Scott’s 2020 Year-End Book Reviews
By: Scott Collins
Tags: Book Recommendations, Books, Book Review

I don’t need to tell anyone that this year was hard. I found that a lot of things I previously found pleasure in seemed to lose a bit of their luster, reading was among these things. It took more force of will to keep up with my past goal to read at least 10 pages a day. My mind was often preoccupied with other thoughts, which then required increasing effort to focus and retain what I was reading. The extra effort to write out my thoughts for each book at times loomed as a burden that in other years wouldn’t have garnered a second thought. But it turned out that pushing through ended up being a gift, as I got to process and relive so many of these fantastic books. And, at a minimum, I’ll be glad to have this written record long after this year recedes, and a new (hopefully) better year takes its place. With that, below is my 2020 book summaries.

Pastoralia — by George Saunders — Saunders is brilliant. It’s that simple. Lincoln in the Bardo last year was among my favorite books — and although Pastoralia was wildly different it was still incredible. This collection of short stories were dark, witty, and downright weird. Every story is different, but they are all poignantly threaded with desperate, lonely, and out-of-touch characters. If you could somehow combine cynicism with sincerity the output would be these stories. Each character is an exaggerated amalgam of characteristics many people share but few acknowledge in themselves. It begs deeper introspection as you laugh and cringe as each story unfolds.

All The King’s Men — by Robert Penn Warren — This book was complex, deep, and at times pedantic. At face value it’s about politics, and loosely relates to the life of Huey Long (a fascinating character in his own right). However, politics is just a veneer for Warren to muse about life, unmet desires, dreams, human nature, love, infidelity, selfishness and immaturity, deceit, misdirection, piousness, and death. Warren wrestles with the relentless march of time and each character’s personal response to it. We are a fusion of the time we live, decisions we make, friends we keep, and upbringing we receive. But there are also junctions in life that alter our course permanently, and sometimes we don’t know something is a threshold until we’ve already crossed. As I read this book I kept feeling like it wasn’t written for me, or at least not yet. I haven’t experienced enough life to truly appreciate what Warren was teaching. It’s like someone telling you the answers to a test for a class you’re not in…it sounds right, it’s probably worth knowing, but it’s largely lost on you. I’ll pick this book up again, maybe in another decade, and I am sure I’ll synthesize it differently, and appreciate it all the more.

Zero to One — by Peter Thiel — I want badly to find a business book that knocks my socks off. I felt like this could finally be the one. Peter Thiel is as qualified as anyone to write a great book on business, but again I was left wanting. Maybe I’ve been spoiled, over the years at Amazon, surrounded by incredibly business savvy colleagues who share insights and live out best practices they’ve gleaned from their careers and studies. Maybe I just need to lower my standards. A few small takeaways I liked: (1) In order to have a truly revolutionary idea, you need to be able to offer at least a 10x improvement. This is hard, so most ideas are just step changes and derivatives. (2) When angel investing, make sure one investment you make is capable of making back all of the money in your fund. (3) Founding CEOs should never take a salary over $150k — everything else should be claimed from gains to keep them motivated.

The Brothers Karamazov — by Fyodor Dostoyevsky — I am glad to have finally read this. It’s on a list of books that I’ve been intimidated by for years. I have been knocking off at least one of these books in March of each year (sort of a nerds version of March Madness). This book is so dense I could only read ~25 pages in a sitting, and then I had to give my brain a rest. Despite the challenge, I loved this book. I loved this book because it’s a lens into humanity, it’s a longitudinal study of life, a harbinger of sorts. The Karamazov clan embodies the beauty and vice that permeates each one of us. Alyosha, the youngest brother is a delicate character, a foil for his cast of brothers and father. Alyosha is profoundly religious and possesses a child-like gentleness, selflessness, naivete, and wonderment — and seems to be arrested in this state. But, as life moves forward these qualities that Alyosha keeps, many others begin to trade. There is pressure for conformity, for “enlightenment”, and a higher tolerance for cynicism. Here we find Ivan and Smerdyakov. They represent opposite ends of the same spectrum, Ivan, on one end, is able to hold opposing beliefs in tension, but is utterly unhappy, while Smerdyakov tries to live out these postmodern beliefs and ends up equally wrecked. Through both, we find out how untenable this lifestyle is. Ideas and concepts and philosophies are unsatisfying, the uncertainty and lack of an anchor in “truth” leaves people desiring alternatives, especially as we recognize how evanescent life is. This leads us to the final alternative, or the evolution of self. Here we find the oldest brother Dimitri, and his father Fyodor. At first pass, there is something romantic about Dimitri’s hedonism. It is powerful, unchecked, dynamic, it is exciting, adventurous; but again we find this lifestyle a merciless master. We’ve already seen where it leads, Fydor has offered a glimpse into the future of Dimitri’s selfish living, and it’s not appealing. I love that Dostoyevsky doesn’t tell us what to think, this is not didactic. He lets us feel these different realities for ourselves via his unmatched character development. As a result, we can see the “Alyosha” and “Fyodor” within each of us, and within our society, leaving us to choose which type of life we want to live.

Gilead — by Marilyn Robinson — Gilead is sentimental but not mawkish. It’s casual but not sloppy. It’s surprisingly deep without being heavy. It’s a letter to a son, a reflection of life, religion, and dogma, disappointment, and family. Robinson’s writing style is rhythmic and soothing, it’s not hard to get lost in the story. There’s an intentionality even as John Ames “rambles.” It made me curious what kind of wisdom I will have collected as my life draws to a close, what kind of things I’ll be proud of, disappointed in, what aspects of my family and it’s history would feel worthy to put to paper. Gilead was beautiful and inspiring. It’s on the read again and again and again list.

Super Human: The Bulletproof Plan to Age Backward and Maybe Even Live Forever — by Dave Asprey — Cheesy title, but possibly one of the most enlightening books I’ve read this year. Asprey’s premise is simple: we are at a point in our understanding of biochemistry that, with the right choices, complemented by the right treatments and supplements — -and a little bit of luck — we could easily live into our 100s. He doesn’t labor the science but also doesn’t gloss over it. Most of his ideas trend a lot closer to biohacking than FDA-approved treatment, but it doesn’t lack practicality. Like compounding interest, small decisions we make intentionally or unintentionally through our environment culminate in contributing to one of the four killers: Alzheimer’s, Cancer, Diabetes, and Cardiovascular disease. What resonated with me most was the idea to protect your body fiercely at the youngest age you can, because it’s much easier to stave off health issues then reverse their course. While he talks about novel treatments, and emerging supplements, the main things you can do are actually well known. For me this looks like cutting carbs significantly (but not completely), removing processed sugars (read: attempting), eating more veggies and grass-fed meat (not grilled or fried, boo), sleeping more, and exercising regularly. I’m excited to see what happens over the next decade as some of these lesser-known procedures and supplements move down market.

Une mort très douce — by Simone de Beauvoir — As I attempt to parse my thoughts on this book, I’m pulled in a few different directions, and I think that’s because although this book was short, it was also multidimensional. On the first dimension, de Beauvoir eloquently documents and reflects on the final days of her mother’s life as she passes away from stomach cancer. The hospital, the doctors, the treatment, the psychological toll of watching someone you love waste away, while they hold onto hope for a miracle. At face value, this should be the saddest aspect of the book, but it’s not. In the second dimension, de Beauvoir processes the evolution of her relationship with her mother. “Nobody existed less for me: none existed more. As a child I had loved it dearly; as an adolescent it had filled me with an uneasy repulsion: all of this is perfectly in the ordinary course of things and it seemed reasonable to me that her body should retain its dual nature, that it should be both a repugnant and holy — a taboo.” de Beauvoir was so different from her mother, holding opposing ideals in almost every conceivable way, which wrought their relationship with perpetual tension. But as it turns out, the seed of de Beauvoir’s opposition wasn’t contrarianism; rather it was a reaction to seeing the hand her mother was dealt, and desire to find a different one for herself. This leads to the third dimension, her mother’s life and marriage. Her mother was repressed by the church and her family growing up, faithfully serving during a lopsided and unfaithful marriage, despite herself. “Thinking against oneself bears fruit, but with my mother it was another question again — she lived against herself. She had appetites in plenty: she spent all her strength in pressing them and she underwent this denial in anger. In her childhood her body, her heart and her mind had been squeezed into an armour of principle and prohibitions. She had been taught to pull the laces hard and tighten herself. A full blooded, spirited woman lived inside her, but a stranger to herself deformed and mutilated.” And as it turns out, this third dimension proves to be the most sad.

Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd — by Youngme Moon — This is a business book that I somewhat enjoyed — not mind blowing, but there were some thought-provoking points. Furthermore, Moon’s writing is strong, she has an original voice, and a lightweight fun flow. The premise is pretty simple: as competitors continually focus on resolving the differences between each other they lose sight of what makes them unique, and consumers get an increasingly homogenous array of products. Brands that “escape the herd” are ones that have the conviction of vision. To give customers something that they didn’t ask for, they make their products so good that when customers experience them it just feels right, like it should have existed all along. Easier said than done, but it’s an important call to try to think originally — it’s a race to the uninspiring bottom if you don’t.

Difficult Loves — by Italo Calvino — My words feel deficient in attempting to convey how crisp, unique, and astute Calvino is. It’s common for me to outline a couple of lines in a book that I feel are composed noticeably better than the rest of writing I encounter. With Difficult Loves it felt like I was underlining the whole book. Each story was intensely satisfying, but also left me desiring for just one more word. Except one more word would have been out of place, jeopardizing the symphony Calvino composed. Every word struck the perfect note, every sentence the perfect stanza. It’s like listening to Malhar’s Symphony №9 — from the beginning you’re captured, in the middle of the piece you recognize you’re experiencing something set apart, and at the end you are suspended in emotion…you know you’ve experienced something that has, and will continue to stand the test of time. (Okay that was dramatic…but Calvino’s writing is truly exceptional.)

Selected Political Writings — by Thomas Aquinas — I struggled to find the words when describing Calvino, but I just plain struggled with Aquinas. I decided to start with a selection (of the selection) and read: On Principles of Nature, On Being and Essence, Proof of God’s Existence Summa Contra Gentiles, and Definition of Soul on Aristotle’s De anima. These were challenging, dense, and confusing for the untrained philosopher like me. Even though each page took close to ten minutes to get through, I did enjoy it and appreciate what aspects I understood. I like Aquinas because he’s not emotional, or overly religious, he is dogmatic…in the good way. There aren’t clear swim lanes between “philosophy” and “theology” to Aquinas; they were largely the same as he sought truth through proofs. Aquinas wasn’t afraid to stand on the shoulders of “a pagen” (Aristotle), expounding on the foundation already laid before him. If Aquinas has anything to say on the subject, truth and revelation isn’t reserved for Christians, and God is not confined to the definitions we’ve assigned him. Ultimately, I’d like to spend more time improving my philosophy chops, and then revisit this to further appreciate the brilliance of Aquinas.

Circe — by Madeline Miller — This is what I call an “airport book” — yes I know that is snobby, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Circe commands your attention, but not necessarily your mind, and honestly, after Aquinas, it was just what I needed. Greek mythology is a deep, rich well of content to pull from, and Miller effortlessly expands the narrative of Circe, adds new life to Daedalus, and humanizes the exploits and persona of Odysseus. Miller employs a unique perspective of the immortal, the pettiness of gods, and ultimately paints a beautiful case for growing old. True love is something even gods are envious of; and limiting time together forces one to appreciate and respect what time you do get with your love. Circe made me want to finally pick up and work through Homer’s Odyssey.

Between the World and Me — by Ta-Nehisi Coates — This book is not meant as a balm for white guilt, the opposite — it is a flagrant assault on the “the American dream” that’s been propagated on the backs of minorities. This is an assault on a system that has been set up to psychologically and physiologically repress blacks. Written as a letter to his son, Coates makes it clear that protecting his body is only so much within his control. I haven’t said much during the BLM movement, I’ve tried to do more listening and observing, reserving the platform for those with something meaningful to say. It’s one thing to learn — it’s another to feel. Coates helps you feel. And while I am sure what I felt is only a microscopic portion of what it’s like to be black in America, it was enough to make me distraught.

Where Buddhism Meets Neuroscience: Conversations with the Dalai Lama on the Spiritual and Scientific Views of Our Minds — by Dalai Lama. This had so much potential as a fascinating read, but it didn’t quite live up to expectations for a few reasons. First it’s 30 years old, having cutting edge neuro-scientists discuss breakthroughs in the 80s that are now commonplace knowledge took away from the excitement. The other major issue is that Buddhism and Western thinking are different to their very cores, and when you try to have discourse without each (mostly the Western side) having at least a foundational knowledge of the other it creates less opportunity for meaningful discussion. That said, I enjoyed reading how the Dalai Lama responded to the ideas of consciousness, dreaming, and love. And, in the final pages, after doing much more listening than talking, he makes a counterpoint to this “science only” narrative of consciousness that eloquently leaves the door open for something bigger.

Right Ho-Jeeves — by P.G. Wodehouse — This book was fun, and extraordinarily funny. As the book progresses obscure statements — and events that felt random and unanchored — snowball into funnier and funnier stories and events that make you feel like you are a part of an inside joke. I laughed out loud for the last fifty pages. Berturm (Bertie) is a young, posh Englishman who has very little sense and quite a bit of confidence. As he tries to remedy the issues of three different love lives he makes things progressively worse, leaving his much more intelligent Butler, Jeeves, to clean up the physical and emotional mess.

The Sparrow — by Mary Doria Russell — There is a lot to unpack with this one. I’ve waited weeks to write a review, hoping my thoughts would synthesize and order, but they haven’t. So I’ll say I thoroughly enjoyed The Sparrow start to finish. Sci-fi in the categorical sense but the focus was much more humanistic than scientific. Overtly religious but not zealous or dogmatic, the unique cast of characters, multiple subplots and sharp writing made me sorrowful when the book was finished.

The Warmth of Other Suns — by Isabel Wilkerson — One of the best books I’ve read in years. I absolutely love books like this. Well researched, comprehensive, longitudinal, and to top it off, impeccably written. Coats in Between The World and Me makes you feel racism through his pain with a poetic cadence that assaults your feelings and senses. Wilkerson employs a different technique: she humanizes the suffering and injustices of racism by recounting the lives of three individuals from birth to death as they grow up in the South and migrate North. The migration of blacks out of the South to the North is the largest in U.S. history and is barely discussed. The complexion of major cities like Chicago, Detroit, and even New York City drastically changed between 1900 and 1970. While the blacks leaving the South fared better than those who stayed and endured the Jim Crow South, their issues in the North were not null. They paid up to 3x the rent for worse accommodations than anyone else in the city. They were relegated to the worst jobs, forced into the tiny strips of undesirable portions of cities, and if they tried to move they were literally met with mobs. Unlike the Irish, Poles, and other European immigrants who arrived around the same time, the color of skin alone predestined many things. As the reader follows these three people from birth to the end of their lives you become attached. You feel their pains as they are turned away from jobs, shoved in tenement housing, caught in race riots, habitually and systematically repressed, and accosted verbally and physically. Despite all of the headwinds, they still progress forward and move upward. It’s hard to read through the litany of economic, political, xenophobic, and selfish human nature that has resulted in the issues this country faces today. These issues are deeply entrenched. But I am optimistic that they are reversible and that America can live up to the beautiful words of Emma Lazarus “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

High Output Management — by Andrew Grove — I am adding this to the list of business books that should have been a white paper. At times I was astonished by the similarities between a 1980s tech company and Amazon, and at other points this book showed its age. The best parts of the book are on people management, because as I’ve commented before I am not convinced humans have changed all that much in the last 5000 years — so it appears management advice doesn’t need to change too much either.

The Screwtape Letters — by C.S. Lewis — I loved the originality of this book. Framing ideals from the opposite perspective (e.g. a Jr. Demon learning how to win a soul) was a creative way to impart wisdom. He takes ideas that I’ve been taught since the earliest days of my childhood and breathes new meaning and life into them. Screwtape’s letters made me more mindful as I wondered what the report on my life would look like. It’s hard to go wrong with a C.S. Lewis book, and this book is no exception.

A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments — by David Foster Wallace — It’s almost a cliché to be enchanted by the wit, humor, and piercing intelligence of David Foster Wallace. Nevertheless, here we are. This book was as sardonic as the title would lead you to believe. Harpers magazine pays for David Foster Wallace to go on a seven-night cruise to simply write about the experience. His self-proclaimed “borderline agoraphobic nature” coupled with his self-effacing humor keeps the book light hearted and funny. His conscientious deconstruction of the absurdities found during a luxury cruise made the book downright hilarious. It wasn’t mean-spirited; it just shines a floodlight on the nature of luxury cruises and the type of people who gravitate towards them. The footnotes, the made up words, the repeated roasting of Frank Conroy (who also got paid to write about his experience on a cruise but chose an entirely different tack)…made this book a fun reprieve in days that COVID-19 — and the election season — made increasingly unpleasant.

Mark of the Lion Series — Books 1 and 2 (A Voice in the Wind, An Echo in the Darkness) by Francine Rivers. These are not the typical books I pick up, but it’s always good to venture outside the bounds from time to time. Despite my somewhat pretentious preconceptions about Francine Rivers, I will say declaratively that she is a gifted writer. Although she may cater to a different demographic than me, I see why her books are loved. Rivers has some of the most convincing and dynamic character development, which draws you in. And then her easy prose and her well-chosen plot keeps you turning the pages. A lot happens over ~1,000 pages, but one salient message landed: money, power, and beauty are not foundations for happiness, and excess in these do not create freedom. This may seem like a religious sentiment, but I am brought back by two quotes from two non-religious people that corroborate this idea — Jim Carey when he said “ I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer,” and David Foster Wallace when he said, “ There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship — be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles — is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you.”

Mr. Palomar — by Italo Calvino. It felt fitting to end this year with another book from the author I enjoyed the most. Mr. Palomar was both very different from Difficult Loves and incredibly similar. There is a heavy metaphysical element to Calivno’s writing, a crisp and exact nature which takes some time to adjust to reading. Mr. Palomar takes these qualities to the extreme. It’s a series of three-six page stories that follow Mr. Palomar as he observes and processes the world around him. I what appear to be trivial subjects — buying cheese, watching ravens, observing a sunset — Palomar zooms in closely, reducing subjects to tiny, hyper-specific observations that then expand into philosophical musings. For example:

Palomar as he stands in line waiting to order…

“Or else, or else: it is not a matter of choosing the right cheese, but of being chosen. There is a reciprocal relationship between cheese and customer: each cheese awaits it’s customer, poses as to attract him, with a firmness or a somewhat haughty graininess, or, on the contrary, by melting in submissive abandon.

There is a hint of complicity hovering in the air: the refinement of the taste buds and especially of the olfactory organs has its moments of weakness, of loss of class, when the cheeses on their platters seem to proffer themselves as if on the divians of a brothel. A perverse grin flickers in the satisfaction of debasing the object of one’s own gluttony with lowering nicknames: crottin, boule de moine, bouton de culotte.”

When it’s time to order…

“The elaborate and greedy order that he intended to make momentarily slips his mind; he stammers; he falls back on the most obvious, the most banal, the most advertised, as if the automatons of mass civilization were waiting only for this moment of uncertainty on his part in order to seize him again and have him at their mercy.”