (Guy Raz)

8. The Deficit Myth (Stephanie Kelton)

9. The Practice (Seth Godin)

10. Enchantment (Guy Kawasaki)

11. Post Corona (Scott Galloway)

12. Vagabonding (Rolf Potts)

13. Essays in Love (Alain de Botton)

14. The Righteous Mind (Jonathan Haidt)

15. Joseph Campbell and The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers Programs 1-6

16. The Expanse: Caliban’s War (James S.A. Corey)

17. The Son (Jo Nesbo)

18. The Expanse: Leviathan Wakes (James S.A. Corey)

19. His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass (Philip Pullman)

20. His Dark Materials: The Subtle Knife (Philip Pullman)

21. His Dark Materials: The Amber Spyglass (Philip Pullman)

22. Stalling for Time (Gary Noesner)

23. Status Anxiety (Alain de Botton)

24. Predictably Irrational (Dan Ariely)

25. Thinking in Bets (Annie Duke)

26. Debt: The First 5000 Years (David Graeber)

27. Sapiens (Yuval Noah Hurari)

28. Tribe (Sebastian Junger)

Here are 3 lessons I learned from a year of relatively intense reading.

Don’t get caught in the hype of thinking you need to read best-sellers or really long books. Most of the time I wouldn’t finish these books. The ones I did finish ended up near the bottom of my list. (this leads to my next point)
You don’t need to finish the book. Also, feel free to jump around. The book is for your enjoyment, not to suffer through so that you can say “I read THAT book”.
Re-listen to parts of your favourite books when you need inspiration or guidance. This was a huge turning point for me after reading “Religion for Atheists.” I went back to several favourite passages and had soul food for the mind.

Book Review: Sapiens (Yuval Noah Harari)

TL;DR This whole book is a TLDR, unfortunately. If you have interest in this book, take it chapter by chapter and don’t worry about skipping around chronologically. Don’t feel the obligation to read every page – it won’t bring you any ultimate satisfaction. Take this from someone who did listen to the whole thing.

Surprise Highlight: Has humanity been domesticated by plants? Consider the prevalence of a small amount of crops around the world (e.g. wheat, rice, soya) to their historical ancestors – there are very clear winners and losers in that sense. Take it a step further and look at the increase of domesticated traits passed down in humans since major agricultural revolutions. Harari finally posits that humans are actually the ones who have domesticated humans, but this idea really stuck with me.

Review Score: 3/5

What an intellectual’s book. Exactly what you might expect on the nightstand of a first year university student trying to be eager, or on the nightstand of a 30-something, not realizing the irony in trying to look intelligent to a one-night-stand. Either way, there’s a lot of circulation of this book, but maybe not so much reading of it.

To be fair, I listened to it, and it still took me a while to work through. What I found interesting about the length of this book, though, is that it still feels relatively ambiguous with a lot of what it touches on. There are specifics offered when it comes to conceptual lessons, or biological limitations, but there’s a lot of history that gets glanced at quickly.

There’s certainly no intention to skip important events, but there are moments when Harari seems to be breezing by with the gusto of making a point.

Perhaps my biggest quarrel is with Harari’s ability to write engaging historical analysis. He seems to line up interesting historical subjects, points in time, and topics of greater discussion. If only he possessed the ability to make it a little more engaging, I bet so many more people would have actually finished the book.

I’ll admit it, by the end it felt like a bit of a burden, but I was determined to get through it so I could compare it with some of the other books I recently finished. They all complemented each other extremely well, and I’m working on a joint write-up on them currently. The three books are: Sapiens (Harari), Debt (Graeber), and The Power of Myth (Campbell and Moyer).

Based on those three books, it may not be surprising that I found Harari’s section on religions to be particularly interesting. His ability to dissect and interpret the duality of Monotheistic and Polytheistic, the Singular Power and the Duality of Power, being two sides of the same coin. That they borrow and rely on each other for narrative and historical relevance. Harari demonstrates religion as a societal glue across cultures and time periods especially when presented in triumvirate with the concepts of empire and money.

That’s where I’ll be heading next, to the intersection of the concepts of Money (Debt) and Empire (Sapiens) and Religion (The Power of Myth). I recommend these books as a cluster because I feel they enrich each other. I don’t always like reading multiple books simultaneously, but these ones allowed my mind to take a break from each author and switch gears without diverting from major concepts. With this in mind, I have presented an adjusted rating, with the caveat of needing to read these other 2 books in close proximity.

Adjusted Sapiens Rating (after reading Debt and The Power of Myth): 4/5

Book Review: Tribe (Sebastian Junger)

Let’s start this off by saying that this is a subjective review – it’s just an opinion. If you have a different opinion, I would be genuinely interested to hear about it in the comments.

And going into it, I wanted to like this book, I wanted to like it so much. I had heard it recommended from several different prolific figures I follow (Sam Parr, Tim Ferriss and a few others). I had heard it was being used to formulate decisions about the types of places to live and the types of communities we try to create. I heard that it was being used as a tool to reflect on where these people wanted to live and how they wanted to live. It was a pretty big set-up, and maybe that’s part of why I felt the way I did after listening to the whole audiobook on a single bike ride.

Instead, I found that I was being thrown a slew of case studies where lessons were being pulled from unique scenarios, without much practical application outside of said specific cases. I found there to be vague assessments of “social issues” with even more vague “solutions” posited. It felt like somebody using a rough understanding of astronomy to apply an astrological solution to society as a whole. That is, I didn’t find it deeply insightful, but there are passages that would fit nicely on bumper stickers.

Junger uses war stories to give colour to the closeness we experience through incredulous circumstances where uncertainty of our own lives is in the air.

He says he has no issue continuing to use the terms or stories/anecdotes present in his book, recognizing that there has been backlash from what he says and the way he says it. While Junger is free to say what he wants, I absolutely challenge his assertion that PTSD from military action has longer-lasting ramifications than sexual assault related PTSD. I feel as though PTSD as it relates to sexual assault has been historically ignored, and that there has not been nearly enough research into the long-term impacts because it has been historically ignored. Further, I find Junger’s use of this example as a way to be dismissive of sexual assault, without adding much gusto to his argument of the severity of military-related PTSD. You don’t need to make one weaker to make another stronger.

Beyond all of this, though, I found the book to lack relevant lessons that could be applied in my life. I found it difficult to pull any deeper meaning out of Junger’s book than variations of “pressure makes diamonds”.

He applies this to a greater context, without much specifics, stating that challenges push us to limits we thought were not possible and that go against what we might think be able to collectively handle. This isn’t anything new, and I didn’t need to hear all of the stories he tells to re-affirm my belief that giving a larger challenge is one of the best ways to push us to accomplish more.

The most interesting part of the book comes when he starts to explain how the leadership qualities that get us through a traditional work-day are flipped on their head when an emergency occurs. Generally, the skill-set we see as leadership-laden is the same one that struggles heavily under drastically different circumstances.

This is not a particularly shocking revelation, but it is the closest I could find to a practical lesson in Tribe.

At the end of the day I was looking for something other than “hardship brings us closer together and provides us with fulfillment at the same time”. If this was going to be the only lesson, then I wanted some sort of practical application, other than “exist at a horrible junction in history”. I never found Junger truly offering even a partial solution as to some sort of hardship (artificial or otherwise) that could be brought into the world to create some good. Instead, he posits that we probably don’t want to all live in WWII era London Bomb shelters, something I actually agree with him on.

Final Review Score: 2/5

Notable Quotes:

“The beauty and tragedy of the modern world is that it eliminates many situations that require people to demonstrate a commitment to the collective good” (Perfect bumper sticker material, see…)
“As affluence and urbanization rise in a society, rates of suicide and depression tend to go up rather than down”
“Humans don’t mind hardship, in fact they thrive on it; what they mind is not feeling necessary. Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary” (Another great bumper sticker!)
Sebastian Junger (Tribe)