Couple of years ago, I decided to keep a list of books I read outside of work as a way of keeping notes on the personal takeaways. Since the beginning of the New Year is as good point of reference as any, I’ve been organizing my reading log by year. Here is the 2022 list, grouped into three categories: children’s literature, fiction and non-fiction.
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Children’s literature:
These are books we read aloud with my wife and daughter, usually in the evening. When we started this tradition a few years ago, all the books we read were in hard copy format, but lately we read a few e-books, which are very convenient for traveling.
After finishing the “Harry Potter” series last year, this was our choice of a huge epic book. It did not disappoint, either in volume or in the content. Certainly, it’s a classic for a reason.
I am a fan of Jocko Willink’s podcast and non-fiction writing for adults, but I was skeptical about his foray into the children’s literature. I was definitely wrong – his simple language and super-straightforward way of presenting and demonstrating ideas were both fun and super-inspirational. It inspired my 10-year-old daughter to start a pull-up training program.
A sequel to the “Warrior kid”, this book once again surprised me with how efficiently Jocko handles complex issues that kids face like personal responsibility, compassion and bullying.
This summer we went to France, so we thought it would be good to read a classic adventure novel with strong ties to the location. This book has been my all-time favourite since childhood – certainly one of my most formative reads. With my daughter, though, we found that traction was elusive. Perhaps, at 10 years of age and in 2022, powering through a rather long introduction written is a somewhat archaic style and peppered with references to Huguenots “making a second La Rochelle” of some obscure Trent town was asking a bit too much. On a positive side, on the very first page, the book referred to another classic – “Don Quixote”, which my daughter was unaware of. So we had a chance to introduce that story to her. Maybe, she’ll decide to read it some day? There is hope, at least.
This book was given to me as a present many years ago, and I heard only good things about it, but somehow I never got to reading it. It is definitely very nice – a casual, lay person’s-level insight into the development of applied science in Europe from the perspective of the specific problem of determining the longitude of a ship at sea. I’ve certainly enjoyed it, although I think my daughter is probably experiencing the story very differently, since she lacks the understanding of some physical concepts that are discussed there. Still, perhaps simply being exposed to them could spark some curiosity.
Fiction:
Most of my fiction books in the past year, not counting “The Chronicles of Narnia” and “The Three Musketeers” that I mentioned above and “The paper menagerie” (see below), have been written by Boris Akunin. I read them in their original Russian and really enjoyed the fast pace, the variety of styles (they are parts of a series of detective novels set in late 19th – early 20th century, featuring a common protagonist, Erast Fandorin, and written in different classic styles of the genre) and detailed, but liberal, interpretation of historical events. Pure entertainment!
This is a collection of short stories, whch is shockingly good. I was getting a bit tired of Akunin’s historical detective novels, so picked up this audiobook to listen to on the plane. It is easily the best new book I’ve read in the year, or maybe even of all time (I am saying “new” to avoid pitting against the classics like “The Three Musketeers“, “The Chronicles of Narnia” and the “Harry Potter” series, which would be a meaningless and an impossible comparison).
Non-fiction:
This was the most thought-provoking read (or rather, listen) for me during 2022. It introduced me to the “hard problem of consciousness” (how consciousness comes into existence) and panpsychism. At he time of reading, I wrote down my impressions in this post (“Curiouser and curiouser!”).
I think I heard about this book in Krista Tippet’s “On being” podcast. I wrote about my impressions of this book in this post (“Invention vs discovery”), but the main personal takeaway was to enjoy mathematical problems without worrying too much whether they are immediately relevant to my current research projects.
Although I am not planning to write a memoir (come to think of it, why not?), I found this academic dissection of what makes a good memoir, or generally a non-fiction piece of literature, quite useful in framing my thoughts on capturing ideas in writing.
I started reading this after listening to “The Art of Memoir” by Mary Karr, because she uses Nabokov’s book as an example of a masterful memoir. It is definitely fascinating, and I enjoyed the historical references to the pre-revolution Russia, but with all the tremendous prose, it is not an easy read. I still haven’t finished it, and now that I’ve got an idea of what it’s like, I don’t think I am willing to invest more time in this story.
Another book that I started and haven’t finished. It is is pretty good though, and I might come back to it. I wish that I’ve started it in audio, because my actual reading time is to scarce and I prefer to spend it on something more entertaining.
This book is based on a blog, but unlike Steven Pressfield’s “Do the work”, which I very much disliked, not on a single article. It recaps main takeaways from other authors, but does it quite effectively and with the author’s own interpretation and humour. Main takeaways for me personally were:
a) Gamifying work by referring to the WNGF (Why Neutered Goats Fly) mnemonic: incorporate these aspects into your work – Winnable, Novel, Goals, Feedback. Also, don’t worry about being constantly productive: adding fun is opposite of productivity by definition, and that’s Ok.
b) Using mental contrasting: WOOP (Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan) – think about if-then scenarios.
c) Necessity to prune the list of activities. Aim for one “highlight” activity per day.
d) Fixed schedule productivity (from Cal Newport) – schedule the work, not the interruptions.
This is a deeper dive into the concept of mental contrasting process (see WOOP mnemonic definition from the “Barking up the wrong tree above”). This concept was originally introduced and popularized by Oettingger. The main idea is that wishful thinking alone is detrimental for success, but it is conducive to constructive planning if done correctly.
It was an enjoyable read/listen, but I don’t seem to have many constructive takeaways. The main thesis of the book is to not always be data-driven in our decisions. This advice mostly applies to the problems that are outliers in terms of their complexity (due to dependance on incomparable variables) or significance of the consequences of the decision. Examples would be deciding whether or not to get married, to have children, to move to another country, to switch careers, etc. The difficulty with this type of problems is that making one decision or the other changes who you are, this making pros and cons analysis from the perspective of you before having made the decision is fundamentally flawed.
This one of the few books that I found truly disappointing. It came highly recommended by Tim Ferriss, whom I’ve been following because of his excellent podcast, but the book itself is a slapped-together recording of live lectures/seminars by De Mello, who is quite condescending in his attitude to the audience. Most frustratingly, he doesn’t add much insight to the field of spiritual development. Overall, the book leaves an impression of a money grab. I do regret the time spent on it, but the lesson to take away is, perhaps, not to hesitate to drop the books without completing them.
A fascinating insight into long-term possibilities for the humans.
This book shows that it might never be possible to decipher strangers without resorting to evolutionary-dictated mental shortcuts. But this is Ok, because the price of being always vigilant would be too high in terms of poor social fit.
I really liked this book. It has many practical strategies for maintaining focus. The emphasis on internal triggers is particularly insightful. This book also pointed me towards the rabbit holes of multi-modal perception and self-determination theory. it is bit ironic, though, that I listened to it in audio, so that I’d be able to do other things at the same time.
For me, this is a deeper dive into Self-Determination Theory, inspired by Nir Eyal’s “Indistractable”. The idea of the “third drive”, beyond the carrot-and-stick motivation (motivation 2.0), is central here. Also, I agree with the statement that a flow state is relatively easy to achieve, but mastery is asymptotic, and it requires years of painful practice.
The main takeaway is that it is not always better to work in groups. The society expects everyone to conform to being an extravert, but almost half of people are introverts. True mastery strongly correlates with working alone, because only you can determine what you should be working on, which is the necessary component of deliberate practice. This book also changed how I look at my daughter and her interactions with friends and other people (at least I’d like to think so).
I first came across the idea of identifying one thing, completion of which would make other tasks easier or unnecessary, and focussing on this one thing until it’s done in Tim Ferriss’ podcast, so it wasn’t particularly new to me. This probably remains the main takeaway from the book, but I also like the tactical advice of going small, which, according to the author, applies to everything.
The main ideas in the book are not new, but the tactics are surprisingly fresh and useful. Stop (to identify the “zone of desire” – things you are good at and that you like to do), Cut (things in your “dread zone” and most of other things), Delegate (three levels of delegation, using specific language to define boundaries), Execute (I particularly like the “on-stage/backstage/off-stage” analogy. Plan on weekly and daily scales).
The idea of early specialization is profitable for organizations like junior sports leagues and music teachers.
Short-term success and before-your-eye progress does not correlate with long-term learning.
Desirable difficulties – space the testing in time, use interleaving – make learning more challenging in the short term.
Overall – an excellent read. I’d like to re-visit it some time in the future, probably.
I came across this book several times, but always hesitated to pick it up, being turned off by a click-baity title. It was a pleasant surprise – a good combination of depth and tactical advice. I also liked the historical reference to a paradigm shift from character ethic to personality ethic in the self-development literature. Here is a summary:
Habit 1: Agency. Be “response-able”. This closely parallels the “extreme ownership” idea of Jocko Willink.
Habit 2: Starting with a destination in mind. The idea that everything is created twice – once as a plan and once as an implementation.
Habit 3: Prioritize the important over the urgent.
Habit 4: Aim for a win-win. Seek mutual benefits.
Habit 5: Prioritize listening to understand the others.
Habit 6: Collaborate to create new possibilities.
Habit 7: Practice self-renewal.
