Hey Friends,
This is the first year I kept track of books I have read, mostly as an accountability mechanism, but also in the hope that it will make me to read more. To be honest, looking at books I read in 2022, I notice how unremarkable the list looks like — I remembered some, I enjoyed a tiny of portion of them, and the rest was bleak. And no novels, except for one, mostly non-finction. May be the next year I will make better book choices.
Anyways, here we go:
January
January was all about audiobooks. I got a free month subscription to Amazon’s Audible and decided to try it. Here is what I listened to:
Atomic Habits by James Clear. I already have read the physical copy of the book a few times, but listening to it while going for gym was a motivating experience. I use Atomic Habits as a table book, that I occasionally pick-up and find something useful — I made a tons of notes from it. I finished it pretty quickly in an about of week of gym workouts.
Dilla Time by Dan Charnas. J Dilla is an iconic persona in the hip-hop culture, whose music received a cult following after his unfortunate early death. I was a fan of everything he produced and I remember consuming like crazy all of these few stories about him told by his friends and people that knew him, because his life was not well documented and his whole persona had a veil of mystery. Dan Charnas, a music journalist, did an awesome job making J Dilla human again, with all the imperfections and mistakes that one has in the life. The book made me think of how much we idealize people whose work we love.
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami. I already started reading a digital copy of the book when I realized that it is included into Audible’s Netflix-like collection of free to listen books. I loved this audiobook. I never have read anything by Murakami. I picked it up because I learned somewhere that he is an active runner and wrote a book about it. In the book, he describes his early years in his writing career, how he owned a jazz bar, how he started running and how it transformed his way of living.
He provides many parallels between writing and running, and I deeply sympathized with them. More importantly, he wrote about what happens when you reach your running goals and how there is just nothing after that. If you run with a specific goal, your running ambition will eventually dry up and you kinda go over this more philosophical question of why you are running in the first place — this is something that I experienced later in the year.
February
No books.
March
Steal Like Artist and Show Your Work! By Austin Kleon. Two rather shorts books on creative thinking, one about how to learn from the best by “stealing” or imitating their work and then developing your own style. The other one, is that sharing your work, and getting feedback is a faster way toward improving whatever craft you are trying to master than working endlessly on perfection. Pretty simple and obvious things, but presented in an interesting format.
April
Make Time by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky. Book about time management and and how to time for focused work. More relevant for people who spend most of their day in meetings. To be honest, none of ideas of the book seemed novel or eye opening for me, some of it was pretty cliche like change passwords to your social media accounts so you do not spend time checking them, or delete all of your apps on the phone and stuff like that. I remember not finishing the book and mostly reading it during my occasional commutes for office days.
May
Jacked: The Outlaw Story of Grand Theft Auto by David Kushner. The book about Rockstar Games, a gaming company, that have created probably the most popular game series, Grand Theft Auto (GTA). The company, as well its games, were pretty revolutionary in the gaming industry, in terms of aiming at primarily at adults as the main audience, at the time, when the most of gaming industry was considered to be kids driven. The book badly documents how Rockstar Games originated and how they created their games and earned billions and billions. The only thing I remember about the book is that I read it on my way to and from Malmo, which was a super nice trip.
June
Hemingway: The Homecoming by Michael S. Reynolds. I finished Reynolds’ third book of Hemingway biography in June, but I started way back in November, 2021 and had several pauses in between. It is my second favorite book in Hemingway’s biography series by Reynolds, after its The Paris Years. It is a long, very detailed description of Hemingway’s rise to American literature elite class, and yet it reads as a novel — Reynolds is a master of his craft.
July
No books.
August
Between Us by Bajta Mesquita. One the best scientific psychology books I have ever read. Its about emotions and how there is no such thing as “universal” emotions — emotions that we take for granted a our natural reaction to events are actually constructed by culture, traditions, environment and people we have been surrounded by when we were growing up. It had really strong impact on my thinking and practice of inter-cultural communications.
Psychology of Money by Morgan House. Akin to Atomic Habits, this Psychology of Money is my table book when it comes to managing my finances. More than anything this book is about a mindset you need in order to lead and sustain financially healthy and independent life. I would definitely say this is one those books that I am happy I have read in 2022.
September
Soft City: Building Density for Everyday Life by David Sim. The book about how to make cities more kind and friendly to its habitants. Pretty technical, a lot of concepts from architecture and urbanism explained simply, and great conversation started when you are traveling.
October
Out of My Skull: The Psychology of Boredom by James Danckert and John D. Eastwood. The scientific study of boredom and of all its aspects. I was pretty surprised to learn that boredom plays much bigger role in our lives than I attribute to it. The studies were very interesting, but writing was dry and boring in the best traditions of academic writing.
November
The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell. The novel, written in a form of a daily diary, about the dying industry of sellers of secondhand books. The big theme of the book is a constant fight of a little bookshop against Amazon. Yet in between, it is a very funny, sarcastic and engaging reading that describes everyday encounters with customers and their sometimes idiotic questions and requests. Definitely the brightest book of the year, the one that made to want to read more novels like this one.
December
No books.