My 2021 Book List

Here is a list of all the books I read in 2021, and a short summary of what I thought.

• The Intelligint Investor - Benjamin Graham
  • 9 / 10
  • This was a great read. Not a ton of new advice, over other investment books I have read, but it reinvigorated my enthusiasm for lazy investing.
• Beginner’s Mind - Yo-Yo Ma
  • 7 / 10
  • This was a pretty light ruad. It gave me a new respect for Yo-Yo Ma and his music. His spirit was a positive addition to my 2021. Easy reading. A remitder to be gentle and grateful.
• Confucius, Buddah, Jesus, and Mohammed by Mark W. Muesse
  • 10 / 10
  • I love learning about religion. Understanding the similarities and conditions of the people who were at the center of humanity’s most enduring traditions is something I wish more people would do. If you’ve ever wanted to know what religion was trying to teach you, this is the fastest way that I have found to get as close as possible.
• Endymion - Dan Simmons
  • 8 / 10
  • This was a great follow-up to the two Hyperion books, and set up a potentially epic final book. This book introduced me to the concept of a tree-star - a biological dyson sphere - which I absolutely love as a concept.
• The Rise of Endymion - Dan Simmons
  • 6/10
  • Still good scifi, but it felt less imaginative than the rest of the series. I think readers could safely read the first two books and ignore the second two. The plot line and ending of this series
• Leadership is Language - L. David Marquet
  • 4 / 10
  • Probably not worth reading. Read Turn This Ship Around! instead. The thesis of the book is that communication matters, and that bad cultures come from and contribute to poor communication. If you’re a jerk, people will communicate less well with you. There, you don’t have to read it now.
• Recruit Rockstars - Jeff Hyman
  • 7/10
  • Basically, the people you hire determine your culture, and you need to think more broadly about hires than whether this person is qualified on paper. This is tricky business, and the book is helpful in detailing this subtlety. A pretty good read.
• High Output Management - Andrew S. Grove
  • 9/10
  • I have seen a lot of startups fail sto scale, and this book would have greatly helped many of the problems that they faced/created. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to run an organization and not simply be managed by the team that they believe they are managing.
• The Real History of Pirates - Professor Manushag N. Powell
  • 9/10
  • I loved this lecture series. Consider for a moment how you would define “piracy”, and you may begin to understand how broad and fascinating this lecture series is. Through this lecture series, I gained a new appreciatiion for how history is written.
• The Ascent of Humanity - Charles Eisenstein
  • 9/10
  • A lovely read. I didn’t realize when I bought this book, but this is a philosophical counterpoint to the The Ascent of Man, which focuses on the technological progress of humanity. This book takes a wider view, and believes humanity’s journey to be more than its technological progress. You can read it for free here
• 7 Powers - Hamilton Helmer
  • 6.5/10
  • Personally, I didn’t find this book to have much new information over other business books that have a tech focus. To its credit, this book was written first, so many of the ideas presented in other books were likely drawn from this book. With that said, I didn’t find it particularly informative
• Dare To Lead - Brené Brown
  • 8/10
  • Like other Brené Brown books, this one was very good, but you don’t need to read all of them. That is, if you haven’t read any other Brené Brown books, you should definitely read this one. If you have read another one of her books, you probably don’t need to read this one.
• Backable - Suneel Gupta, Carlye Adler
  • 7/10
  • If you’ve been thinking of building a startup, but haven’t done it before, this book is oone you should read. It has a good way of distilling the fundamentals of building a business that I haven’t read in other books. It’s hard to tell, though, whether the words in this book would have landed with me before having learned the lessons through my own trial and error.
• Capitalism in America - Alan Greenspan, Adrian Woolridge
  • 8/10
  • Regardless of your political leanings, I think this is a good book to read to understand at least part of US economic policy. It does have a bit of bias towards Greenspan’s economic philosophies, but it was mosly factual, and minimally expository.
• NeuroTribes - Steve Silberman
  • 8/10
  • There is so much misunderstood, misdiagnosed, and misinformed about neurodivergence. This book is an excellent and honest dive into what we think we know about neurodivergent people, and how we have reached those conclusions.
• The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft - H.P. Lovecraft
  • 2 / 10
  • Not a 1 because this fiction was foundational to much of modern scifi, but I only made it through out of pure stubbornness to finish what I started. H.P. Lovecraft must have been insufferable to the highest degree. Don’t read this.