The Best Books I Read in 2020

One good thing about lockdown was getting to read a lot more than usual. 2020 turned into a bumper reading year, with as many as 72 books!! I even managed a 50-50 split between fiction and non-fiction.

Reading so many books makes it harder than usual to select the best ones. But here is my top 20% of 2020, in no particular order, equally divided between fiction and nonfiction.

FICTION

1. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

This has been on so many people’s lists in the last few years and fully deserves to be. It seems unlikely that the story of a Russian aristocrat in house arrest (ok, hotel-arrest) for 400+ pages can be so…ahem…arresting, but it is truly wonderful. And while I didn’t know it when I read it (in January), it’s also a great example of how to find meaning and joy even when not being able to leave one’s house.

(Thanks to Meeghan Zahorsky for the suggestion!)

2. The Daevabad Trilogy by S. A. Chakraborty

It’s a cheat to call this one book – so I’m choosing to see it as one 2000-page book rather than three smaller books. Incredibly refreshing to find a world-class fantasy tale set entirely in the Middle-East/Central Asia, with an Arab female lead. Beyond the diversity, it has all the best aspects of fantasy stories: good vs. evil, the profound difficulties of leadership when there are no easy answers, endless magic, and memorable new types of magical beings. I spent all of November in Daevabad and would have happily stayed longer!

(Thanks to Shriya Sethi for the suggestion!)

3. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

In which a young lady romps across much of Europe to find and try to save her father, who has become hell-bent (hehe!) on tracking down the enigmatically evil Count Dracula. A wonderfully researched dive into myth and legend.

(Thanks to Meeghan Zahorsky for the suggestion!)

4. Circe by Madeline Miller

Rounding off a trio of great fantasy books with female leads, this re-imagining of the life of Circe, the Greek nymph sorceress who refused to play by the rules, was castaway for it, and then discovered her true power to shape the world, deserves all the hype. It’s also, a fun way to brush up on your Greek mythology: Helios, Daedalus, Hermes, Odysseus – they’re all in there, and more!

(Thanks to Shriya Sethi for the suggestion!)

5. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

No magical beings in this one, but it’s another female-led story (see a theme?), this time a multi-generational saga about Korean immigrants in Japan through the 20th century. An eye-opening look at a subculture I knew nothing about and what it was like to be a second-class citizen in Japan during World War II and the decades of rebuilding after.

(Thanks to Shriya Sethi (again!) for the suggestion!)

6. The Sea Wolf by Jack London

A golden oldie that surfs the waves of time with ease. Self-discovery and survival on the high seas in the face of a murderous captain, an unexpected romance, treacherous weather, and a despairing shipwreck.

7. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje

A re-read after 15 years just to make sure I still love it. And I did! Most people only know the Best Picture Oscar-winning movie version, but the actual book is on a whole other level than the movie. Indescribably wondrous - poetry written as prose!

NON-FICTION

1. The Honorable Company: A History of the English East India Company by John Keay

In today’s muscle-flexing India, it’s in vogue to rubbish the East India Company. My interest was less in its role as colonizer and more in its corporate history as the most influential company of all time. Keay provides a fabulous look at how maritime exploration fueled international trade (pepper was once more valuable than gold, and today it’s free on every restaurant table!) and what it took to build a multinational company that survived for hundreds of years. Of course, there was also much war, piracy, geo-political drama, boardroom intrigue, and other fun stuff.

2. This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor by Adam Kay

The memoir of a doctor coming up in various OB-GYN wards of the UK’s National Health Service. After leaving medicine, Kay became a comedy writer and it’s easy to see why. I haven’t laughed so much during a book since Christopher Moore’s Lamb. Read it and you’ll have tears - the good kind - streaming down your face!

3. Shark Drunk: The Art of Catching a Large Shark from a Tiny Rubber Dinghy in a Big Ocean by Morten Skroksnes

The western coast of Norway is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. This memoir/meditation/travelogue set out there is too quirky to describe – if the title itself doesn’t grab you, then give it a miss. But I loved it, and could almost taste the salt water and feel the biting winds and gaze at the majestic fjords while reading it.

(Thanks for the suggestion, random Czech guy I met in a desert camp in Oman!)

4. What You Do is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture by Ben Horowitz

The best work-related book this year. Horowitz’s previous book was my favorite book of 2018 and this one also delivers. A surprising study of what modern organizations can learn from the only successful slave revolt in history (in Haiti), an American prison gang, the ancient Japanese samurai code, and the approach to conquest by Genghis Khan. Horowitz then draws parallels to modern organizations like Netflix, Uber, Facebook and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. My lasting take away is on the potential of re-framing organization “values” to “virtues” – i.e. values are what you believe, virtues are what you do – which I wish I’d known 10 years ago when starting Amani Institute.

(Thanks to Christopher Schroeder for the suggestion!)

5. The Last Rhinos: One Man's Battle to Save a Species by Lawrence Anthony

Last year, I discovered the amazing conservation exploits of Lawrence Anthony, who is now in my all-time top 5 changemakers. This, his final book, is the bittersweet tale of how he came to be negotiating in secret with the Lord’s Resistance Army, at the height of their infamy and terror campaigns, in order to try and save rhinos in one of the remotest patches of forest on the planet. Just freaking insane!

6. Magellan by Stefan Zweig

A phenomenal portrait of the first explorer to circumnavigate the world, peering into the obsession, intensity, self-denial, and ultimately bad judgment that led to Ferdinand Magellan first doing what nobody had yet done but then failing to survive to tell the tale.

(Thanks to Ryan Holiday for the suggestion!)

7. Farther than Any Man: The Rise and Fall of Captain James Cook by Martin Dugard

Take the description above and apply it to this book too. Just yesterday, I visited the exact spot in Hawaii – a pristine coral reef and bay – where Captain Cook was killed (and then eaten). More than 250 years after Magellan, James Cook pushed exploration even farther, with even more obsession and fatal hubris. His voyages of exploration knitted together large parts of the world map and he is justly celebrated for it. But it’s also a cautionary tale of what happens when leaders take for granted what enabled their success in the first place.

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Want more? Here are my 'best books' recommendations from 2017, 2018, and 2019.

And I'm always looking for new book recommendations, so send them along!