Best Books I Read in 2021
Top 3 out of 14 books, and 3 honorable mentions!
As this year ends, I wanted to write a review of the books I’ve read. Out of 14 books, a total of 6 really made a huge impact in the way I think or in my life. I decided to do a top 3 books among those and the the remaining 3 as honorable mentions.
Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow
Completed on December 31, 2021
This book is a recounting of how Ronan Farrow, a former journalist at NBC, uncovered and exposed the sexual assault stories behind Harvey Weinstein, how Harvey Weinstein was just the “tip of the iceberg”, and how Fallow continued to work hard at uncovering more of these stories in multiple companies beyond Miramax (Weinstein’s company).
This book is easily the #1 book I read over the past year, and the reason I’m putting it first is not just because it’s #1 but also because I strongly believe that everyone should read it. This book made me realize that sexual assault, to the extent that it happened at companies like Miramax, may still be happening in other companies. Why? Because these companies would make use of NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreements) to essentially limit what the victims of assault could and could not say, and on top of that, they used a whole hosts of methods to make sure the stories never got out:
- paying out huge sums of money to victims along with the NDA agreements
- ruining the careers of victims who showed any propensity to speak out
- intimidating, both within and out of companies, people who tried to expose these stories (including Ronan Farrow who thankfully prevailed!)
- killing stories internally (NBC attempted to kill the story for Farrow, so he decided to move to the New Yorker)
- attempting to hide what happened—NBC went as far as hiring someone to update Wikipedia articles to hide the evidence of sexual assault they had and knew about internally
How could we know that not more of these stories exist out there if they’re going to these extremes to hide these stories or prevent them from ever coming out?
I’m thankful for the work that Farrow did here, and I’m also thankful for my friend who recommended this book to me. With that, I want to share that it has made a significant impact in my understanding of these sexual assault issues, and I want to encourage more people to read it.
Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell
Completed on April 15, 2021
If you go back to my previous blogs, you’ll see just how many of them include citations from this book. Basic Economics teaches you micro-economics in a way that is insanely easy to understand and insanely intuitive. The most recent blog that includes citations from this book is “Thinking Framework | 2021”, linked below:
What I got from this book, really, is just how important it is to think about incentives. From “Thinking Framework | 2021”, I wrote:
Incentives are ways that people are pushed to act or actions that people are drawn to take. If you’re familiar with calculus, you can think of incentives as the first derivative function of the actions that people take — if such a function could be defined.
This is likely the biggest lesson from the book, and it looks at it from the standpoint of various economic policies (e.g., rent control, car insurance, supply and demand, etc).
The other lessons that this book taught me are economic lessons, of course. What this does that other economics books likely don't is to explain things in an intuitive way without using too much economic jargon unless necessary and with focusing on cause and effect of various public policies. The book is over 500 pages long, and it has no graphs! So, it’s a solid read for anyone who wants a refreshing view of economics.
No More Mr. Nice Guy by Robert A. Glover
Completed on April 26, 2021
Before you jump your guns at the title of this book, I would really suggest you read it or at least the following summary.
Colloquially speaking, a “nice” guy is a guy who basically does favors to people—and generally to women—with the hope of getting something in return. Giving with expecting something in return is not nice, it’s selfish, and that’s just one of these “nice” on the surface but really-mean, unkind, and selfish behaviors that this book tries to shed lights on and make you stop doing.
To me, this book was instrumental in helping me understand where what I was doing was not OK vs. OK. I’ve started a weekly meeting with a friend to work through the many activities in the book, and we’ve made a ton of realizations through it and have gotten closer together.
While the cover is catchy in a way that might be offensive or controversial, I think this book really helps men become better men by helping them understand and deal with their emotions and become more authentic and kind, which is why I highly recommend it.
Honorable Mentions
Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss
Completed on September 23, 2021
This book is about negotiation, but it comes from the standpoint of what I’d describe as “street negotiation”. The author, Chris Voss, was negotiating with the FBI (or CIA or something), and he was negotiating with people where lives were at stake (i.e., kidnapping). The reason it says to “never” split the difference is because when lives are at stake, you can’t compromise—you want the victims of kidnapping to come back alive and well when the negotiation is over. So, it gave some really unconventional tips, which I wrote about here:
I would recommend this book for anyone who wants to learn how to negotiate better (and I’d say, it’s an upgrade from books like Getting to Yes).
Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb
Completed on August 21, 2021
The concept of “skin in the game”, you could say, is intuitive, but what’s not is all that it implies and how society has created many systems in which people have thrown skin in the game out of the window.
For me, reading this book has helped me put this idea more at the forefront of my life—as the “Thinking Framework | 2021” blog recounts a story about this in my own life. Overall, I recommend people to read this book and maybe think about ways you can have more skin in the game in the things that they do or participate in. Some examples include:
- Bring a gifts when invited to a party
- Be willing to meet people halfway (literally or however you define “halfway” in your relationship with them)
- Be willing to speak to the people involved in a public policy that you support
- Put your money on the line when making claims (not super necessary but you could do this if you want to take “skin in the game” to the next level)
- When you ask for something to someone, make a thoughtful effort to make it easy for the other person to provide what you ask for
- If you work in politics, talk to your constituents—all of them, not just the ones that give you money or votes
There can be countless examples here! I hope this list gives a sense of the breadth of skin in the game.
Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Completed on December 3, 2021
This book has taught me a lot about the way the brain and mind functions. While it’s a little dry (citing multiple studies and experiments), it sheds light on a lot of human biases that we all have and that we should be aware of.
One of those biases is “availability bias”, which intuitively is that your mind puts more emphasis on what is “available” in it—which usually refers to recent event. As I was writing this blog, I thought about how I literally finished reading the book Catch and Kill yesterday, so that made me question whether there was some availability bias here. I still don’t think so, but it’s good that reading this book made me aware of the situation.
Overall, it’s a solid read if you want to understand how your mind works!
What I’m Reading in 2022
I have a really long list of books that I want to read, and I usually pick from that list. With that said, there are some books that (1) I already have and (2) that I am definitely excited to read this upcoming year. Here are the books on my queue:
- Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (starting this tonight)
- The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee
- McDonald’s Behind the Arches by John F. Love
- The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller
Behind each of these books, there’s a story of how they got into my list. I likely will write a blog post about most, if not all, of them, and when I do, I may reveal those stories!
