The 12 Best Books I Read in 2017

The first thing I saw this morning was my friend Ben Keene's review of the 50 books he read in 2017. Like most people who read a lot, Ben's secret is that he just makes time for it, especially at night. I envy that discipline, as I'm usually too exhausted when bedtime rolls around.

But I did manage 24 books in 2017. And here are the best 12, sorted in 3 genres, with a short review of each. Some are very popular today, and some are obscure. I would recommend every one of them.

Biography/Memoir

1. Shoe Dog by Phil Knight: My favorite book of the year, and one every entrepreneur should read. About the founding years of Nike, the struggles and triumphs of a flawed band of unlikely brothers. What I found most remarkable is that the book ends in 1980, before Nike truly became big, so what you remember is not the global corporation but a struggling start-up.
2. Love, Africa by Jeffrey Gettleman: The former New York Times correspondent for East Africa describes a life dedicated to one purpose: getting that job. On the way, he reported on rural America, Iraq, and Afghanistan; and struggled to build a relationship with his college sweetheart. It's a love story (with a woman and a geography) set in modern professional life - except his profession takes him to war zones.
3. Too Close to the Sun: The Audacious Life and Times of Denys Finch Hatton by Sara Wheeler: Everyone reads Karen Blixen's Out of Africa. Nobody looks at the real story of her mysterious lover. But he was quite a dude. This book attempts to make sense of a brilliant man who refused to commit to a job or a woman, died at 42, and yet still gave birth to wildlife conservation in East Africa.
4. When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi: This is on everyone's list, of course. Writing about your death when you're in love and at the peak of your career is breathtaking. This book will make you cry.

Fiction

1. The Wanderers by Meg Howrey: Chronicle of the training of astronauts for an expedition to Mars. Not the expedition itself, but the training for it. It's a story about going into space, but the real journey, as always, is about going deeper inside yourself.
2. The Wind-Up Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi: Imagine a post-apocalyptic world where calories are worth more than money. Set in Bangkok (one of the last surviving cities), a story of corporate greed, climate change, autocratic government, and a love affair between a man and a robot. Sounds crazy? It was. And I couldn't put it down.
3. Infomocracy by Malka Older: A reimagining of politics in a world beyond nation-states. The premise of a hyper-local + hyper-global government feels quite plausible. So too the fact that a company called Information (i.e. Google?) oversees everything as a neutral observer. What could possibly go wrong? Hint: humans are horrible to each other in the future too. This is the first book in a series, and I can't wait to start the second.
4. Circling the Sun by Paula Mclain: People who know me well know that I'm obsessed with the life of Beryl Markham, a woman who could do anything and sleep with anyone in a world where women were expected to just have babies. She should be as famous as Hemmingway. This is a fictional biography of her life, and of the romantic-sleazy world that was colonial East Africa in the early 1900s.

Non-Fiction

1. Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday: Self-help advice for entrepreneurs that explains how whether we are starting-up, scaling up, or coping with failure, our worst enemy is our own ego. And what to do about it. A book to stay grounded when things are good, and stay positive when things are bleak. Probably helpful for 'normal' people too.
2. A Feast for Vultures by Josy Joseph: Inside look at the rotten state of corporate and political India today. How so many of India's iconic companies and business heroes are deeply corrupt and outright criminal. A book that will make you despair - but also get angry. Read it if only to applaud the desperate courage it must have taken to write.
3. The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity by Esther Perel: There is a quiet revolution going on about how humans live with each other, and how marriage is being redefined as a result. Along with the economic liberation of women, looking at how and why people cheat is an important clue to where we're going as a social species.
4. Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim & Renee Mauborgne: A book that revolutionized the field of business innovation. Not an easy read, but worth it. One nugget of wisdom goes like this: ask your customers what they want, and they will always say 'more value for less cost'; but innovation comes from studying those that are not yet customers. Deceptively simple, and genius, and bloody hard to do.

I'm looking for great books to read in 2018. What do you think I should read? Do share!