Welcome to the inaugural edition of my yearly booklist! I’m following in the footsteps of many of my role models of sharing a selection of what I read this year that left a mark on me and which I’d recommend to others. The motivation for this is threefold. First, I’m hoping that this inspires others to share recommendations from what they read/watched/experienced so I can learn from them. I find the social aspects of reading (debriefs and discussions) to be far more fulfilling than reading alone. Second, the books I’ve curated here left a lasting impression on me and I’m hoping that they have a similar impact on you. Third, this exercise allows me to reflect on the year and relive some of my favorite memories from it. Knowing that I was going to write this was a forcing function for me to read more intentionally and consciously, so it’s been helpful for me whether or not anyone actually reads this list.
2020 was a challenging year in a lot of ways. It forced us to confront our own mortality and fragility in a way that we generally don’t have to in the developed world. It changed our social dynamic from one of in-person interaction to one of zoom happy hours. It brought forward a weird new moral grandstanding, not too dissimilar from slut shaming, where any social interaction, however responsible, was criticized by the more righteous among us. It brought about a healthy change of perspective from individualism to collectivism – wearing a mask is less about keeping ourselves safe and more about keeping others safe. It exacerbated polarization where tribal affiliation influenced our likelihood to ascribe to public health guidelines. Most of all, it made us look inwards, not outwards, for fulfillment – instead of Tuesday nights at the salsa club next to the office with gin and tonics, Tuesday nights were spent ten feet away from our desks curled up on the sofa under a blanket with a cup of tea (also, let’s be real, frequently still gin and tonics).
I found a lot of solace this year in books. I looked to some books as a source of perspective – what lessons could we learn from others who’ve handled adversity more gracefully than us. I looked to others for inspiration – how can we make sustainable and persistent changes in our own lives; what can we learn from the successes of others. Sometimes I looked to books as an escape mechanism to distract me from current events that were stressing me out – immersing myself in worlds without pandemics, elections, and climate change. Often I did the opposite and chose books that were so dark and grim that our world, by comparison, felt like an absolute blessing. Other times, I just read to learn something new – reminding myself of the vast world of information available at our fingertips if only we take the initiative to consume it.
Without further ado, here were some of my favorite books that I read this year:
Biography / Autobiography
This book is absolutely incredible. Sometimes when I experience something for the first time, there’s a blend of wonder from the experience coupled with a frustration that I hadn’t done it sooner. Reading this was definitely one of those experiences. This is also the kind of book where as soon as I was done, I had to take a walk, process my emotions, and journal to reflect back on what I thought my meaning was.
Dr. Frankl’s memoir tells of the horrors of Nazi death camps, coupled with his lessons on moral fortitude. The fundamental message is a simple one: if you have a meaning to your life, then you’re able to handle any adversity with grace and determination. He returns frequently to a quote from Nietzche:
He who has a why to live can bear with almost any why
or as Dr. Frankl puts it
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
Meaning can come from the pursuit of a goal, human experiences (i.e. love), or from (unavoidable) struggle. Meaning isn’t something that’s static or external, it has to come from within and it’s something that changes organically over time. However, it’s in determining that meaning that we’re able to live a fulfilling life.
A snippet that especially resonated for me was that meaning also can’t be simply the pursuit of success or happiness:
Don’t aim at success – the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued, it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will love to see that in the long run – in the long run, I say! – success will follow you because you had forgotten to think about it.
A refreshing reminder in what feels like an especially outcome-driven society.
Phil Knight is an incredible businessperson and an even better storyteller. He tells of how he progressed from a track athlete at Oregon to the founder of Nike. It’s a refreshing and honest take on the grit, determination, and passion required to navigate the chaos and uncertainty of starting something new and growing it. He’s honest and self critical, spending more time telling the lessons he learned through his own successes and failures than on parroting cliche aphorisms that are too abstract to be meaningful. I especially enjoyed the passages about how he learns how to navigate Japanese business customs and his financiers – striking the delicate balance between his lofty vision and the financial practicalities.
One of the recurring themes in his story is that of courage:
The cowards never started and the weak died along the way. That leaves us.
He also talks about failure:
Fear of failure, I thought, will never be our downfall as a company. Not that any of us thought we wouldn’t fail; in fact we had every expectation that we would. But when we did fail, we had faith that we’d do it fast, learn from it, and be better for it.
Failing fast is a mantra that I definitely agree with – we need to give ourselves liberty to fail (else, we’ll be doomed to a cowardly inaction), but we need to do so quickly and in a way which gives us information that will prevent us from failing in the same way again. There’s no shame in failure, only in failing the same way repeatedly.
He also gives some great leadership lessons. Early Nike was a ragtag group of misfits brought together by a love of running and not much else. He navigates the classic challenge of the level of direction to give to his team and how to foster autonomy:
Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.
Also, it’s got this legendary quote from Steve Prefontaine, an Olympian from Oregon that really sums up the Nike ethos:
Somebody may beat me but they’re going to have to bleed to do it.
Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson
So this book is an absolute beast, but it’s an appropriate length for somebody as multi-talented as Leonardo da Vinci. I actually didn’t know all that much about him before reading this (outside of having seen some of his pieces in the Louvre). The biggest takeaway for me with this book was the value of playful curiosity coupled with careful observation. One of the treatises from his journal is to
describe the tongue of the woodpecker.
He watched how dragonflies’ wings worked in an offset beating pattern. He studied cadavers not only to improve the anatomical accuracy of his paintings, but out of a genuine desire to learn, resulting in some of the best medical diagrams of the era.
He pursued knowledge for knowledge’s sake, instead of as a means to an end. This is both his most admirable quality and the cause for his countless unfinished pieces. His endless curiosity drove him to understand things at a level of depth that far surpassed what was strictly necessary for any task – the result of which being that he was able to draw connections across a wide variety of disciplines (for example, using his knowledge of hydraulics from city planning to understand how blood currents in the aorta help the cardiac valves close). This also naturally caused some frustration from his benefactors who were disappointed by his relatively infrequent completed works.
The criticism one can levy against him was that he didn’t publish many of his findings, thus requiring humanity to take often hundreds of years to rediscover them independently. I think this is valid, but he didn’t stop projects out of mere boredom, but rather because something else had captured his fascination and wonder. This might not have been the most productive (if we use the narrow definition of the word) mindset, but it’s one that inspired me to be more curious, have more wonder, observe the world more carefully, and not to artificially constrain myself to only learn about things that help me professionally.
In his letter (job application) to the then-Duke of Milan, he describes his skills in set decoration for plays, engineering
I can invent portable bridges, I can make great public buildings, I can divert water, I can make military weapons
and includes casually in the last paragraph:
I can also paint.
Health / Lifestyle
Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker
So this book changed the game for me. The key takeaway is straightforward: we need to sleep eight hours a day. It helps with memory, learning, creativity, decision-making, cardiac health, brain health, immune response, emotional health, the ability to lose weight, the ability to control temptations, etc. He directly addresses myths that some folks don’t actually need eight hours a night (spoiler alert: you do, even if you naturally wake up with less). He also gives a simple set of recommendations to improve sleep health: minimize caffeine (especially in the afternoon), limit alcohol, minimize LED exposure leading up to sleep, cool your bedroom, and ideally take a short nap in the late morning / early afternoon.
Similar to Man’s Search for Meaning, this was a book that I was almost frustrated that I hadn’t read earlier. I had obstructive sleep apnea as a child (since resolved by removing my tonsils and adenoids) so my relationship with sleep has always been a tricky one. On one hand, I always felt like I needed it a bit more than others, but as a society (especially in Indian culture) we also stigmatize sleeping as a proxy for laziness and we lionize those who function well with unhealthily low amounts of sleep.
This is a short review because it’s a clear book with a simple message, but this book fundamentally changed my approach to how I’m spending a third of my life and gave clear actionable instructions that have prompted lifestyle changes. I can’t speak for if/how my cardiac health has changed, but I’m definitely seeing an improved mood and attention span.
The Headspace Guide to Mindful Eating by Andy Puddicombe
I love Andy Puddicombe. I read his other book (The Headspace Guide to Mindfulness and Meditation) last year and have been using the headspace app since. I started reading this book shortly after a challenging break up. Quarantine was a stressful time for budding romance and it forced us to either live together or not see each other for months, potentially longer. The breakup came with the standard feelings of regret, betrayal, and damaged self worth. I decided that I needed a productive way to channel my energy so I decided that I was going to invest in my revenge bod.
In addition to obvious changes like starting to go for runs, weightlifting, and reducing my Tayyabs/Dishoom deliveries from once a day to once a week, I realized that I didn’t really know why I ate the way I did. To effect change, and to do so sustainably, I not only needed to change habits, but to understand the emotions that underpinned those habits. I needed to break vicious cycles (feeling sad → eating donuts → feeling even more sad because I ate donuts → eating more donuts) and foster virtuous cycles (feeling sad → meditating on the sadness and practicing compassion → feeling happy → eating well → feeling happy).
This isn’t a diet book and it’s not overly prescriptive telling you what you can and can’t eat. Everyone knows that. This is a way to introduce mindfulness into eating and to help you understand your relationship with food so that you can start to mold that in a more productive, healthy, and sustainable future. Nothing from this is counter-intuitive or revolutionary, but it was able to help me solidify some temporary changes for some (hopefully) lasting results.
Also, the revenge bod worked!
Other Nonfiction
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini
This was my first read of 2020 and one that I’d been recommended many times from different sources. They were right! Cialdini talks about six principles used to influence people, why they work to influence behavior change, different ways that people can use them, and most importantly how we can be more mindful to prevent them from being used against us. I took a psychology class in high school and have been interested in the topic since, but this has risen above most of the books I’ve read on the topic.
The six weapons of influence are Reciprocation (people tend to return a favor), Commitment/Consistency (once people commit to something, they’re more likely to follow through even if the original incentive is changed), Social Proof (people do things they see other people doing), Authority (people obey authority figures), Liking (people are more easily persuaded by people they like), and Scarcity (people have more demand for things they think are scarce).
However, this summary doesn’t do the book justice because the beauty of the book is in the many flavors they come in and how to counteract these, not just in simply identifying them.
The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee
I recently decided to move on from Facebook to pursue an opportunity at the Broad Institute, a genomics research organization, which is more in line with my ambitions to help people and to solve hard problems. The first challenge here is that the last time I learned anything about biology was in high school (with my poor sleep hygiene, see above) and I knew next to nothing about genetics. Fortunately, I had this book sitting patiently in my bookshelf from a previous bulk buy of Gates Notes recommendations and I decided to pick it up and learn some things.
Touching and personal were definitely not the words I would have thought would describe this book, but they’re entirely appropriate. Mukherjee tells the story, not only of genetics, but also of his family’s multigenerational history with mental illnesses. He touches on the scientific history and the innovators who enabled it to progress, the science itself, and the ethics of both how this science has been misused in the past as well as how it could be misused in the future. There are unquestionably societally valuable results that can come about from genomics research and gene editing (for example, curing cystic fibrosis) but there are complicated ethical questions such as the morality of editing the human germline so those edits propagate across generations.
The biggest testament to an effective science book that’s targeted at the general audience is that it gave me an introduction to the topic and stoked my appetite to learn more. I can’t wait until my next trip back to California so I can steal my family’s copy of Mukherjee’s other book, The Emperor of All Maladies.
Fiction
The Rosie Project by Don Tillman
This was one of the books that Mom had been telling me to read for years and then my cousin Satnam pushed me over the edge to read it. I think the whole book took me just over a day because I absolutely couldn’t put it down. It’s the story of a genetics professor on the Aspergers spectrum who’s looking for a wife (what he dubs “The Wife Project”). The main character is hopelessly logical and efficient, eventually realizing that this isn’t a perfect recipe for romance.
I saw a lot of myself in the main character, by the end an uncomfortable amount, and this was a good reminder to leave room in life for spontaneity and flexibility instead of strict intentionality. It’s absolutely hilarious and I’m planning on reading the rest of the trilogy next year.
Here’s a brief snippet of a speed dating scene that captures the humor:
‘I’ve sequenced the questions for maximum speed of elimination,’ I explained. ‘I believe I can eliminate most women in less than forty seconds. Then you can choose the topic of discussion for the remaining time.’
‘But then it won’t matter,’ said Frances. ‘I’ll have been eliminated.’
‘Only as a potential partner. We may still be able to have an interesting discussion.’
‘But I’ll have been eliminated.’
I nodded. ‘Do you smoke?’
‘Occasionally,’ she said.
I put the questionnaire away.
‘Excellent.’ I was pleased that my question sequencing was working so well. We could have wasted time talking about ice-cream flavours and make-up only to find that she smoked. Needless to say, smoking was not negotiable. ‘No more questions. What would you like to discuss?’
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
So I was definitely supposed to read this in high school, but I regretfully spark-noted my way through this book at the time, only coming back to actually read it this year. Suffice to say that high-school-me was a clown because this book is amazing. I love the dystopian fiction genre (see next book as well) and this is a really interesting take that contrasts pretty heavily to some of the more totalitarian depictions in 1984 or Fahrenheit 451.
I’ll intentionally steer clear of talking about plot because half of the charm of reading the genre is learning about what makes this fictional world so dissimilar (or similar) to ours and there’s this absolutely brilliant scene where students go on a tour of a facility and learn what it’s used for. There’s an eerie fatalism that resonated with me a ton in a year where it feels like the democratic experiment may be waning and authoritarianism may be increasingly in vogue going forward. I love how the characters say things that sound reasonable in a vacuum, but then you slowly realize how warped that mindset can be as more of the story unfolds. Without going into details, I thought the representation of soma and its dampening impact on their world was probably one of the more relatable depictions to how our society could regress.
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
I fully immersed myself into the Gilead universe more than I did for probably any other book in recent memory. I read The Handmaid’s Tale, I watched all three seasons of the show, and I read the sequel, The Testaments. This is another dystopian fiction book, but unlike most, it’s the prose that really carries this book. Which isn’t to say the plot isn’t great, it is, but Atwood has a way with words that made me want to linger on each sentence and appreciate it before moving on to the next one. The character development is phenomenal and even the villains are robust and nuanced, instead of caricatured exaggerations.
This is one of the most quotable books I’ve read in a while and I kept a long list of snippets that I especially enjoyed (most of which I’m not sharing because of spoilers). One that felt especially appropriate this year was when the protagonist was reminiscing on her life before Gilead:
We thought we had such problems. How were we to know we were happy?
Another that showcases Atwood’s amazing prose was this:
We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of the print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories.
Absolutely beautiful.
One other personal note about this book: this was actually the book that inspired the family to start a book club. My cousin Nimar, Mom, and I had all read the book and spent an hour discussing the ending, what it meant, what we thought of various characters, what stood out to us, how it made us feel about the show, etc. It was one of my fondest memories of the year – getting to share one of my favorite activities with some of my favorite people.
And don’t forget,
Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.
Thanks for reading! I hope you’ll share back what you enjoyed this year as well. Happy new year!
Leave a Reply