I had a goal of completing 2 books per week throughout the course of 2020, finishing 104 books if my math is right.
We hit the goal. In fact, we snuck in a few more, finishing 116 books (43,080 pages). I say we because it took a lot of help, encouragement, recommendations, and tips from Caitlin, friends, and you reading.
Thank you.
I wrote a post called How to read 2 (or more) books a week detailing how I went about finishing this amount of books over the past year.
At this moment, I don’t have time to give a review, but I listed the date finished, title, author, and a rating from 1-5 based on how they impacted me at the point in my life when I read the book. I also put the books with a 5 rating in bold for quick reference.
There are several on here that my readers listed as life-changing books that I may have rated lower than life-changing for me. That doesn’t mean they weren’t great books, just the wrong timing for me. There are books I read for the 2nd (or 3rd) time that used to be 5’s but are now lower.
Hopefully you enjoy and can grab a few to put on your to-read list.
2020 List
| Number | Date | Title | Author | Rating (1-5) |
| 1 | 1/1 | Grit | Angela Duckworth | 3 |
| 2 | 1/9 | Fooled by Randomness | Nassim Taleb | 4 |
| 3 | 1/11 | Hypergrowth | David Cancel | 3 |
| 4 | 1/11 | Range | David Epstein | 5 |
| 5 | 1/17 | Nudge | Richard Thaler & Cass Sunstein | 3 |
| 6 | 1/19 | Cashvertising | Drew Eric Whitman | 4 |
| 7 | 1/21 | This Won’t Scale | Drift Marketing Team | 3 |
| 8 | 1/25 | Inbound Marketing | Brian Halligan | 3 |
| 9 | 1/25 | The Ultimate Sales Letter | Dan Kennedy | 2 |
| 10 | 2/2 | Predictable Revenue | Aaron Ross | 2 |
| 11 | 2/4 | Inbound Marketing | Brian Halligan | 3 |
| 12 | 2/9 | The Price We Pay | Marty Makary | 5 |
| 13 | 2/12 | Mindset | Carol Dweck | 3 |
| 14 | 2/15 | Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone | JK Rowling | 5 |
| 15 | 2/15 | Future Babble | Dan Gardner | 3 |
| 16 | 2/19 | The No Asshole Rule | Robert Sutton | 2 |
| 17 | 2/24 | The Future of Humanity | Michio Kaku | 4 |
| 18 | 2/25 | OtherLife | Jason Segel & Kirsten Miller | 3 |
| 19 | 2/28 | OtherWorld | Jason Segel & Kirsten Miller | 3 |
| 20 | 2/29 | Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets | JK Rowling | 4 |
| 21 | 2/29 | Seven Brief Lessons on Physics | Carlo Rovelli | 3 |
| 22 | 3/4 | OtherEarth | Jason Segel & Kirsten Miller | 3 |
| 23 | 3/5 | Something Deeply Hidden | Sean Carroll | 4 |
| 24 | 3/7 | Concussion | Jeanne Marie Laskas | 4 |
| 25 | 3/11 | Unaccountable | Marty Makary | 4 |
| 26 | 3/16 | A Short History of Nearly Everything | Bill Bryson | 5 |
| 27 | 3/17 | Physics of the Impossible | Michio Kaku | 4 |
| 28 | 3/20 | Small Great Things | Jodi Picoult | 5 |
| 29 | 3/22 | Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban | JK Rowling | 4 |
| 30 | 4/1 | The Count of Monte Cristo | Alexandre Dumas | 5 |
| 31 | 4/8 | Blockchain: The Next Everything | Stephen P. Williams | 3 |
| 32 | 4/16 | The Fountainhead | Ayn Rand | 5 |
| 33 | 4/28 | What Matters Most | Chanel Reynolds | 4 |
| 34 | 5/1 | One Second After | William Forstchen | 4 |
| 35 | 5/3 | Adventures Beyond the Body | William Buhlman | 3 |
| 36 | 5/6 | The Mastermind | Evan Ratliff | 5 |
| 37 | 5/9 | One Year After | William Forstchen | 4 |
| 38 | 5/13 | What Every BODY is Saying | Joe Navarro | 3 |
| 39 | 5/15 | Treating People Well | Lea Berman & Jeremy Bernard | 3 |
| 40 | 5/17 | The Final Day | William Forstchen | 3 |
| 41 | 6/5 | Atlas Shrugged | Ayn Rand | 5 |
| 42 | 6/7 | Radical Candor | Kim Scott | 3 |
| 43 | 6/9 | American Sniper | Chris Kyle | 3 |
| 44 | 6/12 | Permanent Record | Edward Snowden | 4 |
| 45 | 6/16 | Fear: Trump in the White House | Bob Woodward | 3 |
| 46 | 6/17 | Whistleblower | Susan Fowler | 3 |
| 47 | 6/20 | Face to Face | Brian Grazer | 3 |
| 48 | 6/21 | Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire | JK Rowling | 5 |
| 49 | 6/27 | How Money Became Dangerous | Christopher Varelas | 3 |
| 50 | 6/28 | White Fragility | Robin DiAngelo | 1 |
| 51 | 7/3 | Educated | Tara Westover | 4 |
| 52 | 7/5 | Hero | Meg Meeker | 3 |
| 53 | 7/5 | Driven | Larry H. Miller | 3 |
| 54 | 7/8 | Economics in One Lesson | Henry Hazlitt | 3 |
| 55 | 7/9 | Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix | JK Rowling | 4 |
| 56 | 7/12 | 5-Minute Spider-Man Stories | Multiple | 3 |
| 57 | 7/12 | Good to Great | Jim Collins | 5 |
| 58 | 7/13 | Freakonomics | Steven Levitt | 4 |
| 59 | 7/16 | The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People | Stephen R. Cover | 4 |
| 60 | 7/18 | The Power of Habit | Charles Duhigg | 3 |
| 61 | 7/20 | The $100 Startup | Chris Guillebeau | 3 |
| 62 | 7/21 | Talking to Strangers | Malcolm Gladwell | 3 |
| 63 | 7/22 | 5-Minute Marvel Stories | Multiple | 3 |
| 64 | 7/27 | Getting Things Done | David Allen | 3 |
| 65 | 7/30 | Influence | Robert Cialdini | 4 |
| 66 | 7/30 | Start With Why | Simon Sinek | 3 |
| 67 | 8/1 | Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince | JK Rowling | 5 |
| 68 | 8/4 | The Sleep Revolution | Arianna Huffington | 2 |
| 69 | 8/8 | Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows | JK Rowling | 5 |
| 70 | 8/13 | Born to Run | Christopher McDougall | 5 |
| 71 | 8/18 | I Am Pilgrim | Terry Hayes | 4 |
| 72 | 8/20 | Will it Fly? | Pat Flynn | 3 |
| 73 | 8/25 | Endure | Alex Hutchinson | 4 |
| 74 | 8/25 | Growth Hacker Marketing | Ryan Holiday | 3 |
| 75 | 8/28 | Crushing It | Gary Vaynerchuk | 3 |
| 76 | 8/31 | Stillness is the Key | Ryan Holiday | 3 |
| 77 | 9/4 | Crush It | Gary Vaynerchuk | 3 |
| 78 | 9/7 | American Assassin | Vince Flynn | 4 |
| 79 | 9/23 | Untamed | Glennon Doyle | 3 |
| 80 | 9/24 | Gmorning, Gnight! | Lin-Manuel Miranda | 3 |
| 81 | 9/25 | Kill Shot | Vince Flynn | 3 |
| 82 | 9/26 | Enemy at the Gates | William Craig | 5 |
| 83 | 9/29 | Perennial Seller | Ryan Holiday | 2 |
| 84 | 10/4 | The Logical Leap | David Harriman | 3 |
| 85 | 10/8 | Invisible Influence | Jonah Berger | 4 |
| 86 | 10/17 | The Bitcoin Standard | Saifedean Ammous | 5 |
| 87 | 10/24 | Alexander Hamilton | Ron Chernow | 5 |
| 88 | 10/27 | Your Money or Your Life | Vicki Robin | 3 |
| 89 | 10/30 | Permission Marketing | Seth Godin | 3 |
| 90 | 10/30 | 12 Rules for Life | Jordan Peterson | 5 |
| 91 | 10/30 | This is Marketing | Seth Godin | 3 |
| 92 | 10/31 | Factfulness | Hans Rosling | 5 |
| 93 | 11/1 | Unscripted | Ernie Johnson Jr. | 4 |
| 94 | 11/2 | The Alchemist | Paulo Coelho | 4 |
| 95 | 11/4 | The Spy and the Traitor | Ben Macintyre | 4 |
| 96 | 11/6 | The Nightingale | Kristin Hannah | 5 |
| 97 | 11/7 | How Will You Measure Your Life? | Clayton M Christensen | 4 |
| 98 | 11/10 | The Undoing Project | Michael Lewis | 4 |
| 99 | 11/11 | The Year of Less | Cait Flanders | 3 |
| 100 | 11/16 | Enlightenment Now | Steven Pinker | 4 |
| 101 | 11/17 | Unbroken | Laura Hillenbrand | 5 |
| 102 | 11/19 | David and Goliath | Malcolm Gladwell | 4 |
| 103 | 11/20 | The Book of Mormon | Many | 5 |
| 104 | 11/20 | Never Split the Difference | Chris Voss | 4 |
| 105 | 11/21 | Trillion Dollar Coach | Eric Schmidt | 4 |
| 106 | 11/25 | Dune | Frank Herbert | 3 |
| 107 | 11/27 | Atomic Habits | James Clear | 4 |
| 108 | 12/10 | The House of Morgan | Ron Chernow | 3 |
| 109 | 12/13 | Love and Other Ways of Dying | Michael Paterniti | 5 |
| 110 | 12/15 | Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage | Alfred Lansing | 4 |
| 111 | 12/19 | When Breath Becomes Air | Paul Kalanithi | 5 |
| 112 | 12/20 | The Boys in the Boat | Daniel James Brown | 5 |
| 113 | 12/25 | Sapiens | Yuval Noah Harari | 5 |
| 114 | 12/26 | Leadership and Self Deception | The Arbinger Institute | 4 |
| 115 | 12/29 | The Day the World Came to Town | Jim DeFede | 3 |
| 116 | 12/31 | Think Like a Monk | Jay Shetty | 5 |
There you have it.
2020 gave me a lot to think about, learn, and try to improve upon, and for that I am grateful.
What should be on my list for the upcoming year?
Erik Soderborg 