2022 Reading List: A Year in Review
Spotify hit on something with its end-of-year Wrapped analysis. It’s fun to look back and see how we spent the minutes and hours of the past 365 days. But in my eyes (or ears?) songs are relatively cheap investment of time. They’re typically three to five minutes long and require low commitment. I’m not sure how to think about the 866 minutes I spent listening to David Bowie apart from I like David Bowie?
Books on the other hand are commitments of time, energy, and attention. They are the truer barometer of what I thought about in a year (along with Wikipedia history) than the 39,782 minutes of music listening.
So for the past few years I’ve been doing this reading list retrospection — a Wrapped for the Written Word. And similar to previous years (2019, 2020, 2021), my mind was all over the place. Rather than having a unifying strand, I spread my attention amongst genres, authors, styles, and decades. Whereas some readers are pre-planners and make detailed lists of which books they want to read, my style tends to be serendipitous: I’ll read whatever I happen to be interested in at the moment I finish my last book. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s fascinating to see the threads that emerge from this approach. There are clearly themes and connections, but not the ones I would have expected.
I realize that year-end reading lists are more meaningful to the writers than the readers, so I’ve appreciated those of you who asked when this list would come out. If you’re looking for something new and interesting to read next year, I hope this helps!
New (and Revisited) Cultures
Russia
While the Russo-Ukrainian War has been technically ongoing since Russia annexed Crimea in February 2014 (almost 9 years ago…), the situation escalated dramatically in February 2022 when Russian troops began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Since then it seems like every day the news carries footage of troop movements, collapsed buildings, and human hardship. I am deeply moved and inspired by the people of Ukraine who’ve faced down this invading force and — after months of occupation — turned the tide in many areas. 🇺🇦
I also became fascinated about the Russian psychology underlying the invasion: why did they do it? Political analysts have highlighted Putin’s need to be seen as a Russian strongman with a legacy comparable to past Russian leaders. It occurred to me that while I recognized the names of historical emperors and empresses, I didn’t know much about them. I attempted to rectify this gap with two biographies from the inimitable Russian historian Robert K. Massie: Peter the Great: His Life and World (which won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography) and Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman. To say I learned a ton about a cultural blindspot would be an understatement!
And once I started reading about Russia, it was hard not to be drawn back to some of my favorite authors — I’ve always enjoyed the deeply psychological and tormented nature of Russian writing. Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Idiot and Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Master and Man added fiction and cultural perspective to my Russian foray. The heavy material reminded me of one of my favorite literary memes (because yes I have a favorite literary meme):
Israel
In August 2022 I joined a new company for the first time in over 6 years: Snappy. Snappy is a gifting platform that connects senders, recipients, and suppliers around an experience centered on gifting choice (recipients can choose a gift from a collection — check out our new friends and family offering). In addition to its headquarters in New York, Snappy has a sizable office in Tel Aviv where many of our engineers, product managers, and designers live. I traveled to Israel in both September and November ‘23, and I was blown away by the beauty and modernness of the country as well as the welcoming culture of its people.
I naturally wanted to learn more — and reading was my gateway to this timeless and timely nation-state. Three books on Israel made it onto my 2022 reading list: Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn; Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle; and My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel. While Start-Up Nation may be most applicable to my work in the technology sector (and the most well known in tech circles), I found My Promised Land did the comprehensive job of outlying the nuanced tensions at the heart of the modern Israeli state. Reading was further bolstered by some Israeli cinema, including Waltz with Bashir, Footnote, and Broken Wings. I can’t wait for my next visit.
Spanish + Latin American Heritage
I unfortunately didn’t keep up with our Latin American book club as much as I would have liked. But what I lacked in quantity, I hopefully made up for in quality. This year I only read one Latin American book, Argentinian author Ernesto Sabato’s El Túnel. I write the title in Spanish because — for the first time since I was twenty-one — I read a novel completely in Spanish! ¡Que maravillosa!
Despite being a short novel, it took a long time and my paperback is riddled with notes in the margins from translating on-the-go. But, the further I moved into the story, the faster Spanish words and phrases came back to me (note: I also read The Tunnel in English concurrently to ensure I was comprehending everything — e.g. I read a chapter in Spanish, then in English). This exercise reinvigorated my desire to learn Spanish, and I’ve been dedicating ~8 minutes a day to Spanish vocabulary since (I’m at a 300-day streak in the Drops app).
Humans
Human Organization
Books on human organization and coordination problems make it on my reading list every year. Finding ways to work together and solve problems is a theme at the heart of government, business, justice, and many other topics I find fascinating. It’s perhaps not surprising that my two undergrad majors were government and economics and my role within the tech world is helping organizations work together to build and ship products. People are individually complex. Aligning multiple individual and independent minds is even more so.
In 2022 I wanted to learn more about how the theme of decentralization and individual liberty fit into the puzzle of human coordination given they’ve been in the forefront of news stories recently. I began the year with two classic novels on libertarianism (Robert A. Heinlein’s sci-fi classic The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress and Ayn Rand’s philosophical fiction Atlas Shrugged) and quickly followed with a non-fiction deep-dive on blockchain technology and web3 (The Infinite Machine: How an Army of Crypto-hackers Is Building the Next Internet with Ethereum).
I found myself both fascinated and challenged by the world when viewed from these angles — particularly about whether or not there are systems that can ever justly align a web of individual desires and choices into cooperative forward progress. Much like Aristotle pointed out over two thousand years ago, answers rarely exist at the extremes. As much as humans crave liberty, they also crave community, belonging, and centralization too. I’m reminded of F. Scott Fitzgerald famous quote:
“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise.”
Individualism vs. collectivism is an arena for this mental flexibility. There are good parts of each — and it’s important to identify them. I expect more reading in this area to come in 2023.
I also expect more game theory books, a staple of my reading lists. In 2022, I was particularly fascinated by the idea of “infinite games”: games where the goal is to keep playing rather than to reach some finite goal (e.g. statecraft, business). Three books I read on game theory included The Infinite Game; Finite and Infinite Games; and Hidden Games: The Surprising Power of Game Theory to Explain Irrational Human Behavior.
Gender
The past several years have been a profound time to understand what gender means in modern society . During my lifetime there’s been a dramatic shift in the way generations and people think about gender (albeit slowly, but in the right direction). As a husband, friend, coworker, and manager it’s worthwhile to reflect on these changes and understand where my own perceptions and biases might be. While I like to think of myself as a thoughtful modern guy, it’s important to challenge this thinking and not assume that I don’t carry any privilege or preconceptions.
To that end, I found myself diving more deeply into this area in 2022 via a collection of both non-fiction (Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men; A History of Masculinity: From Patriarchy to Gender Justice; the aforementioned biography on Catherine the Great) and fiction (The Power; A Doll’s House). The Power in particular was a standout experience. Combined with several of the titles from 2020 and 2021, I hope I’m becoming more thoughtful in this area and continue to do so next year.
Biography
When I was seventeen, WVU’s former president James Hardesty told me he found it helpful to explore a new subject through the eyes of a protagonist. It grounded and personalized historical events in a way that reading about a series of dates and places didn’t. Several years ago, I took up his strategy and started reading biographies as a narrative on-ramp into historical events and eras. While biographies tend to look long and off-putting, I’ve found the really engaging ones fly by quickly and make for some of the best audiobook listening. I look forward to the people whose lives I’ll become more familiar with during the year.
In addition to Russia’s Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, I completed biographies about Philadelphia boxer Joe Frazier (Smokin’ Joe: The Life of Joe Frazier), polymath and game theorist John von Neumann (The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann), fascist Benito Mussolini (M: Son of the Century: A Novel), Roman statesman and orator Cicero (Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome’s Greatest Politician), and politician-general Julius Caesar (Caesar: Life of a Colossus). It’s interesting to observe that most biographies started from wanting to learn about a subject (Russia, Rome, game theory) vs. learn about any specific individual.
Learning & Development
Business / Technology
Reading is a way for me to keep building my skills as a technologist, product creator, and business thinker. Not surprisingly, there were several books in this arena that helped me challenge my thinking and learn new skills in these areas. On the technology side, Where Is My Flying Car? and What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions were mind-expanded technology reads, while Hook Point: How to Stand Out in a 3-Second World and Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life were more practical dives into user behavior and desires. Finally, The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion detailed the train wreck of a technology company gone wrong. Maybe they’ll be an FTX read next year?
Personal Spiritual and Artistic Development
After leaving my job at Carta in January ’22, my wife encouraged me to take some time off — something I had never done before. For several months, I woke up each morning without a set daily agenda, series of meetings, or pressing task list. It started off uncomfortably — I really like feeling productive — but over the weeks turned into something special. In addition to hiking in the Bay Area, learning to surf, and spending more time on friendships, I had ample time to focus on myself. I didn’t expect this at the beginning of the year, but the biggest area of reading this year was in personal development and philosophy. I had time to think about what a life well-lived meant and the nature of happiness.
Early in the year I downloaded two lectures from the Great Courses series: Jeremy McInerney’s Plato, Socrates, and the Dialogues and Michael Sugrue’s The Age of Pericles. Both were fantastic and inspired me to read/re-read a number of Plato’s minor works (Euthydemus, Timaeus, Critias, Theaetetus) as well as Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes.
I hadn’t studied Plato since college, and I found the experience at this stage of life even more rewarding. One of the approaches outlined in the lectures was to think of Plato’s works more like Wikipedia (where topics interlinked with each other) than individual stories or narratives. The analogy was a good one, and I found myself understanding the material in a new and exciting way. While I didn’t re-read The Republic, it became clear to me why this has stood as a towering achievement of human thought as never before — the 18-year old version of me would be stunned to hear this.
Subsequent explorations went beyond Greece to Roman thought and history (biographies of Cicero and Julius Caesar) and the early Enlightenment philosophy of Baruch Spinoza (A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza’s Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age). Philosophy then led to ethics and exploring what it means to be a good human. Several fiction and non-fiction books focused on life and death (Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death; Humboldt’s Gift; The Death of Ivan Ilyich; Master and Man; The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories), ethics (Frankenstein, The Picture of Dorian Gray), perception/feeling (How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain; Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking;), and dreams (The Interpretation of Dreams).
While there were some heavy topics this year (right?!), they were incredibly worthwhile. And perhaps I feel a little wiser at the end of the year knowing a bit more about how little I know :)
General Interest
There are some books that don’t fall into broader themes, but which were interesting for their own sake. In the non-fiction arena I learned more about the history of film (Hollywood: A Very Short Introduction), video games (Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America), food production (The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket), soccer (How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization), and the ’90s (The Nineties: A Book).
In fiction, there was index towards emotionally-heavy narratives (The Turn of the Screw, Lapvona, The Ploughmen) as well as deep-dive into one of my favorite authors: J.G. Ballard (Concrete Island, The Drowned World, High-Rise, The Kindness of Women).
Creative Endeavors
Friends!
And finally there was the most exciting group of books this year — those written by friends and their family! Christine Knapp, the mother of my friend Mike, published two murder mysteries as the first installments of her newly-launched Modern Midwife Mysteries series: Murder at the Wedding and Murder on the Widow’s Walk. Not only were these exciting who-do-its, but it was fun to identify several character names that I recognized (including yours truly!). Perhaps there’s a Modern Midwife Mysteries cinematic Universe in the future?
In addition to these books, I also read the first draft of my friend Trevor’s world-building fantasy novel Terra Nova. For those of you familiar with Trevor’s mind, you can know he brings a tremendous amount of creativity, fun, and intellect to whatever he does. I hope 2023 sees him finish the book ;)
My Writing
The last few years I’ve noted how I’ve wanted to write more in addition to reading. And in 2022 I delivered (finally!). During the year, I wrote and refined a group of twelve short stories, totaling 220 pages. There’s still more editing to do, but I’ve received incredible feedback from a number of friends and family who proofread various stages of drafts. During 2023, we’ll see if I can get any of them published, which would be quite a thrill. There’s a few that I think aren’t all bad!
Top Picks, Data, and List
Top 5
- The Power by Naomi Alderman (2016)
- High-Rise by J.G. Ballard (1975)
- Peter the Great: His Life and World by Robert K. Massie (1981)
- The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy (1886)
- My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel by Ari Shavit (2013)
Data
Like previous years, I did a quick analysis of my reading habits. Of the 59 books completed in 2022, 22 were fiction (37.3%) while 37 (62.7%) were non-fiction. That’s the most lopsided tilt I’ve ever had in a single year! Books were an average of 324 pages with a median of 304 pages (19,106 pages total). The most popular genres were novel (11), social science (9), and biography (7).
The List
And here’s the list. If you want to know about any of them or recommendations, please ask! I’m always interested in recommendations as well.
- The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein (1966, Fiction, Sci-Fi, US 🇺🇸, 382 pages)
- Where Is My Flying Car? by J. Storrs Hall (2021, Non-Fiction, Technology, US 🇺🇸, 332 pages)
- Hollywood: A Very Short Introduction by Peter Decherney (2016, Non-Fiction, History, US 🇺🇸, 160 pages)
- Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (1957, Fiction, Novel, US 🇺🇸, 1168 pages)
- The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion by Eliot Brown & Maureen Farrell (2021, Non-Fiction, Business / Management, US 🇺🇸, 464 pages)
- Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America by Jeff Ryan (2012, Non-Fiction, Business / Management, US 🇺🇸, 320 pages)
- What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe (2014, Non-Fiction, Science, US 🇺🇸, 320 pages)
- Euthydemus by Plato (transalted by Benjamin Jowett) (c. 384 BC, Non-Fiction, Philosophy, Greece 🇬🇷, 102 pages)
- Timaeus by Plato (transalted by Benjamin Jowett) (c. 360 BC, Non-Fiction, Philosophy, Greece 🇬🇷, 102 pages)
- Critias by Plato (transalted by Benjamin Jowett) (c. 360 BC, Non-Fiction, Philosophy, Greece 🇬🇷, 44 pages)
- Theaetetus by Plato (transalted by Benjamin Jowett) (c. 369 BC, Non-Fiction, Philosophy, Greece 🇬🇷, 108 pages)
- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818, Fiction, Horror, UK 🇬🇧, 190 pages)
- Smokin’ Joe: The Life of Joe Frazier by Mark Kram Jr. (2019, Non-Fiction, Biography, US 🇺🇸, 384 pages)
- The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1891, Fiction, Novel, UK 🇬🇧, 168 pages)
- The Turn of the Screw by Henry James (1898, Fiction, Horror, US 🇺🇸- UK 🇬🇧, 120 pages)
- Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez (2019, Non-Fiction, Social Science, UK 🇬🇧, 272 pages)
- Peter the Great: His Life and World by Robert K. Massie (1981, Non-Fiction, Biography, US 🇺🇸, 928 pages)
- How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain by Lisa Barrett (2017, Non-Fiction, Social Science, Canada 🇨🇦, 449 pages)
- The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud (1899, Non-Fiction, Psychology, Austria 🇦🇹, 106 pages)
- The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann by Ananyo Bhattacharya (2022, Non-Fiction, Biography, UK 🇬🇧, 368 pages)
- The Infinite Machine: How an Army of Crypto-hackers Is Building the Next Internet with Ethereum by Camila Russo (2020, Non-Fiction, History, US 🇺🇸, 347 pages)
- Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie (2011, Non-Fiction, Biography, US 🇺🇸, 672 pages)
- Terra Nova by Trevor Kempner (2022, Fiction, Fantasy, US 🇺🇸, 180 pages)
- Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus (translated by James Scully & C. John Herington) (c. 479 BC, Fiction, Play, Greece 🇬🇷, 144 pages)
- Seven Against Thebes by Aeschylus (translated by Ian Johnston) (c. 467 BC, Fiction, Play, Greece 🇬🇷, 58 pages)
- M: Son of the Century: A Novel by Antonio Scurati (2022, Non-Fiction, Biography, Italy 🇮🇹, 784 pages)
- Humboldt’s Gift by Saul Bellow (1975, Fiction, Novel, Canada 🇨🇦, 487 pages)
- Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death by Irvin D. Yalom (2009, Non-Fiction, Psychology, US 🇺🇸, 320 pages)
- The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1869, Fiction, Novel, Russia 🇷🇺, 656 pages)
- The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy (1886, Fiction, Short Stories, Russia 🇷🇺, 116 pages)
- Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking by Daniel C. Dennett (2013, Non-Fiction, Psychology, US 🇺🇸, 512 pages)
- Murder at the Wedding (Modern Midwife Mysteries) by Christine Knapp (2022, Fiction, Mystery, US 🇺🇸, 249 pages)
- The Power by Naomi Alderman (2016, Fiction, Novel, UK 🇬🇧, 400 pages)
- El Túnel (Spanish) by Ernesto Sabato (1948, Fiction, Novel, Argentina 🇦🇷, 159 pages)
- The Tunnel (English) by Ernesto Sabato (1948, Fiction, Novel, Argentina 🇦🇷, 140 pages)
- Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh (2022, Fiction, Novel, US 🇺🇸, 320 pages)
- Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome’s Greatest Politician by Anthony Everitt (2003, Non-Fiction, Biography, UK 🇬🇧, 400 pages)
- The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek (2019, Non-Fiction, Business, US 🇺🇸- UK 🇬🇧, 272 pages)
- Hook Point: How to Stand Out in a 3-Second World by Brendan Kane (2020, Non-Fiction, Business, US 🇺🇸, 304 pages)
- A History of Masculinity: From Patriarchy to Gender Justice by Ivan Jablonka (2022, Non-Fiction, Social Science, France 🇫🇷, 351 pages)
- A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen (1879, Fiction, Play, Norway 🇳🇴, 72 pages)
- Finite and Infinite Games by James P. Carse (1987, Non-Fiction, Social Science, US 🇺🇸, 160 pages)
- The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket by Benjamin Lorr (2020, Non-Fiction, Business, US 🇺🇸, 336 pages)
- Concrete Island by J.G. Ballard (1974, Fiction, Novel, UK 🇬🇧, 156 pages)
- Hidden Games: The Surprising Power of Game Theory to Explain Irrational Human Behavior by Erez Yoeli & Moshe Hoffman (2022, Non-Fiction, Social Science, US 🇺🇸, 368 pages)
- Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn by Daniel Gordis (2016, Non-Fiction, Social Science, Israel 🇮🇱, 560 pages)
- The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard (1962, Fiction, Novel, UK 🇬🇧, 158 pages)
- How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization by Franklin Foer (2004, Non-Fiction, Social Science, US 🇺🇸, 272 pages)
- Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle by Dan Senor & Saul Singer (2011, Non-Fiction, Technology, Canada 🇨🇦 — US 🇺🇸 — Israel 🇮🇱, 320 pages)
- High-Rise by J.G. Ballard (1975, Fiction, Novel, UK 🇬🇧, 204 pages)
- The Kindness of Women by J.G. Ballard (1991, Non-Fiction, Memoir, UK 🇬🇧, 286 pages)
- The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories by Marina Keegan (2014, Non-Fiction, Essays, US 🇺🇸, 240 pages)
- My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel by Ari Shavit (2013, Non-Fiction, Social Science, Israel 🇮🇱, 512 pages)
- Caesar: Life of a Colossus by Adrian Goldsworthy (2006, Non-Fiction, Biography, UK 🇬🇧, 583 pages)
- Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life by Luke Burgis (2021, Non-Fiction, Social Science, US 🇺🇸, 304 pages)
- A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza’s Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age by Steven Nadler (2011, Non-Fiction, History, US 🇺🇸, 304 pages)
- Murder on the Widow’s Walk (Modern Midwife Mysteries) by Christine Knapp (2022, Fiction, Mystery, US 🇺🇸, 257 pages)
- The Ploughmen by Kim Zupan (2015, Fiction, Mystery, US 🇺🇸, 272 pages)
- The Nineties: A Book by Chuck Klosterman (2022, Non-Fiction, History, US 🇺🇸, 384 pages)