Top 5 Reads

Kept to a book a week plus a little more due to work engagements, new hobbies and work-related courses for the year 2023.

Highlights were definitely reading about how different fields outside my current knowledge work - whether thats from semiconductor to commodities trading.

1. The World For Sale - Javier Blas, Jack Farchy
2. Chip War - Chris Miller
3. Status and Culture - W. David Marx
4. How We Got To Know - Steven Johnson
5. Principles For Dealing With A Changing World Order - Ray Dalio

Bonus

• Working Backwards - Colin Bryar, Bill Carr
• A Thousand Brains - Jeff Hawkins

Top 10 Reads

Pared down reading pace to a book a week, with the loss of transit time with the new work setup, and side studying like German and Product courses.

Highly recommend going through Vaclav Smil's books that while heavy, bring a good dimension of numbers and scale first thinking. All in all - many books in the year around general/world knowledge.

1. The World - Richard Haass
2. How the world really works - Vaclav Smil
3. Think Again - Adam Grant
4. Marriage, a history - Stephanie Coontz
5. Skill with people - Les Giblin
6. A very punchable face - Colin Jost
7. The Elephant in the Brain - Kevin Simler
8. Numbers Don't Lie - Vaclav Smil
9. Should we eat meat - Vaclav Smil
10. Seven Brief Lessons on Physics - Carlo Revelli

Bonus

• Islam Explained - Ahmad Rashad Salim
• Lifespan - David Sinclair

Top 10 Reads

First year breaking the streak of 100 books. New city, new job and minimal transit or travel meant it was hard to carve time out to read.

Despite that, found a few gems among the mostly random list of books I was reading through with reads on power, comedians and jung-ian theory making a strong impression.

1. The Infinite Game - Simon Sinek
2. Moral Animal - Robert Wright
3. Jonathan Living Seagull - Thomas Moore
4. The Dictator's Handbook - Bruce Bueno De Mesquita
5. Scale - Geoffrey West
6. How Asia Works - Joe Studwell
7. The Happiness Hypothesis - Jonathan Haidt
8. The Righteous Mind - Jonathan Haidt
9. Let My People Go Surfing - Yvon Chouinard
10. The Long Tail - Chris Anderson

Bonus

• Escaping The Build Traip - Melissa Perri
• Cats Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
• Power - Jeffery Pfeffer
• Cod - Mark Kurlansky

Top 10 Reads

Oh 2020. What a year eh?! After falling behind at the start of the year due to increasing workload, the lockdown became a space for exploration of hobbies (hands up everyone who got into cooking/baking/coding/running). I highly recommend Samin Nosrat's S,F,A,H (see below) for a good primer on cooking, and perhaps enjoyed G,O,P too much due to the perfect combination of Spain, travel and food.

While doing an intership as a strategy consultant, I found Michael Porter's work way more accessible when you have time to digest it. And if you are looking for ways to understand and appreciate the world around you - How to Invent Everything, The Body and Genome are fantastic. Looking forward to next year for obvious reasons but also to branch out to more topics beyond business reads!

1. The Metamorphosis - Frank Kafka
2. The Almanack of Naval Ravikant - Eric Jorgenson
3. Awareness - Anthony de Mello
4. How to Invent Everything - Ryan North
5. Our Iceberg is Melting - John Kotter
6. Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat - Samin Nosrat
7. The Little Book of Stoicism - Jonas Salzgeber
8. Grape, Olive, Pig - Matt Goulding
9. The Body - Bill Bryson
10. Genome - Matt Ridley

Bonus

• Competitive Strategy & Competitive Advantage - Michael Porter
• Running Learn - Ash Maurya
• The Elements of Style - William Strunk

Top 10 Reads

A year with many changes (MBA, Job, Cities), meant that reading took a backseat. However, managed quite a bit of momentum (creeped past a century at 101) especially whent travelling. Naturally, read a lot on the new job - operations and culture were a big portion of the reading, as well as class related - economics and strategy.

Also, it became clear how different reading for pleasure and reading for need (Eg. Class) was different. Nonetheless, always interesting to explore new topics and I found myself very passionate about new topics like strategy and operations. Enjoy!

1. Talking to Strangers - Malcolm Gladwell
2. The Uninhabitable Earth - David Wallace-Wells
3. Raise Your Game - Alan Stein Jr.
4. Salt: A World History - Mark Kurlansky
5. Can't Hurt Me - David Goggins
6. Execution - Larry Bossidy
7. Trust Me, I'm Lying - Ryan Holiday
8. Inspired - Marty Cagan
9. One Plus One Equals Three - David Trott
10. The Goal - Eliyahu M. Goldratt

Bonus

• Reinventing Organisations - Frederic Laloux
• The Ladybird Book of Dating - Jason Hazeley
• Trillion Dollar Coach - Eric Schmidt
• UCB Comedy Improv Manual - Matt Besser

Top 10 Reads

In an attempt to break out of the routine reads and the top lists elsewhere, I took in a few lesser known titles this year. Among the 110, there were a few autobiographies and quite a few different health related books. My relationship with sleep and certain food stuffs has changed tremendously after reading further. And oh man, where has George Orwell been all my life?

1. Survival of the Prettiest - Nancy L. Etcoff
2. The Blank Slate - Steven Pinker
3. The Inner Game of Tennis* - W. Timothy Gallwey
4. Living Within Limits - Garrett Hardin
5. Why We Sleep - Matthew Walker
6. Superforecasting - Philip E. Tetlock
7. Animal Farm - George Orwell
8. Everybody Lies - Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
9. Astrophysics for People in a Hurry - Neil deGrasse Tyson
10. As Little Design As Possible - Sophie Lovell

Bonus

• The Book of Tea - Kakuzo Okakura
• 1984 - George Orwell

*re-read

Top 10 Reads

This year I dabbled a little bit in some excellent fiction (American Gods, Pride & Prejudice, *cough* *cough* Crazy Rich Asians) and books that were contemplative in nature. First time breaking the 100 books per year mark at 111.

History was also a focal point, and I highly suggest everyone to try to read books that give you perspectives on different levels - macro, regional, national, industry. And if you've never read anything other than your local textbook on local history, try picking up one from a foreign author - you might just discover something new. Enjoy!

1. Moonwalking with Einstein - Joshua Foer
2. The Lessons of History - Will Durant
3. The Halo Effect - Philip M. Rosenzweig
4. Goodbye Things - Fumio Sasaki
5. High Output Management - Andrew S. Grove
6. Born To Run - Christopher McDougall
7. Between the World and Me - Ta-Nehisi Coates
8. The Non-Designers Design Book - Robin P. Williams
9. When Breath Becomes Air - Paul Kalinithi
10. Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury

Bonus

• Guns, Germs & Steel - Jared Diamond
• A Histotry of the World in 6 Glasses - Tom Standage
• Born a Crime - Trevor Noah
• Prisoners of Geography - Tim Marshall
• Algorithms to Live By - Brian CHristian

Top 10 Reads

This year was a very tough list to narrow down, with many excellent books making part of the 92 considered for the year. A few brilliant ones narrowly missed the cut, like Surely, Your Joking Mr Feynman!, So Good They Can't Ignore You and Poor Charlie's Almanack. There was an extra focus on design and general thinking among the list as I was trying to pick up design for work, and engaging meta-learning before learning. Enjoy.

1. Shoe Dog - Phil Knight
2. Thinking with Type - Ellen Lupton
3. Steve Jobs - Walter Isaacson
4. The Hard Thing About Hard Things - Ben Horowitz
5. The Design of Everyday Things - Donald A. Norman
6. Fooled by Randomness - Nassim Nicholas Taleb
7. Sapiens - Yuval Noah Harari
8. Modern Romance - Aziz Ansari
9. Thank You For Arguing - Jay Heinrichs
10. Salt, Sugar, Fat - Michael Moss

Bonus

• Getting Things Done - David Allen
• Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World - Jack Weatherford