19 Nov On My Nightstand – October 2020 Book List
Apparently October was a busy month for me! I got through 9 books as well as a few audiobooks. Probably the most inspiring, exciting book that I read was Genome by Matt Ridley. Not only does Ridley have an incredible mastery of the English language, but he explains very complex subjects in a way that almost anyone can understand.
I’m on a ‘German refresher’ kick, so I’ve been working my way through a few German readers. This set that I’m reading by Brian Smith is the best I’ve found. They are ‘accumulative’, so each book builds on the vocabulary from the last. Having spent a lot of time using readers like this to learn Mandarin Chinese, I can say that it’s one of the fastest and more natural ways to become comfortable with a language (beware, however: it doesn’t immediately convert to speaking or listening skills.)
Finally, I’m most proud of finally having gotten through Hayeks important work, The Road to Serfdom. This books has taken on renewed significant in our present political environment, and one might think he was writing with this particular decade in mind (the book was written in the 1940’s, before WWII was completely over.) Hayek is a dense writer, and it took the full faculty of my mind to understand each sentence. I would often find myself having to read paragraphs out loud multiple times just to understand them.
Books I read during the month of October 2020:
- The Rational Optimist, by Matt Ridley (My Underlines)
- Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, by Immanuel Kant (My Underlines)
- Genome, by Matt Ridley
- German Easy Reader: Super 500, by Brian Smith
- German Easy Reader 2, by Brian Smith
- The Road to Serfdom, by F.A. Hayek
- Twilight of Democracy, by Anne Applebaum (My Underlines)
- The Fire Down Below, by Jack McDonough
- Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius
Audiobooks I listened to:
- Lives of the Stoics, by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
- Dare to Lead, by Brené Brown
Read any of these recently? Let me know in the comments! Would love to hear what you thought?
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