The Top 10 Books I Read in 2019

Written by Derek Loudermilk

December 23, 2019

Of the 66 books I read this year, I have distilled down the top 10 books I’ve read, so you can go right to the good stuff. On this year’s list, we’ve got some great adventure narratives, well researched NYT bestsellers, and some books that will completely shake up your understanding of reality. Enjoy!

10. Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance by Alex Hutchinson. I’ve always been fascinated by the interplay between the mind and the body in physical endurance. If you look at the start line for an endurance race – its often very quiet because everyone is preparing mentally for the pain they are about to endure. Here is my interview with Alex Hutchinson on The Art of Adventure Podcast

9. The Amazing Development of Men and Understanding Women: Unlock the Mystery by Alison Armstrong. Heidi and I both listened to both of these and it was incredible how we felt like the author totally got our experience – so many aha moments about the opposite sex. These books really helped us improve our Marriage.

8. Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World – by David Epstein. A runaway NYT bestseller this year. For everyone that has a wide range of interest and expertise out there – this book will make you feel way better about yourself. With the popularity of talking about the 10,000 hour rule, it has become common knowledge that if you dabble or delay learning a specialized skill, you’ll never catch up to the people who got a head start. But Epstein takes a closer look at research on the world’s top performers, from professional athletes to Nobel laureates, and shows that early specialization is the exception, not the rule.

7. One Way Ticket: Nine Lives on Two Wheels – by Jonathan Vaughters. Vaughters is the creator and director of the World Tour cycling team, EF Education First (formerly Slipstream), and a prominent anti doping crusader, who was a doper himself during the Lance Armstrong era. Most readers will probably enjoy the juicy details of the doping era scandals from an insider, but what I loved most was hearing about Vaughter’s early years as a cycling obsessed 13 year old nerd – hanging out in bike shops where old timers said everything had to be Italian or it was crap, watching the movie Breaking Away over and over, feeling like a tough guy by riding outside in the snow in spandex. It was gleeful to have someone recount my exact experience with discovering bike racing and how cool it was as a young teenager.

6. Loving what is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life – By Byron Katie I had heard about “the work” for years but it blew my mind just how much these four questions can shift your entire life and way of looking at the world. We get so much anguish from wishing the world was different from how it really is – this is about how to end our suffering that comes when we think the world “should be” be one way or another.

5. The Altitude Journals: A Seven-Year Journey from the Lowest Point in My Life to the Highest Point on Earth by David Muaro. This is the top adventure book I read this year because it is a combination of authentic adventure account, plus humor. Mauro is an improv comedian (and friends with Ryan Stiles from Who’s Line is it Anyway), and his comedy training makes the book take on another dimension of enjoyment. I could relate to Mauro’s experience of how powerful a place it can be when you are at rock bottom and willing to take a big risk to change your life.

4. Sapiens: A brief history of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. I’ve already recommended Harari’s Homo Deus – as one of the top books I read in 2018, and Sapiens was exceptional as well. Besides being a great overview of the history of humans – I realized how much of our thinking is a product of the world we were born into. We can easily navigate constructed concepts like money and corporations and nationalities because of our collective stories about those ideas. Seeing these concepts through the lens of history is like being a fish and able to see the water you are in.

3. Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio. I avoided this book for a long time because it was big and didn’t know exactly what I would get – and it absolutely blew me away when I finally read it. Some of my favorite concepts are:

  1. How to see the world as it actually is vs. how you want it to be.
  2. Radical truth and transparency in business, Radical open mindedness in life.
  3. Idea meritocracies where the best ideas win (normally, social hierarchy entangles ideas). Check out Dalio’s TED talk to see how this works

2. The Third Door: The Wild Quest to Uncover How the World’s Most Successful People Launched Their Careers by Alex Banayan. Some really entertaining stories as this kid tries (and often fails repeatedly) to get interviews with these successful people (Bill Gates, Jane Goodall, Warren Buffet, etc.). The biggest impact that book had for me was Elliott Bisnow saying, “People like to do big interesting things, don’t do boring small things”. Wherever you can, think, “what would this project or idea look like if it was 10X or 100X bigger or more exciting?” Here is my interview with Alex Banayan on the Art of Adventure Podcast

#1 BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR:

Mind to Matter: The Astonishing Science of How Your Brain Creates Material Reality – by Dawson Church. This book hits #1 on my list because it catalyzed a complete shift in my understanding of reality. This is the book that I had been looking for for the last couple of years – Mind to Matter talks about energy, manifestation, healing, and brings it out of the woo woo. This book concretely explains how our thoughts and consciousness effect the material world. New discoveries in epigenetics, neuroscience, electromagnetism, psychology, vibration, and quantum physics connect each step in the process by which mind creates matter. Mind to Matter won ‘Best Health Book’ and ‘Best Science Book’ of 2018 awards.

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