Not a book review - book review
TLDR: A few books i read (listened) this year. Mostly non finance related books
I should start off by saying that this blog has almost nothing to do with Finance or Investing. It is almost a recap of 2018 with regards to some books i listened last year. The reason i keep saying “listened” instead of “read” is because i use audible as my go to source for books. It is easier on the eyes, helps me during commutes and also while making the little one sleep. I also use audiobooks when i can’t really have the lights on or keep a dead tree (or kindle) version of a book in front of me.
I enjoy listening to books, average around 25 books a year. I might not even manage half that if i just read books. I have recommended this option to many friends, half of them are converts and the other half just cannot listen. So YMMV.
Now to the books. I am a fan of science fiction and a lot of the books that I listened to, fall in this genre. But i am going to list just non fiction here.
This book is an interesting take of humanity in general and our origin story. I found the narration and the content interesting. So i kind of fell into the trap of reading other books by the same author. There are some recurring themes in this collection but each book can stand on its own.
The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis
Another favourite author of mine Michael Lewis has some very interesting books. Also i loved the movie version of the Big Short, so i ended re-reading (listening) this book again in 2018. I also recommend his other books -
American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road Drugs Empire by Nick Bilton
This is a too good to be true tale of the silk road and how someone with extreme libertarian views could have created something like silk road. Nick straddles the line between fiction and non-fiction in his books, so everything he states might not be true. But it definitely makes for riveting reading material. I also liked one other book from him - Hatching Twitter, which also fits a very similar genre.
The Tao of Seneca: Practical Letters from a Stoic Master, Volume 1 by Seneca presented by Tim Ferriss Audio
Stoicism has been gaining popularity recently and Tim Ferriss has covered some key life lessons from Seneca the original master. This is not easy reading, but has some very good lessons that could be used today.
Out of the rest of the fiction books, i highly recommend one
Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
This book is a science fiction that discusses an alternate intelligent evolutionary path taken in a distant planet where spiders evolve into an intelligent species. This alternate reality is wonderfully visual, well explained and raises some fundamental questions around humanity, our place in the universe and potentially what freak accident or mutation caused us to become the masters of our own planet.
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