2020 - my five books of the year

Usually, I read many, many books throughout the year. I’ve made a habit out of picking my favourites each year and reflect on the lessons I’ve learned. 2019, I chronicled five amazing biographies from Michelle Obama to Samantha Power. 2020 was a different year. A year with more screen-time, more time at home filled with loved ones, less time on planes and trains — less moments of solitude. This left me with fewer books that dazzled me, but I hope you’ll find my small selection equally interesting.

1. “Amor Towles: A gentlemen in Moscow” or lessons on how living in a hotel can make for a full life

Count Alexander Rostov was sentenced to house arrest in Moscow’s Hotel Metropol for committing the crime of being a intellectual of noble origin in Leninist Russia. The book is his first person account of his life inside the Hotel’s walls and Russia’s trajectory on the outside. He mixes profound life insights with observing the realities of living in socialist Russia (political activism, tragedy, arbitrary arrests, shortages). It reminded me that even when we are confined to a small small space there are adventures to be had and relationships to be built and that a full life doesn’t necessarily depend on movement and travel.

“As both a student of history and a man devoted to living in the present, I admit that I do not spend a lot of time imagining how things might otherwise have been. But I do like to think there is a difference between being resigned to a situation and reconciled to it. If one doesn’t master one’s circumstances, one is bound to be mastered by them.”

2. “Siddhartha Mukherjee: The Gene. An intimate history” or how nature vs. nurture actually works.

“It’s only us humans who want to own the future.”
A marvellous book for all those who want a better understanding of what we’re made of. Mukherjee mixes the personal (the story of mental illness in his own family) with the scientific and the historical. Chapter by chapter he traces the progresses humans made in discovering how we work and our attempts to improve on nature. In each chapter, he tackles the moral and ethical debates of the time. He follows the eugenic movement in Germany and the United States all the way up to the AIDS epidemic and recent attempts to alter genes in our offspring and change the human race forever. A dense but enjoyable read in a year where none of us could escape medicine or science.

3. “General Stanley McChrystal, Jeff Eggers and Jason Mangone: Leaders” or how all of us can become leaders (or heroes)

I had this book lying around for over two years and couldn’t bring myself to read yet another eulogy of strong men. When I finally picked it up, I was pleasantly surprised. McChrystal, himself a decorated war hero, traces the lives of a motley bunch of leaders. He portrays them with insight and humility that makes them stand out as people and therefore makes their stories memorable. He portrays Walt Disney and Coco Chanel as autocratic business moguls, Robbespiere and Musab al-Zarqawi as zealots mobilising the violent nature of their followers for their purist fanatical fantasies. The portraits that moved me the most: Albert Einstein and his failure to land a university job for most of his early years and his struggles to gain acceptance in physics circles, Zheng He for conquering the world through peaceful means in service of the man who killed his father and Harriet Tubman for her incredible bravery in putting her life in imminent danger again and again to personally free so many slaves and inspire countless others to do their bit. I’m not sure I’ve learned a lot about leadership, but it’s a great book to learn more about some of the individuals that shaped our world without having to read a 300 page biography on each.

4. “Rohinton Mistry: A fine balance” or a glimpse into Indira Gandhi’s India and how big policies affect little lives

A friend described Mistry’s book to me as the Indian version of Yanagihar’s ‘A little life’. That’s pretty accurate. The book follows the lives of four people that end up living together in Mumbai out of necessity and becoming family for each other. There is Dina, a seamstress who lost her one and only love and reconciled herself to a life of sadness. Ishvar and Omprakash, two poor and honest tailors leaving their village behind to look for work in Mumbai and the student Maneck, who misses his home in the mountains and struggles to adjust to university and city life. The four trying to eke out a living and a slither of happiness, but poverty and human interventions based on ill-advised Government policies such as the forced sterilisation drive continue to scupper their fate. I’m not so sure what I take away from this? How powerless we all are against politicians? How arbitrary fate is in dealing each one of us a hand? Read this if you’re looking for something to lose yourself in, not necessarily if you need a hopeful escape book to lift your spirits.

5. “Esi Edugyan — Washington Black” or about making the best out of what’s been given to you

A superb little novel that grips you from the first page. Washington Black grows up as a slave in the Caribbean. He leaves the plantation — owned by a grumpy and violent Englishman — on a flying contraption together with the plantation owner’s brother, Titch. Titch, a bit of a lost figure, is a scientist and 19th century explorer, who only lives for his discoveries and his attempts to win his elusive father’s praise. Washington Black, forever looking for a home, for parents and for belonging. Together they set out on a magical quest and a journey of adventures that takes them to the sea, to the U.S., to England and to the Arctic, encountering friendship, betrayal, death and love. A delightful book — full of escapism into a different world.

Drawing 2020 to a close, I hope 2021 will bring many many more hours of reading. A few on my list that I’m particularly looking forward to include: The new Walter Isaacson: a biography about the Nobel Price Winner scientist Jennifer Doudna and her work for gene code breaking, Catherine Bolton’s account of Putin’s rise to power, of course, Obama’s ‘A promised land’ and for some fun Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club about a bunch of grannies solving a murder mystery in England. Happy Reading, folks!