19 Dec My year of reading curiously
I’m an equal opportunity book lover. I buy them and borrow them from the library, getting a jolt of joy from every text message telling me a reserved title has landed!
So, it’s always a bit daunting to mine a handful of gems to share. Thankfully (and annoyingly) I score them as I go. Leading to a sparkling short list of books I refer to and recommend.
And while not all books make that grade, every book I finish delivers aha moments, pithy quotes and things to ponder. Which often spark ideas and inform how I think about the world and my work.
Maybe one of them will do the same for you. Drum roll, and in no particular order …
Sprawling History
Master storyteller David McCullough colours even centuries-old events to feel present. The Path Between the Seas is an epic and masterful account of building the Panama Canal. And while ‘building’ sounds like an orderly process. There was nothing orderly about the events which spanned the decades from breaking ground in unforgiving clay to the first ship that passed the gates.
Personal heroism, grand tragedies, geopolitical wrangling and engineering feats mark the endeavours of the thousands who toiled in unrelenting heat and swarms of malarial mosquitos. I was riveted from the first page. And found lessons about the cascading impact of even the smallest choices in every chapter.
Big tech behaving badly
Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams and The Tesla Files by Sönke Iwersen and Michael Verfürden are bookends for the bad behaviour rife across big tech. Wynn-Williams was Public Policy Director at Facebook, and Iwersen and Vefürden are journalists at Germany’s business newspaper Handelsblatt.
Careless People unwraps the decisions and dysfunction behind Facebook, paying special attention to the cavalier way they respond to and often inflame events—including the Rohingya genocide, CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s alleged efforts to censor so they could access China, and social engineering people’s feeds without consent. Throughout, Whynn-Williams doesn’t take her foot off Facebook’s neck. While also acknowledging her initial excitement to work for the company. The push and pull of the complicated feelings, disillusion and delight, make for heady reading.
Meanwhile, The Tesla Files has all the ingredients of a spy novel. A whistleblower. 100GB of confidential internal documents. Supplemented by interviews with employees and customers, the book documents the extraordinary lengths one company will go to hide evidence. Along the way the authors uncover a company culture of fear, fealty, and a staggering disregard for consequences.
Both books are loaded with ‘you’ve got to be kidding me’ and ‘you can’t make this stuff up’ stories that are bizarre and chilling. Such as a silk-pyjama-wearing Sheryl Sandberg pressuring an assistant to keep her company in bed on Facebook’s private jet. Or one employee’s observation that Elon Musk views all accidents as data, sequestering himself in spreadsheets, well away from the sometimes fatal consequences.
Both sides of genius
The Genius Myth by Helen Lewis and John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs by Ian Leslie in turn debunk and illustrate genius at work.
The idea of something being a genius is relatively new. Before the Enlightenment, people were described as ‘having a genius’. But once that shifted to some kind of innate quality which placed people into rare air above other mortals, things sort of went south.
The Genius Myth leans into all the ways that shift populates and pollutes society, observing “You can tell what a society values by who it labels as a genius. You can also tell who it excludes, who it enables, and what it is prepared to tolerate.” This is a funny and fascinating book. And Lewis’ writing walks the high wire of relatable and insightful.
In her book, Lewis quoted an article by another author, Ian Leslie, which led me to John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs.
Leslie walks through Beatles history from school-age Lennon meeting MaCartney through to Lennon’s murder and immediate aftermath. Each chapter is anchored by a song they wrote, giving a fresh feel to their story. The musical choices and influences. The brotherly, borderline homoerotic relationship between them. Not much escapes Leslie’s lens, and I love that Paul, finally, gets a bit more his due.
Saved and doomed
Reading Grace by Code Keenan before Nuclear War by Annie Jacobsen was a roller-coaster of hope and despair. And while I would have preferred to flip the order. In the end it didn’t matter, as they stuck with me equally.
In Grace, Keenan, Obama’s speechwriter, focuses on the difficult choices and expectations that swirled before and after the 2015 murder of nine people in South Carolina during a bible study group. Those killed included senior pastor and State Senator Clementa Pinckney. The book reminded me that leaders can show us how to rise beyond tragedy—something sorely missing in US politics today. The book ends with Obama’s memorable eulogy where he sang Amazing Grace. Keenan lets us peek at the inner workings of how intent becomes words. And how those words become speeches. Speeches that unite and heal. I’m an unabashed fan of how ideas can stir our better angels, and Keenan’s book is a front-row seat that might restore a smidge of faith in leadership.
If you’ve watched A House of Dynamite on Netflix, you’ve experienced a sliver of the alarm Jacobsen’s book delivers. Recommended by a friend (I will find a way to repay the ‘favour’ one day), Nuclear War left me even more deeply unsettled about the personalities with their literal fingers near the trigger. Throw AI and geopolitical mistrust in the mix, and it’s easy to see how all it takes is one nuclear bomb to set off a cascade that kills everyone on the planet.
The story is compressed into a shocking 30 minutes. The time it would take between an unprovoked North Korean launch and detonation in Washington DC. So, if high stakes with a side of existential dread isn’t your thing, probably give it a miss. I couldn’t put it down. And even read it while cooking dinner (apologies for the slightly overcooked pasta).
Worth mentioning
Empire of AI by Karen Hao. Whether you’re an AI atheist, agnostic or true believer, this book is required reading. Hao takes us deep inside the history, choices and underbelly of the industry people can’t stop obsessing over.
And because I don’t only read non-fiction. These Summer Storms by Sarah MacLean is a can’t put-it-down tale of tangled and frayed family relationships and long-overdue reckoning unleashed when the patriarch dies in mysterious (of course) circumstances. A super enjoyable read, perfect for the beach or the couch.
Notable re-reads
Each year, I also dive back into a few books that have more to teach me. Two standouts that always deliver are Switch, How to change things when change is hard by Dan and Chip Heath and Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss. I regularly reference and recommend them both. And not much makes me happier than when people tell me, ‘That book changed my work or life.’ Something I’ve repeatedly heard about both.
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And that’s a wrap on 2025.
I’m taking a break until mid-January. Joy and peace in the coming year and I hope you get to revel in whatever mix of food, family and friends make up your holiday tradition.
Most of all, big bunches of thanks for reading and supporting my work.
M