December Reading Recommendations

What I've been reading that I'd recommend you read too.

Each month, I send one email with the most amazing books I’ve read, reviewed and think you’ll like. It’s usually not more than a line or two, sometimes with a quote, on why I think the book is important enough to recommend.

Money - David McWilliams

McWilliams teases out the correlations and causations between the evolution of money and financial products and social and technical innovations. He manages to make the most boring topic (finances and history) entertaining! A great read to understand currency and the innovations taking place right now. Combine with “The Bitcoin Standard” if you want to understand more about cryptocurrencies.

All the King’s Men - Robert Penn Warrenn

If you want to understand how politics works, (particularly in the US), look no further than this. A literary masterpiece, the author shares many truths about life too, including my personal favourite line;

“The end of man is knowledge, but there is one thing he can’t know. He can’t know whether knowledge will save him or kill him. He will be killed, all right, but he can’t know whether he is killed because of the knowledge which he has got or because of the knowledge which he hasn’t got and which if he had it, would save him.”

I last read this book when I was in college. Re-reading it now has shown me the change in my own perspectives on life.

A Year of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion

If you’re grieving anything whatsoever (breakup, product sun-down, death), this is THE book to read. The legendary Joan Didion puts the rollorcoaster emotions of loss into words. The first time I suffered this sort of loss, I was broken, and reading this book somehow helped me get over it. It’s one of my most gifted books, and one I highly recommend reading in December to let by-gones be.

How to be a Leader - Plutarch

There’s usually a reason why certain books have survived the test of time. Plutarch’s handbook on How to be a Leader are based on his observations of the leaders of the ancient Greek and Roman empires. Every sentence is jam-packed with value, such as;

“We must not, in that manner, snatch glory away from our mentors. We must instead receive glory from them, together with their goodwill and friendship, since, as Plato says, people cannot be good leaders unless they have first been good servants.”