Readings in Isolation, Part 2: July - December 2020

It's Twenty-Twenty-One my fellow bibliophiles and bibliophagists! My warmest wishes to you for the new year and may it be laden with many happy hours of undisturbed readings.

When I wrote the Part One of this post in July 2020, Australia was in a rather different state of affairs in matters of "Readings in isolation". We didn't leave our homes, non-essential retail was closed, and most towns were empty. Thankfully, since most Aussies did bunker down for each other the results speak for themselves. While we are not so much in isolation anymore (mostly), I will keep the title the same for the sake of continuity - and look forward to a more optimistic title six months from now.

Welcome back if you have read any of my past book recommendations from 2018, 2019 and earlier last year 2020 (January - June), and if you are stumbling onto this series for the first time welcome to you too.

I must admit that the last six months was harder than usual to keep up with my two-books-a-month pace, but I did manage to squeeze them in. Below are the twelve books I read from July to December in 2020. If you have missed the ones I read from January to June, they are in a previous post.

13. The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth by Amy C. Edmondson

14. The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design by Richard Dawkins

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

16. Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss

17. Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer

18. WTF?: What's the Future and Why It's Up to Us by Tim O'Reilly

19. The Survivors by Jane Harper

20. Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter by Liz Wiseman

21. Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know by Malcolm Gladwell

22. The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company by Robert Iger

23. Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou

24. Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek

Each of the twelve books above were wonderful to read, and I would happily recommend them to you. That said, when I look back at the twenty-four books I read across all of 2020, I have to admit that the books I read in the first six months left a deeper impact on me than the ones in the latter half. Books like Simon Sinek's Start with Why and The Infinite Game, Sam Walton & John Huey's Sam Walton: Made in America, Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell (there were more) were all fantastic reads which I still use in my daily life.

There were of course still a few amazing gems that stood out for me. Below are my top five reads for the last six months in no particular order:

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou

“The way Theranos is operating is like trying to build a bus while you’re driving the bus. Someone is going to get killed.”

One cannot make this stuff up - any more explosive and you would need Michael Bay to bring it to screen. Carryrou's book documents an excellently researched journey of Theranos, a company founded by Elizabeth Holmes when she was just nineteen years old. They claimed to have built a device that could run a massive number of tests and tell you about your health from just a single drop of blood. This is the stuff of Silicon Valley legends - and many were convinced of it too. With the backing of major investors, distinguished leaders on its board, major customers lined up and front-page articles on major business press Theranos was valued at $10 billion. Only, that promised device never existed!

The book is very well written, and as Bill Gates called it - "a thriller with a tragic ending".

Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer

Perhaps, as Borges concludes in his story, it is forgetting, not remembering, that is the essence of what makes us human. To make sense of the world, we must filter it. “To think,” Borges writes, “is to forget.

I will take any help anyone gives me on improving my memory skills and who better than the United States Memory Champion? Foer's book on memory was light, entertaining, informative, and useful.

In the book Foer shares his training to become the US Memory Champion, something I did not know existed, and along the way discusses the history and importance of memory and memory skills. I highly recommend the book to anyone who is looking at understanding how memory works and practical methods to starting to use that engine in possibly a more purposeful manner.

Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss with Tahl Raz 

“He who has learned to disagree without being disagreeable has discovered the most valuable secret of negotiation.”

The author, Chris Voss has two and a half decades in the FBI under his belt as a hostage negotiator. In the book, Voss shares his methods and tactics he has honed over the years for effective negotiations. One does not need to be in the FBI or terrorist negotiation space to appreciate the book. There are useful principles to use in everyday negotiations in our personal and professional lives. It's a book you will want to take notes in the margins as you read it.

What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture by Ben Horowitz

“The samurai called their principles 'virtues' rather than 'values'; virtues are what you do, while values are merely what you believe. As we'll see, doing is what matters.”

This was my second book by Ben Horowitz and while I thoroughly enjoyed The Hard Thing About Hard Things, I found What You Do Is Who You Are had broader applications - possibly because of the stories used not being from his personal experiences only. What you do is who you are is about organisation culture illustrated through backdrops of historic events and individuals - ranging from the Samurai, Shaka Senghor who was convicted of murder and ran the most formidable prison gang, Haiti's Toussaint Louverture and Ghenghis Khan. Horowitz goes on to overlay the brilliantly narrated stories with recent examples of cultural movements in places like Netflix, Uber, Slack, McDonalds and more.

It's one of the reads that make you feel like you are with the author as he shares his insights and in this case with the author being Horowitz, it's nothing short of a privilege for us. I loved the examples and the multitudes of practical take-aways I soaked in throughout the book. I highly, highly recommend it!

The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design by Richard Dawkins 

“Evolution has no long-term goal. There is no long-distance target, no final perfection to serve as a criterion for selection, although human vanity cherishes the absurd notion that our species is the final goal of evolution.”

I loved this book. It's beautifully articulated scientific commentary on evolutionary theory - rich in data, deductions and stories. It is no surprise that the book is in its 30th Anniversary Edition. The best way I can summarise the book is that it's about the how of the why we all exist. Dawkins discusses evolution as a natural, blind, and non-random process of survival of the gene. If you are interested in Darwinian evolutionary biology, I highly recommend you get your hands on this book.

While that was the top five, I would like to make a special mention of Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter by Liz Wiseman & Greg McKeown, The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth by Amy C. Edmondson, and The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company by Robert Iger, Joel Lovell. They were all wonderfully insightful reads.

Well that's a wrap for the year! Not since the days of reading Enid Blyton have I read three books by the same author in the same year. I bookended my readings this year with the writings of Simon Sinek. What are your thoughts on the list? Please do share them in the comments section below - I always look forward to reading them.

Looking ahead, I am now onto my first book for the year, and I look forward to you reading my next post where I will share what it is!

Again, thank you for reading my posts and my warmest wishes to youfor the wonderful year ahead. Happy Readings!