Books to read in 2022

It’s a new year. Maybe you have the resolution to build a reading habit or read x number of books. So, here I am giving you some book recommendations.

I dabbled across 40 odd books last year and finished 20 books I found interesting.

Here are my top picks.

Project Hail Mary

A science fiction thriller book with an amazing plot.

The narrator awakens in a spacecraft connected to a medical computer which doesn’t let him get up until he answers two plus two but he doesn’t remember even his name. Slowly, he figures out he is a sole survivor of a mission to save earth from alien microbes draining the sun. The story goes around — how does he solve the obstacles that come his way and save the earth? Plus, it’s got witty humour from the narrator 😉

The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness

This book is Naval Ravikant’s philosophy to wealth creation and happiness in life. Wealth and happiness must be goals for everyone irrespective of whoever they are. This book is formed with pieces around his famous tweets which are like practical wisdom.

A few things that really resonated with me from this book are:

Code and media/content are timeless ways to create wealth in the present. They can scale easily and reach a huge audience. Leverage them.

Happiness is a skill you can develop like any other. If you can’t figure out your own happiness, what’s the point of being wealthy/smart?

Stormlight Series by Brandon Sanderson

I have been a fan of Brandon Sanderson after reading the Mistborn series which completely blew my mind. So, I picked up the Stormlight series.

The Stormlight series has 4 books with the fifth final book yet to be released and it left me equally amazed. I love how Brandon books have a huge fantasy universe, great plot, multi-dimensional characters and multiple POVs. It’s a great pick for a fantasy read.

A Brief History of Capitalism by Yanis Varoufakis

Written as a one-sided conversation from a father to his daughter explaining the nuances of the economy and why capitalism exists. It explains fundamentals like where does money come from, how debts fuel the economy with help of banks and can even lead to its collapse. The author concludes by asking us to contemplate about the capitalistic future we’re moving towards, where all experiential value is converted to exchange value(it does seem like we already are there). The author argues for solutions where we ‘democratize everything’ instead of ‘commodifying everything’ which may seem socialistic. It’s upto the future generation to decide upon a compromise between both. But, if we don’t understand economics, can we make an informed decision?

All the concepts are explained in first principles and the book is perfect for beginners.

The Midnight Library

It’s a deep, thought-provoking book. The protagonist, Nora Seed feels useless. Her cat is dead, her family ignores her and she gets fired from her job. One day, she gets a chance to explore her life made with different life choices in the past. How far would one go to address every regret they had? How can she decide in which life she will be the happiest? She gets to experience how life changes in the grand scheme of things with every regret she tries to fix. Though the end may seem cliche, this book is a realisation of “the prison wasn’t the place, but the perspective”

As put somewhere online, this book is “A whimsical fantasy about learning what’s important in life.”

I hope you found something interesting!