Books I’ve consumed in 2019 — Part 1
This is the third instalment in my book review series, following the two I wrote in 2018.
In my last review (which you can read here), I set myself a target of 40 books for 2019. The year always starts slowly due to the Australian summer holiday period, where I spent more time with the kids and less time with my books. My consumption was further stifled due to a family holiday I took from mid-April to early-May. Somehow I managed to not touch any of my books, in any form, over this 3.5 week period, so I have fallen well behind my target for 2019. I had aimed to consume between 17 and 20 books, and are well short of that with just 13.
Like always, most are business-related books, but I’m continuing to expand my reading beyond just business books to some fiction.
Audible Books (7)
The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco. MJ is a charismatic person, who tells a fantastic story of his upbringing and his journey from rags to riches. While his knowledge isn’t earth-shattering news, there were sections of his theory that were very interesting. I’m on the fence if I would recommend this to people or not, though.
Becoming by Michelle Obama. This was an absolutely amazing book, and it blew me away with the detail that Michelle went into with discussing her upbringing, her relationship with Obama, and even how things were in the White House. Her journey is certainly one that is inspiring and uplifting, and worth a read if you think that times are getting tough for you.
The Surrender Experiment by Michael A Singer. This book was recommended to me by my wife’s life coach, and it was certainly an interesting story. The cynical summary of the book is to never plan, let life happen to you (“flow through you” is the term used), and you’ll stumble into being the owner of a billion-dollar tech company. However, I think the lesson we were meant to learn is that there are going to be continual challenges placed in front of us, and we can either fight them or ‘surrender’ to them.
The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself by Michael A Singer. This is the first book written by Michael, and I definitely enjoyed it more. Many of the concepts Michael talks about are implementable in daily life, and I hope to be able to do that as I change my thought patterns towards the universe.
Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. I’m a fan of Malcolm’s work, so was keen to have a listen to this book. Malcolm talks about how we make snap judgements about everything in our lives, based on our prior experience and bias. Sometimes this is good for us, especially if we are an expert in a certain area. Sometimes it isn’t good as it can blind us to the actual situation. It was a thoroughly enjoyable book filled with really interesting stories.
Everything is f*cked by Mark Manson. Despite his last book being filled with a bit too many f-bombs, I still wanted to hear his take on hope. And he didn’t let me down. He brings a seemingly cynical view of the world in the first half of the book, basically sh*tting on most of our values and ideologies. However, what he is trying to explain is that the whole point of life is NOT about hanging onto hope, and in fact, we need to appreciate the now rather than hope for a ‘better’ future.
The Alchemist: A Fable About Following Your Dream by Paulo Coelho. I feel compelled to listen to this book once a year (probably because the narration by Jeremy Irons is incredible)! I wrote about my thoughts on this book in my article here, and I can’t recommend this enough.
Kindle Books (3)
Zero to One by Blake Masters and Peter Theil. Having read this book in late 2017, I thought it was time to re-read it. I put it into my last review, however, I didn’t actually finish it by December, so it belongs here!
Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future by Ashlee Vance. I had read this book a few years ago and felt like a re-read of it now. It’s reading about the upbringing of people like Elon that sometimes makes me think that people who have ‘normal’ upbringings (i.e. without any struggles) simply aren’t equipped to become world-changers simply because they never had the reason to develop an inner drive to change things. I know that’s a generalisation, and in fact, it makes the success of these people even more impressive to me (rather than the general population view that successful people come from successful backgrounds). I hope to one day join this list of people…
Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. When looking to boost the number of books you consume in a year, I don’t recommend this one. It’s a monster with an average read time of over 11 hours! Shantaram is the semi-true story of Greg’s life. I really enjoyed the writing style, and, having never visited India, it felt like I was able to really picture what life is like there. To me, it dragged on for a VERY long time, and I think reading it would be more enjoyable if he had broken it up into a series of shorter stories that carried on from each other.
Actual Books (3)
The Three Secret Cities by Matthew Reilly. As you will now know, I am a huge fan of Matthew Reilly and the Jack West Jr series. And this one is just as good as the others. The research Matthew does to ensure that what he’s writing about is ‘real’ is incredible. He has mentioned in an interview that he knows people will Google places or things that are mentioned in his books, so for complete accuracy, he ensures he knows as much as he can about the place to maintain the reality of the book. That was certainly the case here with every location perfectly referenced, adding to the ‘realness’ of the book!
F.I.A.S.C.O. by Frank Portnoy. I felt like re-reading this book again for a change of pace. Frank’s inside story of the derivatives trading on Wall Street in the early 1990s is equal parts amazing and terrifying! Part of me wishes I had been able to be a part of this (due to my love of mathematics, and also knowing — in hindsight — I would have been able to make millions of dollars!), and part of me is glad that I wasn’t a part of it at all.
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby. This one’s an oldie (relatively speaking since it was released in 2000), but I have loved Nick’s work since that time, and haven’t re-read any of his books for many years now. What struck me reading it now, at 43, is that I was a 24–25-year-old reading this story about a 35-year-old guy, and finding myself really relating to it. No wonder I lead such a boring and straight forward 20s when I was in the same mindset as this fictional 35-year-old! I’ll be reading (and reviewing) more of his work in the second half of the year)
How was your first half of 2019? What books have you read that you would recommend? I’m always on the lookout for new books to read.
