My favorite books of 2018
Another year, another goal - read 55 books in 2018. I failed to reach my goal of reading 50 books in 2017 and … dropped the ball this time too. Why set even more ambitious goal instead of lowering the expectations? Because lowering feels like a step backwards and one should always strive to move forward. I am still happy with the result - 49 books!
To be completely honest with you, I cheated a little bit by also adding a few photo books. But I wanted to keep the history nevertheless. Note: it usually takes about one or two hours to “read” one photo book.
Here are my top 5 favorites of 2018:
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Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou The book was recommended to read by Bill Gates in his blog. If you’re related to IT, you’ll most likely find yourself in the middle of the night not being able to stop reading it :)
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Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah These stories will make you laugh a lot, worry for Trevor and his mom, think about apartheid, religion and education. Advice: listen to the audiobook read by Trevor himself.
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Sebastio Salgado: Genesis I am just starting to explore the field of professional photography, but this book immediately captured my attention because I’d watched his documentary “The Salt of the Earth (2014)” before. In the book, Sebastio gathered shots from different corners of the world including pictures of indigenous tribes in Africa, wild life in the North Pole and many more things.
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The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life by Mark Manson Not like the other self-help books :) I’ll probably reread it this year.
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The Art of Loving and Escape from Freedom by Erich Fromm A deeper monologue on what it means to love somebody/something. His second book (Escape from Freedom), provides great insights and thoughts on the “the illness of contemporary civilization as witnessed by its willingness to submit to totalitarian rule”.
If you like these, you might want to check out the full list on Goodreads.
Other years: