My top books I read in 2020

Dec 19, 2020 | Entrepreneurship

  1. Almanack of Naval Ravikant: What a stunning and thoughtful compilation of Naval Ravikant‘s work and words. I predict that this is going to define a new industry – curating public content of thought leaders and converting them into books.
  2. Waking Up: Search for spirituality without religion Sam Harris provoked me through this book and offered me, an atheist, a lot to think about. Pick up his works!
  3. Psychology of Money: My most awaited book of this year, since the day Morgan Housel announced his book. A must read for all ages, especially those in their 20’s. I predict this to reach levels of “Rich Dad Poor Dad” over the next 10 years.
  4. Courage to be disliked: What a stunner! Challenges most of our tightly-held beliefs and I found myself nodding more often than not through the book. Not for the faint-hearted.
  5. One from many: VISA and the rise of chaordic organization This was the biggest surprise of 2020. I started it with little expectations and was blown away by the story of how VISA came to being. Much read for all fin-tech enthusiasts.
  6. What you do is who you are: Ben Horowitz strikes again, after “The Hard Thing about Hard Things”. This is a different yet joyous read from his earlier book and does the job well of establishing culture as a critical input to business success.
  7. Siddhartha: An Indian Tale This was a long time due book and I am so glad I got to it this year. Any other year I may not have appreciated it as much. Such a powerful book to read and reflect upon. Set during the time of the Buddha.
  8. No Rules Rules: Reed Hastings’ first book. if you have read the Netflix Culture Deck, then this is a great follow up book. A must-read for all founders and business leaders.
  9. Laws of human nature: Robert Green calls a spade a spade. And this book brings all his spades together! It is hard-hitting, it is unapologetically real and it kept me hooked.
  10. The moral animal: The new science of evolutionary psychology This is hands down the most provocative science books that I have read. Gripping read, that tries to explain why we are the way we are!
  11. Range: how generalists triumph in a specialized world If you want the class generalist vs specialist question answered, this is the book for you. David Epstein has written a beauty. One of the best reads of the year for me.
  12. Awareness: They key to living in balance This is was my first read by OSHO and I quite liked it. In more ways than I expected, he made a lot of sense and his ideas were hard to not appreciate. I would surely recommend this to many.
  13. On the shortness of life: I remain such an admirer of Seneca and his timeless wisdom. And every year find myself going back to some form of Stoic reading. This book was my highlight from the year.

I tracked some numbers down for 2020:

  1. This year I read 37 books.
  2. 5 of them were re-reads.
  3. Of the 32 new books, I didn’t complete 9 of them (Autobiography of Yogi being the most important one that I wish I had).
  4. There were 47 days in 2020 when I did not read at all.

In addition to these books, I also converted 5 of my twitter threads in illustrated eBooks.
You can download them for free here.

Here is a thread I wrote about how I read my books.

Here are 20 books that have benefitted me a lot in life

I would love recommendations for 2021 (am building my list right now).

I love reading:

  • Entrepreneurship
  • Human Psychology
  • Philosophy
  • Autobiographies/Biographies

PS: I only read non-fiction.

No – I don’t intend to change that :)