My Reading List for 2018
The best books I read this year
Rather than making a list out of all the books I read this year, I would love to share only the best out of them. Again, like last year, I get convinced more and more that sometimes you may not have an answer to your questions, but you can always find it in books.
Also, it’s unbelievable how easy it is to become an author nowadays and how much crap gets published on a yearly basis. Great authors with an actual well thought opinion are scarce. Most of the books on the market are about how somebody found that we need to breathe air and writes 800 pages about how great and useful is to breathe air. Nonetheless, the list of books mentioned below, I am convinced, will make you see life differently, work smarter, and create better products.
My book of the year
Totto-Chan: The Little Girl at the Window by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi
After reading this book, it immediately became my favourite and took place on the same shelf as other great authors such as Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Bulgakov. The books are about a recollection of memories of an ideal school in Tokyo during World War II. The school, if you can name it that way, combined fun with learning and love.
The level of thinking and deepness the principal of the school had for the kids is unbelievable. By reading it, you will understand what it truly means to be a kid and how schools should encourage that. You will also learn so many things about how to “educate” and take care of a kid that you haven’t thought of it before.
Practical books
These books helped me become a better designer and business person overall. From basic principles to practical advice, you can find something for yourself.
Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krugg
Do I still need to say why it is a great book? I wrote an articleearlier this year about the book, and it blew up. The book is a must-read for anybody who creates or is involved in a building a product for people. From fundamental principles to rules to follow, you will find almost everything in it.
Brand Thinking by Debbie Millman
A great collection of interviews with great people. People interviewed are Wally Ollins, Seth Godin, Malcolm Gladwell, Daniel Pink, Stanley Hainsworth, and many more. The book is one of those which I call “A book about nothing and everything”. Whether you are a designer, design strategist, product manager or CEO of a company, you will find something for yourself in these interviews. On what is a brand, how to create great experiences and many more.
Nudge by Richard Thaler
Behavioural economics is new to me, got into it only this year. Out of all the books I read on the subject, Richard Thaler’s is the best one so far. It is well written and easy to understand. You will find examples of what drives human behaviour, how we can become choice architects and other practical stuff on how to create better products that encourage good behaviour (or bad).
From Zero to One by Peter Thiel
Haven’t read a better business book that this one. It is short, well-written, practical. What else can you need? It’s easier to copy than create something new, and the book is about how to get from 0 to 1. Rather than from 1 to 0 (copy a model from others). If you are in the market of creating a product/business that stands out then it is for you.
Getting Real by Jason Fried
The book is about a smarter, faster and easier way to build a successful web product. It is from 2004, but by reading it, you will realise that nothing has changed. We make the same mistakes, from product to running a team. The guys from Basecamp did a great job at writing it, by using practical advice from their own experience. The book is easy to read with tons and tons of useful information on how to design, build products and manage teams.
Inspired by Marty Cagan
Never expected to read a good product management book. As the industry is pretty young, Marty Cagan does a great job to give some useful information on what it takes to create products that people love. From having a vision, to building, testing and managing a product. It is a useful read for designers and for product managers.
To make your brain work and think
Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday
Ryan Holiday is one of my favorite modern writers and his books, Ego is the Enemy and Obstacle is the Way (and many others) are a great reminder of how not to allow your own ego to interfere with your work and how the struggle to get somewhere is the way. An easy read and a great reminder with examples from famous leaders, actors, writers and many others.
Filter Bubble by Eli Pariser
Eli Pariser does a great job of describing how, basically, people with a bad foundation to their thinking came to create algorithms that encourage bad behaviour. He reveals how such algorithms or more specific “bad thinking” can lead to limiting the imagination, creativity and freedom of thinking for future generations. As a designer who thinks on how to improve products, this book became a great wake up call to think twice about everything I put out in the world. And what impact it may have. With all the scandals, the book is more relevant than ever.
Lev Tolstoy’s Essays
There are more than 50 of them, but the most remarkable ones are “The Kingdom of God is Within You”. You can ignore the title, it’s not about preaching Christianity. But more about the system around us that we’ve created and decided to call it a rational one. From life, governments, to how people are manipulated into wrong thinking and belief. The book is hard to read, and sometimes it requires a re-read but is worth every minute spent on it. Also, it’s a book that inspired Mohandas Gandhi to “align his life with the Truth at any cost”.
“What Is to be Done?” a complementary book to the first one. It is a fiction work in which Tolstoy describes the social conditions of Russia in his days. Again, he also touches more general points on a worldwide scale and how we came to call certain things “rational” to do in modern days at the cost of people. Frankly, by reading it, you won’t realise any difference of those 120 years that have passed since its initial publication.
Starting Point, Hayao Miyazaki
A collection of essays and interviews with filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, the founder of Ghibli studio. Your probably know him from his films: “Spirited Away”, “Howl’s Moving Castle” or “My Neighbor Totoro”. The entire book is about the animation industry and how he makes “movies” for children.
In the beginning, I thought it will be boring to read about how a cartoon is made, but I was wrong. There’s so much thought, and effort poured into creating “lives”, people, environments that you could not have imagined before. The entire book is a collection about nothing and everything ever possible. It is like a journey through an unexplored jungle which, in the end, puts your mind at ease.
One more thing
I often share book recommendations and publish some of my articles via the newsletter. If you would like to receive a weekly newsletter with a design article and book recommendations, then sign up here. Thank you ❤