Scott’s 2021 Books

I read more this year than any other year in my life. I kept thinking about if someone were to tell 18-year-old Scott that he’d average reading a new book every two weeks AND “re-read” books he just finished giving fractional attention to in high school…he would have laughed. They would have commented on his sardonic response, and he would have walked away confused why they just called him a sardine.

I enjoyed most of the books I read this year, and I hope if you read these twenty-six synopses you can find a few to enjoy next year too!

Darkness at Noon — by Arthur Koestler — This book may not be on the radar for most readers in the 21st century, but it is far from outdated. Darkness at Noon is a requiem for communism — specifically for the intellectual ideals of communism that turned into paranoia and Stalinism. Written from the perspective of Rubashov, a (fictional) former leader of the communist revolution, he awaits trial for treason and anti-party activities. He’s one of the last to go through this process as one by one the old guard is culled by Stalin. As he awaits trial he debates what it means to be on the right side of history, if one can ever know during their lifetime, if any of it changes when there is a gun to your head, a gun to the head of your friends or lovers, or if the means eventually justify the ends. It’s a lament for unattained ideals that may never come to fruition. As history changes at a different rate than personal philosophy, it’s easy to find yourself on the wrong side, increasingly alienated, creating friction, and feeling the heat. And this story is the timeless reminder of that.

Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World by Fareed Zakaria — This book wobbles between 3 and 5 stars. I like Fareed Zakaria — I think he’s smart, well informed, articulate. However at times it felt like he was filling pages, drawing conclusions that felt biased by frequency or availability. At other times this book is brilliant, incisive, and enlightening. It juxtaposes America, and the rest of the world in how we handled the pandemic, but more importantly the history and the whys behind our response. It breaks down globalization, American exceptionalism, income inequality, and the post-industrial society–subjects on which Zacharia is eminently qualified to speak. My main takeaway is that America is slow for some of the very reasons that made it great: capitalism, State power, free trade. However, during our 250+ year history our systems have become increasingly complex. Systems can be open, fast, or stable — but not all three. “Each time an abuse of power is discovered, a new, additional set of rules is put into place. Often there are separate sets of rules at the federal, state, and local level.” Compounding the issue is every time a new law is put into place special interest groups have increasingly disproportionate say on the new rules. I guess this is how things become byzantine. These observations left me feeling worried, rather than optimistic. These problems are not “unfixable” but it appears we are far off from even taking some foundational steps to start moving in the right direction.

Midwest Futures by Phil Christman — This book starts slow, has a cutting dry whit, and is surprisingly fascinating. In just 130 pages Christman sets out to define “the Midwest’’, an amorphous place that even many Midwesterners can’t define. It’s part commentary on American history, part dissertation on local business, and part political critique. It’s written with a chaotic cadence where profound ideas are often buried in run-on sentences and abstruse intellectualism. My main takeaway is that many areas in the Midwest have over the course of history been treated as a sort of fund managed by a few, not present in the region, and like most businesses in the 80’s, stripped systematically of its value. Harsh assessment but, as a corn-fed midwesterner myself, I believe it’s not too far off the mark.

Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury — On the heels of a book about the Midwest and how it’s been used as a trope for “aw shucks” sentimentalism and small town lore…Bradbury comes along and reminds us how it’s done right. When you are a child you see and experience life differently– it’s smaller in some ways and much much bigger in others. You don’t stop to be mindful of the experience, you’re just living it. Bradbury seems to be able to channel the experiences of childhood and re-codify it with the ability of a generational writer. Adult-level knowledge with kid-level empathy. This book is beautiful and fun — you can almost feel summer, smell the humid night air, hear the crickets. It was a welcome reprieve from the cold months of Seattle January.

Odyssey by Homer — I enjoyed parts of this immensely and at other times wished it got along a little faster…and then I remembered that most of this story was likely passed down orally for over 800 years, and figured if it’s survived nearly 3,000 years every sentence is worth my attention. I forgot just how many stories and ideas are derived from this poem. While I’m not on an epic quest home, with gods actively foiling my plans, many parts felt relatable. I guess it’s that humanistic element that I seem to always come back to and an understanding that the core characteristics of humans have changed very very little over thousands of years.

Ulysses by James Joyce — There is a rumor that when Kanye West released his highly acclaimed album, My Dark Twisted Fantasy, that he only did it because he didn’t feel like enough people liked him. And since he knew exactly what people wanted he just gave it to them…but did not care much for the album himself. I’ve always thought that genius lies in the ability to transform high-voltage intelligence or creativity into something that the masses can connect with and “use.” In a weird unsubstantiated way, I feel like Joyce and Kanye share genius in this. While reading Ulysses it was clear Joyce could have written something witty, original, and accessible, and he did for certain chapters. But then, seemingly despite the reader, he amps it up to a level that satisfies his idea of “great.” At this point, accessibility leaves the room and originality takes center stage. The reader is carried out to sea in a stream of consciousness and obscure references, each chapter written in a new style. It’s at this point that I had to let go of the desire to understand everything in a nice, neat, linear fashion, and just enjoy the ride. The simplest way I can think to explain getting through these chapters (which comprise the majority of the book) is approaching each chapter like a different section within an art gallery. When you visit an art gallery, or look at a piece of art you don’t expect to understand it completely, but what you can do is appreciate the way it makes you feel. Each chapter made me feel different — each chapter I squinted my eyes and turned my head and ruminated on words and phrases. I finished this book feeling inspired. Will I read it again? Yes, will I read it again from start to finish? Maybe…

Divine Comedy “Poem” by Dante Alighieri — Maybe I was intellectually spent after finishing The Odyssey and Ulysses, or maybe I just didn’t enjoy Divine Comedy as much as I thought I would. Composed of three parts, Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso I enjoyed each part less and less. Inferno I found the most intriguing. I enjoyed the visceral imagery of a muted hell all the way down to the deepest circles. I enjoyed seeing which historical characters Dante parked in which circles, and now feel like I can be much more specific the next time I tell someone to “go to hell.” Purgatorio felt like it was funded by the Catholic church and read like a pamphlet someone leaves at your door when you act like you’re not home. It made the most references to people and events I had never heard of to the point where I felt I had walked into a reunion where everyone just reminisced about things that meant nothing to me. Paradiso I had high hopes for, I thought it was going to be a revelation (pun intended) like when I read Milton’s Paradise Lost, instead Beatrice, his guide for the final portion of his journey was single dimensional borderlining on boring, and Dante’s imagination of heaven, uninspired.

The Right It: Why So Many Ideas Fail and How to Make Sure Yours Succeed — by Alberto Savoia — Those who know me, or have read my reviews from years past, know that I don’t care much for business books. I often find the writing simple and redundant. When my boss recommended that all the product managers within the advertising organization read this book I figured it was worth a go, and in fact it was! While The Right It did suffer from some of the same needless repetition, this book was chock-full of practical, actionable, and sound advice for new product/business development. The simple premise is that many businesses don’t even start with “the right ‘it’,” and no amount of money or execution can fix that. Intuitive at first blush, yes, but where the book gets really interesting is why so many businesses miss the premise. Savoia posits (and I would agree) that many stay in their own “thoughtland” that supports their idea, and then go and find data that corroborates their view of their world. What Savoia does for the rest of the book is outline how to avoid this by getting your own data (or as he likes to call it YODA). Getting YODA doesn’t require lots of money, or a crisp prototype, instead he recommends pretotyping, a process where you synthesize ways to get real market feedback on a product or service that doesn’t exist yet. How do you get real market feedback without a product? Well, that’s kind of the point of the book, and he gives dozens of examples and ways to do this. The second and equally important part of the book is making sure that data is meaningful. Your friends and family telling you “heck yeah!” means nothing. You need to find a way to reach your target market and have them commit something that forces some sort of commitment–”skin in the game,” so to speak. This can be as small as an email, or as big as a down payment. If your assumptions don’t match the data you received it’s time to adjust and re-try. After a few tries, you should have a generally good sense whether the idea actually has legs, and whether it’s time to pony up the time and money for an actual prototype. As someone who is responsible for building ad products for Amazon, I will without a doubt be referring back to this book and looking for ways to quickly gather YODA before signing up for a big goal, or asking for resources.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion — The beautiful writing did little to mute the undercurrent of melancholy that pulled you through this collection of essays. Didion is brilliant, amply manifested through her ability to make keen observations and synthesize and distill them into beautiful prose. But, Didion’s synthesis felt incomplete, and that’s okay. The subjects she touches on don’t have a logical terminal point (as far as I can tell), because many relate to an individual’s experience. Concepts like growing old, societal selfishness, ironies and idiosyncrasies of human nature — these can only be distilled so far before becoming reductionist. This book makes you think, which I liked.

Devil in the White City by Erik Larson — This was a quick, easy, page turner. Gilded age, Chicago, serial killer true crime is a can’t miss recipe. Larson oscillates between the story of the Chicago Columbian Exposition and a serial killer in Chicago named H.H. Holmes. The chapters about building this fair at times drag out, and Larson stretches his buck with the serial killer narrative, but he balances both stories well. The serial killer piece kept the tempo of the book up, but the really fascinating pieces were how much Chicago was able to construct for this fair in just a couple of years, and how many firsts accompanied the fair: lighting, filtered fresh water, the Ferris wheel, and the complete transformation of a tract of land into a beautiful “white city” with, up to that time, some of the biggest buildings ever built. This was an age of manpower, ingenuity, and unabated drive.

Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman — “I’m complex. ‘I read,’ I say. ‘I study and read. I bet I’ve read everything you’ve read. Don’t think I haven’t. I consume libraries. I wear out spines and ROM-drives. I do things like get in a taxi and say, “The library, and step on it.” My instincts concerning syntax and mechanics are better than your own, I can tell, with due respect. But it transcends the mechanics. I’m not a machine. I feel and believe. I have opinions. Some of them are interesting. I could, if you’d let me, talk and talk. Let’s talk about anything. I believe the influence of Kierkegaard on Camus is underestimated. I believe Dennis Gabor may very well have been the Antichrist. I believe Hobbes is just Rousseau in a dark mirror.’ — Why did I start this review with a random quote from Infinite Jest? It’s because I thought of this quote dozens of times as I slogged my way through this book. Bregman wants you to know he’s read everything you’ve read and he has original thoughts on all of it. Bregman starts with setting up a dichotomy — are humans intrinsically selfish and bad like Thomas Hobbes thought? Or are they intrinsically geared towards good, like Jean-Jacques Rousseau proposed? Bregman then spends 400 pages ``debunking” major research from Steven Pinker, to the Stanford Prison Experiment, the Bystander Effect, to Broken Window Theory. While I agree that these major psychological research experiments can’t be taken carte blanche and broadly applied, I also don’t think they are as easily explained away as Bregman would like us to think. His formula for the book is bringing up an infamous experiment that paints humans in a negative light, then cites another newer researcher who offers a contrary view of that popular research, and then, borrowing from the latest experiment, readily discards prior work–as if everything has been neatly explained away. I found his work, Humankind was reduced to the simple and inauthentic. This is a shame, because I think there is validity to much of what he was proposing, but rather than taking the time to wrestle through the complexity and ambiguity of these subjects, he chose instead to breeze on to the next subject. Is this the recipe for a NYT bestseller?

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole — Ignatius J Reily, what a character. Completely untethered from society, he leaves a wake of destruction everywhere he goes. He approaches situations with supreme confidence and conviction with all of the skills of a man child arrested in development. In addition to some of the sharpest writing I encountered all year, the story is laugh out loud funny, intelligent, and witty. It’s accessible without being predictable or sophomoric. As usual, one of the best books I’ve read this year leaves me with the least amount to say.

I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong — I normally gravitate towards these types of books where someone takes decades of research and distills it into a neatly packaged summary. Normally the flow is to discuss the research in borderline inaccessible terms for the untrained reader but then jump into anecdotes about application and future development hypothesis. Yong labors the science and then, rather than jumping deep into the application and implication, moves to the next scientific development. This made the book more challenging than I expected, and, for a marketing major, significantly more boring. Despite its fascinating subject that viruses and bacteria are more than dangerous, if I learned anything from the book it’s that there is no “good” or “bad” microbe, it’s situational, contextual, relative, and relational. Our bodies are fine tuned to work with different microbes that address myriad tasks; it’s a miracle this calibration is so precise. I learned that antibacterial products that are overused can actually have an adverse effect as they wipe out all of the good microbes with the bad and create space for new bad microbes to have a home. Although Yong didn’t spend as much time on the application as I would have liked, it made me hopeful for a future where we not only have our genetic identity calibrated to our medicines but also our microbiome, where we can rely on microbes tailored to our needs to remedy problems. It’s still early days, but I think some of the most promising science lies ahead within this field.

The Power Broker by Robert Caro — How does one summarize a 1,200 page tome? Equally intriguing, how does Caro write nonfiction with the craft of the best novelists so that not a single page was boring? It’s a gross understatement to say that today everyone who has lived or has visited NYC and New York State are still affected by the decisions and work of Robert Moses. Four year governor terms, consolidation of government agencies from 180+ to a few dozen, highways, state and national parks, authorities, all bear the undeniable fingerprints of Moses. And what’s fascinating about the story is not only the scope and scale of Moses’ work, it’s the way he went about making it happen. It’s a masterclass in politics, in the accumulation of power, in getting stuff done. It’s a testament to the fact there is no substitute for a dynamo work ethic, and a reminder that if you are smart and work hard there is likely someone smarter that works even harder ready to eat your lunch. Moses approached his work like Grandmaster playing a dozen games simultaneously against the local high school chess club. Except Moses wasn’t playing against a high school chess club, his opponents were robber barons, borough presidents, political bosses, mayors, governors, and even presidents (Google ``Order 129”). With an uncompromising vision, he aligned every move to array more of his power along strategic files, systematically blocked his opponents’ paths forward, pinned their pieces and checked their Kings. Moses is responsible for massive parks at one point New York had more park acreage as the rest of the country combined. But Moses is also the embodiment of the platitude “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Caro–in a way that only Caro can–paints a complete portrait of Robert Moses. Throughout this massive work, the reader receives a deep and thoughtful analysis of the multi-faceted, multidimensional nature of not only Robert Moses, but of human nature. The idealist gives way to the pragmatist, who gives way to the tyrant. It’s both a fascinating and heart-breaking testament to moving even a few feet every day for decades ultimately places you miles from where you started without even realizing you’ve drifted. It’s a reminder that everyone dies, power, no matter how tightly held, is ephemeral, and that good does not always balance the equation with bad. It’s a weird feeling to miss a book when you’re finished. This is that rare case.

The Friend by Sigrid Nunez — I wasn’t sure what to think about this when I started it. I wouldn’t categorize this as avant garde, but it did feel unique. It wasn’t really a book about her dog, but it was about friendship. Rambling, beautiful, short, Nunez attempts to sort out her feelings of loss in a transparent and sometimes haunting way. It’s a book about suicide. It’s a book about grief. It’s a cathartic exercise. It’s absolutely worth the time to read.

Create Dangerously: The Power and Responsibility of the Artist by Albert Camus — Short, short book. Camus questions the role of an artist in society, and posits their ability to be a sequestered participant, determining that art inevitably chooses a side. There were a number of unique little nuggets and insights on artists, genius, and art.

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon — This was my foray into Pynchon, a friendly 150-pager. This is the book equivalent of having a sommelier at a restaurant pour a taste of wine before deciding to buy the bottle, and, well, I am sold. Like David Foster Wallace or George Saunders but before either of them Pynchon was producing these hysterical, quasi-reality stories that are hilarious, hyper-detailed, and original. This book is about stamps, kind of, but Pynchon manages to bring his events and characters into an unhinged crescendo– where the insanity oozing from the pages is palpable–and ending with little to no resolution. Yet, it is still satisfying…Thanks to this taster, I will be returning for more Pynchon.

Afterparties: Stories by Anthony Veasna So — I had high–no, exceptionally high–expectations for this book. It did not deliver, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t great. So’s debut and, due to an untimely death at 28, his last book, was…different. These short stories are told from various relatives’ viewpoints about what it was like to grow up as “Cambo” American. It explores how his parents’ generation, a generation so close but hopelessly far away from his, survived and advanced from genocide. It delt with religion, homosexuality, and death. It offered glimmers of strikingly beautiful writing, original narrative construction…and then at other times it felt like he was writing to satisfy some publisher-imposed common denominator. At times when I wanted him to double down, take things further into the absurd, he dials it back into a predictable and comfortable place. I join the chorus of people feeling like we were robbed of someone who could have graced us with distinctive and improving literature for years to come.

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf — This book was fabulous. It enters the pantheon of books that’ve been earmarked to re-read at multiple points throughout my life, as I am sure there is something new waiting to be revealed in every read. Some artists seem to have a pulse or a sixth sense on a deeper source of truth or energy or enlightenment or divine inspiration (whichever you prefer) that reveals to them qualities about human nature and the unity of the human experience that resonate with a transcendent truth.

If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino — I’ll start by saying that I think Calvino is one of the best writers I’ve ever encountered. This book, while mind bogglingly creative, was not as enjoyable as some of his other works. And, no surprise, this was by design. Rather than writing a novel, Calvino writes the first chapter to 10 different, unrelated novels, and in between each he sympathizes with the “reader” who is trying to finish at least one of these stories. This acts as a platform for Calvino to challenge the relationship between a reader and the word, between a reader and author, between author and Publisher, and even between the book and society. It didn’t feel like a dig at readers who read consumeristically, but more of a call to mindfulness of what kind of relationship you have with reading and books. Calvino clearly illustrated the desire for linearity and completeness as he effortlessly attracted you with an irresistible lure in each story just to end it at the moment you’re hooked.

Buy Then Build by Walker Deibel — I found this book an accessible and practical guide to buying a small business. At times it felt like Deibel took liberties in his pursuit to convince the reader that buying a business is a better way to be an entrepreneur than starting a business from scratch, but I generally didn’t mind this as it felt sincere. This book covers everything from how to structure a search, how to find good brokers, all the way through each step of the buying process. Would someone who has no experience in this field be able to successfully buy a business after reading this? No, but it’s a solid template and resource that highlights where else you need to look to round out your knowledge. I won’t be buying a business anytime soon, but I am glad to have this knowledge in my back pocket.

Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess by Bobby Fischer — I wouldn’t classify this as a book in the classic sense, but it did have pages and a binding and text…so here we are. Like the rest of the world I watched Queen’s Gambit and was reminded that chess is awesome. I’ve known the basic moves of chess for years but wanted to elevate my play, so I did this workbook where Bobby Fischer takes you through everything from how the pieces move, to end game strategies. I found this book incredibly helpful (especially in conjunction with my sandbox, chess.com). While not Bobby Fischer, of course, I can now consistently beat people rated over 1,000–and my wife on most occasions–so I’ll take what I can get.

Dune by Frank Herbt — If you have been reading my updates over the last few years, you’ve maybe noticed that I read very little science fiction. That said, I do almost always enjoy the one scifi book I pick up a year. This year I did not. I thought Dune was kind of a drag, and after getting to the end I think it’s because Herbert is a betting man, wagering that he piqued interest enough for people to pick up book two. History would say he is right, but I mostly likely will not be reading the rest of the series. It’s not that I didn’t think Dune was creative and that Herbert’s world creating ability wasn’t impressive, it’s just that I wanted to get a little more for my 600+ page reading investment. Further, I thought Paul was a surprisingly thin character for being the protagonist, I found Jessica unstable and boring, Leto wasn’t even developed, as if it was a foregone conclusion that he would be dead in a couple hundred pages so Herbet decided not to even waste the energy. The whole thing just fell pretty flat with me.

Collected Poems by T.S. Eliot — I’ve always avoided poetry. Not out of a weird place of misunderstood masculinity, but more from a residual intimidation that poetry is for more intellectual or artistic souls. It’s disappointing that it took so long to identify and challenge this long held belief. Similar to Ulysses, I went into this less to “understand” and more to feel. I kept this book on my bedside table and just read a few poems a night in parallel with the other books I was reading at the time. This offered such a peaceful way to wind down from the day, turn off the constant stream of things going on in my head and just key into the beautiful verses and stanzas. I loved the unconventional style of Eliot’s poetry because it helped me give up faster on the desire for linearity. A few of the poems I loved: The Hollow Men, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Rannoch, By Glencoe’, Choruses from The Rock and A Dedication to My Wife.

The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck — I love Steinbeck. I love the way Steinbeck conveys aspects of human nature/behavior that read like both an enlightened insight and obvious truth. I love Steinbeck’s seemingly endless vocabulary and dialed ability to evoke emotion from me in a way that few other authors can. I love the way Steinbeck ends his books. I finished The Winter of Our Discontent and just said “Damn…” — because I lacked the right words, and my command of the English language is 1/1,000,000 as complete as Steinbeck’s. This book is dark, it dallies for a while, Ethan the protagonist appears goofy and light hearted but is mored by his failures, his families illustrious past, and jealousy, among other more nuanced feelings. Going more in depth in plot would give away too much. But again Steinbeck rests his hand squarely on the pulse of deeply human issues and makes you think a little longer and more seriously about subjects that are right in front of you but often out of conscious grasp.

The Overstory by Richard Powers — this was a great book to end the year on. Can a book be bucolic? Because if it can, this was. But it was also sharply contrasted by a feeling of loss from the way that humans have used this earth as if it’s a limitless resource that responds not to millions of years of evolution but ideas contrived in a boardroom or lab. I read a few years ago, I believe in Kobert’s Sixth Extinction, that humans are responsible for ending the Holocene epoch prematurely and kicked off the Anthropocene epoch because of our irreversible and overstated impact on the geology and ecology of earth. That sentence means little without some point of reference. So look at the oceans for reference, or at the growing list of extinct mammals,…or really any animal that could not evolve fast enough to keep up with human destruction. Or you could look at trees, which is what Powers does. I didn’t know anything about this book when I started to read it, so I was surprised to find something that was simultaneously a beautiful narrative about nine individuals whose stories end up intertwining and…trees. Powers does not belabor the science of trees but doesn’t discount it either. Throughout this book you learn about different species of trees, how they interact and support not only one another but all living things around them, including us. He keys into the destruction of Redwoods, trees that grow over millennia and die over centuries as the fallen tree disintegrates giving back to the earth, supporting the ecosystem of animals and insects until there is quite literally nothing left of them. I went on a little bit of a mysticism kick a couple years ago, and I haven’t shaken the idea that all of life is connected on some-level, operating at a frequency that most, if not all, humans are incapable of tuning into. I was drawn to the way Native Americans thanked every living thing that gives its life for their sustenance, including plants. I admire this deep understanding of give and take. Western ideals and capitalism feel increasingly mypoic. The Overstory manages to be confrontational in this regard without being judgemental or cynical. Pretty rare. On a less serious note, I kept noticing fringe references that were deeply Midwestern. The Largest Truck Stop on I-80, Chillicothe, OH, Wheaton, IL, characters slapping their knees and saying “welp” before leaving. In a weird way it tied into some of the premises that I read in Midwest Futures that the Midwest doesn’t have definitive boundaries but you know it when you are there. Turns out Powers is from Evanston, Illinois. It all checks out.