What Dan Read | H2 - 2023
Daniel Canetti
Sage 200 Business Development Account Manager | Guiding SMBs along their Sage journey.
One of the newsletters I subscribed to, Snail Mail, shared a post called How to enjoy reading on August 07, 2023. I wholeheartedly agree with their main points:
As always, my top picks are below, and the complete list follows. Hopefully you'll find something new to read!
My book of the year is... Wavewalker: Breaking Free.
My top picks from each category are:
Business/Finance/Technology
The Laundromat: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite - (4/5)
In The Laundromat, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Jake Bernstein explores this shadow economy and how it evolved, drawing on millions of leaked documents from the files of the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca – a trove now known as the Panama Papers – as well as other journalistic and government investigations. Bernstein shows how shell companies operate, how they allow the superwealthy and celebrities to escape taxes, and how they provide cover for illicit activities on a massive scale by crime bosses and corrupt politicians across the globe.
Can’t We Just Print More Money? Economics in Ten Simple Questions - (5/5)
Why are all my clothes made in Asia? How come I'm so much richer than my great-great-grandma? And what even is money? Whether you're buying lunch, looking for a job, or applying for a mortgage, the thing we call 'the economy' is going to set the terms. A pity, then, that many of us have no idea how the economy actually works. That's where this book comes in.
Currently Reading: Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire - (?/5)
In Amazon Unbound, Stone offers the must-listen follow-up to his best seller The Everything Store, detailing the seismic changes that have taken place at Amazon over the past decade as it became one of the most powerful and feared companies in the global economy, led by one of the most powerful and feared leaders in business. He shows the acquisitions and innovations that have propelled Amazon’s unprecedented growth and the turn in public sentiment that criticises Amazon’s monopolistic practices. As he charts the company’s meteoric rise, Stone probes the evolution of Jeff Bezos - who started as a geeky entrepreneur but who transformed to become a fit, famed, disciplined billionaire, a man who runs Amazon with an iron fist but finds his personal life splashed over the tabloids.
Personal Development
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness - (4/5)
Naval Ravikant is an entrepreneur, philosopher, and investor who has captivated the world with his principles for building wealth and creating long-term happiness. The Almanack of Naval Ravikant is a collection of Naval’s wisdom and experience from the last ten years, shared as a curation of his most insightful interviews and poignant reflections. This isn’t a how-to book, or a step-by-step gimmick. Instead, through Naval’s own words, you will learn how to walk your own unique path toward a happier, wealthier life.
To Sell is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others - (3/5)
To Sell Is Human offers a fresh look at the art and science of selling. As he did in Drive and A Whole New Mind, Daniel H. Pink draws on a rich trove of social science for his counterintuitive insights. He reveals the new ABCs of moving others (it's no longer "Always Be Closing"), explains why extraverts don't make the best salespeople, and shows how giving people an "off-ramp" for their actions can matter more than actually changing their minds.
Non-Fiction
Wavewalker: Breaking Free - (5/5)
Aged just seven, Suzanne Heywood set sail with her parents and brother on a three-year voyage around the world. What followed turned instead into a decade-long way of life, through storms, shipwrecks, reefs and isolation, with little formal schooling. No one else knew where they were most of the time and no state showed any interest in what was happening to the children.
Suzanne fought her parents, longing to return to England and to education and stability. This memoir covers her astonishing upbringing, a survival story of a child deprived of safety, friendships, schooling and occasionally drinking water… At seventeen Suzanne earned an interview at Oxford University and returned to the UK.
From the bestselling author of What Does Jeremy Think?, Wavewalker is the incredible true story of how the adventure of a lifetime became one child’s worst nightmare – and how her determination to educate herself enabled her to escape.
This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor - (5/5)
Welcome to the life of a junior doctor: 97-hour weeks, life and death decisions, a constant tsunami of bodily fluids, and the hospital parking meter earns more than you.Scribbled in secret after endless days, sleepless nights and missed weekends, Adam Kay's This is Going to Hurt provides a no-holds-barred account of his time on the NHS front line. Hilarious, horrifying and heartbreaking, this diary is everything you wanted to know – and more than a few things you didn't – about life on and off the hospital ward.
Fiction
The Black Echo - (5/5)
LAPD detective Harry Bosch is a loner and a nighthawk. One Sunday he gets a call-out on his pager. A body has been found in a drainage tunnel off Mulholland Drive, Hollywood.
Bosch recognises the victim. Billy Meadows was a fellow 'tunnel rat' in Vietnam, running against the VC and the fear they all used to call the Black Echo. Bosch believes he let down Billy Meadows once before, so now he is determined to bring the killer to justice.
Bad Soldier - (4/5)
Danny Black Thriller 4. Picked this series up again after a stint away following my disappointment with Hellfire.
Warlord - (4/5)
Danny Black Thriller 5. Rolled into this book straight from Bad Soldier.
Head Hunters - (4/5)
Danny Black Thriller 6. Another solid military action/adventure in this series.
The Kind Worth Saving - (3/5)
There was always something slightly dangerous about Joan. So, when she turns up at private inves-tigator Henry Kimball's office asking him to investigate her husband, he can't help feeling ill at ease. Just the sight of her stirs up a chilling memory: He knew Joan in his previous life as a high school English teacher, when he was at the center of a tragedy.
Now Joan needs his help proving that her husband is cheating. But what should be a simple case of infidelity becomes much more complicated when Kimball finds two bodies in an uninhabited suburban home with a FOR SALE sign out front. Suddenly it feels like the past is repeating itself, and Henry must go back to one of the worst days of his life to uncover the truth.
Black Ops - (1/5)
Danny Black Thriller 7. The worst book in this series so far, certainly one of the worst books I’ve read in a long time.
The Black Ice - (3/5)
L.A.P.D. detective Harry Bosch investigates the slaying of a narcotics officer, one in a series stretching from Hollywood's drug trade to dirt alleys south of the border, a crime reported to be linked to a new drug called "Black Ice."
The Lord of the Flies - (4/5)
At the dawn of the next world war, a plane crashes on an uncharted island, stranding a group of schoolboys. At first, with no adult supervision, their freedom is something to celebrate; this far from civilization the boys can do anything they want. Anything. They attempt to forge their own society, failing, however, in the face of terror, sin and evil. And as order collapses, as strange howls echo in the night, as terror begins its reign, the hope of adventure seems as far from reality as the hope of being rescued.
Labelled a parable, an allegory, a myth, a morality tale, a parody, a political treatise, even a vision of the apocalypse, Lord of the Flies is perhaps our most memorable novel about “the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart.”
Animal Farm - (4/5)
A farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality. Thus the stage is set for one of the most telling satiric fables ever penned--a razor-edged fairy tale for grown-ups that records the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible.
The Pelican Brief - (5/5)
In suburban Georgetown a killer's Reeboks whisper on the front floor of a posh home... In a seedy D.C. porno house a patron is swiftly garroted to death... The next day America learns that two of its Supreme Court justices have been assassinated. And in New Orleans, a young law student prepares a legal brief...
To Darby Shaw it was no more than a legal shot in the dark, a brilliant guess. To the Washington establishment it was political dynamite. Suddenly Darby is witness to a murder--a murder intended for her. Going underground, she finds there is only one person she can trust--an ambitious reporter after a newsbreak hotter than Watergate--to help her piece together the deadly puzzle. Somewhere between the bayous of Louisiana and the White House's inner sanctums, a violent cover-up is being engineered. For someone has read Darby's brief. Someone who will stop at nothing to destroy the evidence of an unthinkable crime.
Abandoned
I have added this new section for the books I abandoned to help me with calling it quits on the books I'm not enjoying.
The Bonfire of the Vanities
I abandoned this book because I just couldn't get into the style of writing or the story. Not one for me.
An exhilarating satire of Eighties excess that captures the effervescent spirit of New York, from one of the greatest writers of modern American prose.
Sherman McCoy is a WASP, bond trader and self-appointed 'Master of the Universe'. He has a fashionable wife, a Park Avenue apartment and a Southern mistress. His spectacular fall begins the moment he is involved in a hit-and-run accident in the Bronx. Prosecutors, newspaper hacks, politicians and clergy close in on him, determined to bring him down.
Trillions: How a Band of Wall Street Renegades Invented the Index Fund and Changed Finance Forever
I abandoned this book because the level of detail this book dives into is much more than I need to know. It's a well written book and a good read, but is probably more suited to those studying banking or economics.
In Trillions, Financial Times journalist Robin Wigglesworth unveils the vivid secret history of index funds, bringing to life the colourful characters behind their birth, growth and evolution into a world-conquering phenomenon. It is the untold story behind one of the most pressing financial uncertainties of our time.
My quick take-aways:
What are you reading?
Firstly, please let me know in the comments if you've read any of these books, I'd love to hear from you and discuss more.
Secondly, I'm constantly adding to?my list ?of books, so please comment any recommendations. You can also keep on top of my current reads and reviews over on goodreads .
Finally, if I remember, I will try to upload a new list in the summer to cover the first part of 2024. Until then, Happy New Year and Happy Reading!
"One sign you haven’t done enough reading is if you find yourself agreeing with whatever book you read last. At first, it’s easy to be swayed by any reasonable argument. Once you’ve read a lot, you can see that even the best arguments have limitations." - James Clear