What I read in 2021

Revisiting the books that impacted me the most in 2021. Opinionated but mainly consensual takes.

With the end of the year around the corner, I decided to revisit the books that I enjoyed the most this year. You may take this as a suggestion list, but, in fact, there's a more selfish reason for wanting to write this. I've come to the conclusion that this is a great exercise to organize and summarize everything I learned from what I read: forcing myself to sit down and go through my notes has helped me greatly in retaining information and building a database of my thoughts. If anything, that is my real suggestion.

Axiomatic, Greg Egan

Collection of sci-fi short stories ranging from reachable themes - such as parenthood - to the distant and hard to conceive - such as the fatality of knowing your future. These thought-provoking concepts Egan creates are presented in self contained stories that are always appealing to the “what if” exercise, demanding the reader's commitment. The stories always kept me in check and invited me to challenge what I should consider the boundaries of reality and technology, the same way the popular tv series “Black Mirror” did.

Every now and then, issues of our present are also raised and handled with raw and straightforward critique, out of them I want to highlight a take on gambling in “Eugene”.

Do you know what gambling is? Gambling is a kind of tax: a tax on stupidity. A tax on greed. Some money changes hands at random, but the net cash flow always goes one way - to the Government, to the casino operators, to the bookies, to the crime syndicates. If you ever win, you won't have won against them. They'll still be getting their share. You'll have won against all the penniless losers, that's all.

Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck

A short book about two men who hang on to their companionship as they struggle in the midst of the great depression. In this bitter setting, I kept getting the grim reminder that sometimes, having a better life is just not within our reach. The plot keeps gravitating towards the need to hang on to our dreams in order to survive the harsh reality. Hope, dreams and fear of solitude seem to drive every character you encounter on this story, but ultimately the world and the circumstances just don't take their side.

Well, we'll have a big vegetable patch and a rabbit hutch and chickens. And when it rains in the winter, we'll just say the hell with goin' to work, and we'll build up a fire in the stove and set around it an' listen to the rain comin' down on the roof.

A feeling of “something's not right” looms over the entire story, I felt like something inevitably bad would happen. As I went back to some passages, I understood how beautifully Steinbeck laid out these ubiquitous sentiment of inevitable doom. The characters were not given any opportunities to escape it, which I found terrifying, and reminded me of how privileged I am.

Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse

A thorough illustration of "learning by experience" through a spiritual journey seeking understanding of the world and ourselves.

Siddhartha willingly takes his life for a ride several times, as he believes he is following the true and only way of achieving enlightenment. Through these twists and turns, he is able to get some deeper understanding of himself and the world that surrounds him.

Metaphors are very a recurrent mechanism used in this book, and that made a huge difference on my understanding of this journey.

Words do not express thoughts very well. they always become a little different immediately they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.

Communication can be very hard in general, but in this book, through metaphors, I was offered how I was supposed to feel instead of the analytical explanation of it.

Most people are like a falling leaf that drifts and turns in the air, flutters, and falls to the ground. But a few others are like stars which travel one defined path: no wind reaches them, they have within themselves their guide and path.

This passage is an example of how Hesse's metaphors succinctly explain the concepts and the messages that he wants to convey. My understanding of his point goes beyond what an objective description would do. Furthermore, this explanation still felt like a succinct one, I didn't feel like I was thrown long essays on feelings, every word had a purpose, and that's something that I highly value.

Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, Carl Sagan

Inspiring as always, Sagan took me on a trip through humanity's history, our galaxy and beyond. With great scientific exposition, mind-boggling facts and deep understanding of our species' past, every chapter taught me something about space, who we are and where we stand.

I really appreciated the way Sagan highlights our smallness before the universe and how it contrasts with our achievements as a species. I definitely started feeling the existential nihilism in his words at some point, and the pale blue dot passage will always send shivers down my spine.

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar", every "supreme leader", every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there --on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

(...) The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

(...)

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

Overall, a great lesson on the universe, humanity and humility.

Conclusions

All in all, going through these books again has helped me understand them even better and I feel that revisiting this list in a few years will be interesting. I also couldn't help but notice that all of these were short books to some extent. While I also read some larger stories that I enjoyed (Frank Herbert's Dune or Stephen King's 11.22.63), shorter books impact me more, probably because I am able to binge them more easily and my mind does not wonder as much in between sittings.

If you're still there, thanks for reading! If you agree or disagree feel free to reach out to me. I'm also open to book suggestions!