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Originally published on Medium on December 31st, 2019
I continue to spend a lot of time not just reading books, but thinking about why I read books, how to better read books, and more specifically how to retain and track what I learn from what I read.
To better capture what I learn from the books I read, I committed to writing a separate Medium post, along with the quotes I most enjoyed from each book (and if you’ve read my book lists from 2016, 2017 and 2018 (Part One and Part Two), you’d know this approach is also to keep this post shorter and to stop it from crashing Medium.)
For me, this year was a year of associations among the people I know. Alexis de Tocqueville, when he visited America, noticed how much we like to do this.
“Americans of all ages, all conditions, all minds constantly unite. Not only do they have commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but they also have a thousand other kinds: religious, moral, grave, futile, very general and very particular, immense and very small; Americans use associations to give fêtes, to found seminaries, to build inns, to raise churches, to distribute books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; in this manner they create hospitals, prisons, schools. Finally, if it is a question of bringing to light a truth or developing a sentiment with the support of a great example, they associate.”
My associations often motivated me to read wider and deeper than I have before, some lasted longer than others:
I also started to see trends in some of the books I was drawn to, including reading biographies of Presidents of the United States (Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, etc.) as well as Presidents of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (from modern presidents like Howard W. Hunter and Gordon B. Hinckley to early presidents like Joseph Smith and Brigham Young who I’ll be reading about in 2020.)
What I read represents one small part of what makes me. This is a record of the things that made me who I am this year. “You are what you think all day long.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
This book exposed me to one of the first great leaders of the American middle-class, a pioneer in self-improvement, the best case study of hobbyist scientist, and the elder statesman of the founding fathers. I’ve had the chance to read several biographies of founding fathers over the last few years, from John Adams to Alexander Hamilton. I didn’t relate most closely to Franklin, but I did see the most practicality from his life that I could apply to mine.