I was trying to read this book when I “read” for the first time. I remember this magical moment when the words came alive and I understood them in strings. It is not possible for me to put into words how awesome this was. My one super power in this world is reading and I love books.

PS. As you can probably tell I am moving into our new house, and finding a lot of stuff that has been in boxes for a half decade to decade :).

Since 2010 I’ve taken part in a yearly challenge to read 100 books, and I met my goal for 2015 with 141 books. I almost broke my all time record of 146 books from 2012. So what did I read? 2015 was not as stressful as 2014, but I still had a lot to shake loose in the first half of the year so I read a lot of “fun” books.

I do a big book summary each year too, if you want to take a look at past years for some reading ideas check them out here: 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014. So what are my top books of the year?

If you only read 3 books this year I recommend the following:

1. The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet. This is written by Ramez Naam who is a great scifi author and someone who makes a lot of interesting blog posts. This book gives an overview of where the world is, threats to it, and the progress so far on solving some of those problems (heavily focused on the environment). I highly recommend reading it.

2. The Three-Body Problem – This book is by Chinese science fiction author Cixin Liu. It is EXCELLENT, not only for the change in perspective, but the story is fantastic! Highly recommended!

3. Money Master the Game: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom by Tony Robbins – My brother gave me this book for Christmas and I was pretty skeptical, but I am a convert :) . The majority of the advice in this book is spot on and helpful for living your life and planning your retirement. He does a great job of explaining the value of money and I highly recommend reading it.

Best Business Books Of The Year:

1. Peter Thiel’s Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future. Great read, especially about the loss of optimism and the USA and our inability to plan or attempt BIG things.

2. Clay Water Break: Finding Inspiration from Entrepreneurs Who Do the Most with the Least – A fantastic book from the co-founder of Kiva.org about her journey.

Top 3 Scifi / Fantasy

1. The Monster Hunter’s International series. Monsters are real and when they get out of control someone has to step in. I also recommend Grimnoir Chronicles by the same author.

2. The Night’s Dawn trilogy by Peter Hamilton. These are massive tomes, super detailed, and weird, but some of the best space opera I’ve ever read. Hamilton is amazing.

3. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August. One of the most original science fiction books I’ve read in awhile. It is about a group of people across time who just relive their lives again and again.

Top 3 *Real* Books

1. Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis. An amazing book that illustrates that class difference money now makes and how American is becoming two Americas.

2. The Happiness Project. I LOVED this book! She has a great sense of humor, well written, and good mix of personal narrative and scientific facts.

3. Alif the Unseen. A cool techno thriller with some mysticism thrown in. It takes place in the middle east with hackers, a dictatorship, and Jinn.

Top 2 Travel Books

1. On the Trail of Genghis Khan: An Epic Journey Through the Land of the Nomads. This was an amazing book about a dude traveling on horseback from Mongolia to Hungary just like the mongols. This was the BEST travel book I’ve read in years. Highly recommended, just beautiful, and so well written.

2. The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey. The author and his brother go by covered wagon along the Oregon trail.

I read a lot, and I was curious if the ratio of fun versus serious books changed per year or remained roughly the same. I classified fun as anything I read that is fantasy, sci fi, travel, thrillers, ie, beach books. I classified serious as anything that was business, history, biography, etc.

Percentage of fun books?

2010 – 63%
2011 – 64%
2012 – 46%
2013 – 54%
2014 – 65%
2015 – 70%

Percentage of serious books?

2010 – 37%
2011 – 35%
2012 – 54%
2013 – 46%
2014 – 35%
2015 – 30%

I’ll keep it going and see what it looks like in 10 years :)

One of my first posts on this blog back in November 2008 was my review of the first Amazon Kindle I had been using! I LOVED it and that has only continued as I have bought newer versions of the Kindle. I read fast and I always run out of books when I am traveling, the Kindle changes that! Plus the price of those books is usually cheaper. I love having the entire world’s library at my finger tips.

The new Kindle Voyage is awesome and I love the backlight. I thought I wouldn’t use it much but I love being able to read at night without bothering my wife, and on airplanes with a little less eye strain. The browser for buying new books and navigating my library is a huge improvement. And, battery life is good. I highly recommended the Kindle Voyage if you read a lot!

Since 2010 I’ve been challenging myself to read 100 books a year and it has been a great habit to build. In 2014, I read 101 books and left mini reviews of them here. This was my lowest year since I started this challenge. Why was it so low? Because it has been one of the most crazy year of my life and I met someone who I enjoy spending time with even more than books :).

If you only read 3 books this year I recommend the following as my best of 2014:

1. Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time – This should be required reading for all Americans, and anyone in school. What do you want the minutes of your life to be? A rush through it, or something that feels deeply satisfying? This is an amazing book of one woman’s search for what has happened to our society and why we all feel so overwhelmed, rushed, and without any time for anything. Fantastic writing and backed by really interested research too.

2. How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas – Lindsey recommended this one to me I think, it is a fantastic story of what social entrepreneurship can do for the world and for the people who go down this path. I wish people would read this one in schools and especially university. It was also one of the best business oriented books I’ve read this year.

3. Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell – A true account by the famous author of what it is like to be poor and trying to live. Something everyone could remember for time to time and better understand why it isn’t as easy as getting a job or working harder sometimes. I really enjoyed reading this and found his entire experience fascinating.

One distant runner up was: Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street’s Post-Crash Recruits. It followed the lives of 8 new recruits to Wall Street over a 2 to 3 year period, and if you want to learn about the good and bad wall street brings, read this book.

Best Business Books Of The Year:

Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t – This puts into words a lot of what I’ve felt for the last 10 years. I highly recommend this book and it really defines what great leadership is IMO.

Unlabel by Marc Ecko – A fantastic business book with real world advice by the famous artist/designer. He is very candid about his failures, problems, and where he fucked up. Great format too, and a lot more fun to read than most business books.

Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. – An AMAZING person and an awesome read. It was very cool to learn how he built up his company, how he created the modern idea of the company, and the long challenges he faced down. It is mind blowing how many modern oil companies were spun off from his company…

Best Scifi / Fantasy
*This year this section is a bit longer as I found so many great ones, and I did so much more pleasure reading than normal due to stress this year brought into my life.

Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive) – This is book two of Brandon Sanderson’s new huge series and it is AMAZING!!! I have no words for how good this is. The man is a god :). The first book made last year’s mention I believe. If you like Wheel of Time, or any big series you will love this one (slow going and huge universe but amazing characters).

The last StormDancer: Lotus Wars Series – A fantastic book in a steampunk japanese universe, great characters and really unique. I’ve read the first two and I am waiting on the next one.

Starship Grifters (A Rex Nihilo Adventure) – An absolutely hilarious book about a space adventure, I was laughing out loud at this one as the main two characters are hilarious.

Nexus and Crux – A fantastic series of books about programmable nano bots that allow you to become human version 2.0. If you are interested in a future where you can change your biology I recommend this one. I read the first two and can’t wait for the 3rd.

Brilliance and A Better World – An amazing series of science fiction book about the near future when “Brilliants” start being born. They are human but have different talents that can cause problems, kinda like mutants. Great story and highly recommended.

Fallen Dragon by Sci Fi King Peter F. Hamilton – This guy can imagine huge universes but luckily this is a smaller one to start in. Just one book to get going, space adventure, time, and crazy crazy stuff. Great read.

Mindstar Rising and A Quantum Murder by Peter F. Hamilton – Amazing detective books set in this future dystopian world that comes about because of global warming.

The Promise of Blood and The Crimson Campaign – I think Brian McClellan is the best author I’ve found since Brandon Sanderson, these are amazing and gripping books about a napolean type era but with mages and mages who can work with gunpowder and the return of god’s.

Enjoy and good reading!

Read this article entitled: “FUCK YOU AMAZON! FUCK YOU FOR BEING RIGHT! AGAIN!”.

Hilarious read and spot on from what I’ve seen :)

Yeah Amazon, fuck you! Fuck you for being right! Again! What have Amazon ever done for books eh? Pioneered a postal delivery market publishers ignored? Yes ok, but what else? Invested millions in an ebook infrastructure publishers deliberately ignored? Fine, but what else? Opened up publishing to thousands of independent authors of all kinds, many of whom are making entire careers in digital sales with 70% royalties? Well, damn yes that’s pretty good I guess, but what else? …. read more …

What is awesome too is that a lot of the existing publishers involved in all this with Amazon are the same group that disrupted the previous setup. And, in some cases as illegal as they are still doing with price fixing.

This could save me so much money!!!!!!

OMG if this is so true it would be amazing!!! Here is the leaked copy of the page!

The only thing I kept in storage while I traveled was my books. But I finally decided it was time to say goodbye :(. I donated them all to a Denver goodwill, hopefully someone else enjoys them and gives them a new home.

Goodbye 658 books!

I love my kindle, I can carry every book in the world with me it feels like :)

My brother got me on a bit of a Hemmingway kick, loving him :)

“They say the seeds of what we do are in all of us, but it always seemed to me that in those who makes jokes in life the seeds are covered with better soil and with a higher grade of manure.”

With all my traveling 2013 was a fantastic year for reading :), I read 137 books this year which is 9 books shy of my 2012 record of 146. For a list of all of them plus mini reviews go here. Now onto the best of the year…

If you only read 3 books this year I recommend the following:

1. The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism – An utterly amazing book written by a young autistic boy about his autism. Please please please read this!

2. Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture – As a kid who grew up playing wolf 3d and doom this is a must read for anyone who did. A very well written story about the johns and the industry at the time.

3. Vince Flynn’s CIA/Military theory series that stars Mitch Rapp (around 12 books). Such a great series of books and I can’t recommend it enough. Almost as good as Clancy and it dominated my January last year. I’m so sad that he passed away this year.

Best Business Books

1. Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works – An amazing book and one I hope to read every few years to refresh. The best book I’ve read on business strategy. Both practical examples and big picture approaches.

2. Dave Ramsey’s EntreLeadership: 20 Years of Practical Business Wisdom from the Trenches – A great podcast too and just full of nuggets for small business owners.

Best SciFi / Fantasy

1. Brandon Sanderson is a god, he is so good! This year I read Steelheart which is this kinda post apocalyptic future with super villians; and Rithmatist which is just so awesome I can’t explain it. Both are must reads!!

2. Joel recommended The Mote in God’s Eye and I loved it. Crazy sci fi with a twist.

3. Pandora’s Star and the Commonwealth Saga. A huge space epic that is weird but if you stick with it you will love it :). Think wormholes and crazyness.

Real Life Shit

1. Dark Pools: The Rise of the Machine Traders and the Rigging of the U.S. Stock Market – Super well written and a must read for anyone who wants to know why wall street and bankers are destroying your savings/future. We need more regulations on this area of finance!!

2. The Billionaire Who Wasn’t: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune – Amazing story about billionaire Chuck Feeney and how he grew the business, and then how he gave all the money away secretly :). Great read!

Special Topic Of The Year: Sailing Solo Around The World

I got really into sailing books, especially those around the world as it sounds really fun. So I have 3 books I’d recommend as being the best in this genre so far.

1. A Voyage For Madmen – “In 1968, nine sailors set off on the most daring race ever held: to single-handedly circumnavigate the globe nonstop. It was a feat that had never been accomplished and one that would forever change the face of sailing. Ten months later, only one of the nine men would cross the finish line and earn fame, wealth, and glory. For the others, the reward was madness, failure, and death.”

2. Maiden Voyage – “Tania Aebi was an unambitious eighteen-year-old, a bicycle messenger in New York City by day, a Lower East Side barfly at night. In short, she was going nowhere—until her father offered her a challenge: Tania could choose either a college education or a twenty-six-foot sloop. The only catch was that if she chose the sailboat, she’d have to sail around the world—alone.”

3. Across Islands and Oceans – “Across Islands and Oceans is the memoir of twenty-five year-old James Baldwin and his epic two-year, solo circumnavigation in Atom, his trusty but aging twenty-eight foot sailboat.”

The Wheel Of Time series is an epic fantasy series that I highly recommend. The total series is 14 books, long books that are a total of 11,916 pages of amazing characters and stories. The creator of the series, Robert Jordan, died before the 12th book and Brandon Sanderson finished the last two from his detailed notes and drafts.

Memories of Light is the last book in the series and just came out last month, after rereading the previous 13 I finally finished this one and had to say goodbye to all the characters. It is so hard to say goodbye when you feel like you know them, and then have to watch them die, change, and then no matter what say goodbye because there are no more books about them. Sad but happy. Amazing series.

I’ve always wanted to go to Bali and I found an awesome house on AirBNB. I love the style of Bali/Thai houses where the walls open up on all sides. I stayed in Ubud the entire time.

It was a really nice vacation, and much needed after a trip to Vegas for a management meetup and all the jet lag that induces. I spent half my time catching up on big picture work projects and the other half reading. I made it about half way through the Wheel of Time series as I wait for the last one to make its way to ebook… If you haven’t read the wot series yet please do!

The best 3 parts of this trip?

#1 – The house included someone making breakfast each morning which was awesome. Nyomen was very nice and cooked a massive breakfast each morning with black rice pudding (delicious), local fruit salad, yogurt, and delicious bread from the local bakery. I had at least 4 fruits I’ve never had before, drank my way through 12+ coconuts, and one bottle of homemade rice wine (the pink drink). And delicious coffee each morning that was grown only a few miles away (pic below).

#2 – The quiet. Living in downtime Melbourne I forgot how nice it is to open your window and there is just silience and bug noises (like Arkansas). Plus at night the terrifying screams from the lizards sitting on the roof ease you into slumber (amazingly loud). It’s been a long time since I slept so soundly and woke up with the sun.

#3 – Rice hike. I went for a few hour hike with Nyomen all over the area which was fun. Bali is beautiful, especially when you stay out of the typical south-asian touristy towns.

2012 was a fantastic year for reading! With all my travels I had a ton of time to read and set a new record! I read 146 books this year and you can read all the mini reviews here.

If you only read 3 books this year I recommend the following:
*All of these are incredibly well written and fascinating reads. Thanks to the Daily Show for helping me to find them!

1. The Quants – A must read for anyone who likes the modern financial system and doesn’t want to see it wrecked (esp after some of the crazy days we have had since 2008)… An investigative look into high speed stock/bond/etc trading, trading AI, and a lot more. This book and others on the same subject are a big reason I don’t trust the stock market any longer.

2. The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Cornelius is one of the most amazing people I’ve stumbled upon and a true American story of rags to riches. Just an amazing guy! Read the NY Times review here. At his death he possessed 1/9th of all American currency in circulation. Think about that, and he was also just a bad ass, even death couldn’t take him despite many horse racing accidents.

3. The Match King: Ivar Kreuger, The Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals. An amazing amazing guy who is responsible for so many of our modern financial rules after his huge collapse :). Read the NY Times review here.

Honorable Mention (Downgraded because it is INTENSE):
What It Is Like To Go To War. One of the most powerful books I’ve ever read, I literally had to sit and just think for a few hours at a time after I finished sections. And call a friend just to talk. Should be required reading for every single person in high school and discussed.

2 Best Business Books
1. Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck–Why Some Thrive Despite Them All – I love Jim Collins and all his work, this is yet again a great read on what makes a company great.

2. Race Against The Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy. Why this book? Because I think over the next 20 years Robots are going to change the global work environment. And I’m not sure how this will affect the concept of “work” and income for so many people. Scary/Exciting stuff.

3 Best True Books
Mountains Beyond Mountains. The story of a doctor trying to make a difference, beautiful story, made me cry at a few points. Changing the world is hard.

Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough. A brilliant book that me and my brother read and had a fantastic time discussing. A lot of women should read this book.

Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World. A dense but great read if you want to understand the upcoming power dynamics in the world. Esp if you get tired of people claiming the sky is falling because the USA isn’t #1 in every category.

Best Travel Books
Weak year, have nothing I would recommend strongly :(.

Best Thrillers / Military
1. The last week of 2012 I found the best author I’ve found since Clancy. His name is Vince Flynn and I finished all his books within about a week. 12 amazing books about Mitch Rapp, an off the books CIA assassin. Fantastic, well written, awesome. Buy them all!

Best Sci Fi / Fantasy
A weak year for this category :(, the only stand out was the Repairman Jack series. Props to Laura/Karl for finding this one for me. A great read.

Best Bibliographies
Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson. Just a well done biography about an amazing man who was also an uncompromising dick hole. Love it!

All In: The Education Of General David Petraeus. A fantastic book about an amazing man, flawed like all of us, but still amazing. A great read.

Best History
1. The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention. One of the best books I’ve read and a close one for best book of the year. Highly recommended if you want to learn about innovation, the patent system, and more. Check out this great Lincoln Quote that really sums the book up.

2. The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. Just an amazing book about the epidemic and also the medical community at the time. Almost made the best books of the year category. Highly recommended if you want a better understanding of the medical community and the risk of these type of pandemics.

3. And the Money Kept Rolling In (and Out) Wall Street, the IMF, and the Bankrupting of Argentina. I love Argentina, fantastic people, amazing wine, beautiful beautiful country. And they got F’ed in the A on this one, by their bad decisions, plus the international community. A good read if you want to learn how not to govern + how not to help a country. Still causing them so many problems and it frustrates me. I hope they get better leadership in the next decade, their people deserve it.

4. The Last Days of the Incas. Great read to understand this aspect of history. The most amazing part is how a mere 60 to 200 heavily armed calvary destroyed such a vast empire, makes you realize how military technology can really do some crazy things. Very well written.

Loving this quote I found in a book I was reading:

The patent system changed this, secured to the inventor for a limited time exclusive use of his inventions, and thereby added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius in the discovery and production of new and useful things.

From the book The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention. One of the best books I’ve read so far this year. Read a review at the New York Times.

PS. Abraham Lincoln received Patent #6,469 for “A Device for Buoying Vessels Over Shoals” on May 22, 1849.

I was reading a book today about the history of cities and one of the little tidbits I really enjoyed was that the Harper Brothers and many other publishers pirated books to sell locally. Which is funny considering their positions now.

Like many publishers of the 1800s, Harper Bros. took advantage of the lack of international copyright enforcement. The firm printed pirated copies of works by such British authors as Charles Dickens, William Make-peace Thackeray, and Anne, Charlotte, and Emily Brontë. Harper Bros.’ best-selling pirated work by a British author was Thomas Babington Macaulay’s History of England from the Accession of James II. The book sold approximately 400,000 copies, a figure that would classify it as a nonfiction bestseller at the turn of the twentieth century. Because international copyright laws were not enforced, U.S. publishers did not pay royalties to either the British authors or their publishers. The American market had grown to be so significant that, in 1842, Dickens traveled to the United States in an effort to secure royalties from the sale of his works. He was unsuccessful at recouping this money, but the trip did give Dickens the material for his book American Notes for General Circulation, which Harper Bros. promptly pirated.

Read more info here on this and other in the early publishing industries.

Just makes you realize that once you are in power the way you got that power quickly becomes “illegal”. You see the same thing with online startups, they abuse all kinds of spam rules, or what they do with information and once they have grown they rewrite history to pretend they didn’t do x.