My annual round-up of books I read this year.
Philosophically my reading this year (both non fiction and fiction) was much more about what I wanted to read than what I felt I should read. And the result seemed to be that I read more overall, which has to be a good result!
Next year my resolve is to try to read more on my phone as well as my iPad, so that I use more of those little spare 5 minutes of time reading books, rather than hanging out on social media. But this year, two of my books read were actually on paper! That’s probably more than has been true in the last few years. This list is broadly in the order in which I read them (based on my kindle).
Charles C Mann uses the history of two remarkable scientists – Norman Borlaug and William Vogt to help us think about the contrasts between environmentalist thinking and technological thinking about all the various crises facing our planet (not just climate change, but water shortages, excessive waste, etc). Borlaug (the Wizard in the title) was the scientist who was most responsible for the Green Revolution, which is the main reason we have more than enough food for everyone to eat on Earth, despite the massive population increase since Malthus’s doomsaying predictions. Vogt (the Prophet in the title) is less well-known (at least to me) and was one of the first environmentalists, telling people to cut back, and tread lightly, and think about our impact on the planet, rather than just trusting to technology to sort out the messes we humans make.
Most reviews suggest that Mann is even-handed between the two ways of thinking as we face massive planetary wide challenges. My sense was that Mann was on the side of the wizards – humans are smart and we will figure it out.
A really interesting history, but a bit heavy going for me at times.
Charles C Mann also wrote one of my favourite broad sweeping history books – 1491, New Revelations of America before Columbus.
Recommended
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I’m breaking my rule on this blog with this one. I don’t normally review fiction, but this was worth it. When I travel I love to read about the place while I am there. We had a week in Taiwan on holiday this year, and I couldn’t find a good short history, so instead I bought this novel, which is set mostly during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan in the first half of last century.
This novel, completed in 1945, is the story of a man who had been raised by his Chinese classically educated grandfather, but manages to do very well in the Japanese education system of Taiwan (despite the bitter knowledge that the Japanese will always be on top of the hierarchy as the colonialist power). He spends time in China and Japan, but ultimately becomes estranged from all three cultures (including the developing Taiwanese culture which is starting to be more distinct.
It is amazing how universal the themes of belonging and progress are.
Highly Recommended
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The Family Law started as newspaper columns by Benjamin Law about his experience growing up in Queensland – as an asian, gay, geeky kid with an even more eccentric family, there was a lot of material for great columns.
There is an SBS series based on this book, which I still haven’t seen (although the third series has just been released and apparently is even more worth watching), but I read the book because I love following Benjamin Law on twitter, where he is hilarious, except when he is being serious and makes me think.
Recommended
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I read this on a recommendation from a colleague (who works in Strategy, no coincidence) and it is a great reference book. As a non strategist, without the background of an MBA or time in one of the big strategy firms, I found it very useful. If you aren’t trying to think about strategy, maybe not so much.
Recommended, depending on your interests
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Andrew Leigh is currently Shadow Assistant Treasurer in Australia. But before that he was an award-winning economist at the ANU, who wrote very thoughtfully about public policy. He is an impressive part (perhaps the most impressive!) of the opposition front bench in Australia, and always worth reading.
I really enjoyed reading this, but I would say that if you follow Leigh, or other economists like Justin Wolfers or economics writers like Tim Harford, you have probably read a fair bit of this book already.
Highly Recommended, depending on your interests
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Richard Denniss is the former CEO of the Australia Institute, now their Chief Economist, the left leaning think tank that balances out right-wing tanks like the Centre for Independent Studies. At the time I enjoyed this Quarterly Essay, but I’m not sure that enough of it has stayed with me to be worthy of a review.
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Rachael Robertson spent a year running on of Australia’s Antarctic bases, and this is her leadership lessons from that experience. There are two parts to her leadership experience – the summer part, three months of frenetic activity, and the winter part, 9 months where there are 19 people who are on their own and have to get along and be productive.
The winter is the most interesting, and Robertson has taken some insightful lessons from the experience. I was lucky enough to hear her speak, six months after reading the book, and while the anecdotes were very similar, it is always better when you see someone in person. Two lessons I took away from this book (but there are more!) First, no triangles – it is a hard thing, but worth while, to ban people from complaining about others to a third party (especially a leader). Much better to make the conversation a direct one. And second – the bacon wars of Antarctica. The lesson here is that every workplace has a trivial sounding issue (generally involving the kitchen) that masks a deeper conflict, often a lack of respect. It is important to try to figure out what that deeper conflict is, and resolve it.
Highly Recommended
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Laura Vanderkam is a freelance author who has become a productivity speaker and expert. I really enjoy her insights, because she is all about making the most of life; not just trying to work more.
The book I recommend reading first is 168 Hours; you have more time than you think, which reminds you that there are 168 hours in a week, and even you are working 60 hours and sleeping, you still have lots more time that you can spend wisely.
This book is more about perceptions; how to help yourself perceive your time better as well as spend it better. The insight that has stayed with me is the difference between our anticipating self, our experiencing self and our remembering self. My anticipating self often says yes to fun events (cocktail parties; lunches, wine tasting, dinners out etc). My experiencing self cancels them too often, because I am busy. And my remembering self enjoys the ones I do get to and all the friends I manage to chat to when I am there. I like to think I haven’t cancelled as many after reading that insight; but I haven’t yet checked back on my calendar to confirm (another trick that Vanderkam recommends is to actually track what you are doing, rather than assuming).
Highly Recommended
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Exactly: How Precision Engineers created the Modern World, by Simon Winchester
A book from one of my favourite genres; a small corner of history that has a very big influence on the world we live in today that I have never thought about before. My favourite book of this genre is Cod, by Mark Kurlansky, but this a pretty good example. Winchester writes the history of exact measurement. How did we get from hand-made to engineered machines; and how did that make it possible for machines to become ever more complex and amazing?
Along the way, Winchester manages to make so many aspects of precision engineering fascinating; starting with steam engines at the dawn of the industrial revolution, and ending with the Hubble telescope, and the tiny tiny measurement errors that nearly made the whole project useless.
Recommended
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This book is the story of Dr Kirsten Ferguson’s project during 2017. Every day, she tweeted the story of one woman, and why she was unique. She started with her mother, on January 1st, and ended with her daughter. Along the way, she realised how much of a difference simple recognition can make, both to the woman herself, and to those around her who see themselves reflected, rather than the more usual heroic stories of men in business, sport, politics, and all other walks of life.
Ferguson herself talks a little bit about her life, and successes, and that is just enough to make you want to know more about what makes this woman tick.
Catherine Fox has written about women in business for many years, and I’ve enjoyed her work before.
Recommended
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A quarterly essay about leadership in politics. Is it true that our political leadership has become less about consensus building and more about being “the strongman”? Is that a bad thing, and if so, how bad? I enjoyed this essay, in thinking about what we want from our leaders. Do we want them to just reflect the majority opinion? Do we want them to build a case for change and change our minds? How much of what we think a leader should do reflects our opinion of their current policies?
In an ironic twist for me, many of the people I follow on twitter posted pictures of themselves reading this essay. I couldn’t, because, as always, I read it on my kindle app.
Recommended
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This book investigates the history of aboriginal people in the Sydney region. It dispells the myth that they all died fairly soon after white settlement, and the related myth that any aboriginal person living in Sydney has come from somewhere else by reviewing the colonial records of the time and recounting the stories of the people who still lived here in Sydney all the way through the 19th century.
My personal frustration with this book was that it didn’t deal at all with the North shore of Sydney (where I live), and by implication suggested that north of the harbour perhaps all the aboriginal people did die or leave after white settlement. Given the number of aboriginal traces that I can still see when I am out for a walk, I don’t really believe that having read this book.
I read this after two years of taking part in the Sydney Festival’s Baraya: Sing up Country event on Australia Day. Jacinta Tobin, a Dharug woman from who wrote the song we sing in the Dharug language told us a few stories in rehearsal of being told that her people didn’t exist and she wasn’t really a local aboriginal person.
Recommended
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This book is amazing. Bruce Pascoe has painstakingly read the stories of early settlement of Australia, from all over Australia, and pulled out all of the stories that describe how aboriginal people lived.
The weight of evidence is overwhelming that Aboriginal people had settled agriculture, by farming plants (often in the form of yams) and fish (using fish traps all over the eastern part of Australia) and that they had villages and even small towns made of permanent huts and buildings.
Given how much of the Australian myth is based on the aboriginal people having been hunter gatherers, it is an astonishing read. I had heard of the fish traps of Brewarrina, but very much as an exception. This book makes the very strong case that the first settled farmers on Earth lived in Australia.
Highly Recommended
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Traister is a feminist writer for various US magazines, and always has something interesting to say. This book (which I was surprised to see is only her third – her output must go to the articles I love to read!) is making the case that women should stop being polite and let their anger show, in the US political system. She starts with the way in which the original women’s movement in the 60s and 70s gave voice to women who were not interested in being polite; and suggests that in the current #metoo environment, women should let their (already smouldering) anger into the public discourse.
Traister’s argument is that in order to shape history, women need to be non compliant, insistent and furious. Telling the stories of past women who have been angry and effective helps can give today’s woman an effective voice and change history.
Recommended
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One of the first feminist history books I read (while still at university) was Damned Whores and God’s Police, Anne Summers’ fabulous history of Australia from a women’s viewpoint. So I have always been aware of Summers as she has been a part of Australian (and world) public life. Reading this book, though, made me realise just how many different things she had done; from starting one of Australia’s first women’s refuges, to being the first woman in charge of a Canberra press gallery team (for the Australian Financial Review).
Annabel Crabb’s review puts it best – “it’s the story of an utterly singular woman, who always says “Yes” to life even when it scares her.”. It’s a long book, for a memoir, and it was fascinating and inspirational at the same time.
Highly Recommended
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Robin Ince is the cohost (with Brian Cox) of the Infinite Monkey Cage – a weekly podcast about science. His half of the cohosting is a combination of being a foil for Brian Cox, and an infinite level of curious and humour about the universe.
So this book is much more serious than I expected; it is a ramble through the science of humour and joke telling (and receiving) with some deep wisdom involved.
Being more serious than I expected, it was harder going than I thought; very worth while, but not something I could breeze through in a few days.
Recommended
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Leigh Sales is the host of the ABC’s 7:30 report, which is the magazine style half hour after the evening news on Australia’s equivalent of the BBC. In that role, she reports on and interviews people involved in many stories about horrible events; the kind of events nobody would want to be involved in.
And she herself had a near death experience when her second child was born, which was part of her inspiration to find out more about that part of the human condition; how do you pick yourself up and go on after a tragedy like the Port Arthur massacre, or the Lindt cafe siege.
So Sales uses her skills as an interviewer to find people who have had terrible experiences, and ask them questions that in many cases, nobody has asked before. She also asks them what they have learned; and what they wish they and the people around them had done.
And her conclusion is surprisingly uplifting; “to be grateful for the ordinary days and savour every last moment from them.” While that seems quite humdrum, the stark experience that gets you there makes you realise how wise it really is.
Highly Recommended
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How much do you think about your listening skills, as opposed to your speaking skills? Communication is just as much about listening as it is about talking, and this slim book gives you some systematic ways of thinking about listening, and paying attention, that will improve your listening.
I’d also recommend Oscar’s podcasts where he interviews various people about how they listen. All of them have jobs which mean that they need to listen well, but many of them have never thought explicitly about their listening skills before Oscar talks to them, and it is great hearing them work through what works for them and why.
Highly Recommended
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Clementine Ford is an Australian feminist writer who recently gave birth to a son. Which means she is thinking hard about the effects of patriarchy on boys as well as girls. I generally read everything Ford writes in her columns, which means I felt familiar with many of her arguments. But laid out in one book it is pretty compelling.
This particular book had a surprising extra impact on my family; my seventeen year old son found it at the top of our recently purchased books on our jointly managed Amazon account and devoured it in two days. He found it pretty shocking, particularly the fairly frank discussions of rape, and we have had lots of interesting conversations about the effect of our patriarchal society on his own life, and his freedom to be himself.
I actually enjoyed this book more than Fight Like a Girl (Ford’s previous polemic) perhaps because it is more personal for her.
Highly Recommended
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Cordelia Fine is an Australian neuroscientist who analyses all the peer-reviewed research on brain science and how much it really shows about the difference between male and female brains (spoiler alert; there really is very little).
In this book, her spotlight is on the effect of testosterone and the relationship between testosterone’s differential impact on men and women’s bodies, and their behaviour.
In a very entertaining romp through the research, she demolishes the harem model of male and female sexual behaviour with a few choice bits of maths, looks at the impact of testosterone on behaviour (the main impact in both men and women comes from change rather than absolute levels) and points out the many features of humans that have started out with one evolutionary purpose and have ended up being completely different. I doubt if this will convince those people who just like to write that men are wired differently due to sexual selection and therefore it is no surprise that they are more successful as (for example) foreign exchange traders, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
Highly Recommended
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Ferguson is a historian who writes about economics history, and is a goto historian to talk about historical lessons we should pay attention to in today’s political environment.
This book is a broad sweeping recasting of most of the history of the last thousand or so years, paying attention to the networks that helped change, as well as the hierarchies. While it is an interesting way of looking at history, it felt to me as if Ferguson had always wanted to write a broad sweeping history (which is quite a self-indulgence, even for such a well-known historian) and so he used his idea of networks to give him an excuse.
I enjoyed it, particularly as I read much of it in Central Europe while reading the complex histories of the thirty years war, and the stories of how Europe came to be both before and after the French Revolution. But at times it was hard going, and I didn’t think the network idea really lasted throughout the book.
Recommended
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Seth Stephens-Davidowitz is an economist and data scientist. He uses data, particularly massive data about google searches, to draw conclusions about human behaviour.
I loved this book, and to the frustration of my family, I kept reading bits out to them as I worked my way through it.
So should you read this book? If you like stories of analysis based on clever uses of data, absolutely read it.
It’s not a how to book, but it does give you a sense of what is possible, and Stephens-Davidowitz’s website gives you lots of resources if you’d like to learn more. It certainly made me want to play with some of the data sets available, even though there is quite a lot I would need to learn about large-scale data manipulation to perform the kind of analysis that seems effortless in this book.
Highly Recommended
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by Hans Rosling (with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund)
Hans Rosling is the person who introduced me to Ted Talks, with this classic talk on visualising the world through statistics. I’ve used it a few times with various teams helping them understand how much of a difference the way you communicate numbers can make (plus I always love some great demography).
This book is Hans Rosling’s final work, written as a collaboration with his son and daughter in law after he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and finished by them after Hans died in 2017. Despite the sad circumstances of its writing it is a paean of optimism about the world, and how much better the lot of the whole population of the world is getting and has become, since Rosling was born in 1948. Although the book is the work of three people, it is written in Hans Rosling’s “voice”, which makes sense given every speech he wrote was a collaboration, so his voice is as much his collaborators’ voice as his own.
As Rosling points out, it is possible to believe both that the world needs to improve, and that it has improved by a long way to get to where we are now. This is an overwhelmingly optimistic book, and a delight to read.
Highly Recommended
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Overall I’m pretty happy with the diversity of my reading this year, some history, some feminism and some fun economics books as well as a bit of reading on leadership. And as I mentioned at the top, I managed more interesting fiction than I have done for a while. I’ll leave you with my favourite fiction discovery for the year:
This book is an adventure set in late 19th century Britain and Europe, imagining the life of the girls who were experimented on by the various gentleman scientists of their time, both real and imagined. They find each other and become the Athena Club – a group of women with various superpowers created by their scientists progenitors and/or fathers. Of course Frankenstein’s daughter makes an appearance, together with some fabulous other creations.
This was incredibly well written and imagined, and I’d be surprised if anyone reading this blog has ever heard of it. Given how much great fiction is being written these days, nearly everyone should be able to find something great in their favourite genre.
Happy reading for 2019!