2021 Through the Books I Read
Another calendar year comes to a close, another Goodreads Reading Challenge achieved, and my third annual (2020 , 2019 ) recap to be shared!?
I read 42 books in 2021.
I'm pleased that my personal annual reading trends upwards while surveys show that the average number of books an adult reads is about 12 per year.
One thing that concerns me with folks who aren't reading as broadly or curating their reads is that the vast majority of ‘thought leadership’ circulated among professionals is of the male and pale variety: Seth Godin, James Clear, Tim Ferriss, Adam Grant, etc.
Now don’t get me wrong, I myself am male and pale (and my hairline is fastly retreating towards stale), and some of these guys are favourite authors of my own – I also know that our voices as white men are heard more on the corporate ladder, in the annals of history, in the protagonist’s shoes or whichever genre you fancy. From Deloitte :
When we read, we put ourselves in the characters’ shoes to see their points of view, fears, hopes, and experiences. For female authors and protagonists to be a closed book to many male readers can be unhelpful in an era where we strive for greater diversity, equity, and inclusion. Not to mention that capabilities developed by reading—including emotional intelligence, empathy, and imagination—are in high demand in the workplace and will likely be critical to employability in the future of work.
Conducting a quick audit on the sex and race of listed authors, in 2021 I read:
I myself fell into a trend highlighted by Deloitte:
“Men and boys read fewer books written by women. A study by Nielsen Book Research found that, of the 10 bestselling male authors, readership was roughly evenly divided by gender, with 55% male readers and 45% female readers. In contrast, only 19% of the 10 bestselling female authors’ readers were male, compared to 81% female.”
I’m disappointed to see that my readership of female authors fell from 2020, but happy to see that I read more books by authors of colour as opposed to last year.?
My audit is in the spirit of ‘what gets measured, gets managed’ to give myself a kick in the butt to focus more on reading works by women in 2022 – but I want to flag what happens when we put diversity ahead of inclusion. What you can’t necessarily see is:
Making sure that I’m covering all sorts of diverse perspectives and lived experiences gets me so stoked about what we’re doing through Beyond Our Own Knowledge (B.O.O.K.) Club !?
At 40+ books read this annual recap would get unruly so I’ll share my top 10 books in alphabetical order to save you some scrolling. You can check out the full list of books on Goodreads (be my friend!).
The Choice: Embrace the Possible by Edith Eger
Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning remains one of my most formative books from my early 20’s. Little did I know it would spark a years-long journey into Stoicism, but I digress.
When I heard that Dr. Edith Eger studied under Frankl, I immediately bought her book.?She is an inspiring woman who survived the Holocaust and lived a pretty full life before going back to study how she could use her survival of trauma to help others transform theirs.
The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business by Erin Meyer (Fall B.O.O.K. Club)
Through the reading and discussion of this book, we had participants from Best Buy talking about how they collaborate with their colleagues in Quebec. We had folks from the tech sector reflecting on how they collaborated with their teams in India, Colombia, and elsewhere. More than once I had to reflect and share some stories from my own culture shocks living in Brazil and Germany.
“Millions of people work in global settings while viewing everything from their own cultural perspectives and assuming that all differences, controversy, and misunderstanding are rooted in personality. This is not due to laziness. Many well-intentioned people don’t educate themselves about cultural differences because they believe that if they focus on individual differences, that will be enough.”
Dedicated: The Case for Commitment in an Age of Infinite Browsing by Pete Davis
There may be some recency bias here as it was a Christmas gift from my partner, but the speed at which I devoured these pages makes me think it was an important read.
Based on Pete Davis’ Harvard Commencement speech entitled ‘A Counterculture of Commitment’ this book tied together several thoughts I’d been having as well as examples that bore out those thoughts in practice.
I like to say that some people collect the dots, while others connect the dots and Pete does a great job weaving studies, stories, and sayings in this one.
From the Ashes: My Story of Being Métis, Homeless, and Finding My Way by Jesse Thistle (Winter B.O.O.K. Club)
Technically I re-read this one in 2021 as I vetted it in 2020, but it was such a powerful and moving read that it had to make this list. Not to mention that I had the distinct privilege of interviewing Jesse as part of B.O.O.K. Club.
“All us criminals start out as normal people just like anyone else, but then things happen in life that tear us apart, that makes us into something capable of hurting other people. That's all any of the darkness really is—just love gone bad. We're just broken-hearted people hurt by life.”
This quote is very similar to a favourite quote of mine from the recently passed bell hooks' The Will To Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love highlighting to me that it is often hurt people that hurt people. This is why we need to be thoughtful in transforming our culture and systems upstream so as to mitigate those initial wounds to be successful in our prevention efforts.
"The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem."
The Psychology of Money: Timeless lessons on wealth, greed, and happiness by Morgan Housel
I try to read at least one book about money a year. As the Wu-Tang Clan says, Cash Rules Everything Around Me (C.R.E.A.M.) dolla dolla bill y’all.?
This book stood out to me because it didn’t talk about RRSPs or TFSAs (401k’s and Roth IRA’s for American readers), but rather how we think and act with regards to money as keys to success. But there were some great metaphors to ways we think about other things along the way too.?
Sorted: Growing Up, Coming Out, and Finding My Place (A Transgender Memoir) by Jackson Bird (Summer B.O.O.K. Club)
Despite working in the gender space, I benefitted from this book tremendously. Jackson weaves in personal stories with numerous explainers of terms like AFAB/AMAB (assigned female/male at birth), what top surgery is, answering whether people have to have bottom surgery in order to be trans, and more.
I genuinely learn so much from the trans and nonbinary community. Breaking down the binary benefits us all. The more we move beyond a singular way to 'be a man', the more we can embrace all of our unique embodied ways of being.
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Jackson also made time to speak with me and the B.O.O.K. Club cohort ??
The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee (Spring B.O.O.K. Club)
What's that saying? 'Bite off your nose to spite your face'?
Heather visits communities across America to discuss the mortgage crisis, rising student debt, environmental degradation, collapsing public infrastructure and finds a common cause in racism, but more importantly showcases that the privatization and segregation of parks, pools, and schools, to unions collapsing, wages stagnating, and increased inequality, and the inability to move towards universal healthcare harm white people too.
An anecdote from B.O.O.K. Club:
In the discussion of this book, one participant essentially said something like 'I lived in the States for eight years and I just don't think Black people want to get educated'.
Imagine saying something like that in the workplace?! You wouldn't, or couldn't without tremendous backlash and judgement.
What I was most proud of as a facilitator is that I did not have to intervene with this individual's statement. It was the other participants who called this individual in to unpack and rethink his statement and position by tying it into the subject matter of the book.
B.O.O.K. Club is a place to ask the 'dumb question', to say the 'problematic thing' –?a space to challenge and be challenged, but always be held by a belief in diversity, a call to behave inclusively, and the goal of becoming equitable.
Thirst: A Story of Redemption, Compassion, and a Mission to Bring Clean Water to the World by Scott Harrison
Running a nonprofit/charity is hard. It's a whole other world where your beneficiaries and benefactors are not necessarily one and the same. So it was interesting to read Scott's story of how he started charity: water and grew it to be one of the world's leading charities providing clean water.
Two things stood out to me from the perspective of Next Gen Men :
The origin story involving death threats and running away on a ship to Africa are worth the read alone...
We Will Not Cancel Us: And Other Dreams of Transformative Justice by Adrienne Maree Brown
This one was maybe more of an essay than a book, but regardless of its length, I’m still thinking about its content! One of the central premises is that we have collapsed harmful experiences into an unhelpful and unnuanced bucket called ‘cancelling’. There is a difference between abuse and conflict when we have these discussions:
Abuse: behaviors (physical, emotional, economic, sexual, and many more) intended to gain, exert, and maintain power over another person or in a group.?
Conflict: disagreement, difference, or argument between two or more people.
…which can both result in…
Harm: the suffering, loss, pain, and impact that can occur both in conflict and in instances of abuse, as well as in misunderstandings steeped in differences of life experience, opinion, or needs.
Which can be affected by these other nuances:
Critique: an analysis or assessment of someone’s work or practices.
Contradiction: the presence of ideas, beliefs, or aspects of a situation that are opposed to one another.
Misunderstanding: incorrectly interpreting or not understanding what is being communicated.
Mistakes: when someone straight up messes up.
Suffice to say, it's important that we use the appropriate language as we move towards a transformative and just world.
You Are Awesome: How to Navigate Change, Wrestle with Failure, and Live an Intentional Life by Neil Pasricha
As I mentioned at the end of last year's recap, itt was Neil's 3 books podcast that originally put him on my radar, but learning more about his projects and commitment level to them is inspiring!
For example, 3 books is a 15-year commitment to finding the 1,000 most influential books of all time in – you guessed it – 3 books increments. His notoriety began after a rough stretch of life where he committed to writing one awesome thing on his blog for 1,000 straight weekdays. Going back to an earlier book on my list, one could say that Neil is dedicated.
2021 has been a rough year. We can say that has dashed our hopes and replaced our imagined lives with a nightmare, but my hope is that we will include this year and this pandemic into our narrative of how we transcend many of the issues around equity, culture, and society in 2022 and beyond.
Otherwise, I really enjoyed reading various School of Life books to think deeper on some thoughts I'd been having, a handful of business books that helped me solve problems at hand, and a few Derek Sivers titles as I find his format of writing and book distribution interesting!
Thanks for recapping 2021 with me!
For those of you who made it all the way through, I'd like to share a special discount on the aforementioned?B.O.O.K. Club?for yourself or a man in your life as a token of my appreciation!?Use the code 'LINKEDINREADS' for 15% off till January 15th.