The best books I read in 2021
The best about startups - Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days by Jessica Livingston
Constant enlightenment for anyone interested in startups. It is a collection of interviews with 32 founders from a diverse range of companies. Similar themes emerge and re-emerge, each time put so well that you end up highlighting the entire book. I will re-visit this book as it is one of the best single sources of founder knowledge compiled.
The best for programmers - Practical Object-Oriented Design: An Agile Primer Using Ruby by Sandi Metz
Don’t let the “Ruby” part fool you — or even the “Object-Oriented” part — this is a great book for thinking about programs and tests in general. I highly recommend checking out Sandi Metz on YouTube to see how she simplifies and improves software development. How Sandi thinks about testing is particularly enlightening and I’ve been writing my tests (and therefore code) that way ever since.
The best for life in general: The Life You Can Save: How to do your part to end world poverty by Peter Singer
This is a book for people who want to maximize the positive impact they can have on the world. Singer makes arguments for why some forms of aid have a higher impact than others and then debunks common responses to these and charity in general. In terms of how I spend and value money — and even the reason I want to acquire money — this may be the most impactful book I’ve ever read. It’s also free.
Honorable mentions:
The Launch Pad: Inside Y-Combinator by Randall Stross: An inspiring page-turner that exposed me to the world of Y Combinator and startups and set me on that reading path the rest of the year. It reads like you’re binge-watching a Netflix documentary on Y Combinator’s Summer 2011 batch which included Codecademy (which was a pivot from programming challenges for job interviews), Firebase (another pivot), and Genius.com. Is it weird to say going through Y Combinator or something like it is on my bucket list now?
Venture Capitalists at Work: How VCs Identify and Build Billion-Dollar Successes by Tarang Shah: Similar to Founders at Work in format and insights but from the perspective of VCs instead of founders — though they’re more similar than you may think.
