Books I read during 2020

The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business

Erin Meyer

There were several books I read this year that made me reflect on some personal past decisions. The Culture Map was one of them. It helped me to understand better the different expectations people have at work based on their culture. It's without any doubt the book I enjoyed the most this year.

The book is full of little stories about work situations where diversity caused some struggle. Meyer perfectly explains each participant's context and real expectations, giving some cultural background and how it suggested their clients to unravel those. For example, they talk about how some cultures expect the boss to make the call. Then she proceeds to explain how some other cultures have a more horizontal approach but differ on how fast the decision is taken and how much flexibility there is once the decision is made.

There are hundreds of topics and real examples like this in the book. If you work in a multicultural company or you want to understand how other people may think based on their cultural background, this is a must.

Practical Empathy: For Collaboration and Creativity in Your Work

Indi Young

I wrote some words about this one last month.

EMPOWERED: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products

Marty Cagan

OK. Officially I didn't finish this one in 2020, but who cares.

EMPOWERED is an enjoyable continuation by SVPG to their digital product bible: Inspired. It could be more or less deep based on your experience working on mature digital product teams. Still, if the first one was a must, this one is an excellent continuation focused on building and managing strong product teams and making them grow.

The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company

Robert Iger

Not every day you have to convince your company board or Steve Jobs to buy Pixar. Or follow your shopping spree with Marvel and LucasArts. I don't have the money or the power, so I only got some gossip and anecdotes.

The Great Mental Models Volume 1: General Thinking Concepts

Rhiannon Beaubien and Shane Parrish

I was not too fond of it. I got a strong reaction against it when I first read it as I felt it was some human behavior bullshit for tech people. Mental models are an exciting topic, but I think it oversimplifies them, and talking about them without context is not acceptable. Trying to talk about magic formulas about how people think requires a bit more.

On the other hand, a couple of friends enjoy it, and I'm not even close to being a human behavior expert.

Patria

Fernando Aramburu

I read this one just before HBO released the TV show to avoid spoilers. I mean, maybe spoiler is not the word for something I experienced during my youth.

It was a hard book to read for me. It made me notice some behaviors I had while I was a teenager that I never before stop and think about them as an adult. It made me reflect on my views about violence when I was younger, and things look a bit less severe than they were.

Nevermind, it opened during this Coronavirus-centric year a ton of interesting conversations with my friends about the Basque Conflict without the strong opinions brought usually by the news.

La sombra del viento

Carlos Ruiz Zafón

The book I read the fastest this year. I started it just when I moved to Barcelona, and the story and the places made me imagine the city and its people in the past. I loved it.

El juego del Ángel

Carlos Ruiz Zafón

The second part of the book above. I hated it.

Ensayo sobre la cegera

José Saramago

Probably this year was the one where I read more non-fiction or non-work-related books. It took me way too much to finish it, but it was recommended to me by someone special, and it would make a fantastic apocalyptic TV show if you ask me.

The Darkest Forest

Liu Cixin

The Dark Forest is the second installment of the utterly popular sci-fi trilogy that I hope to finish this year. A lot has been written about these books. It's a must.

You Don't Know JS Yet

Kyle Simpson

I took several months off this year to study and travel (perfect timing). One of the things on my list was learning a bit more about JavaScript. I read some of the books of this collection and made some courses and projects. "Projects."

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Books I read more than half, but I didn't finish.

Thinking in Systems: A Primer

Donella Meadows

This was one of the Factorial Book Club reads. One of these books that explains super exciting things but made my eyes start closing after a couple of pages. It explains how systems work and their different interconnections. How changes in one place could push significant changes somewhere else. Super exciting stuff, so it has to be how it's written, my attention span, or probably using the same glyphs over and over.

A Promised Land

Barack Obama

I bought it an audiobook because Obama narrated it. I found it boring how he won all those elections before becoming President, but in these times, Obamas voice helps me sleep a couple of days a week.

Actívate: Y cambiará tu vida

Crys Dyaz

Lockdowns are hard.

Database Internals: A Deep Dive Into How Distributed Data Systems Work

Alex Petrov

My previous job was a lot about Postgres, BigQuery, and databases. I wanted to learn a bit more about their inner workings, so I read this book as far as I could.

Eloquent Javascript, 3rd Edition: A Modern Introduction to Programming

Marijn Haverbeke

I started working before finishing it, but it's on my pending list for the beginning of this year.