Reading is one of the things I really enjoy doing. When I finish a good book, I get into a sorry state because I rarely want it to end. I also read like no other. I can spend hours on one page, as I pause to check the internet for something referenced on the page, and before you know it, I’ve spent hours down a rabbit hole.
There’s a concept Malcolm Gladwell calls overstories, which I love so much. It’s the idea that the real stories are often the ones overlooked. I like it when a book mentions something in passing and ends up revealing much more about the passing topic than whole books dedicated to the topic. My personal method of finding out things about history is to find random news clippings about the event as they were reported in real time. One good example is Watergate – in finding real-time news clippings from Seymour Hersh and, of course, Woodward and Bernstein, I got to feel the pulse of Watergate without the drama that ensued when it became a National topic. I loved coming across a random article that guessed Mark Felt as the source of the leaks; if only the author knew he was right.
This year, my reads were around specific themes. The most prominent was studying 20th-century New York. I think New York really became very powerful and a financial cornerstone of the world. I wanted to understand how New York became this behemoth, and as I mentioned earlier, the best way to do so is to find the overstories. Thus, I settled on four books (I only finished two of them this year).
The first book I read was I Regret Almost Everything by Keith McNally. I have already written an extensive review of this book here, so I will not belabour the point, but it was a really good book in how honest and unpolished the writer made himself appear. After I published my review, I shared it with Keith, and we got into a conversation. Given that I was also reading or had read books with timelines that overlapped his, I wanted to find out if he came across the subject of the other books during his time in New York, and I wanted to know what the subculture in New York was at the time, outside what he had written in his book.
I won’t go into the details of our conversation because, as you’ll see when you read Keith’s book, he’s very open and holds nothing back, and he made sure to share exactly what he thought about the other topics I raised.
The second book I read in understanding New York in the late 20th century was Barry Diller’s memoir, Who Knew. I first heard about the book after reading an excerpt of it on NYMag, where Diller spoke in very sweet tones about his love affair with Diane von Furstenberg (DvF). I have been a Diller fan for nearly ten years. First took note of him seriously after Reid Hoffman did an episode with him on his podcast Masters of Scale, and I saw the term “Killer Dillers”, which referred to the number of media and entertainment giants that Diller has mentored. I have used so many Diller anecdotes in my career and in mentoring my proteges. Diller has a special skill in knowing ho wto make people better. I do something today that I directly learned from how Diller mentored the current CEO of Uber, Dara. It’s called “sink or swim”. Barry’s memoir was really good in mapping the advent of TV and programming in its early days. There was so much serendipity in Diller’s career, and I liked that he embraced and owned it. I liked when he said “when all the dota are against you, the only way out is to not connect them”. Diller also had some funny quips, here’s one about his father:
“I don’t think he took pleasure in making money, and the only extravagances he displayed were buying the occasional Patek Philippe watch and his yearly trip to the Cadillac showroom to get the latest-model convertible”
I heard too many people talk about Sam Walton’s Made In America as the catalyst they needed to go on to build enduring business processes and I knew I needed to read this magnum opus. Sam Walton is the founder of Walmart and this autobiography was written like none other. I like the in-line anecdotes as told by others that he added throughout to corroborate his story. This was another book that gave insight into life in the early 20th century, what raising money felt like then and expansion. I loved that he also talked about his failures, he failed so many times in the beginning and shut down many stores. Today Walmart is a global behemoth and has enduring legacies from Sam. Yet another evidence that failure should not deter you. I wholly recommend this book for anyone running a business, especially a retail one.
Luck by Design by Adam Tank was another good book I read this year. Small easy to read book but packed with so many original insights. He said so many things in the book that align with how I live my life. The main premise of the book was that we can engineer what we call “luck” by taking advantage of all the catalyst that life brings our way. Something else I really liked what where he said humans tend to overestimate the impact that major events have on our personal trajectory. COVID did not change anything about you like it changed the world, when you look at it, your life has continued on the same trajectory. Major global events don’t change your trajectory that much, you remain in charge of your trajectory and change it by taking the bull by the horn. Embrace transitions, don’t get too focused on baseline stability. Another book I recommend for anyone trying to lay hold of their live and change their trajectory.
Satya Nadella will go down in modern history as one of the best turnaround evangelists ever with what he did with Microsoft after Ballmer. He wrote this book, Hit Refresh, a decade ago chronicling his journey to leading Microsoft and the changes he had made in the couple of years since he’s been in charge. I loved that he wrote this book now instead of waiting for another 20 years after he retires, it’s very important to detail your journey in real time. Although, having read the book and knowing what I know now about the inner workings of Microsoft, I think he is due a new version. Some of the change Satya brought in the early days were commendable and worked wonders, but I do feel they have reneged on some of those progress. But still a good book to read if you’re looking for how to reverse a decline in your business. Something he said I really liked: the future first transforms you before it transform the world. So if you’re looking for evidence of transformation, look no further than yourself.
Yet another year where I resolved to read many fiction but didn’t do too well. I only read a handful thanks to my local bookclub but I will highlight just two. A Broken People’s Playlist is a collection of short stories set mostly around Port Harcourt in Nigeria. It was a laid back easy read but I am highlighting it because I loved something the author did, even though they were independent stories, he found a way to weave themes and connect themes, subjects and timelines across the stories. I liked the feeling of racking my brain and making the connection between one story and the previous one I had read, I liked that the connections were not obvious. Was a laid back read, so no criticism. It was a good book to get into the rhythm of fiction. Of course, the opus of African literature that came out in 2025 was Chimamanda Adichie’s long awaited comeback, Dreamcount. It was her first book after a long while and the media blitz and anticipation that follow made this book popular. The story follows four women whose lives are intertwined but different. I think Adichie is a prolific writer, I am a big fan of hers but I also don’t think Dreamcount was her best work. Understandable after a long absence.
There are probably other books that I read that I wanted to highlight but these will do for now. Some really exciting books are scheduled to be released in 2026 and I look forward to getting into them. I encourage you to always read, reading opens the mind and your eyes.
See you, same time, next year.