My Reading Highlights From 2020

It's New Year's Day so I'd like to wish you a Happy New Year! 2020 may rate as the worst year in our lifetime, but I did manage to read at least two books a week throughout the entire year.

In 2020, I was a victim of the publishing industry and their endless fascination with the American presidency. I read Barack Obama's 'A Promised Land', Bob Woodward's 'Rage', Michael Cohen's 'Disloyal', 'The Tragedy of Rudy Giuliani' by Michael Wolff, and Mary Trump's 'Too Much and Never Enough.' On a similar theme, I read 'Dealing With The Devil' by Tony Schwarz - the man who ghost-wrote 'Art of the Deal' for Donald Trump.

This comes off the back of many other recently published political memoirs and biographies, including James Comey's memoir and Michael Wolff's expose of life inside the White House. Whatever you think about Donald Trump, he has certainly been helping the publishers to sell more books.

But although I have consumed many of these recent political books, they are often just froth. Woodward is a great journalist, but many of the events he is documenting need more time to be analysed in context. 'Leadership' by Doris Kearns Goodwin or 'Andrew Jackson' by HW Brands were certainly more insightful explorations of the presidency.

I read Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs and then read his biography of Albert Einstein because Jobs loved the Einstein book so much he sought out Isaacson to work on his own life story. Will Self's memoir, 'Will', was particularly interesting as he writes his memories in the third person - "young wannabe writer Will was stoned again as he entered the contact centre..."

This year, I've read a lot of books about music (Elton John, Kraftwerk...), biographies (Dan Rather, Lenin...), sport (Arsène Wenger, Kaiser...), history (Toqueville, The Great Stink) - and some fiction too (Mayflies, The Leftovers...).

I read both volumes of the memoirs published by the lead singer from Suede, Brett Anderson. These are both beautifully written and far from the typical rock bio - in fact he barely talks about the music industry at all until late in the second book. They depict a social history of growing up in working-class England in the 70s and 80s and are highly recommended if you want to understand that period in British history.

I read quite a lot about race this year - it's understandable. The killing of George Floyd in May led to a resurgence of the Black Lives Matter campaign and there is simply no excuse to not get educated about the deeper issues and experiences - whatever your own race or background. I'm tired of seeing people sharing 'All Lives Matter' memes with a complete inability to understand why they are perpetuating racism and colonial attitudes.

I think that the renewed sober analysis of issues such as slave trading, and the monuments that still exist to this day of the people who facilitated this industry are long overdue. It's not erasing history to start removing some of them - their history lives on in Wikipedia. Bonnie Greer's 'In Search of Black History' and Adam Rutherford's 'How To Argue With A Racist' are stand-out titles.

I didn't read too many business titles. I tend to think that you learn more about power and management from biographies and stories, rather than business titles, but I did read a few business titles that really stood out this year, including:

• Console Wars by Blake Harris. A fascinating exploration on the history and rivalry of Sega and Nintendo. It's quite long (about 600 pages) but zips along with something interesting taking place all the time.
• No Rules Rules by Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer. Take the boss of Netflix and an academic focused on management and try to explore how Netflix created their corporate culture and how/why it works. An interesting experiment and more validating than if Reed had written this alone.
• The Joy of Work by Bruce Daisley. Bruce was the European head of Twitter until he left to pursue a writing career. His book analyses how great teams are formed and how people work well together - and why some people hate work. It's a good analysis of the problems in management and I was gratified to see that many of my own strategies for work align with some of the best practices Bruce outlines.

One surprise this year was finding that I hated the Booker Prize winner, Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart. I couldn't feel empathy for any of the characters. It just didn't work for me. I'll give him another chance with his second book though. It's quite something to win such a prestigious award with a debut book.

I only read one traditional 'paper' book in 2020. I listened to 223 hours of audiobooks on Audible and read everything else on my Kindle. Some people don't like reading devices, but I love my Kindle. It's waterproof, I can hear about a book on a podcast and have it on the Kindle in seconds, and it doesn't have notifications from apps - it's an entirely different experience compared to trying to read something on a phone. It's just like a real book, only better.

Considering the stress and strains of 2020 I'm pleased to have (just) hit my target of 104 books across the entire year. Let's see how 2021 works out... ??????????

The complete list of all 105 books I read or listened to this year is available here. What were your favourite reads of 2020?

CC Photo by Freddie Marriage