2020 Reading list
It has certainly been a year. Unsurprisingly, having lived through the Melbourne lockdown during 2020 (twice!), I have found more time to read than in any previous year.
I also drove from Brisbane to Melbourne round trip three times— giving ample a chance to catch up on ‘those books’ that I mention in conversation almost weekly but have actually never read (or listened to) start to finish.
Below is a list of all the books I got through in this wild year. Included are all 3 formats: paperbacks, epubs, and audiobooks.
Biography + Autobiography:
The Man who Solved the Market — Gregory Zuckerman
The Education of an Idealist — Samantha Power
American Spy — Lauren Wilkinson
No Room for Small Dreams — Shimon Peres
A Bigger Picture — Malcolm Turnbull
My Story — Julia Gillard
Lazarus Rising — John Howard
The Audacity of Hope — Barack Obama
The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man — John Perkins
Tribe of Mentors — Tim Ferriss
The Insider — Christopher Pyne
Remembering Bob — Suzie Pieters-Hawke
Let My People Go Surfing — Yvon Chouinard
Dreams From My Father — Barack Obama
Trust — Pete Buttigieg
Shortest Way Home — Pete Buttigieg
Best Foot Forward — Adam Hills
A Private War — Marie Brenner
A Promised Land — Barack Obama
Economics and business leadership:
This is Marketing — Seth Godin
Randomistas — Andrew Leigh
Economics in two lessons — John Quiggin
Indistractable — Nir Eyal
Hooked — Nir Eyal
Why We’re Polarised — Ezra Klein
The Charisma Myth — Olivia Fox Cabane
How to make the world add up — Tim Harford
The Lean Startup — Eric Reis
Debt: The First 5000 Years — David Graeber
If Then — Jill Lepore
The Black Swan — Nassim Taleb
The Almanac of Naval Ravikant — Eric Jorgenson
Military:
Leadership Strategy and Tactics — Jocko Willink
Extreme Ownership — Jocko Willink
The Commando — Ben Mckelvey
History/Science/Climate:
Guns, Germs and Steel — Jared Diamond
The Anarchy — William Dalrymple
Jerusalem — Simon Sebag Montefiore
The World Until Yesterday — Jared Diamond
The Bush — Don Watson
A Life on Our Planet — David Attenborough
Fiction:
The Rules of Backyard Cricket — Jock Serong
Blue Moon — Lee Child
The Martian — Andy Weir
Stoner — John Edward Williams
The Invisible Man — H.G.Wells
The Rosie Project — Graeme Simsion
The Rosie Effect — Graeme Simsion
The Pact — Thomas Keneally
Quarterly Essays:
Quarterly Essay 76: Red Flag — Peter Hartcher
Quarterly Essay 47: Political Animal: The making of Tony Abbott — David Marr
Quarterly Essay 44: Man Made World — Andrew Charlton
Quarterly Essay 74: The Prosperity Gospel — Erik Jensen
Quarterly Essay 77: Cry Me A River — Margaret Simons