Well well. It’s 8pm on a Saturday night, and rather than heading out to meet up with friends for dinner or drinks, I’m doing my civic duty and isolating myself. With freshly baked oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and my second glass of wine. Not terrible, I admit.
Anyway, the point here isn’t to complain about Covid-19 (side note: more than anything, I hope simply for a fast end to the chaos with as few deaths as possible), rather to use this unexpected free time to write about my favorite books of 2019. So here we go!
My favorite books of 2019
To be clear, not published in 2019, but that I read in 2019. Anyhoo. In no particular order:
- Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson. I didn’t realize this had been made into a movie, but I guess I’m not surprised. The book somehow restored a little bit of my faith in humanity while simultaneously making me furious at our (the US) criminal justice system. If I had a top-5 list of people for a dinner party, Stevenson would be on it.
- Factfulness by Hans Rosling. A tip by a friend as a read that would help brighten my perspective when I was going through a grey patch in winter. I owe him thanks, and not just for a good book rec. Rosling uses some pretty basic facts (hence the title) to demonstrate that the world (global, not just western societies) is much better off than we think. Perhaps you think things have gone down the toilet in the last X years, or that some people just want to watch the world burn. You may not be wrong at a micro level, but at a macro level you are. Read the book, it’ll give you a new perspective on the world.
- The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. It’s been a long time since I enjoyed a book as much as this. The writing is just brilliant. I recommended it to my dad, which was great, because then we could both nerd out about the way Rothfuss could craft a phrase or how the book was damn hard to put down. Still, I can only recommend it with an “at your own risk” caveat, because the series hasn’t been finished, so you may find yourself getting hooked on book one, enjoying (but not nearly to the same extent) book two, and desperately wanting to know the rest of the story, which may never come…
- Mindset by Carol S. Dweck. I hesitated to put this on here, because the book itself, while an easy read, is not that great. But the principle is too important to leave it off. Basically, you can have a fixed mindset (“I got a bad grade because I’m not good at math”), or a growth mindset (“I got a bad grade, which means I just need to study harder/differently”). Dweck is a Stanford psychologist, which is funny, because I really could have used the inspiration from her book after I failed my first math midterm while at Stanford. Instead, I just started copying off of my buddy Barry. Thanks Bar! Anyway, failures can either be an opportunity to learn a lesson or a confirmation of your rightful place in the world. The author advocates for the former (the growth mindset). I buy in. Take your lumps, learn your lessons, and never stop on your journey of self-discovery and improvement.
- When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. I cried while reading this book. Multiple times, because I put it down (unbeknownst to me) between some of the more poignant sections. Man did I cry. It’s a poignant, devastating, inspiring story of a doctor coming to grips with being the patient. A great read.
Epilogue
That didn’t take too long, but somehow my wine glass is empty and four cookies have disappeared. So rather than add another book to the list, I’ll stick with the nice round number of five and move on to more pressing topics like hydration and hiding cookies. In my stomach. Any thoughts on the list or the books?…just comment!