2021: The Year In Books

As we wrap up 2021, my first full year remote working, I managed to read a whopping 54 books, an increase of 31 books over last year and my first year completing the 52 books in 52 weeks challenge.  I surpassed last year’s total in mid-June, passed my best years, 2015 and 2016, in late August, and completed book 52 with two weeks left in the year.  I read (or listened) to 18,670 pages, by far my highest total of all time and only the second time I’ve passed 10,000.

Of those books, 16 were non-fiction and, of the 36 novels, 10 were tied to a TV show, either as the source material or as a tie-in.  None of the books came out of my dwindling “to-read” drawer, with 43 e-books and 4 audiobooks.  For the first time since I was a kid, I got myself a library card, which helped me procure 14 of the books.

Just less than half of the books I read this year were by authors I have read before. The 31 authors that I read for the first this year were:

  • Tegan Quin
  • Sara Quin
  • Lucy Foley
  • Jenna Fischer
  • Matt Haig
  • Eric Nusbaum
  • Jon Taffer
  • Charlotte Douglas
  • Susan Kearney
  • Fredrik Backman
  • Jeff Pearlman
  • Minka Kent
  • Alan Cumming
  • Megan Goldin
  • Molly Bloom
  • Barack Obama
  • Ali Wong
  • Timothy Ferriss
  • Issa Rae
  • Walter Tevis
  • Tess Gerritson
  • Gary Braver
  • Andy Weir
  • Matthew Walker
  • James Clear
  • Grady Hendrix
  • Simon Sinek
  • Jason Fung
  • Julia Spiro
  • Jon Pessah
  • Ruth Ware

Erle Stanley Gardner, Mary Kubica, Jeffery Deaver, Andy Weir and Karin Slaughter were the only authors that I read multiple titles from during 2021.

6 of the books I read were released this year, while 5 of them were released last century, with the oldest first published in 1933.

Finally, the breakdown by month, which was fairly consistent across the entire year.

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Book 39 (of 52) – The Infinite Game

The Infinite Game – Simon Sinek

In The Infinite Game, Simon Sinek lays out that there are two competing mindsets for playing any game, the finite game, which has a distinct beginning, middle, and end with set rules and a definitive winner declared at the end, and   and the infinite game, which are played for the purpose of continuing play rather than to win and can have an unknown number of players, as players can join or drop at any time, and there are no set or fixed rules.  Sinek’s hypothesis is that business leaders who embrace an infinite mindset will build stronger and more resilient organizations.  , though these benefits may accrue over larger timescales than benefits associated with a finite mindset.

I first became aware of Sinek earlier this year when he gave a talk at my company focused on this same topic.  After that, I started to follow him on Twitter and then watched an earlier TED Talk he had done as part of a training course.  Using my newly acquired library card, I looked him up and was able to get this audiobook with no wait time, so I figured what the heck.  The main takeaway I got from this is that when business leaders focus on finite goals, trying to “win” the now, they may end up sacrificing the future, doing my overall harm than good.  The classic example, which Sinek details in the book, is Kodak, who invented the digital camera in the 1970s but didn’t exploit it so as to not impact its film market share.  By 2011, as they let others take the lead in digital photography, the company was bankrupt and is now a shell of its former self.  One decision, based on a finite goal of winning, brought down the entire company.