2015 is over and 2016 is here. Happy New Year! Following the tradition, this post lists the books that I read in 2015. I managed to read 12 books on various topics from Sci-Fi to economics and personal finance.
Without further ado, here’s the list:
The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
The Currents of Space
The Stars, Like Dust
The Richest Man in Babylon
Next Round's On Me: How-to Achieve Financial Freedom in Your 20s
Pebble in the Sky
The Martian
Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics
Prelude to Foundation
Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone
Forward the Foundation
The E-Myth Revisited
While all those twelve books are wonderful, there are two that really stand out:
Michael Gerber’s “The E-Myth Revisited” is probably the most brilliant business book I’ve ever read. This book was so good that I will write a full blog post about it in the next weeks. For now, I’m going to say that this book is about business, but especially the first part of the book is applicable to any job you do. If you see your job as a franchise, you’ll realize that you can work on that business rather than in that business and each of us has 3 personas in us (entrepreneur, manager, and technician) that fight all the time to take control of what you do. Learning how to balance the 3 personas is the key to producing meaningful results and not burning out.
Richard Thaler’s “Misbehaving” is a wonderful introduction to behavioral economics. I had the honor of meeting Mr. Thaler while he was doing the book tour in Seattle. He uses humor and real life cases to exemplify how theory and practice in economics should be in theory the same, but in practice they’re different. The book explains how consumers behave in an irrational way even when all the information is available out there. One classic example is the attractiveness of an item marked “50% off” in a store, even when you don’t need it. After reading this book, you’ll think twice about everything that you see as “bargain”.
The first book that I’m reading in 2016 is Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People”. I’m only 3 chapters in but this book is brilliant. I like to take notes about the books that I read. For this book, I feel that everything in it should be included in the notes. Once I’m done with it, I’ll come back to it regularly:
Want more book recommendations? See my previous reading lists: 2014, 2013, 2012.