2021 Year in Review
The lost reviews, Part II...
All previous Book Reviews/ ratings can be found at jessesbooks.com.
A reminder from the 2020 Year in Review.
2020 and 2021 are the lost years of book reviews. A combination of complacency after crushing the 2019 reading goal by 50%, business school shifting priorities, and not having my work email list as motivation resulted in a whopping zero reviews for the 34 books read in 2020 (the majority, pre-business school, thanks lockdown) and 12 books in 2021 (the majority during the summer, thanks, free time from bschool parties).
There has been too much time since completion for me to write an appropriate review myself, so I’m going to just provide a one-sentence summary. If you just wanted any review, well, the internet exists, and you can use ChatGPT.
Some additional notes:
The Three-Body Problem was the most overhyped book I’ve ever read and I will die on that hill.
All the good five-star karma of 2020 was lost in 2021. A “mid” year definitionally.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
n/a
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster, Jon Krakauer –Krakauer’s personal retelling of the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, where eight climbers died during a freak storm while they were attempting to summit. I was left in awe at the struggle the hiking groups went through, how the stranded parties persevered through the night, and how insane/ hardcore people who attempt to summit Everest are.
The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, Brad Stone – I find everything Jeff Bezos and Amazon to be super interesting and Stone’s book is probably the most detailed account of how the tech behemoth came to be. Amazon’s story is so well known, that a lot won’t be new, but the details in The Everything Story often aren’t found elsewhere.
The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company, Bob Iger – Legendary CEO, Bob Iger’s memoir which covers his entire career pre- and during his time leading Disney. It’s fascinating to get an inside view into some of the great acquisitions Iger led during his tenure, from Marvel to Pixar to Lucasfilm.
Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking, Samin Nosrat – This book is best described as a science textbook crossed with a cookbook; a fun read that explains the science behind making great-tasting food. It also literally contains a cookbook in the back, so a nice addition to the kitchen as well as the bookshelf.
The Vanishing Half, Brit Bennett – This was a very good fiction about twins, separated during childhood, whose lives diverge completely but reconnect later in life. There’s some really good racial commentary as well.
The Mom Test: How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you, Rob Fitzpatrick – If you are trying to start a company, or are a PM, you probably should read this book on customer discovery and how to identify opportunities. As a personal read, it will bore you to death, but the business learnings are great.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts, Annie Duke – World-famous poker player Annie Duke breaks down probabilistic thinking and how that applies not just on the poker table, but in making decisions in life. As a former engineer who worked on statistical modeling, none of this was new, but I do think that the average person should incorporate some probability into their life so maybe it’s a good read?
Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World, Adam M. Grant – I like Adam Grant, but I unfortunately cannot come up with anything memorable about Originals.
Choose Possibility: Take Risks and Thrive, Sukhinder Singh Cassidy – This book was written by my boss from my MBA internship so I figured I’d show her some love. The core theme is how one should take risks in their career to open doors and succeed, but it was slow and surface level. She’s had a great career, but the book was okay.
⭐️⭐️
The Three-Body Problem, Cixin Lui – Many people whose opinions I care about very much recommended this book to me as one of the best science fiction books they had ever read. I was SO INCREDIBLY disappointed, that words can’t really do it justice. It’s the first of a trilogy and for about 70% of the book, nothing really happens: it feels like it’s just setup for books two and three (which I refuse to read out of protest). The rough premise (without giving away spoilers that were given to me), is that Chinese scientists are investigating anomalies in measurements from space while a seemingly random citizen discovers a puzzling game that may link to those anomalies. What happens next can best be described as a person failing at a level of a video game for like 300 pages or something. There’s a Netflix adaptation coming out next year, that admittedly should be pretty good though.
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, Steven D. Levitt – I really like the Freakonomics podcast, but this book was pretty disappointing, overly simplistic, and very dry.
The Wall Street Era is Over: The Investor's Guide to Cryptocurrency and DeFi, the Decentralized Finance Revolution, DEFIYIELD App – I went into this book trying to learn more about crypto, but it was pretty bad. It’s not nuanced, didn’t really explain how crypto worked very well, and was just trying to get people to blindly use their DeFi strategies without going it why.
⭐️
n/a
If you’re enjoying these book reviews, please consider sharing with a friend and subscribing, if you haven’t already.
Cheers,
Jesse