Here we are at the dawning of a new year, which for me means it’s time to post an update on my reading over the last year. For my previous lists, you can see them here: 2019, 2018, 2017, and 2016. It’s hard to believe this is my fifth reading list!

	Title	Author	Date Completed	Pages
1	Creative Calling	Chase Jarvis	22-Jan	304
2	The Age of Surveillance Capitalism	Shoshana Zuboff	25-Jan	704
3	Animal Farm	George Orwell	27-Jan	112
4	Alexander Hamilton	Ron Chernow	02-Feb	818
5	Range	David Epstein	12-Feb	352
6	The Bookshop on the Corner	Jenny Colgan	29-Feb	384
7	Call Sign Chaos	Jim Mattis	12-Mar	320
8	The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy	Douglas Adams	19-Mar	208
9	The Alchemist	Paulo Coelho	22-Mar	208
10	Guns, Germs, and Steel	Jared Diamond	06-Apr	496
11	Upstream	Dan Heath	16-May	320
12	Symposium	Plato	18-May	144
13	Gulliver’s Travels	Jonathan Swift	25-May	432
14	Anything You Want	Derek Sivers	11-Jun	96
15	Extreme Ownership	Jocko Willink & Leif Babin	18-Jun	384
16	The Code. The Evaluation. The Protocols	Jocko Willink	23-Jun	93
17	How Will You Measure Your Life	Clayton M. Christensen	28-Jun	236
18	The Last Wish	Andrzej Sapkowski	05-Jul	384
19	The Expectant Father	Armin A. Brott & Jennifer Ash	06-Jul	336
20	The Coaching Habit	Michael Bungay Stanier	14-Jul	234
21	The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks	Rebecca Skloot	23-Jul	400
22	Working	Robert A. Caro	08-Sep	240
23	Crime and Punishment	Fyodor Dostoyevsky	15-Sep	544
24	Every Tool’s A Hammer	Adam Savage	18-Sep	320
25	Love Sense	Dr. Sue Johnson	20-Sep	352
26	Natural	Alan Levinovitz	22-Sep	264
27	The Kite Runner	Khaled Hosseini	06-Oct	363
28	My Own Words	Ruth Bader Ginsburg	10-Oct	400
29	Kitchen Confidential	Anthony Bourdain	20-Oct	384
30	Stillness is the Key	Ryan Holiday	06-Nov	288
31	The Oxford Inklings	Colin Duriez	07-Nov	276
32	The Infinite Game	Simon Sinek	14-Nov	272
33	The Ride of a Lifetime	Robert Iger	21-Nov	272
34	As a Man Thinketh & From Poverty to Power	James Allen	26-Nov	182
35	Medium Raw	Anthony Bourdain	06-Dec	320
36	A Christmas Carol	Charles Dickens	06-Dec	112
37	The Little Book of Hygge	Meik Wiking	12-Dec	288
38	Nicomachean Ethics	Aristotle	30-Dec	400
			Total	12242

Overall, I’m happy with how the year went for reading. In reviewing the list, a few things stood out to me. First is that I surpassed my total books read for the year over 2019 by 13 entries. While we can certainly have a discussion about the merits issues of using the number of books read as an accurate key performance indicator of comprehension or progress, it was nice to see that I stepped things up a bit. I was fairly consistent in making my way through the books, with only a dip in April (likely because of the life-adjustment that came from working from home) and the silence seen from mid-July to the start of September thanks to the birth of our son in early-August.

I’m also happy to see that I read fewer self-help and business books last year and instead dove into more fiction, memoirs, and books about history. In my previous roundup, I had commented about wanting to be more intentional with my reading after feeling burnt out on certain genres of books.

One significant change in my reading habits this past year was that I joined a reading group/book club. A friend organized it just as things went into lockdown in March. We meet online every few weeks to discuss books selected in a rotation by the group. I commented earlier that I read 13 more books this year than last, and I’d attribute the book club to being the single biggest reason for the boost in completions (we cleared 12 by year’s end). Here are the books that we read:

1. Call Sign Chaos by Jim Mattis
2. Symposium by Plato
3. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
4. How Will You Measure Your Life by Clayton M. Christensen
5. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
6. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
7. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
8. Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
9. The Oxford Inklings by Colin Duriez
10. As a Man Thinketh & From Poverty to Power by James Allen
11. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
12. Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle (finished in the final days, though we haven’t met to discuss it yet.

I’d normally create a separate post about my top reads for the year, but I’ll include it here for simplicity. In chronological order of when I finished, my top 5 reads of the year are:

1. Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow (among my top reads ever; I was fortunate to see the stage play before the shutdown in March)
2. Call Sign Chaos by Jim Mattis (the first book I chose for the book club; I was struck by how Mattis talks about self-education and reflection)
3. The Expectant Father by Armin A. Brott & Jennifer Ash (since we were expecting this year, this book was a nice roadmap to know what to expect, and it provided some comfort along the way)
4. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (I recommend everyone read this book; it reminds me of the important work we do on the research ethics boards I sit on, and why we must be critical of research)
5. My Own Words by Ruth Bader Ginsberg (I started this collection of writings and speeches before RBG died, and was sadly reminded after finishing of what we lost in her death).

This was a pretty good year for reading. It felt good to get lost in more fiction, and I’ll have things to say in the future about the value I’m finding in reading as part of a group. In the meantime, Happy New Year, and it’s time to keep tackling my reading backlog.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan