My reading journey through 2017

Anything that happens three times is a tradition, right? So, just like the past two years, I’ve put together my reading list for 2017. Biographies, novels, business books, sci-fi, memoirs, fiction, non-fiction — these books below were all solid reads that taught me something and moved my margin of ignorance out a bit. If you enjoyed anything off the 2016 or 2015 list, or are just looking for a new book, pick one of these up for your next long flight or weekend staycation. You can’t go wrong amongst these.

“Throughout my life, I have been accused by many people (in many languages) of being too optimistic — of having too rosy a view of the world and the people who inhabit it. I tell them that both optimists and pessimists die in the end, but the optimist leads a hopeful and happy existence while the pessimist spends his days cynical and downtrodden. It is too high a price to pay.

Besides, optimism is a prerequisite to progress. It provides the inspiration we need, especially in hard times. And it provides the encouragement that wills us to chase our grandest ambitions out into the world, instead of locking them away in the safe quiet of our minds.”

— Shimon Peres, No Room for Small Dreams

“I felt like a kid standing in the world’s greatest video arcade without any quarters, unable to do anything but walk around and watch the other kids play...for a bunch of hairless apes, we’ve actually managed to invent some pretty incredible things.”

— Ernest Cline, Ready Player One. Can’t wait for the Steven Spielberg film coming out soon!

“That’s the whole challenge of life— to act with honor and hope and generosity, no matter what you’ve drawn. You can’t help when or what you were born, you may not be able to help how you die; but you can — and you should — try to pass the days between as a good man.”

— Anton Myrer, Once An Eagle, a classic of the US military

“When I was hired, I was told CAA was a family. I just didn’t realize it was the Corleone family.”

— James Andrew Miller, Powerhouse: The Untold Story of Hollywood’s Creative Artists Agency. Entirely written as a series of conversations between famous Hollywood agents, actors, directors, etc., this book is not only a fascinating study of a vast disruption in the way Hollywood does its business but also reads like a never ending and very entertaining talk show.

Kazuo Ishiguro won the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature, and so I picked up his most famous novel, The Remains of the Day. It is a great read, and the movie adaptation with Anthony Hopkins in the main role of an English butler who leaves his manor for a long drive and considers his life for the first time is very much worth watching as well.

Charlie Munger is full of wisdom. This bit I’ve always found it easy to subscribe to:

“Acquire worldly wisdom and adjust your behavior accordingly. If your new behavior gives you a little temporary unpopularity with your peer group…then to hell with them.”

— Charlie Munger, Poor Charlie’s Almanack

Reading this book was an entirely new experience for me, because it tells the story of what I personally spent a good four years doing (2007–2011). It would take longer to comment on the accuracies or inaccuracies of Brian Blum’s Totaled: The Billion-Dollar Crash of the Startup that took on Big Auto, Big Oil, and the World, but it is an entertaining and well-written account of the rise and fall of Better Place, and the unexpected and crazy things that happened to us along the way.

“No, don’t blame the wine. There’s truth in wine.”

— Robert Graves, I, Claudius: From the Autobiography of Tiberius Claudius, considered to be perhaps the greatest historical fiction novel of all time.

I read somewhere that Marc Andreessen said Kevin Maney’s The Maverick and His Machine: Thomas Watson, Sr. and the Making of IBM is the best book to read to understand the technology industry, because history repeats itself so many times. And indeed, this is an incredible book. Highly recommended. So many parallels to today’s world.

In reading the IBM book above, I learned that Thomas Watson, IBM’s founder, used to give Oscar Lewis’ The Big Four: The Story of the Men Who Built the Central Pacific — Stanford, Hopkins, Huntington, Crocker as a gift and as required reading to all the IBM executives he was mentoring. The reason? He believed the California spirit, and the mindset that the Central Pacific brought to the world by opening up California, was the most important mindset to have in business. Written in the 1930s, it is still extremely readable and a fascinating study of San Francisco, of Stanford, and of the whole opening of the West. Walking around San Francisco feels different once you’ve read this book.

“To succeed, planning alone is insufficient. One must improvise as well.”

— Isaac Asimov, Foundation

“The lack of power to take joy in outdoor nature is as real a misfortune as the lack of power to take joy in books.”

— Theodore Roosevelt in Darrin Lunde’s The Naturalist: Theodore Roosevelt, a Lifetime of Exploration, and the Triumph of American Natural History

“In my opening seconds, I would say, “It’s great to be here,” then move to several other spots on the stage and say, “No, it’s great to be here!” I would move again: “No, it’s great to be here!”

Thankfully, perseverance is a great substitute for talent.”

— Steve Martin, Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life

“Think about it for a moment: Is there anything at all that Americans do for thirty years? Almost half of Americans change their religions, and usually before age twenty-four. We leave our jobs, on average, after 4.6 years. The average marriage in the United States lasts eleven years. And yet, consumers routinely make the most important financial decisions of their lives based on the assumption that they’ll live in the same house for thirty years.”

— Spencer Rascoff and Stan Humphries, ZillowTalk: Rewriting the Rules of Real Estate

“I already know I’m going to Hell. So, at this point, it’s go big or go home.”

— John Lefevre, Straight to Hell: True Tales of Deviance, Debauchery, and Billion-Dollar Deals, famous for his @GSelevator Twitter account.

“Of the twenty-five largest financial institutions at the start of 2008, thirteen either failed (Lehman, WaMu), received government help to avoid failure (Fannie, Freddie, AIG, Citi, BofA), merged to avoid failure (Countrywide, Bear, Merrill, Wachovia), or transformed their business structure to avoid failure (Morgan Stanley, Goldman). The stock market dropped more than 40 percent from its 2007 peak.”

— Tim Geithner, Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises

“The blockchain keeps everyone honest, and a whole layer of banking bureaucracy is removed, lowering costs.”

— Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey, The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and the Blockchain Are Challenging the Global Economic Order

“In the technology sector failure is often a precondition to future successes, while prosperity can be the beginning of the end. If the rise and fall of BlackBerry teaches us anything it is that the race for innovation has no finish line, and that winners and losers can change places in an instant.”

— Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff, Losing the Signal

“…the question of how and when to start vagabonding is not really a question at all. Vagabonding starts now. Even if the practical reality of travel is still months or years away, vagabonding begins the moment you stop making excuses, start saving money, and begin to look at maps with the narcotic tingle of possibility. From here, the reality of vagabonding comes into sharper focus as you adjust your worldview and begin to embrace the exhilarating uncertainty that true travel promises.”

— Rolf Potts, Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel

“1. It is necessary for me to be extremely frugal for some time, till I have paid what I owe.

2. To endeavor to speak truth in every instance; to give nobody expectations that are not likely to be answered, but aim at sincerity in every word and action — the most amiable excellence in a rational being.

3. To apply myself industriously to whatever business I take in hand, and not divert my mind from my business by any foolish project of suddenly growing rich; for industry and patience are the surest means of plenty.”

— Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

“Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare.

If you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time.”

— Patrick Lencioni, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable

“Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Wind, Sand, and Stars

“‘That was some weird shit,’ George W. reportedly said with characteristic Texas bluntness. I couldn’t have agreed more.”

— Hillary Rodham Clinton, recounting the day of the Trump inauguration, in What Happened.

“Learning to fly is not pretty but flying is.”

— Satya Nadella, Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft’s Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone

“So there are no experts in what we’re doing. Except for us: we are becoming experts as we do this. And for anyone we bring on board, the best expertise they can bring is expertise at learning and adapting and figuring new things out — helping the company grow, and in the process they will also be growing themselves.”

— Tony Hsieh, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose