I'm starting this years "What I've Read" post with a few disclaimers, just to make my style for these posts crystal clear. First, the links below are Amazon affiliate links, there's no impact to you as the purchaser, but as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. That income goes straight to paying my hosting provider, domain name registrar, and ISP. The total amount I receive a year doesn't even fully cover the hosting provider for this blog, it just helps a bit, but I appreciate you using my links to buy. You can read more about this in my Privacy Policy. Second, all book excerpts in italics are the property of Amazon.com, they're the same ones they provide in the book descriptions and aren't written by me (which is why I've always put them in italics). You'll now find this permanently on my Reading page as well.

  1. In 2019, I started this post by saying that 2019 had been hard, but that 2020 would be better. Boy was I ever wrong! Coronavirus (COVID-19), Stock Market crash; and those were only in the first few months of 2020. I set a goal on GoodReads to read 22 books in 2020 and hit that goal! In 2021, I'm going to read 25!

In reviewing the books I read this year (22 titles, up 38% from the 16 titles in 2019), they were broken down in the following broad genres:

  • Entertainment - 18% (down from 25%)
  • Non-fiction - 27% (up from 19%)
  • Computing - 18% (up from 0%)
  • Biographies - 14% (up from 0%)
  • Self-improvement - 23% (down from 56%)

All in all I'm pretty happy that I seem to have gotten a wider set of genres over 2020 than in previous years, nothing is really heavy, nothing is missing. I attribute a lot of this to a program I did that required reading but it had to be non-fiction in nature (and non-audiobook), more in a bit.

Unfortunately, I'm still working on the following books in 2021:

A goal I'm setting for this year is to have all 3 of those books finished by the end of 2021.

When I started 2020, I was still reading several books I had started at the end of 2019 (or even 2018). Happy to report I finished all of these in 2020, the first two which were from 2019:

  • Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War (Kindle) -- In June 1983, President Reagan watched the movie War Games, in which a teenager unwittingly hacks the Pentagon, and asked his top general if the scenario was plausible. The general said it was. This set in motion the first presidential directive on computer security. They had me at "War Games".
  • Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government--Saving Privacy in the Digital Age (Kindle) -- If you've ever made a secure purchase with your credit card over the Internet, then you have seen cryptography, or "crypto", in action. From Stephen Levy—the author who made "hackers" a household word—comes this account of a revolution that is already affecting every citizen in the twenty-first century. Crypto tells the inside story of how a group of "crypto rebels"—nerds and visionaries turned freedom fighters—teamed up with corporate interests to beat Big Brother and ensure our privacy on the Internet. Levy's history of one of the most controversial and important topics of the digital age reads like the best futuristic fiction.
  • Thinking, Fast and Slow (Audible) -- In his mega bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, the renowned psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning our next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems shape our judgments and decisions.
  • Winner's Dream: A Journey from Corner Store to Corner Office (Audible) -- Bill is our current CEO at ServiceNow and I've had the pleasure to speak with him in person as well as watch him perform internally, this book shows how he got to where he is, and I HIGHLY recommend listening to the audiobook which is read by Bill himself, In Winners Dream, Bill McDermott—the CEO of the world’s largest business software company, SAP—chronicles how relentless optimism, hard work, and disciplined execution embolden people and equip organizations to achieve audacious goals. Colorful and fast-paced, Bill’s anecdotes contain effective takeaways: gutsy career moves; empathetic sales strategies; incentives that yield exceptional team performance; and proof of the competitive advantages of optimism and hard work. At the heart of Bill’s story is a blueprint for success and the knowledge that the real dream is the journey, not a preconceived destination.
  • The Unicorn Project (Kindle) -- This highly anticipated follow-up to the bestselling title The Phoenix Project takes another look at Parts Unlimited, this time from the perspective of software development. In The Unicorn Project, we follow Maxine, a senior lead developer and architect, as she is exiled to the Phoenix Project, to the horror of her friends and colleagues, as punishment for contributing to a payroll outage. She tries to survive in what feels like a heartless and uncaring bureaucracy and to work within a system where no one can get anything done without endless committees, paperwork, and approvals. One day, she is approached by a ragtag bunch of misfits who say they want to overthrow the existing order, to liberate developers, to bring joy back to technology work, and to enable the business to win in a time of digital disruption. To her surprise, she finds herself drawn ever further into this movement, eventually becoming one of the leaders of the Rebellion, which puts her in the crosshairs of some familiar and very dangerous enemies. The Age of Software is here, and another mass extinction event looms—this is a story about rebel developers and business leaders working together, racing against time to innovate, survive, and thrive in a time of unprecedented uncertainty...and opportunity.
  • Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World (Kindle) -- Your cell phone provider tracks your location and knows who’s with you. Your online and in-store purchasing patterns are recorded, and reveal if you're unemployed, sick, or pregnant. Your e-mails and texts expose your intimate and casual friends. Google knows what you’re thinking because it saves your private searches. Facebook can determine your sexual orientation without you ever mentioning it. The powers that surveil us do more than simply store this information. Corporations use surveillance to manipulate not only the news articles and advertisements we each see, but also the prices we’re offered. Governments use surveillance to discriminate, censor, chill free speech, and put people in danger worldwide. And both sides share this information with each other or, even worse, lose it to cybercriminals in huge data breaches. Much of this is voluntary: we cooperate with corporate surveillance because it promises us convenience, and we submit to government surveillance because it promises us protection. The result is a mass surveillance society of our own making. But have we given up more than we’ve gained? In Data and Goliath, security expert Bruce Schneier offers another path, one that values both security and privacy. He brings his bestseller up-to-date with a new preface covering the latest developments, and then shows us exactly what we can do to reform government surveillance programs, shake up surveillance-based business models, and protect our individual privacy. You'll never look at your phone, your computer, your credit cards, or even your car in the same way again.

On March 9th, my wife and I started working from home as part of our companies' response to COVID-19. Knowing that we were going to be home for a while, I suggested we attempt 75hard, a mental toughness program. So, on March 15th, one day before Santa Clara County ordered us to "shelter in place" to "flatten the curve" of COVID-19 infections, my wife and I (and some of my peers at ServiceNow) started on the program. One aspect of the program is that you must read 10 pages of a non-fiction book each day and audiobooks didn't count. That really amped up my reading! Here are the books I read over those 75 days, if it's an audiobook, then I read it during my workouts (2 a day, 1 has to be outside):

  • Talking to Strangers (Audible) -- I can't stress enough how amazing this audiobook is, if you've never listened to an audiobook before, THIS is the one to start with, just incredlble and has to be heard to be believed. How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to each other that isn't true? While tackling these questions, Malcolm Gladwell was not solely writing a book for the page. He was also producing for the ear. In the audiobook version of Talking to Strangers, you’ll hear the voices of people he interviewed - scientists, criminologists, military psychologists. Court transcripts are brought to life with re-enactments. You actually hear the contentious arrest of Sandra Bland by the side of the road in Texas. As Gladwell revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, and the suicide of Sylvia Plath, you hear directly from many of the players in these real-life tragedies. There’s even a theme song - Janelle Monae’s “Hell You Talmbout”.  Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don't know. And because we don't know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world.
  • Limitless Mind (Audible) -- From the moment we enter school as children, we are made to feel as if our brains are fixed entities, capable of learning certain things and not others, influenced exclusively by genetics. This notion follows us into adulthood, where we tend to simply accept these established beliefs about our skillsets (i.e. that we don’t have “a math brain” or that we aren’t “the creative type”). These damaging - and as new science has revealed, false - assumptions have influenced all of us at some time, affecting our confidence and willingness to try new things and limiting our choices, and, ultimately, our futures. Stanford University professor, bestselling author, and acclaimed educator Jo Boaler has spent decades studying the impact of beliefs and bias on education. In Limitless Mind, she explodes these myths and reveals the six keys to unlocking our boundless learning potential.
  • Lock In (Audible) -- Not too long from today, a new, highly contagious virus makes its way across the globe. Most who get sick experience nothing worse than flu, fever, and headaches. But for the unlucky one percent - and nearly five million souls in the United States alone - the disease causes "Lock In": Victims fully awake and aware, but unable to move or respond to stimulus. The disease affects young, old, rich, poor, people of every color and creed. The world changes to meet the challenge. A quarter of a century later, in a world shaped by what's now known as "Haden's syndrome", rookie FBI agent Chris Shane is paired with veteran agent Leslie Vann. The two of them are assigned what appears to be a Haden-related murder at the Watergate Hotel, with a suspect who is an "integrator" - someone who can let the locked in borrow their bodies for a time. If the Integrator was carrying a Haden client, then naming the suspect for the murder becomes that much more complicated.
  • The Tales of Beedle the Bard (Audible) -- As every fan of the Harry Potter stories knows, the shelves of the Hogwarts Library are home to all sorts of fascinating books. There are three in particular you might have heard mentioned by certain Hogwarts students and that you can add to your listening list too, including The Tales of Beedle the Bard. As familiar to Hogwarts students as Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty are to Muggle children, Beedle's stories are a collection of popular fairy tales written for young witches and wizards. So, if you're wondering what's in store...well, your ears are in for a treat.
  • The X-Files: Stolen Lives (Audible) -- Note: This title is no longer available on Audible, so I've linked to the CD version. It's amazing because all of the voices are from the original cast. -- Out of the ashes of the Syndicate, a new, more powerful threat has emerged. Resurrected members of this fallen group - now shadows of their former selves - seemingly bend to the will of someone, or something, with unmatched abilities and an unknown purpose. As those believed to be enemies become unlikely allies and trusted friends turn into terrifying foes, FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully become unknowing participants in a deadly game of deception and retribution, the stakes of which amount to the preservation of humankind.
  • Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet (Audible) -- Twenty-five years ago, it didn't exist. Today, 20 million people worldwide are surfing the Net. Where Wizards Stay Up Late is the exciting story of the pioneers responsible for creating the most talked about, most influential, and most far-reaching communications breakthrough since the invention of the telephone. In the 1960s, when computers where regarded as mere giant calculators, J.C.R. Licklider at MIT saw them as the ultimate communications devices. With Defense Department funds, he and a band of visionary computer whizzes began work on a nationwide, interlocking network of computers. Taking listeners behind the scenes, Where Wizards Stay Up Late captures the hard work, genius, and happy accidents of their daring, stunningly successful venture.
  • Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration (Audible) -- Creativity, Inc. is a manual for anyone who strives for originality and the first-ever all-access trip into the nerve center of Pixar Animation - into the meetings, postmortems, and “Braintrust” sessions where some of the most successful films in history are made. It is, at heart, a book about creativity - but it is also, as Pixar cofounder and president Ed Catmull writes, “an expression of the ideas that I believe make the best in us possible”.
  • The Fifth Risk (Kindle) -- Michael Lewis’s brilliant narrative of the Trump administration’s botched presidential transition takes us into the engine rooms of a government under attack by its leaders through willful ignorance and greed. The government manages a vast array of critical services that keep us safe and underpin our lives from ensuring the safety of our food and drugs and predicting extreme weather events to tracking and locating black market uranium before the terrorists do. The Fifth Risk masterfully and vividly unspools the consequences if the people given control over our government have no idea how it works.
  • David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants (Audible) -- Three thousand years ago on a battlefield in ancient Palestine, a shepherd boy felled a mighty warrior with nothing more than a stone and a sling, and ever since then the names of David and Goliath have stood for battles between underdogs and giants. David's victory was improbable and miraculous. He shouldn't have won. Or should he have? In David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell challenges how we think about obstacles and disadvantages, offering a new interpretation of what it means to be discriminated against, or cope with a disability, or lose a parent, or attend a mediocre school, or suffer from any number of other apparent setbacks.
  • Atomic Habits (Audible) -- No matter your goals, Atomic Habits offers a proven framework for improving--every day. James Clear, one of the world's leading experts on habit formation, reveals practical strategies that will teach you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results. If you're having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn't you. The problem is your system. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don't want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Here, you'll get a proven system that can take you to new heights.

After doing 75hard from March 15th to May 28th, we took a break. However, we both felt really great, and frankly I also lost 30 lbs. So, we decided to go for a second time, starting on June 1st, 2020. That session ended on August 14th, one day before I turned 50.

Also, on August 3rd, 2020 we rescued our dog, Sunny, from the Humane Society. He was 8 weeks old and while we thought he'd be a big dog, turns out ... not so much.

  • How to Raise the Perfect Dog: Through Puppyhood and Beyond (Kindle) -- For the millions of people every year who consider bringing a puppy into their lives–as well as those who have already brought a dog home–Cesar Millan, the preeminent dog behavior expert, says, "Yes, you can raise the perfect dog!" It all starts with the proper foundation in the early years. Here, Cesar tells you everything you need to know to create the best environment for a well-balanced dog in order to avoid behavior issues in the future, and shows you how to correct the most common behavior issues for young dogs.
  • The Price of Tomorrow: Why Deflation is the Key to an Abundant Future (Kindle) -- We live in an extraordinary time. Technological advances are happening at a rate faster than our ability to understand them, and in a world that moves faster than we can imagine, we cannot afford to stand still. These advances bring efficiency and abundance—and they are profoundly deflationary. Our economic systems were built for a pre-technology era when labour and capital were inextricably linked, an era that counted on growth and inflation, an era where we made money from inefficiency. That era is over, but we keep on pretending that those economic systems still work.
  • History of Bourbon (Audible) -- Is bourbon the quintessential American liquor? Bourbon is not just alcohol—the amber-colored drink is deeply ingrained in American culture and tangled in American history. From the early days of raw corn liquor to the myriad distilleries that have proliferated around the country today, bourbon is a symbol of the United States. This course traces bourbon's entire history, from the 1700s, with Irish, Scottish, and French settlers setting up stills and making distilled spirits in the New World, through today's booming resurgence._
  • A Short History of Nearly Everything (Audible) -- In A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson confronts his greatest challenge yet: to understand—and, if possible, answer—the oldest, biggest questions we have posed about the universe and ourselves. Taking as his territory everything from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization, Bryson seeks to understand how we got from there being nothing at all to there being us. The result is a sometimes profound, sometimes funny, and always supremely clear and entertaining adventure in the realms of human knowledge, as only Bill Bryson can render it.
  • Chasing Midnight (Doc Ford Book 19) (Kindle) -- On one of Florida’s private islands, a notorious Russian black marketer is hosting a reception. Doc Ford only wanted to get an underwater look at the billionaire’s yacht. But when he surfaces, he gets a look at something he’d rather not see.
  • Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less -- Essentialism is more than a time-management strategy or a productivity technique. It is a systematic discipline for discerning what is absolutely essential, then eliminating everything that is not, so we can make the highest possible contribution toward the things that really matter. By forcing us to apply more selective criteria for what is Essential, the disciplined pursuit of less empowers us to reclaim control of our own choices about where to spend our precious time and energy—instead of giving others the implicit permission to choose for us.

Reflection: 2020 was an incredibly difficult year for everyone on the planet and it's continued into 2021. I was fortunate, dare I say prescient, that when we were all locked down, I knew that if I didn't make some dramatic changes in my life I was going to be far worse off when our COVID lockdown ended than when it started. My wife and I found 75hard and we ended the year in the best shape of the last decade or so. We've continued with this going on 75hard again at the beginning of 2021 and I personally achieved a weight I hadn't seen since before my son was born a decade ago.

I hope everyone continues to stay safe, has gotten vaccinated (regardless of your beliefs overall, this is a public health crises), and has learned to thrive in this new environment in which we find ourselves.

If you're suffering, seek help, or as I often do, find a good book to learn more about your situation and to create a sense of wonder and hope.