My books in 2018

The year 2018 is coming to an end and it’s time for me to pick up my weekly blogging again. My last blog post is actually from May and a busy summer season gave me enough excuses to not start again. And once the habit is broken it’s easy to ignore it for a longer time. But now with the new year ahead and thinking about some new year resolutions, it’s a good moment to start this again.

Even though I have not been blogging in the second half of 2018 I have increased my reading time. Usually I am aiming to read one book per month which results o twelve books per year. In 2018 I have read in total twenty books and most of them in the second half of the year. Even though twenty is a lot more than twelve, there’s still plenty of room to increase this. Thus, my reading goal for 2019 is more like 40-50 books – and definitely plus weekly blogging as well!

Daily reading became a habit for me over the last months and this was also partially due to the advice from Naval Ravikant about how to read more. In short, the following three bullet points were most helpful for me to increase my book count in 2018:

1. Read multiple books at the same time
2. Choose books with different topics (e.g. combination of science, history, philosophy etc.)
3. Don’t aim to finish every book (only when they are good!)

So what were the books in 2018 that I read and which one can I recommend? Below you can find the list of my books in 2018 ranked by how much I enjoyed reading and how much I could learn from them (linked to Amazon via affiliate links):

1. Principles: Life and Work
2. High Growth Handbook
3. Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About The World – And Why Things Are Better Than You Think
4. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
5. Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in Silicon Valley
6. The Startup Way: How Entrepreneurial Management Transforms Culture and Drives Growth
7. The Truth Machine: The Blockchain and the Future of Everything
8. A Guide To The Good Life: The Ancient Art Of Stoic Joy
9. Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies
10. Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life
11. influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
12. Fascism: A Warning
13. Narconomics: How To Run a Drug Cartel
14. Fear: Trump in the White House
15. Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It
16. The Servant: A Simple Story About the True Essence of Leadership
17. How To Be A Stoic: Ancient Wisdom for Modern Living
18. Crushing It!: How Great Entrepreneurs Build Their Business and Influence
19. When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing
20. It doesn’t have to be crazy at work

Hopefully this list gives you some inspiration for some books that you might add to your reading list. For 2019 I have already collected twelve books to start with. I will probably read 3-4 books at the same time and make sure that the styles are very different, and thus ensuring that there is always a book to read no matter how I feel:

1. INSPIRED: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love
2. Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike
3. Creative Selection: Inside Apple’s Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs
4. High Output Management
5. The man who saved India
6. Platform Revolution
7. The Daily Stoic
8. Refugee
9. The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect
10. The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics
11. Finish What You Start: The Art of Following Through
12. The Accidental Superpower: The Next Generation of American Preeminence and the Coming Global Disorder

Happy reading and have a good start into 2019!