So, it’s 2020 new year resolution achievement time. You promised to read more books this year, but there are some problems –
1. You hate reading
2. You don’t have the time to sit down and read
3. You can’t afford to buy so many expensive books
4. You don’t even know which books to read
In this article, we will give you solutions to all these problems. I will review 5 books that I think you should read in 2020 –
Some of these books I have read in print form or on my book reader, and several of these I have heard as audiobooks.
I love audiobooks because I can save time by listening to them on the move. Listening to audiobooks is a new way of reading books and especially if you are learning English but are not very comfortable with reading a 300 page book, then listening will help you improve your pronunciation and grasp of the language – to begin with you can pair a physical copy with the audiobook and match your reading and the narration speed on the app.
Now for my 5 favourite books –
1 
New York Times Bestseller and recommended by Bill Gates. Some of the key takeaways for me were
a) Not letting other people’s vision of the future dictate you – every person initially thought that Knight’s idea was completely crazy, because at that time running was considered so weird that people would literally throw things at a person running down a road.
b) You don’t need to know what you’re doing in order to be successful. I just love this about this book – he says you just don’t need to know everything at the start, you just need an absolute obsessive willingness to figure it out.
c) If you’re going through hell, keep going. There were so many times during this book when you think that Knight is hanging by a thread and will not make it.
Trust me, someone somewhere thinks your idea is crazy too, and that is why this book is definitely a great read.
2.
this book by David Epstein is close to my heart. In fact I did a TED talk on this subject 2 years ago as well. You may have heard that Tiger Woods picked up his first golf club when he was a toddler and we often think that the best students always know, very early, exactly what they want to pursue.
But did you know that as a young boy Roger Federer dabbled in squash, skiing, wrestling, skateboarding, basketball, tennis and badminton before turning to tennis much later as a teenager. Roger gave credit to this range of sports for his hand eye co-ordination and athleticism.
In his research Epstein found that most successful individuals didn’t actually know what they actually wanted to do, they tried a bunch of different things before zeroing on one. In fact a Nobel Laureate was 22 times more likely to be an amateur actor, magician, singer or poet.
So if you haven’t found your calling yet, try a bunch of different things and of course – read ‘Range’
3.
this book takes a neuroscience perspective on the brain. One interesting research in the book is about cab drivers who used their memory to find routes as against using google maps – over years these cab drivers developed a larger hipocampos than the average. The hipocampos is the part of the brain responsible for visual and spatial memory.
And the authors also did functional MRI’s on performing musicians and other public performers. And they found that when the performer was playing music without actually worrying about how good or had his performance was, their entire brain lit up. Not the left or the right side, but the entire brain. Which explains the benefits of ‘being in the zone’ or ‘being in the flow’.
So this book gives five brain power tools for us to change our own brain’s landscape.
4.
This book will make you laugh and ponder over your inner thoughts at the same time . It is a straight-forward, straight-talking guide to find your own identity in the midst of all this chaos around us.
I especially liked his approach to deal with rejection. Shwetabh lays bare the three most common reactions to rejection – he says that most people when faced with rejection will feel one of three things – I am a loser, I will become successful just to prove them wrong, and the third reaction is to spread hate around – the world is a bad place. He goes on to say how each one of these three reactions is in fact detrimental to you, and in turn gives a very interesting and unique way to deal with rejection.
Read this book if you are ready to have your beliefs shaken.
5.
This is a guide book to self awareness- who we are, how others see us and how we fit into the world. In this book Tasha shares years of research with us and some of her most shocking revelations are – selfie takers tend to have shallower relationships than non selfie takers, text-ers on average tend to be less personally reflective than those that speak face to face etc.
One very simple tool to become more self aware and improve relationships she says is to replace the ‘why’ with ‘what’. So let’s say you hate your job’, then instead of asking ‘why do I feel so terrible’, how about you ask ‘what are the situations that make me feel terrible and what is common about them’ go on with ‘what can I do to change this’.
Read this if you want to really grow as an individual
I hope you enjoy these books as much as I did, and by the way, I give below my recommended list books.
So try it out today and put a comment under this article telling me which of these was your favourite book.
