Books

Table of Contents

My bookshelf, with some quick takeaways.

The below list is a culmination of the books I read over the course of 2020, plus 1-2 scentences of my highest level takeaway from reading each book.

I sometimes write more comprehensive summaries of takaways on my newsletter.

You can check out my more recent reads on Goodreads.

2020 #

Book	Takeaway
Scale	The patterns that exist from micro to macro are often the same.
Factfulness	The world isn’t as bad as you’ve been led to believe.
Wild Ride	Meteoric rises require astronomical energy to propel them.
Shadow Dance	Acknowledge and take pride in the ability to overcome a dark side rather than pretend it doesn’t exist.
Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynmen	Curiosity pays dividends.
Creativity on Demand	Creativity is an improvable skill.
Guns, Germs and Steel	Small advantages in the early stages of development lead to large advantages in later stages.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde	The Shadow cannot be suppressed.
One Taste	There’s a place you can get to beyond the present, where you perceive the totality of the present.
The Origin and History of Consciousness	There are consistent patterns that reflect the nature of consciousness across the religious texts of history that can teach valuable lessons.
127 Hours	Try the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing. Endurance with a stoic mindset pays off.
The Italian Summer	There’s no guilt in earned pleasure.
The Brain that Changes Itself	Our brains are adaptable to maximize the ROI of our experience.
The Jefferson Bible	There are moral truths that exist in the Bible. Religious or not, it’s not worth throwing the baby our with the bathwater.
1984	Complacency at scale will lead to amorphous existence devoid of truth.
The War of Art	It takes discipline to be a successful artist, in any domain.
The Stranger	If you are complacent to the whims of the world around you, you will deserve whatever it brings you.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance	The process of defining quality, otherwise known as ’the journey’ is the most virtuous and powerful thing a human being is capable of.
Finite and Infinite Games	Some games you play to win, but the more fun games are the ones you play to prolong.
Crime and Punishment	Living a nihilist doesn’t net you any return comparable to subscribing to a mode of meaning.
The Hobbit	You experience adventure as much as it experiences you.
Bhagavad Gita As It Is	Morality, faith and religion are practices of intuition.
The Three Body Problem	Complexity can’t be solved, it can only be simplified.
Seven Pillars of Wisdom	An incredible experience can take place over any stretch of time, but one on a longer stretch is made up of a myriad of smaller experiences of comparable value.
Candide and Selected Stories	The same negative social norms that plague us now, plagued us in the past, their amplification has only increased. The right behaviors are generally common sense.
The Odyssey	If you choose the right objectives, the universe will conspire with you to achieve them. Otherwise, it will conspire to send you in the right direction, often through struggle.

Want More of a summary? Check out the posts marked ‘Page Crimps’ on my newsletter.