Book picks from (what I read in) 2018

This year 2018 was more productive for me than ever when it comes to reading . After internally setting myself the objective of reading a book per month, year 2018 it is most likely the one that I read more books in my life so far. Besides the number of books (16), I also went for long to read books (~1K pages) going away from my comfort zone (<350 pages). You will see in my list below (skip my reviews if you wish) that the kind of books I read are getting more and more heterogeneous maybe because I went for recommendations from family, co-workers and friends. Most of my reading (>80% ) happened from an electronic book, and also most of it in English, although I am happy to have read (at least 10%) in another language (Spanish) for a change. I would divide the books I read in the following categories

• Psychology (for business) - (4)
• Classics (4)
• Economy (for not economists) and Healthcare economics (3)
• General divulgative / best sellers (4)
• Milennial thinking (3)
• Productivity (1)

(Disclaimer: some books fall in more than one category, hence the sum of all books in each category exceeds the total number of books I read)

I realized my internal system for reading mandates to finish a book when I already started it (never abandon a book) and permanently have the next one on the shelf (real or virtual) just when you finish your current. As usual I am an intense reader during holiday periods and specially during travel (train, plane, I do not have an autonomous car just yet...).

The rest of the article provides my reviews (per topic) and a full list of the books read.

Psychology

Following some of the reads from last year, I started the year reading Superforecasting the art and science of prediction (Philip E Tetlock). This is an interesting read about a multiyear experiment performed on people who are requested to forecast certain events. The author actually narrows down the people with best results (superforecasters) and studies their methodology, discovering that there is indeed a method to better predict, consistently providing superior results. Lots of what the book claims is reduced to how people are biased when forecasting due to several physiological anchors and mind mechanisms. As expected the book quotes and links thoroughly with Thinking Fast and Slow (one of the bests books I had read in 2017). In a related theme The signal and the noise (Nate Silver) goes to great lengths to proof the Bayes theorem (how observations do change the initial probability estimation) based on actual examples and cases, which ends up being part of the methodology used by Superforecasters (indeed Silver does reference the mega study about Superforecasting in his book). In the process of describing that, Silver discusses relevant topics of interest such as online (sports/poker) betting, weather forecast, earthquake forecast and climate change. I have to confess though that I crawled through the last sections of the book. Last for the section, I also read Left brain right stuff by Phil Rosenzweig, which is a shorter read on the topic of Psychology and its impact on business decisions. This is also an interesting topic when it comes to the games your mind plays when (for instance) putting large business/project proposals together. One of the top picks for me in the psychology section, The better angels of our Nature, I will cover further down in the article.

 Classics

As part of the effort in having a variety of topics to read through, there is a bunch of classical books I never got the chance to read and always wanted to. In this case, I focused particularly in classic books on the main topic of dystopia (following on the Black Mirror syndrome I got from Netflix). In that line of reading I had the pleasure of reading A Brave new world from Aldus Huxley, which is definitely in the top 5 books I read this year. Most of the (English speaking) people get to read this book in high school, but unfortunately I never got to do it. If you did not read it please add it to your list as it poses great (and scarily applicable to our times) topics as a food for though. I will not spoil the topic though. In a similar line, I also read Animal Farm from Orwell, highly recommendable. Reading also Homage to Catalonia (as per a co-worker's recommendation) makes Orwell one of the two authors I read 2 books during 2018. It is clear to me how the historical/daily description in Homage to Catalonia did shape Orwell together with the allegory to communism in Animal Farm made me get a full high level understanding of how Orwell experienced reality and predicted the dystopian reality of 1984. Interestingly enough 1984 and A Brave new world have been quoted by many as the mixture of realities we are currently experiencing (with Google and Facebook as the big brother, and our cellphones and addition as soma). Last in my list of classics Ficciones by the Argentinian Jose Luis Borges. I read it because I read an article in the news that quoted it and I was gladly impressed. Written in the 1940s, the imagination of Mr Borges was incredible (some might say it goes too far) and I realized how many Hollywood movies I can think of resemble some of the concepts in this collection of short stories. It was the first book I read this year in Spanish, as I think it is always a good thing to read in the source language.

 Economy and Healthcare economics

Besides Left brain right stuff already described in the psychology section, I read a couple more books on Economics. Maybe the one reflecting most of the my relationship with economics is The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford. This book is a great book for people like me who are not too much into economic topics and do not want to go through boring explanations. Harford manages to explain economic terms with simple daily examples (price for coffee at your train station) that are easy to read and bring tricky concepts down to street language. Highly entertaining and a nice read. However, my top pick for this section among the books I read this year is The innovators prescription by Clayton Christensen. If you work in healthcare, this book is a must-read, as it poses some of the challenges of the healthcare economics in the US and hints some nice ideas moving forward. Highly recommended. This is the third book I read from Christensen (2 of them last year), who is a world figure in the topic of innovation (also one of the core topics of my work) and originated the utilitarian theory for products (jobs to be done). 

General and divulgative

Given the world phenomena, I could not resist to read Mr Harari's saga of books, following the recommendations of somebody in my family. Interestingly enough, I started by reading Homo Deus (second book in the saga) to then read Homo Sapiens to hopefully read (the already purchased) 21 lessons for 21st century. Although I liked much Homo Deus and proceeded to read it after a recommendation from the librarian at Waterstones in London during a touristic visit, I have to say that I was a bit deceived by the promises at the beginning of the book, and the conclusions at the end. To be frank I expected a more solid and bold forecast and not a soft open ended final. Also I found a bit lack of originality in some sections, as some of the big ideas I already read in other books such as The better angels of our Nature and believe it or not, some of them in The patient will see you now. Still a nice one to read, particularly the realization of the relationship we humans have with our environment (animals in particular), how we currently treat ourselves as gods and how we will be (or maybe already are) an inferior species to future beings. If you have to pick one though, go for Homo Deus .On the highly recommended status in this category though there are two other books. One is the aforementioned The better angels of our Nature by Steven Pinker. I have to say it is a big time investment (~1K pages) and it took me a long time to read. I must reveal that this is one of the pitfalls of the ebook. When I got into this book I was unaware of its length, given that it is just a file in the device (and you do not see its volume in your shelf). The book is about the history of violence, and how there is less and less violence over time (if you do not think it is true read up!). Particularly interesting from the book (maybe also something to highlight from Harari's saga) is the rationalization of religion and how they have many logical holes. Each of the forms of violence gets its own chapter and extensive research and statistics, together with psychological analysis of all kinds of violence. The message is clear and well-articulated, maybe too long for some tastes. I highly recommend to read the last chapter of the book, where Dr Pinker actually summarizes most of the takeaways of the book (with a great synthesis capacity). So if you do not want to read it all, maybe just the last chapter. Interestingly enough, this ~1K page book was priced in the same ballpark as many of the other books I bought (and hold much lower number of pages), at least the ebook version.

Last book I read in this section is Bad Blood from John Carreyrou. This is the story of Elizabeth Holmes and her Theranos written by the journalist who uncovered the huge scam from the Silicon Valley startup. This book is highly recommendable because of the way it is written, as the short chronological chapters keep you hooked in. I pulled it through in less than 1 week (320 pages). I loved it. Maybe because of my daily interaction with Silicon Valley customers, and its relationship with the biomedical world of medical devices. Read it if you can, as it gets a picture of how hype, millennial thinking, technology and healthcare can all result in a billion dollar scam. And you would keep shaking your head in awe about how could all of this even be possible. Apparently there is going to be a movie about it, so hurry up to get the book before the movie manipulates the story!

 Millennial Thinking

This is a topic that has grown in me throughout 2018, as part of trying to understand the generation that I live in. You could argue that Bad Blood does indeed fall in this category (how millennial thinking can lead to disaster), but the rest of the books on the section are mostly about how to understand life. Interestingly enough, none of the two authors from the books are indeed millennials, but they do represent the ideas most currently in use by this generation. Tribes by Seth Godin, is one of them. Powerful, clear and short book about our need to associate with other people to make bigger things. This book made me think thoroughly about how to face professional work and its impact in daily life, to a point I wrote an article about it earlier this year. Last book from this section is Do cool shit: quit your day job start your own company by Miki Agrawal. I bought this book in the middle of a employer sponsored training I took in 2017 about managing my personal growth. Read it even if you do not plan to leave your company, it will wake up the entrepreneur spirit within and help you value stuff you have and choices you can make. It is a fast read and a wake up call (similar to Tribes) to change your approach to your day to day. It might be also extreme to a certain extent (I am not a big fan of the everything-is- possible and you-put-the-limit-to-your-dreams approach, I am a bit realist and practical) , but a good read anyway. Lots of life experience and learnings (go abroad, relativize things, use the power of your friends) worth keeping in your toolbox, and as the writer says, maybe a good message for future generations.

Productivity

Maybe a section only for the one book I read on the topic is too much, but anyway. Getting things done the book about productivity methodology by Paul Allen is actually a good investment of time. I realized by reading the book that many of the techniques described I already figured out myself up to a point I got even scared. As much as I say the point-by-point methodology is not something I will be implementing any time soon, some of the ideas in the book are worth keeping in mind.

  As promised, below the chronological list of my reads with the recommendations highlighted in bold.

• Superforecasting: the art and science of prediction - Philip E Tetlock
• Left brain right stuff - How leaders make winning decisions - Phil Rosenzweig
• Ficciones - Jorge Luis Borges
• Tribes - Seth Godin
• The signal and the noise - Nate silver
• A Brave new world - Aldus Huxley
• Getting things done - David Allen
• The better angels of our nature - Steven pinker
• Homo Deus - Yuval Noah Harari
• Homage to Catalonia - George Orwell
• The innovators Prescription - Clayton Christensen
• Animal Farm - George Orwell
• The Undercover economist - Tim Harford
• Do cool shit - Miki Agrawal
• Bad Blood - John Carreyrou
• Homo Sapiens - Yuval Noah Harari 

DISCLAIMER: This article presents my subjective view on a topic. This does not represent the thinking of my employer, previous employers, my customers or any other affiliation I might have or have had in the past.