What I've Read This Year

In my old blog I used to keep a running update of what I was reading at the time, so to kick off this blog, here are all the books I've ready so far in 2019 (in the order I finished them).  The underlined ones are the ones I'd recommend:


  • Becoming -- Michelle Obama
  • Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor's Plan to Make Us Safer -- Kamala Harris
  • Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel -- Tom Wainwright
  • The Dictator's Learning Curve: Inside the Global Battle for Democracy -- William J. Dodson
  • All the President's Men -- Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein
  • Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead -- Brene Brown
  • The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts -- Gary Chapman
  • We Should All Be Feminists -- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  • Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower -- Brittney C. Cooper
  • Americanah -- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  • Homegoing -- Yaa Gyasi
  • Marching Powder: A True Story of Friendship, Cocaine, and South America's Strangest Jail -- Rusty Young
  • Life Will Be the Death of Me: . . .And You Too!  -- Chelsea Handler
  • Why Not Me? -- Mindy Kaling
  • The Sparrow -- Mary Doria Russell
  • The Sound of Things Falling -- Juan Gabriel Vasquez
  • The Next America: Boomers, Millennials, and the Looming Generational Showdown -- Paul Taylor
  • Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right -- Jane Mayer
  • Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know -- Malcolm Gladwell
  • Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World -- David Epstein

For a bonus, here are some of the things I've watched on Netflix (and HBO) this year, in no particular order. I liked most of these, so it's hard to pick, but I highlighted the ones I liked most:
  • Pose (Season 1)
  • Atypical (Seasons 1-3)
  • Homecoming: A Film By BeyoncĂ©
  • Rhythm and Flow (Season 1)
  • Rick and Morty (Seasons 1-3)
  • Something Great
  • She's Gotta Have It (Season 2)
  • Icarus
  • American Factory
  • Knock Down the House
  • Deon Cole: Cole Hearted
  • Always Be My Maybe
  • Ali Wong: Baby Cobra
  • Black Lady Sketch Show (Season 1) -- HBO
  • Euphoria -- HBO

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Throwback to that Time I went to a Shawn Mendes Show

I wrote this blog post back in December  (2019) when I went to a Shawn Mendes show. Little did I know that'd be my last concert for awhile.  I was supposed to go to a Snoh Aalegra show in San Diego last week (March 2020) but obviously that got cancelled.  Here's the post! So I went to the last show of Shawn Mendes’s world tour, in Mexico City. Yea, I planned my holiday flight itinerary around it, I’m not here to talk about that. What I DO want to start with first and foremost is telling you about how Shawn Mendes really played me right from the jump. I cannot explain the heartbreak I felt when I walked up to the venue at exactly 8:30p, crossed the stadium lot (which was empty since everybody that wasn’t me was smart enough to show up on time), and heard the stadium go apeshit. From the screams I knew that Shawn Mendes had obviously just hit the stage, and I could have gotten over that, except HE OPENED WITH MY FAVORITE SONG. The audacity. By the time I jogged into th...
Read more

COVID Reads. Da Books I Been Reading

I haven't been reading voraciously since the beginning of the pandemic the way some folks have, but I have kind of started reading again. I think I'm starting to kick into high gear after the past few books I read, though, and I'm looking forward to some good reading in the near future. Here's what I've read so far: Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World - Anand Giridharadas American Prison: A Reporter's Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment - Shane Bauer  Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It - Chris Voss with Tahl Raz Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World - Rutger Bregman A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier - Ishmael Beah and Macmillan Audio How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence - Michael Pollan Especially after reading the last book on the list ...
Read more

Job Hunting: It's the Millennial Thing To Do

It's not a secret that all the cool kids nowadays are switching jobs and careers like shoelaces.  Gone are the days of gettin that good manufacturing job and sticking with it 'till retirement.  First of all those jobs don't exist anymore, but secondly, regarding the comparable, stable jobs that do exist--kids my age are getting bored and our idealism isn't meshing with the concept of coloring inside the lines.  We want to have careers that align with our values and allow us to do some good in the world.  We're also willing to take on some risk in order to achieve that.  We don't have kids, houses, or other assets that create drag on our willingness to drop a good job for something more fulfilling.  We gotta save the planet and like the environment and public health and like voting rights, racial discrimination and homeless or something. #Resist As I look around, I've realized that a lot of my peers are engaged in this hunt right now.  Even as us mill...
Read more