A Year For Thinking
Every year the books I read help me mark the calendar in my mind. I remember where I was any time I read a particular book, like a literary journal. I remember reading The Snowball in 2015 while I was in Uganda. I read John Adams when I was in Boston in 2016. Poor Charlie’s Almanack was a big part of the first year of quarantine. Beyond just the books I’ve read I have different experiences with reading that mark the passage of time and let me see the growth of the people around me.
The most significant development this year was that my oldest son became literate. In a combination of some reading classes we had him do during COVID and starting pre-school he finally started combining sounding out letters and writing out words. His ability to imagine things from what he reads on his own is something I wasn’t prepared for. There is no better way to appreciate something like the ability to read than seeing someone discover it on their own for the first time.
Themes
Fiction & Storytelling: I haven’t read much fiction with any consistency in my life. But the times when I do I get completely sucked into the universe. In 2019 I read a lot of the Red Rising series, but then in 2020 I didn’t read any fiction. While noticing my lack of exposure to fiction I also finally gave into a recommendation that I’d gotten from some of the most well-read people I know: read Brandon Sanderson. I read 6 of the Mistborn series this year and was struck by his ability to build a world and quickly introduce you to characters that you care so much about. The longer I’ve been an investor the more I’ve realized storytelling is a critical life skill.
Story vs. a Snapshot: My approach to investing is building a biography of a business. The history, details, trajectory, and milestones. Think The Profile, but for businesses. There are some fantastic podcasts out there doing this sort of thing, like Acquired and Business Breakdowns. But a lot of times the best information comes from exhaustive work in books like The Everything Store and Amazon Unbound.
How To Think: Several of the books I read this year revolved around helping me more effectively evaluate how I think. "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” The push for activity over reflection can cause a whole host of problems. I came across a few great resources this year to better guide my reflection time. Whether it was parenting (The Self-Driven Child), reading (How to Read a Book), money (The Psychology of Money), or just general overviews of the ways people think (The Great Mental Models, Reinventing Knowledge).
Added a “Quake Book”: Every year I pay attention to the books that have an outsized impact on me (usually I can spot them when I find myself wanting to highlight the whole book) and add them to my list of quake books. This year I added one that made me think deeply about the institutions we use to create knowledge and wonder what that will look like in the future.
The Books I Read This Year
I saw a review for The Death of Expertise in 2017 and have rarely stopped thinking about the title. The subject has become increasingly more relevant in my mind. “These are dangerous times. Never have so many people had so much access to so much knowledge and yet have been so resistant to learning anything.”
We’ve seen the evolution of “experts” online progress from infectious disease to inflation. I always want to be on the humble end of the competence curve regarding my own knowledge and have a discerning eye when it comes to evaluating other people’s expertise. “Respecting a person’s opinion does not mean granting equal respect to that person’s knowledge.”
My wife and I have two sons that keep us plenty busy. Not only are we always trying to be better in the way we raise them, she and I also enjoy spending time together. So our routine for the last few months was reading this book together after the boys go to bed.
Most people’s natural inclincation as parents is to do everything they can to control their kids. No one says it in those terms, and few people acknowledge what they want as control instead of disguising it as a desire for safety or security.
The most dangerous part of helicopter parenting is not the impact it has on the parent / child relationship. Kids can be literally left unable to fend for themselves emotionally.
In 2016 I briefly worked for Amazon. I remember walking to work one day and looking up Amazon’s valuation. It was around $300B and saw that it was less than companies like Facebook or Microsoft. Everything I knew made me believe that Amazon had significantly more potential as a business than any others I was familiar with.
Since then I’ve been a proud Amazon shareholder and have always respected what Jeff Bezos has built. From the vertical integration to opportunity canvassing to leadership principles. I’ve wanted to study Amazon more deeply as a business and when Amazon Unbound came out I figured it was a good time to read both.
No business book has been more recommended to me other than maybe Shoe Dog. To have it be so recently released felt more like reading the news than a history. Jeff Bezos talks about how it’s always “day one” at Amazon but its clear a lot has changed over the last 20+ years. Brad Stone’s journalism presents itself as well. The story is well told and presents the whole picture without just being satisfied with Amazon fanboying. The stories of how Amazon expanded culturally and geographically is fascinating and rarely something that businesses have to tackle at such massive scale. I liked the book so much that it was one of my contributions to the Index Ventures library (and Brad Stone liked it!)
There are a few books and thinkers that are canon in the Roam community. How To Read a Book is near scripture. I’m an information hoarder and when it comes to books I eventually want to read the list is never ending. Big thanks to the Roam Book Club for finally giving me the push to read this book. My first introduction to this kind of methodical reading was called Surgical Reading and it struck me as something that I had always wanted to do better but never had the structure to do well. I learned plenty; “anything worth doing is worth doing wrong,” but this approach gave me a much more methodical way of evaluating what I’m reading and what I’m taking away from it.
“Syntopical reading remains underrated. The result is the difference between reading for information vs reading for comprehension.”
Everyone will compliment Brandon Sanderson on his world building. The thought that goes into the magic, the mythology, and the culture is powerful. What struck me more was the journey of faith that one of the characters takes the reader on as they explore what makes a God? A religion? A system of belief?
Sazed asked, "Tell me, Mistress. What is it that you believe?" Vin frowned. "What kind of question is that?" "The most important kind, I think.”
Church membership in the US fell into the minority for the first time in history (47% as of 2021). People are replacing God in their lives with a host of all kinds of things. What I think is most lacking is the self-reflection from people to really ask themselves “what do you believe?”
As I read the second book I continued to fixate on this journey of faith. While one of the characters goes through a crisis of faith he’s confronted with the simple views from many of the other characters. Much of the book is about trust, promises, and the relationships we choose to engage in.
“Religions are promises--promises that there is something watching over us, guiding us.”
What promises do you choose to believe in? Whether its promises from institutions, individuals, employers, or yourself. For me I look to promises of becoming better. Wherever I can get the promise of becoming a better person, a better husband and father, a better investor, a better friend or leader. That’s what I look to.
In the conclusion of the first trilogy I saw a really compelling conclusion to this crisis of faith. As one character searches for what to believe in they’re confronted with reality.
“It sounds to me, young one," Haddek said, "that you are searching for something that cannot be found." "The truth?" Sazed said. "No," Haddek replied. "A religion that requires no faith of its believers.”
Choosing what you believe in isn’t and shouldn’t be an easy thing. And if it is an easy belief to hold, then is it worth holding? Joseph Smith said that “a religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things never has power sufficient to produce the faith necessary to lead unto life and salvation.”
Look for the things that are true and fight to understand them. That, to me, feels like the only life worth living.