The Best Books I Read in 2019
15 Books Which Changed The Way I See The World
The Year in Reading
This year I finished 45 books, down from 60 last year. The average book was ~ 100 pages longer so the total reading time was pretty similar.
In January, I created my Reading Queue to nudge myself towards the classics and away from the recent bestsellers. 30 (67%) of books finished came from this original list.
My average rating was 7.5/10. [ My Full Reading List with Ratings ] 33% of books were rated a 9 or 10, down from 42% last year. I read fewer mediocre books than last year but also fewer books that were truly profound.
These are the 15 books which impacted me the most from 2019:
Biography (x5): The Power Broker, Titan, Who is Michael Ovitz, Leonardo da Vinci, The Snow Leopard
Fiction (x4): Three Body Problem (Trilogy), The Brothers Karamazov, I Claudius, Slaughterhouse-Five
Business (x3): What You Do Is Who You Are, How to Measure Anything, Market Mind Games
Personal Growth (x3): The Artist’s Way, Super Thinking, Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me)
I believe that the most compressed form of information transfer possible is giving a book recommendation. With a quick summary and a few of my biggest takeaways, I hope to share just enough to inspire you to go to the source.
For more reading recommendations:
The Best of What I Read in 2017 (top 15 books, top 10 articles)
Biography
Robert Moses became the most powerful man in New York for four decades without once holding elected office, permanently shaped the landscape of a city and a nation. His antiquated, classist, and racist views starved public transportation and other essential infrastructure by placing car travel on a pedestal. A masterclass on how large public projects actually get done: legislative maneuvering, strategic patronage, and “driving stakes” before receiving official permission.
Rockefeller believed himself to be blessed by a higher power. This narrative transformed existential threats to the petroleum industry into opportunities to consolidate his position. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy as competitors capitulated rather than face a protracted battle with an inscrutable foe. Rockefeller was the first effective altruist, taking great pains to give away his fortune effectively and anonymously.
Ovitz led a revolution in Hollywood, shifting power from studio executives to creative talent. He was magician-like at manipulating perception and acquired power through sheer persistence and force of will. All revolutions seem to follow the same structure. After tearing down the existing power structure which was stifling innovation, the new leaders install similar measures to protect the new status quo, thus perpetuating the cycle.
It is essential to frame our acts of creation within a larger mission of exploration. For Leonardo, art and science were simply means of comprehending the universe and our place within it. With this frame, just as our knowledge is always incomplete, so is our work.
We travel as a forcing function to traverse the inner path and discover what lies within ourselves. Matthiessen chronicles his treacherous journey deep into the uncharted Nepalese mountains to glimpse the mythical snow leopard. An accomplished Zen practitioner, Matthiessen explores Buddhist thought through the lens of nature. What is beauty? Suffering? Impermanence?
Fiction
The Three-Body Problem Trilogy (Remembrance of Earth’s Past)
A parable nested within parables addressing the tradeoffs between freedom and scientific progress. An existential threat requiring global coordination reveals which the dysfunctions inherent to current systems of governance. This is the farthest-reaching scope of any sci-fi series ever written, spanning billions of years, multiple spatial dimensions, and the full expanse of our universe. Epic.
We contain multitudes. Our visible personality as the landscape, an output emerging from an eternal struggle between our sub-selves: emotional/passionate, rational/intellectual, and loving/moral. Dostoevsky is perhaps the best psychologist who ever lived, making this a profound journey into the depths of human nature.
“History does not repeat itself, but it does often rhyme.” This barely-fictional account of Claudius’s rise to the throne is a masterclass in strategy and as enthralling as Game of Thrones (with togas!). The arc of the Roman Empire reflects our own collapse from within. If we are currently living under Caligula, how long until Nero?
Is free will simply an illusion, a function of our dimensionality and linear perception of time? Our limited perspective conceals both the catalysts of our present circumstances and the efficacy of our actions but imperfect knowledge might be the only way forward. Acceptance of our eventual death removes the paralysis created by taking the world too seriously.
Business
Culture is an unwritten algorithm for making decisions in a company. Horowitz shows that culture is how leadership scales, emphasizing virtues (actions) rather than values (beliefs). Culture is a fantastic lens for understanding the drivers of behavior in any organization and the examples (samurai, revolutionaries, prisons) really drive the lessons home.
If you can measure it, you can improve it. We often track what is easiest to measure rather than what is most valuable to measure—that which allows us to make better decisions by reducing uncertainty. Hubbard shows that anything which is unknown or “unmeasurable” can actually be decomposed into its constituent parts, each of which can be at least estimated within a range. This decomposition allows us to learn just enough so that we can take decisive action.
Investors can win one of two ways: superior information or superior mental game. Emotions are data and oftentimes our rational mind hears only whispers of what is really going on. Being tuned to current emotional contexts unlocks psychological leverage and reduces the propensity for self-destructive and risk-seeking behaviors.
Personal Growth
We are all frustrated artists, desperate to remove the invisible chains which prevent our self-expression. The Artist’s Way is a timeless resource for rediscovering a sense of creativity and was my biggest inspiration in the creation of Experiment Without Limits. I highly recommend daily morning pages and a weekly artist date as proven ways to refill your well of ideas.
Internalizing the mental models which generalize across disciplines allows for faster problem-solving and better decision-making. The narrative-playground style of Super Thinking allows these mental models to sink in much better than other approaches which can feel like derivatives of memorization.
Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me)
Cognitive dissonance is a hell of a drug and we are all the heroes of our own stories. We devote an enormous amount of our mental bandwidth to creating and justifying false constructs designed to preserve our sense of individual exceptionalism. We are more concerned with protecting our ego than pursuing the truth and we will blindly ratchet up poor decision-making to wallpaper over our own blind spots. Sobering, even if you're already familiar with the bias literature.
I’m Chris Sparks, founder of The Forcing Function, helping entrepreneurs and executives design the habits and systems to maximize personal productivity and achieve peak performance.
If you enjoyed this post, you might also be interested in my Top Books from 2018, as well as My Full 2019 Reading List with Ratings. If you found a great recommendation, please share it with a friend!
I’m finalizing my Reading Queue for 2020 and would greatly appreciate your recommendations. If there is a book which should make my list for next year, please let me know @SparksRemarks.
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