Books I read in 2019

2019-01-25

miscellaneous

638 words

Another year of reading books from disparate topics, hoping to come up with mental models to make sense of the world. As always, history-themed books should dominate the list.

J. K. Rowling - Short Stories from Hogwarts

While the Harry Potter series was good, there were always some characters one wished to know more about. Professors McGonagall and Lupin, for example. This book gave me just enough backstory about those characters, without ruining the canon (which is something Rowling's been doing a lot of).

Cal Newport - So Good They Can't Ignore You

This is the perfect build-you-up book that you can read. Newport's got a way with reasoning about things, and he presents his logic in such compelling fashion that you do end up listening to him. The book addresses the "follow your passion" trope that plagues pop culture and our daily lives now. Following one's passion is incredibly bad advice, and Newport explains why in several steps.

Major Robert Crisp - Brazen Chariots

This is a MAN. Heck, he is THE MAN. He can be best described in this set of numbers, as mentioned in his obituary in The Guardian -

The first would be two, which was the number of times Crisp climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. The next would be three, which is both the number of books he wrote, and the number of occasions on which he was busted down in rank and then re-promoted while he was serving in the British Army. Then there are six, which is the total number of tanks he had shot out or blown up underneath him while serving in North Africa, and 29, which is the number of days in which all those tanks were lost; 24 is the number of years he lived after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. And finally, most appropriately for a cricketer, comes 100, which is, well...

Testing.

Philip Delves Broughton - Ahead of the Curve: Two Years at Harvard Business School

Philip is a reporter by training, and from 2002 to 2004, was the The Telegraph's Paris bureau

Nicole Ridgway - The Running of the Bulls: Inside the Cutthroat Race from Wharton to Wall Street

Steve Martin - Born Standing Up

I heard of this book on the episode of Comedians In Cars which had Steve Martin as the guest. Thank god I did. The episode was delightful, and the book, even more so. Reading it was a different experience, because Martin really tells all in this book - his struggles with material, how hard it is to do something really well, etc.