I read quite a few books in 2023, mostly as audiobooks while making coffee, taking long walks, doing laundry, raking leaves, watering the lawn, showering, washing dishes, preparing lunch, brushing my teeth, shoveling snow (ominously little of that these past several winters!), etc. I sometimes even enjoy watching sports – mostly condensed soccer match highlights from around Europe – with the sound off while listening to an audiobook.

You can find a lot of time to “read” if you put audiobooks (or podcasts) on your phone (which you can likely borrow for free from your local library!) and seize the many opportunities that arise when your brain is only half occupied with simple tasks/chores.

Calling audiobooks “reading” is controversial, but I absorb from audiobooks the same ideas I would if I read the words on a dead tree. In fact, some books are far better enjoyed – and their content far better conveyed and absorbed – as audiobooks because the reader’s voice can convey extra information not present in black squiggles on a white background. For example, one of my favorites of 2022 – Elie Mystal’s Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution – was a brilliant book, but the author’s entertaining personality and passionate voice brought the book to life.

Another supremely engaging audiobook was one of my favorite 2023 books, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s Coach Wooden and Me: Our 50-Year Friendship on and off the Court. This was profound on so many levels. Two human beings who looked completely different and grew up in white/rural and multicultural/urban parts of America during different generations became life-long friends, teaching each other so many lessons along the way. They didn’t always agree, but each always respected and listened to the other. I literally cried at the end. I recommend the audiobook, which Kareem reads, to everyone. Beyond basketball, it covers the military, patriotism, racism, growing old, dying, suffering deep personal losses, teaching & mentoring, caring for others, and so much more.

I track the books I’ve read. If a book lands on my list, I chose to start it and chose to finish it. Given the embarrassing number of unread books I own, I can and do stop reading books that don’t hold my interest, so if a book appears below, I enjoyed it enough to complete it:

  • Marcus Sheridan, They Ask, You Answer: A Revolutionary Approach to Inbound Sales, Content Marketing, and Today’s Digital Consumer, Revised & Updated
  • John Whalen, Design for How People Think: Using Brain Science to Build Better Products
  • Donald Miller, How to Grow Your Small Business: A 6-Step Plan to Help Your Business Take Off
  • J. Stuart Ablon, Changeable: How Collaborative Problem Solving Changes Lives at Home, at School, and at Work
  • Scott Berkun, The Myths of Innovation
  • Craig Ferguson, Riding the Elephant: A Memoir of Altercations, Humiliations, Hallucinations, and Observations
  • Philipp Dettmer, Immune: A Journey into the Mysterious System That Keeps You Alive (wonderfully accessible & entertaining exploration of the amazing human immune system from the creator of the fabulous Kurzgesagt science video channel)
  • Alistair Croll & Benjamin Yoskovitz, Lean Analytics: Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster
  • Liz Wiseman, Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter (Revised & Updated)
  • Bret Stetka, A History of the Human Brain: From the Sea Sponge to CRISPR, How Our Brain Evolved (tragically, the M.D. author of this excellent book on the human brain died suddenly a year later from a brain seizure)
  • Melissa Perri, Escaping the Build Trap: How Effective Product Management Creates Real Value (fabulous product management book)
  • Suneel Gupta with Carlye Adler, Backable: The Surprising Truth Behind What Makes People Take a Chance on You
  • Martin Short, I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend
  • Jeff Scheinrock & Matt Richter-Sand, The Agile Start-Up (pretty, colorful physical book; excellent overview/intro but doesn’t go very deep)
  • Bill Messenger, Elements of Jazz: From Cakewalks to Fusion (audiobook only; fabulous)
  • Jeffrey Pfeffer, 7 Rules of Power: Surprising But True Advice on How to Get Things Done and Advance Your Career
  • David Ogilvy, Confessions of an Advertising Man
  • Rishad Tobaccowala, Restoring the Soul of Business: Staying Human in the Age of Data
  • Jennifer Aaker & Naomi Bagdonas, Humor, Seriously: Why Humor Is a Secret Weapon in Business and Life
  • Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer
  • Tom Kelley with Jonathan Littman, The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America’s Leading Design Firm
  • Gary Hamel & Michele Zanini, Humanocracy: Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside Them
  • Tobias Hürter, Too Big for a Single Mind: How the Greatest Generation of Physicists Uncovered the Quantum World
  • Seth Godin, Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable
  • Matt Ridley, How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom
  • Eric Barker, Plays Well With Others: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Relationships is (Mostly) Wrong
  • David Sloan Wilson, This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution
  • Simu Liu, We Were Dreamers: An Immigrant Superhero Origin Story (far deeper, funnier, and more meaningful than I had expected… I recommend the audiobook because Simu Liu’s story is especially entertaining when he reads it)
  • Richard Sheridan, Chief Joy Officer: How Great Leaders Elevate Human Energy and Eliminate Fear
  • Kip Tindell, Uncontainable: How Passion, Commitment, and Conscious Capitalism Built a Business Where Everyone Thrives
  • Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Coach Wooden and Me: Our 50-Year Friendship on and off the Court (astonishingly great book on so many levels; I literally cried at the end… I recommend the audiobook, which Kareem reads)
  • Robert Rosenberg, Around the Corner to Around the World: A Dozen Lessons I Learned Running Dunkin Donuts
  • Ryan Leak, Chasing Failure: How Falling Short Sets You Up for Success
  • Dan Lyons, Lab Rats: How Silicon Valley Made Work Miserable for the Rest of Us
  • Simon Sinek, The Infinite Game
  • Michael G. Goldsby, The Entrepreneur’s Toolkit (The Great Courses)
  • Mariana Mazzucato, Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide To Changing Capitalism
  • Annie Jacobsen, The Pentagon’s Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America’s Top Secret Military Research Agency
  • Lorraine Justice, The Future of Design: Global Product Innovation for a Complex World
  • Thales S. Teixeira, Unlocking the Customer Value Chain: How Decoupling Drives Consumer Disruption
  • Robert McKee, Storynomics: Story-Driven Marketing in the Post-Advertising World
  • Benjamin Bikman, MD, Why We Get Sick: The Hidden Epidemic at the Root of Most Chronic Disease
  • Simon Sinek, Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action
  • Jim Kwik, Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life
  • David Nilssen & Jeff Levy, Making the Jump into Small Business Ownership
  • Jamie Mustard, The Iconist: The Art and Science of Standing Out
  • Barton Gellman, Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State
  • Michael Dell, Play Nice But Win: A CEO’s Journey from Founder to Leader
  • Srinivas Rao (with Robin Dellabough), An Audience of One: Reclaiming Creativity for Its Own Sake
  • Clint Pulver, I Love It Here: How Great Leaders Create Organizations Their People Never Want To Leave
  • Sam Newman, Building Microservices: Designing Fine-Grained Systems, 2nd ed
  • Dennis E. Taylor, We Are Legion (We Are Bob)
  • Rich Diviney, The Attributes: 25 Hidden Drivers of Optimal Performance
  • Jim Collins & William Lazier, BE 2.0 (Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0): Turning Your Business Into an Enduring Great Company (Read this twice)
  • Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

Sadly, my reading habit – strong most of the year – finished 2023 with a whimper… When the weather got cold and darkness fell early, I got lazy about taking long walks. I did start using my treadmill, but I’ve been binge-watching “Northern Exposure” on Amazon Prime… The first season was good, and then it got great.

My list last year was heavy on entrepreneurship books because: a) I find the challenges of launching and scaling a business interesting; b) I moved from a big bank to an innovative, agile 20-person startup (where I’m one of three coders) in July; and, c) For years, I’ve been playing nights and weekends with technologies and ideas I hope to eventually launch as a service people will find useful, so I’m soaking up any ideas that might help launch my future venture. I also enjoy watching Youtube videos, like those from Y Combinator, Harvard Innovation Labs, and SaaStr.

I wish I had read more science books and listened to more science podcasts in 2023 and hope to rectify this in 2024. (I did, though, watch a fair number of science shows on Youtube last year.)

With thanks to Susan Q Yin for her photo on Unsplash