2015 Best Books Read
02 Jan 2016
The end of the year is a time for reflection. These are the best books I read in 2015. Bill Gates listed the 6 best books he read this year. We have one overlap, Mindset. Food I like to eat and this was a pretty good year for books about food.
- The Language of Food - how ketchup came from China
- Flour - awesome cookie recipes
- On Food and Cooking - science of food
- Franklin Barbecue - BBQ in Austin
People This year I read about a bunch of interesting people, ranging from a left tackle to an astronaut.
- Elon Musk - from paypal to spaceX
- Let My People Go Surfing - How Patagonia got started
- Life in Motion - becoming a ballerina
- The Blind Side - left tackle
- Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track - Richard Feynman’s life through letters and correspondence.
- An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth - Chris Hadfield, astronaut
Management Working is not about technology. It is about getting a group of people together to build something together that they couldn’t do alone without everything going to pieces.
- The Hard Things About Hard Things - VC Ben Horowitz telling you the things that suck, which no ones talks about
- The Power of Habit - tricking your mind to help you succeed in whatever
- Mindset - why some people grow and some don’t
Marketing Only one book in this category, but it was good enough for me to make a category just on this. People often focus on the technology, but if nobody knows about you, you wouldn’t be able to sell anything.
- Traction - provides a framework for pursuing difference channels
Money Some books about people and money.
- Venture Deals - must read if you are getting venture money
- When Genius Failed - how Nobel Prize winners lost a bunch of money
- Liar’s Poker - what money does to people