The five books I enjoyed the most in 2020
The year 2020 has been a very unexpected year to say the least. I witnessed the first pandemic in a century and it was really terrifying. I felt the core structure of society break down for the first time ever worldwide. It has been a very crazy and to round it up, I’m going to share the top 5 books I enjoyed the most all year.
The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb
This is easily one of the books that will leave the most impression on my life. A black swan was defined to be a single event or phenomenon which satisfied three requirements: it is rare, it is very significant and we try to explain its occurrence with theories in hindsight, but we truly could never predict them. Simply put, a black swan is a rare and significant event. The book centers on the fact that we shouldn’t underestimate the role of rare events in our lives. The other half of the book continues from what Nassim Taleb had started in his previous book — Fooled by Randomness.
A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel
A great deal of the year went into trying to understand the financial markets and one of the major principles or teachings that the author is trying to pas with this book is that the stock market cannot be timed or beaten consistently over time. The random walk theory essentially base on the fact that the past in terms of price action of stocks is not any indication of the future and whatever technique is employed in trying to beat the market after commissions and transaction costs will not work consistently. I pretty much understood plenty of what I know now about the stock market after reading this book.
The Alchemist by Paul Coelho
The Alchemist is a very interesting short story by Paul Coelho which tries to be motivational. It follows the adventure of a shepherd, Santiago, who follows his quest to satisfy his “Personal Legend” which is to find treasures at the Pyramids in Egypt. His adventures began after meeting the King of Salem who spoke and inspired him for the journey ahead. The Alchemist is definitely a classic I’d be reading again in the nearest future.
Antifragile by Nassim Taleb
Following his Incerto series which contains four books — Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, The bed of procustes and Antifragile, Nassim Taleb was essentially bringing his work against philosophasters (or a pretender to philosophy) into one. Turns out there is no word in English language for the phenomenon that things gain from disorder. In Greek mythology, Hydra was a creature that has numerous heads and if you cut off one, two heads grow back in its place. A town that is destroyed by a disaster that find strength in rebuilding and turns out to be better after the disaster is said to be antifragile.
Like other books from the Incerto series, Antifragile is definitely one of the books that left the biggest impression on me and I’ll be reading it again sometime in the future.
The New Man by Femi Ademiluyi
I actually spent years trying to get a copy of this classic piece of fiction but couldn’t but I eventually found it on the web. It centers on the story of a new Agricultural Inspector, Ayo Badejo, who was just deployed to Ipaja, a fictional town in West Africa, as the previous Inspector was retiring. Badejo was an idealist with plans for the future. He wanted to change the world and make it a better place starting with the town. The only problem is that it’s incredibly hard to change people who benefits from their habits. Badejo would not receive bribes from the people of the town and they feared he was working for the opposing town, Iwuya.
Circumstances would lead to his life being in danger and in a moment of self-defence, he would kill another man. Life in prison changed him forever and he lived to become a very great difference from the man that he used to be.
I look forward to reading other interesting books in 2021. I’d create a list of the books I decide to read for the year but I always prefer to discover them randomly as time and life directs me. One of the things I learned this year is to embrace the randomness of life and the reason why modernity is depressing is that it’s moving our lives more and more into a fixed structure which is against our very nature. I wonder what books I’ll be discussing by the end of 2021 but I can’t wait to discover them.