In the past few years ( 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013) I’ve been summarizing the year both on sports events (running, biking, snowboarding, etc’) and on books.

This year is no different.

Let’s start with the books I’ve enjoyed most in 2019.

Books – Learning and thinking

Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don’t Know – Malcolm Gladwell This is another masterpiece from Gladwell. He knows how to tell a story and to take you from A to B in a fascinating way.
Grit : The Power of Passion and Perseverance – Angela Duckworth I enjoyed this one as it’s not ‘just’ talking about the importance of Grit but also on how to deal with the complexity of life.
21 Lessons for the 21st Century – Yuval Noah Harari If you read the first two books you got the main ideas. However, it’s a great book with many good internal stories. I liked it a lot.
The Infinite Game – Simon Sinek It’s all about life and the “infinite games”, like business or politics. The players come and go, the rules are changeable, and there is no defined endpoint. There are no winners or losers in an infinite game; there is only ahead and behind.
The Fifth Risk – Michael Lewis examines the transition and political appointments of the Donald Trump presidency, especially concerning three government agencies: the Department of Energy, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Commerce. It sounds like a Sci–Fi Book…
The Best Place to Work : The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace – Ron Friedman This book tries to answer the big question of “What makes us successful at work?” Combining powerful stories with cutting edge findings, Friedman shows leaders at every level how they can use scientifically-proven techniques to promote smarter thinking, greater innovation, and stronger performance. This book is full of good stories that drive the points. Big like.
What It Takes : Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence – Stephen A. Schwarzman It’s the story of building Blackstone from zero into the leading financial institution it is today (e.g. managing over $500 billion). Schwarzman tells how his life story with an emphasizes on starting this business. He was focus on hiring great talent, setting the right culture (accountability, performance, freedom), and establishing processes that allow the firm to systematically analyze and evaluate risk while making bets that made lots of profits.
The Singularity Is Near : When Humans Transcend Biology – Ray Kurzweil It’s a ‘heavy’ one but from one of the world’s leading inventors, thinkers, and futurists, with a thirty-year track record of accurate predictions. I was amazed to learn that it was published in 2005 as some of the ideas are ‘new’ even today.
Atomic Habits : Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones – James Clear It’s all about getting a bit better (but every day). The book is mostly about lessons on how to change your habits and get 1% better every day.
Give and Take : A Revolutionary Approach to Success – Adam Grant For generations, we have focused on the individual drivers of success: passion, hard work, talent, and luck. But in today’s dramatically reconfigured world, success is increasingly dependent on how we interact with others. This book is all about ‘peopleware’.
Blitzscaling : The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies – Reid Hoffman This book is about what you do when you need to grow really quickly. It’s the science and art of rapidly building out a company to serve a large and usually global market, with the goal to become the first mover at scale. I read the other two books that Reid wrote in the past (The Start-Up of You and The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age) and they are all insightful and full of wisdom.
When : The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing – Daniel H. Pink
Trillion Dollar Coach : The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell – Eric Schmidt
Brief Answers to the Big Questions – Stephen Hawking
Switch : How to Change Things When Change Is Hard – Chip Heath
The Making of a Manage r: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You – Julie Zhuo
Thinking in Bets : Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts – Annie Duke

Novels

Where the Crawdads Sing – Delia Owens
When Breath Becomes Air – Paul Kalanithi
The Hate U Give – Angie Thomas
After the Flood: A Novel – Kassandra Montag
Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes – Eleanor Coerr Thanks to my kids that got this one from school. It’s a short and very good one. Sad.
A Short History of Nearly Everything – Bill Bryson
The President Is Missing: A Novel – Bill Clinton
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup – John Carreyrou

Other books

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies – Jared Diamond
The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company – Robert Iger
A Gentleman in Moscow: A Novel – Amor Towles
Recursion: A Novel – Blake Crouch
Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day – Jake Knapp
Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite – Jake Bernstein
Snow Crash: A Novel – Neal Stephenson
Before We Were Yours: A Novel – Lisa Wingate
Seveneves: A Novel – Neal Stephenson
A Million Little Pieces – James Frey
Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error – Kathryn Schulz
Super Brain: Unleashing the Explosive Power of Your Mind to Maximize Health, Happiness, and Spiritual Well-Being – Rudolph E. Tanzi
The Tattooist of Auschwitz: A Novel – Heather Morris
The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
Educated: A Memoir – Tara Westover
Long Road to Mercy – David Baldacci
The Reckoning: A Novel – John Grisham
The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right – Atul Gawande
The Art of Racing in the Rain: A Novel – Garth Stein
Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World—and Why Things Are Better Than You Think – Hans Rosling
To Kill a Mockingbird: To Kill a Mockingbird Series, Book 1 – Harper Lee
Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters – Richard P. Rumelt
12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos – Jordan B. Peterson
The Power Paradox: How We Gain and Lose Influence – Dacher Keltner

Sports, Fun And The Outdoors

This year Strava did a really good job with visualizing the stats. I would offer an option to combine some sports (e.g. road biking with trainer) but it’s not a major thing.