James Clear || Audible || Hardcover

The #1 New York Times bestseller, Atomic Habits, has sold over 5 million copies worldwide and been translated into more than 50 languages. It's also the *only* book I read back-to-back. Ever. 

It is short, direct, practical, informative, and perhaps one of the most actionable books you'll find in the self-help section (see below's list of resources for next steps after reading). I want to share a bit about habit formation from the book, and also James' mantra: “When making plans, think big. When making progress, think small.” 

HOW TO CREATE A GOOD HABIT: 4 Steps. 

1. Make It Obvious:
Fill out the Habits Scorecard. Write down your current habits to become aware of them. Use implementation intentions: “I will [BEHAVIOR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION]." Use habit stacking: “After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].” Design your environment. Make the cues of good habits obvious and visible.

Example: I will run three miles after work in my neighborhood three times a week. After closing my work laptop I will fill up my water bottle and put on my running shoes. 


2. Make It Attractive:
Use temptation bundling. Pair an action you want to do with an action you need to do. Join a culture where your desired behavior is the normal behavior. Create a motivation ritual. Do something you enjoy immediately before a difficult habit. 

Example: After running I will cook dinner, my biggest meal of the day, with some healthy favorite options from my refrigerator and pantry. I will ask my neighbor to run with me instead of her going to the gym. I love to eat, so running beforehand will temptation bundle it all together. 


3. Make It Easy: 
Reduce friction. Decrease the number of steps between you and your good habits. Prime the environment. Prepare your environment to make future actions easier. Master the decisive moment. Optimize the small choices that deliver outsized impact. Use the Two-Minute Rule. Downscale your habits until they can be done in two minutes or less. Automate your habits. Invest in technology and onetime purchases that lock in future behavior. 

Example:  I will have my water bottle, running shoes, and airpods ready to go on my kitchen counter after work. The decisive moment is after work when I come into the kitchen and living room. If I turn on the TV I will likely stall from getting out the door. So I will hide it out of sight. If I need to, I will buy Strava app to record my runs or a gym membership to further lock in my habit of running. 


4. Make It Satisfying: 
Use reinforcement. Give yourself an immediate reward when you complete your habit. Make “doing nothing” enjoyable. When avoiding a bad habit, design a way to see the benefits. Use a habit tracker. Keep track of your habit streak and “don’t break the chain.” Never miss twice. When you forget to do a habit, make sure you get back on track immediately. 

Example: I will track my habits in Strava app and watch for new PRs in distance, time, or total miles in a month. I'll compete with last year's month. When I complete my habit I eat as much healthy food as I want, and on Fridays dessert. 
​

• All Atomic Habit Resources (from annual Integrity Reports to data visualization of studies cited and much more)
• The Habits Scorecard (For ranking your current habits positive or negative)
• The Habits Cheat Sheet (For habit formation or destruction) 
• The Habits Contract Sheet (For next-level accountability partners)

​

James Clear is a writer and speaker focused on habits, decision making, and continuous improvement. He is a regular speaker at Fortune 500 companies and his work has been featured in places like Time magazine, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and on CBS This Morning. His popular "3-2-1" email newsletter is sent out each week to more than 1 million subscribers. It includes 3 short ideas from Clear, 2 quotes from others, and 1 question to ponder during the week. 
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Walter Tevis || Audible (6.5 hours) || Paperback (240 pages)
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...There's cigar smoke. There's "fat brass spittoons lining the walls" and a bar of flowing whiskey. There's a white cue ball and 15 other ones, striped or solid. Racking them are two men circling a great, green pool-table made of mahogany and magic. This is where Fast Eddie and Minnesota Fats square off in the beginning of The Hustler. It's a normal Tuesday in Chicago. The mounting tension though belongs to duel, like angry cowboys looking to draw quick. 

So far, Eddie has Fats beat. He's up 18 games and $18,000. This is more than his $10,000 goal, but he gets cocky. He keeps obliging Fat's request for just one more game. As the hours drag to over a day straight of alcohol, pool shots, and sheer willpower, Eddie slips more and more. He gets boastful. Then he starts missing angles, not just the tough ones. He's tired and growing frustrated at himself. And soon enough, rejecting his friend's warning to walk away while he's ahead, Eddie goes from winning $18 grant to down a few out of pocket. Fast Eddie, the hustler was out-hustled by Minnesota Fats. 

And he wants a second shot. But he'll need help. If he's to ever beat his rival, he's going to have to find a whole bunch of self-awareness and get out of his own way. As Bert, a pool coach tells him later, "Self pity: one of the best indoor sports" is keeping Eddie from greatness. This central conflict is what I really enjoyed. The story is fast and sharp. The writing is visual and clear. But the relentless build-up to Eddie's shot at redemption, with pitfalls and detours, never wavers from this central conflict:

This passage in the back-half of the book struck me like a shot from Eddie's pool stick:
​"To love the game itself is a fine thing; it is loving the art you live by. There are many things to love in the art—the excitement of it, the difficulty, the use of skill—but to work at it only for those would be like [a loser]. To play pool, you had to want to win and to want this without excuses and without self-deceptions. Only then did you have a right to love the game itself.And this reached further. It seemed to Eddie now, sitting in Bert's car, his body sore and his mind tremendously aware, that the need to win was everywhere in life, in every act, in every conversation, in every encounter between people. And the idea had become for him a kind of touchstone—or a key to the meaning of experience in the world." [JG]
​

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Walter Stone Tevis (1928 - 1984) was an American novelist and short story writer. He is perhaps best known now for The Queen's Gambit, which was turned into a fantastic miniseries by Netflix starring Anya Taylor-Joy as an orphaned chess prodigy in 1950's America. 

But he also wrote a sequel to The Hustler called The Color of Money, which continues the tale of Fast Eddie in Chicago years later. In 1986, Martin Scorsese directed the movie adaptation with Paul Newman and Tom Cruise. Two of his other novels sound particularly interesting to me: The Man Who Fell To Earth, a science fiction tale of an alien who amasses a fortune in America, as well as Mockingbird, a dystopian novel in which humans use electronics and drugs to sedate their anxieties and satiate their pleasures. No children. No art. No reading.

David Sinclair PhD || Audible (12 Hours) || Hardcover (430 Pages)
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I came across Lifespan when Joe Rogan name-dropped it on his podcast, and later again, when I saw that he actually had the author, Harvard professor David Sinclair, on for a couple hours (Spotify). These conversations were just a primer. The book itself for me is what Tyler Cowen would call a "quake book," which I've certainly had my fair share of (from gentle tremors to Magnitude 8+). 

I'll be honest. This book is dense. I tried to absorb the medical and scientific information as best I could and get to the mainpoints, which I have listed out below. Also, I think it's important to share that since then, I've begun taking Athletic Greens daily, a wholistic health supplement that you mix with your water or yogurt or whatever, and also have been taking Quercetin (a heart-improving, anti-flammatory chemical) that a nutritionist recommended when I got COVID in 2021. It's something that David Sinclair takes daily. 

Okay, here are my takeaways from Lifespan: Why We Age — And Why We Don't Have To. If you think I'm missing anything or got some things wrong, please let me know. I'm so eager to investigate as well as experiment with diet, nutrition, and healthy habits. Appreciate any recommendations as well! 

​1. Do you own research. Don't blindly follow David Sinclair. Or your primary care doctor. Or what seems to have worked for your parents. (Especially) when it comes to health, you should approach any advice carefully. 

2. The Information Theory of Aging is David Sinclair's view that we age because our DNA and our cells are damaged and encoded information cannot be read. An analogy he gives is that of the CD. The aging process is analogous to scratches on a CD; we skip songs when we get older. Treatment is like polishing a CD so you can read all the songs properly. 

3. Aging, Sinclair argues, is not a metaphysical absolute that cannot be changed, reduced, and slowed down. Moreover, it is proper to view aging as a disease—a slow deadly one—but that has a series of treatments. 

4. It is crucial to understand aging nor more than ever for us folks alive today, for obvious reasons, but also because modern life is rife with stressors on our bodies—from the uptick in mental disorders to our sedentary lifestyle in chairs with copious amounts of blue light absorbed each day and delicious, fake food tempting us all the time. 

5. First, some more known things like movement and activity are crucial to stay alive and having a high quality of life (i.e. a low biological age). Even running just 10 minutes a few times per week can and regularly riding bikes have a huge reduced risk of heart attacks. 

6. Hyperbaric chambers can be used for a lot of health treatments and benefits. One of them is to cause changes in oxygen, which actually emulate the effects of getting exercise without having to exercise. We think that this is because they activate sirtuins and improve telomere length. Telomere length is an indicator but not the only metric of aging that is found in your DNA. 

7. Sinclair believes that “your genes only control 20% of ultimate health and old age; 80% of it is in your hands.” If you do these five basic things you will live longer and better: (1) exercise; (2) sleep; (3) don’t smoke; (4) eat less (both in calories and intermittent fasting); (5) manage stress. For example, eating one meal a day turns on hormesis genes which make the body fight disease and aging

8. You can activate the survival network in your body and reverse cellular aging with the above, as well as these additional habits: (1) Taking Metformin, which works by inhibiting mitochondria, forcing the body to respond by making more mitochondria for use when the drug is not around. Sinclair does this daily after exercise. (2). Use saunas and cold plunges or cold showers 2-3 times a week. 

8. Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (a.ka. NAD) is what our cells' mitochondria use to make energy. NAD decreases as we age. NAD levels cycle through the day. Exercise can increase NAD levels. You can also take a supplement, NMD, which Sinclair does, for this purpose. He takes 1 gram a day. Again, do your own research.

9. Lastly, government health organizations consistently get so much wrong with health. COVID showed this nakedly to anyone paying attention. Obesity and Vitamin D were the highest predictors of mortality and hospitalizations for humans—not vaccines or wearing masks. Both losing weight and getting sunlight or taking Vit D supplements were 100% in our control. Both were not explicitly discussed for months if at all by 'leading' health professionals. Be cautious of the status quo, especially government health 'experts.' 
​

David A. Sinclair, Ph.D., A.O. is a Professor in the Department of Genetics and co-Director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research at Harvard Medical School. His newsletter is at www.lifespanbook.com and you can follow him on Twitter @davidasinclair. 
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Paperback || Hardcover
117 Pages

Aladdin is perhaps the most well-known fairy tale of all time. Its origin though is a bit foggy. Immortalized by Disney with the animated 1992 film starring Robin Williams as Genie, the tale may have been created in France. Antoine Gallard's fairy tale of Aladdin, or The Wonder Lamp debuted in the early 1900s, and poses as a Syrian bedtime tale, one set in China. But the tale could be much older and a part of the 1001 Arabian Nights, although scholars question this too. All of these different writers, editors, and translators reminds me of Homer's The Odyssey and The Iliad. They too were refined through generations of oral tradition. 21st century hip-hop beats also come to mind, some of which have been sampled thousands of times over. In this sense, Aladdin is still alive in 2022 and will keep growing. 

Whatever its true origin, the coming-of-age adventure is full of exotic empires, dangerous travel, deceptive magicians, cursed treasure, wish-fulfilling desert genies (or jinns), and romance with a princess and our poor hero. Yasmine Seale's translation and Paulos Lemos Horta's editing made this a fast, fun afternoon read. Each chapter is ten pages and has a clear sense of story progression, with consequences playing out for the characters based on their choices, which build to a climax and resolution.

​As I read it, I thought about story principles too. Sometimes details were planted earlier and cashed in on later for dramatic effect. Other times, details were never mentioned before the story required them, which killed the spell a bit for me. This isn't a translation or editing issue, but probably a fidelity to the original texts. Even these 'Deus ex machina' moments have a charm though, a reassuring quality to me. The type of world constructed in Aladdin is exotic, full of beauty and cunning traps, but the riddles are solvable, the villains not invincible, and true love is just a matter of time and effort. Oh, and storytellers are nearly all-powerful, including Scheherazade, the mythic mother of all stories. She of course begins and ends this one. 

I have to note the book's construction too. The cover is beautiful and the pages have just the right amount of words on the page to flow for easy page-turning. This will be a reread for me. 

Yasmine Seale is a writer and literary translator from Arabic and French. She's also translated an annotated version of 1001 Arabian Nights with Paulo Lemos Horta as Editor. Horta is a professor of literature and creative writing, and the author of Marvellous Thieves: Secret Authors of Arabian Nights. ​I cannot wait to explore both of them. 
​

Dear Friends and Readers: 

2021 was a year of tremendous, surprising growth for me professionally and personally. I was struck at the variety of new, unplanned experiences. I'm grateful for each of them in their own way, because I learned more about myself, friends, and family members in deeper ways.

Some moments that come to mind include my departure from an ed-tech startup I helped grow for nearly four years and decision to pursue e-commerce growth work, observing cultural differences and dating expectations play out in a relationship, and completing a full year of therapy with a licensed councilor.

In 2021, I also completed an online Executive MBA, thankfully recovered from the Covid-19 Delta variant (Zinc and Vitamin D supplements help), was able to attend the last lecture of one of my philosophical heroes, celebrated with my sister and new brother-in-law at their wedding, visited my family for Christmas and New Years, wrote more fiction in 2021 than in the previous three years combined, and, of course, treasured so many (new) books along the way. 

Below are my ten favorite reads in 2021. Some fiction. Some nonfiction. All left their mark on me. I hope some speak to you too. A special thank-you to actor Steven Schub for lunch and his recommendation to explore #10, Panagiota Hatzis for encouraging me to take yet another personality test and delve into #9, as well as Adam Edmonsond for a series of discussions on #2 that at this point have spanned multiple years and eggs Benedict brunches. 

Wishing you all a healthy, wealthy, and wise 2022. 


​Jon 

P.S. Here are my Top 10 roundups from 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, and 2015. 

P.P.S. You can subscribe to the Reading List for even more. Each month, I'll email you 3-6 books that I absolutely couldn't put down—usually a mix of fiction and nonfiction. I try to steer clear of bestseller (fake) lists, and instead explore authors who challenge my worldview, enchant me through language, and model how to act more effectively and nobly.

Hardcover | 516 Pages

I have a friend and actor in Hollywood who recommended this novel to me years ago. We share a love for Ayn Rand's novels, and Kay Nolte Smith the author of this one, I learned, was for a time at least a close friend of hers. A Tale of the Wind follows a dwarf actor struggling to make his mark on the Parisian theatre, overcoming prejudice, poverty, and political unrest. Apparently, Peter Dinklage, who played Tyrion Lannister on HBO's The Game of Thrones, loves this novel too and is trying to turn it into a mini-series. Fingers crossed! 

What I appreciated about A Tale of the Wind  was the world-building of 1820-1860 Paris. It felt alive with color and culture: the working-class neighborhoods, the aspiring-artist undergrounds, the cultural and political revolution in response to the upper class privilege. I think it was achieved in large part to the author's zooming-in on small details. Nolte Smith's brevity of language is crisp and clear, bridging the complex emotional tones of the characters and scenes with just a few words: "a stiff nod", "The kindness was cold water that shocked Jeanne's mind back to life...", "The cat mewed, protesting the increased pressure on his head.", "The shopkeeper's brow rose in a moon of amusement." 

If you're looking for a magnanimous central character, strong and interesting female characters, and a ticket back to a both sunlit and shadowy Paris with winds of change stirring, try A Tale of the Wind.

Hardcover | Audible
304 pages | 11 hours

You've likely heard of The Five Love Languages (Words of Affirmation, Touch, Acts of Service, Gifts, Quality Time), but have you ever heard of The Five Voices? They are Creative, Nurturer, Guardian, Connector, and Pioneer. These archetypes I have found firsthand, are super helpful lenses to see yourself and others through. Test results show that my primary Voice is Guardian and my smallest, or 'nemesis' voice, is Connector.

The core premise, much like Five Love Languages, is that people often want to communicate and be communicated to in different ways, and different voices value different things. For instance, Guardians have a reverence for order and traditions. They steward money entrusted to them with a great sense of responsibility. Nurturers are focused on people's health around them and team dynamics and inter-personal relationships. By knowing your dominant voice and how the other voices fall in priority for you, can give self-awareness and help one communicate more effectively with those who have different voices. 

I'm reminded of the ancient Greek's pantheon of gods—Ares, the god of war, Athena the goddess of wisdom, Nike the goddess of victory, Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Their creators deified human emotions to make sense of themselves and others. I think that is a very sophisticated way of mapping one's inner landscape. In this modern era, maybe more now than ever, humans have a pantheon of personalities, emotions, and influencers inside our minds. And I'm grateful for a bit more insight from The Five Voices.

Paperback | Audible
300 pages | 11.3 hours
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"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation," Thoreau wrote in 1845 at Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts. And some pages later, "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn that it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." I first came upon these words in high school via a movie day of Dead Poet's Society. The existentialist teacher Mr. Keating, played by Robin Williams, has 
his students read Thoreau's work. These quotes have haunted me since. A beautiful cover by Vintage Classics in a local indie bookshop was enough to finally tip me over the edge (14 years post high school) and read Walden and Civil Disobedience.

Thoreau was twenty-eight years old when he went into a two-years-long exile. He built a cabin and labored with his own hands to feed and cloth himself. I really appreciated this part-memoir, part-treatise on living well. He has quiet, yet strong opinions on life and luxury; he feared in 1845 that too many men had "forged their own golden or silver fetters" and were not truly free nor were they happy. "Renew yourself completely each day; do it, again and again, and forever again," he writes. Throughout Walden he summons parables from the far east and western antiquity, as well as blending his own thoughts on the health of solitude and trips into nature, the value of house-warming rituals,  prudent spending, the importance of  reading ;) — "How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book?" — and the dangers of modern jobs — "Man has become the tools of their tools."

​If you're looking for some brother books to Walden, try One Man's Wilderness by Dick Proenneke, The Life and Autobiography of Frederick Douglass, and the stoic Epictetus's Discourses, all of which I've read and recommended before. If you want videos on self-reliance and off-grid living, check out My Self Reliance on YouTube. This guy builds cabins, saunas, and outdoor kitchens mostly by hand; he hunts, foragers and gardens, and plays fetch with his golden retriever in northern Ontario.

Paperback | Audible
624 pages | 22 hours

"The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself." — Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
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Hardcover | Audible
432 pages | 14 hours

"Order is explored territory. We are in order when the actions we deem appropriate produce the results we aim at...Chaos is anomaly, novelty, unpredictability, transformation, disruption, and all too often descent...Sometimes it reveals itself gently...other times the unexpected makes itself known terribly." — Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order
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Dr. Jordan B. Peterson is a psychologist who has "taught mythology to doctors...consulted for the UN Secretary General...helped his clinical clients manage depression...served as an advisor to senior partners of major law firms..." and published more than one hundred scientific papers on personality development. His first book, Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief, explores the psychology of religion and the universal values contained in our collective, ancient myths. 

He's exploded into an online sensation as a part of The Intellectual Dark Web, as a sort of pre-eminent father figure, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, has written a second unconventionally inspiring and instructive manual for dealing with career, romance, family, and personal meaning. I've found a tremendous amount of practical insights from his analysis of biblical and archetypal stories, his mining of history to courageously look at mankind in its worst moments, and his synthesizing of biological and psychological research to understand how societies fail and function. Because of Peterson, I'm not as lazy, messy, bitter, resentful, angry, and pitiful. I see the implications for such chaos a bit more clearly. I hope others begin to help themselves too.

If you're interested in videos instead, try these: 

YOUTUBE 

• The Biblical Lecture Series — 12 lectures (2 hrs per) on key stories found in Genesis and Exodus. 
• The Death and Resurrection of Christ — a compilation of talks on the metaphorical truths of the story of Christ
• Maps of Meaning — 12 lectures (2 hrs per) on key aspects of religious and mythic narratives, from Pinocchio and St. Bernard to Babel and Buddha

GUEST APPEARANCES

• Jocko Podcast, Episode 98
• Jocko Podcast, Episode 112
• Jocko Podcast, Episode 155
• ​Joe Rogan Podcast, Episode 877
• Joe Rogan Podcast, Episode 1070
• Joe Rogan Podcast, Episode 1208
• Joe Rogan Podcast, Episode 1139​

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Paperback | Audible
280 pages | 8 hours

“Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century:
Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others;
Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected;
Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it;
Refusing to set aside trivial preferences;
Neglecting development and refinement of the mind;
Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.” 

- Marcus Tullius Cicero, circa 40 B.C.
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Marcus Tulius Cicero (106-43 B.C.) was a lawyer, philosopher, statesman, and staunch defender of the Roman republic. In his time, he was celebrated as a master orator and has influenced many generations since with his two most famous philosophical treatises, On Duties and On Old Age.

On Duties
With respect to the first On Duties he is addressing much of it to his own son, something I find so refreshing and grounding—the application of philosophical ideas  to everyday living. In it, he is trying to find a rule or code of ethics that integrates the stoic idea of "living consistently with nature," and, Cicero believes, continue Socrates' own tradition of cursing men who sought to parse the good from 'the advantageous' (or practical). 

He concludes that "Every man must bear his own misfortunes rather than remedy them by damaging someone else," to not destroy the "fellowship" of mankind and "nature's creation," which is "the link that unites every human being with every other." 

On Old Age
Written in Cicero's declining years, he explores the often-overlooked silver linings to aging: giving attention to children and the future generations more than self, learning to be in nature and farm without as much sexual lusting and distractions—"He plants trees for the use of another age." I really appreciated the perennial relevance to this treatise and the spirit of optimism in the face of declining health. This is a noble act of knowing and celebrating what a person can control and what one cannot.  
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"With the strength of his spiritual sight and insight the distance, and as  it were the space, around man continually expands: his world grows deeper, ever new stars, ever new images and enigmas come into view." — Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
​

I really enjoyed my first read of Nietzsche, a German philosopher who holds no punches back. Beyond Good and Evil is formatted as a series of numbered essays, paragraphs, and even tweet-sized maxims, from 1-300. This format helped me to better recall his views since he is traveling around topics a lot: music and art, European culture, Christianity, ancient philosophers including the stoics, loneliness, a Superman's will to power, and much more.  

I took nearly 30 pages of notes and quotes, quite a bit for me, and at the end summary, wrote simply "powerful and fascinating." Nietzsche's Superman is one questing with unquenchable, noble "will to power" to defeat his base, common attributes—and those, it seems, of others. This "will to power" is core to what he calls a "master morality," and largely unknown by the common man, who collectively follow a "slave morality." At its core, the slave morality has a concept of a God, and also 'baptized truths' such as Kant's categorical imperative and the works of Spinoza that actually perpetuate self-tyranny.

With respect to the title of the work, Nietzsche is laying out an indictment of the then-current morality of 1800's Europe as well as a declaration of freedom for the Superman, who alone can transcend 'Good and Evil' (as the world sees those concepts) in order to manifest his true potential. Since reading it, I've started worshipping myself. Kidding. But I did pick up Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and plan to read many of his other works. If you have recommendations, please let me know. I'd appreciate it so much. This guy is intriguing, but complex. 

Atlas Shrugged Hardcover | The Fountainhead Hardcover
1182 Pages | 752 Pages

"But you see...I have, let’s say, sixty years to live. Most of that time will be spent working. I’ve chosen the work I want to do. If I find no joy in it, then I’m only condemning myself to sixty years of torture. And I can find the joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me. But the best is a matter of standards—and I set my own standards. I inherit nothing. I stand at the end of no tradition. I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of one.” ― Howard Roark, The Fountainhead
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Atlas Shrugged
57 hours. That's how long the Audible version of Ayn Rand's magnum opus is from the iconic, thematic opening line "Who is John Galt?" to the 600,000+ word answer's final scene. The journey was familiar and nostalgic, but also fascinating and new for me. I had read Atlas Shrugged twice cover to cover before, once eleven years ago and then again three years later and so I felt overdue for a revisit to a novel and its creator who has meant so much to me over the years and shaped my world view. 

In particular, I appreciated the character of Henry Rearden more, and his internal struggle to integrate the virtues of his productive activities with those of his romantic needs. I found myself noticing Rand's use of financial concepts (currency, bankruptcy, gold, account overdrawn, etc.) with moral evaluations and value judgements, something I had only vaguely noticed before. I fell in love again with the end of Part II, in which Dagny pilots a plane to pursue a mysterious man's own aircraft over the Rocky Mountains. And much more. 

Rand's heroes—both their actions and their speeches throughout—continue to inspire me and stir up many conversations in my own mind or with myself and others about philosophy, ethics, art, politics, and American culture. 
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The Fountainhead 
When I first read The Fountainhead in college I remember feeling relieved, but not because I saw a vision of the ideal, as its author wanted. At the time, I didn't understand Howard Roark's seemingly suicidal commitment to his principles. In fact, my relief came when I read the opening scene of Chapter 1, Part IV, in which a young boy “riding his bicycle down a forgotten trail...wanted to decide whether life was worth living.” Like him I “didn’t know that this was the question in [my] mind” — and had been for as far back as I could remember.

Growing up, I felt at times that much of life was some form of damnation to a "quarry," one unchosen and unwanted, but a necessary consequence of dreaming. I associated more with Dominique Francon and Gail Wynand than the protagonist. But Roark’s integrity to his principles and conscious understanding of why his dreams were actually his deliverance was the feast of courage I’d been starving to see. I’m still eating eleven years later.

In 2021, I listened to it on Audible and really enjoyed the experience. Roark's intransigent journey to design and build by his own standards, and overcoming obstacles and temptations to conform, was renewed by the emotionally performed dialogue and exposition. 
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The Incerto Series | Audiobook
2000 Pages | 60+ hours

“The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary." 
​— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes
​

"My principal activity is to tease those who take themselves and the quality of their knowledge too seriously," writes Nassim Nicholas Taleb in the Introduction to Fooled By Randomness, his first work in the Incerto series. It includes such bestsellers as The Black Swan and Anti-Fragile, and Skin in the Game. As a financial investor for over two decades, Taleb's books combine philosophy, mathematics, and probability and applies them to practical problems. 

Themes in NNT's work include his distrust for experts, a kind of rough, Roman virtue that necessitates calling out pseudo-experts and institutions, his fascination with stoic philosophers, especially Epictetus, and his focus on correcting psychological biases. One such bias is Survivorship Bias, which scientific research and development is filled with. Research that yields no results does not go to print. However, in truth there may be great information in the fact that nothing took place. 

A close friend has been recommending Nassim Nicholas Taleb to me for years, and I was so glad to have finally encountered him. His iconoclastic, moral-toned, yet humorous exploration of self-knowledge and it's slippery nature was so refreshing. 

The Bed of Procrustes
​Procrustes was a villain from Greek myths who abducted travelers into his home and had them lay in a bed. The short ones were painfully stretched to fit the bed; those too long were cut down to size. “…we humans, facing limits of knowledge, and things we do not observe, the unseen and the unknown, resolve the tension by squeezing life and the world into crisp commoditized ideas, reductive categories, specific vocabularies, and prepackaged narratives, which, on the occasion has explosive consequences…” as an example, “few realize that we are changing the brains of school children through medication in order to make them adjust to the curriculum, rather than the reverse.” I appreciate Nassim Taleb’s short book of aphorisms and his aim to undo some Procrustean damage by questioning common but unnatural ideas. Too many to list here, but one I've thought of a lot lately: “The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary." 

The Black Swan
"The Black Swan is about epistemic limitations, then, from this definition, we can see that it is not about some objectively defined phenomenon, like rain or a car crash—it is simply something that was not expected by a particular observer." What I take from this book is the importance, but difficulty of knowing what you do not know, and the virtue of taking steps to reduce your vulnerabilities to fatal risks. 

Skin In the Game
Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Silver Rule: “do not treat others the way you would not like to be treated.” Expressed “Via Negativa” because we know what is wrong with more clarity than what is right, and that knowledge grows by subtraction too. Relatedly, it's easier to know something is wrong than to find the solution. This book has four big topics: 1. uncertainty and the reliability of knowledge 2. symmetry in human affairs 3. information sharing in transactions and 4. rationality in complex systems and the real world. 
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"That's what she was, Joanna felt suddenly. That's what they all were, all the Stepford Wives: actresses in commercials, pleased with detergent and floor wax, with cleaners, shampoos, and deodorants. Pretty actresses, big in the bosom but small in the talent, playing suburban housewives unconvincingly, too nicey-nice to be real." — Ira Levin, The Stepford Wives
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Ira Levin is a rare bird, an author whose novels and plays satirize, thrill, and introspect with a brevity that is almost unparalleled. I am in awe of his short, crisp, direct declarative statements that advance the four-month-long story of Joanna moving with her family into Stepford. His transitions are seamless, hidden in plain sight: "She was about a third of the way down the stairs going by foot-feel." His descriptions are not just visual but sensual: "A typewriter peck-peck-pecked from the back." And the creepy suburban life is so on point you feel it all right alongside Joanna with each weird, escalating encounter. 

If you're looking for a single-afternoon-sized atmospheric thriller, The Stepford Wives is the perfect one to pick up. And if you're looking for a play and movie of the same, try Levin's Deathtrap. It is the longest running Broadway play in history. The film version is excellent too and stars Michael Caine and Christopher Reeves. 

Picking just ten books is a tough task. There were just so many spectacular stories that I stumbled upon, devoured, reread, and emphatically recommended in 2021. Which is why I wanted to share another dozen or so below. Whether you pick up one or all of them, from above or below, now or in the future, I hope that they give you as much inspiration and instruction as they have given me! 

1. The Monk in the Garden: The Lost and Found Genius of Gregor Mandel, the Father of Genetics by Robin Marantz Henig. Remember high school biology class about the guy who grew different pea pods and discovered recessive and dominant traits? This is his story. The parallels between his pea pod breeding and A/B testing Facebook ads are fascinating (I work in digital marketing). 

2. Watership Down by Richard Adams. I love anthropomorphic fiction. The friendship of the rabbits Bigwig and Hazel, the terrifying danger of a black cat in the night or a group of men with a bulldozer, the animals' gathering and telling of old stories to face the storm outside, the longing for a distant dream and the discipline to reach it, the mysteries of death and the afterlife—all these stitch together to form an odyssey of rabbits that is so human. 

3. Dune by Frank Herbert. Cracked this open after watching the new Dune movie series with Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya. I appreciated the second-half of the book too and can't wait to see a visual translation of the story's conclusion. 

4. The Rise of America: Remaking the World Order by Marin Katusa. There's a seemingly endless wave of anxiety and cynicism about America's future. It seems to have been going on for twenty years, since 9/11. But I really enjoyed this alternate, reasoned perspective on why America may not just weather the economic, crypto, environmental, and foreign policy issues but excel. Marin Katusa is a Canadian author and independent investor. He makes some very interesting predictions about the US in the next 10-20 years.  

5. The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think by Jennifer Ackerman. There are 400 billion birds on earth. That's 80 per human. And yet, for as resourceful and resilient as the feathered species are, author and "bird nerd" Jennifer Ackerman contends we still know very little about—and worse, largely dismiss—them. Birds make tools. They count. They imitate behaviors of other birds and humans. They invent new solutions to old problems. They remember where they put things. They can anticipate and guard against storms. They exploit opportunities. They teach their hatchlings, and much more.

6. The Fourth Turning by William Strauss and Neil Howe. The premise of this book is that history moves in four cycles, typically 20-25 years (one generation). First comes a High, a period of "confident expansion" as a new order takes root after the old world is swept away. Second: an Awakening, "a time of spiritual exploration and rebellion" against the new order. Third: Unraveling, "an increasingly troubled era in which individualism triumphs over crumbling institutions". Last: Crisis, a.k.a the Fourth Turning, "when society passes through a great and perilous gate in history." I found the examples very compelling, and also was haunted by an idea I uncovered years earlier held by Thomas Jefferson, in which he wondered whether the U.S. Constitution should have a generational expiration date. This would require civic involvement and a new Constitution to be written, ratified, and upheld with real skin in the game by young and old citizens alike. 

7. The Light Ages: The Surprising Story of Medieval Sciences by Seb Falk. An interesting history of some breakthroughs in medieval science: alchemy and early chemistry, physics and astronomy, clocks/time, mathematics, architecture, and more...

8. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. Young adult fantasy and children's stories are still some of my favorite. A friend recommended I give LWW a shot and I'm so glad I did. The Christian parable was funny, scary, fantastical, redeeming and a fast flight through the illustrated story. 

9. Dare to Lead by Brene Brown. I discovered Brene Brown's Daring Greatly years ago via Chase Jarvis Live and continue to appreciate her perspective on communication in the workplace, resolution in relationships, and improvoing on self-awareness through introspection. 

10. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. A murder mystery set in 14th-century England. Deeper, it's a philosophical battle between reason and faith. Brother William of Baskerville's logical process leads him to discover the truths of the murders, while the Catholic priests' faith leads them to blind obedience. Nassim Taleb is also a big fan of Eco's anti-library concept, which I find interesting. 

11. The 50th Law by 50 Cent and Robert Greene. I loved this part-bio, part-instruction manual on how to overcome fear in life and business. ​“Having a brush with death, or being reminded in a dramatic way of the shortness of our lives, can have a positive, therapeutic effect. Our days are numbered and so it is best to make every moment count, to have a sense of urgency about life."

12. The Spy Who Loved Me and On Her Majesty's Secret Service by Ian Fleming. Spy is the only first-person James Bond adventure, and it's told from the perspective of his lover, Vivienne Michel. I loved the 3-part structure: Me, Them, Him. 10 pages per chapter in Part 1. By 60 pages in, we know why Vivienne's come to Dreamy Pines, NY and whom she's run away from—two men who used her. The cathartic  journey with Bond against a pair of mafioso is fast and fierce. Bond helps her overcome her fears to fight and not flee anymore. 

13. The Woman of Samaria and Don Juan, two plays by Edmond Rostand. One motif in Rostand's plays is a deep reverence for people who act honorably, yet are often overlooked. The Woman of Samaria reimagines the biblical tale of a dishonored woman who must convince the unfriendly townsfolk to follow her to Jacob's well and see Christ with their own eyes. Second, Don Juan, which reimagines the archetypal seducer's descent toward Hell on a long staircase. A White Shade  shows our anti-hero the wreckage he has caused so many women with his sexual conquests. This Shade is in fact the spirit of such heartbroken woman. She acts out of love and forgiveness in order to try and  redeem him before he reaches the end of the staircase and enters Hell for eternity. 

14. Mythos by Stephen Fry. During California's lockdowns, I returned to acrylic painting, something I enjoyed a lot growing up. In 2021, I spent many a Sunday afternoon or a few hours after work painting and listening to the audible version of Stephen Fry's Mythos. I have loved re-reading Edith Hamilton's Mythology since high school, but hearing Stephen Fry's rendition of the Greek gods, heroes, and antagonists was a dream. 

15. ​The Little Bitcoin Book: Why Bitcoin Matters for Your Freedom, Finances, and Future. This 100-page, multi-authored booklet is a kind of primer on Bitcoin, highlighting various benefits: financial, cultural, personal, and political. 

16. The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook by Niall Ferguson. A dense book navigating time and space: from the modern social media platforms on all of our phones to fighting in Vietnamese jungles, creating the Italian renaissance with polymath interests, building a decentralized British empire in a then-broken world, and so much more. At the book's core I think is the showcasing of networks as inherent unstable and often causing a slow or sudden destruction of hierarchies. The scope of this book is impressive, though I would have liked a stronger conclusion of learnings from the historical examples.
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