Hi ;

Wow - the last time I wrote to this list was (checks notes) July 20th! Back when I started this newsletter (upon the occasion of leaving my job after 14 years) in March, I had intended to write weekly. I kept close to that schedule for the first 5 weeks... then the work got busy and the days got repetitive and I started writing every month... which lasted for 3 months until my last email in July.

So now, I'm saying this email newsletter will deliver QUARTERLY - which tracks. I got one out in March, several in Q2, and technically July is Q3 so it counts, and I'm sneaking this one into Q4. Take solace, you won't have to hear from me until March (most likely).

To recap 2020... I left my job of 14 years at Wiley to join Book Highlight in March. My first day at BH was the official start of lockdown in NYC. I moved my family to my parents' place in upstate NY, then to their place outside Philly in PA, then we spent a month of the summer in Cape Cod with my wife's mother, and finally back to Brooklyn (privileged - I know! more travel than most could this year) in August where we've got incredibly lucky with a wonderful local nanny to watch the children since then. Oh and a bunch of other things happened in the country and the world during that time, but you knew all that.

What's in this email? And can I get to it? I'm glad you asked...

• ACT ONE: I review the 33 books I read for pleasure in 2020
• ACT TWO: I give my 9 recommendations out of those books
• ACT THREE: I talk about my 3 resolutions for 2021

So let's start the show!

act one

because it's just good to feel what's been missing

yeah, it's bad when it's good to always be missing

Bleachers, chinatown

If there's been one theme so far to these scattered unscheduled emails, it's that a big part of my identity is tied to being a reader. And a reader that keeps precise track of what he's reading, when, and what he thought about what he read. That's the beauty of how I use GoodReads, like no one (especially the author) is watching but me.

I track everything and then at the end of the year, I tally up the totals and see what the trends are telling me. Here's this year's:

My 2020 Year in Reading at GoodReads

33 books. 8,029 pages.

14 Fiction. 19 NonFiction.

16 Female Authors. 17 Male.

14 Print. 19 Digital.

18 Library Digital.

This year I read 33 books, which was 13 books below my yearly average and my set goal for the year in reading challenge. Not only that, but I read more shorter books, about half of my average number of pages read over a year, as I selfishly attempted to get my numbers up to meet my goal (yet still failing). However, I stand proud by this 33 number - having persevered through many changes to remain a reader.

2020 was the first full year that I was a father of two children under the age of 4. That alone accounts for so much, that looking back I should’ve adjusted my goal leaving the hospital in 2019 with our bundle of joy. I also changed jobs in March, abandoning my daily 2-hr commute on trains where I have done the majority of my reading over the last 14 years. This new job is more responsibility (and reading!). 

Of course, no one had a commute once the pandemic hit. And to have finished any books in the year we just had, with an election on top of a pandemic and ongoing protesting, we should all be patting ourselves on the back to have put down a single book read.

Some of my trends make sense… I read more library ebooks and more ebooks in general (as a total percentage) than previous years. Being on the move for five unexpected months with a family, I didn’t bring as many print books along. Some of the trends I’ve been intentionally working towards… I finally (almost) reached exactly a 50/50 split between female and male writers. 

In general, I’m glad to have been able to read many new books published in 2020 (12 books) and 2019 (5 books). 2020 was a great year for publishing and I hope that those books are still discovered and read and remembered as good new things about this year.

If any book ever catches your interest, I hope you follow through in finding a way to acquire and read it - check out my reviews (I write a review for every book I read) and let me know what you’re reading these days. Read on!

act two

Like I've done every year since 2010, I try to narrow what I've read down into 9 recommendations as to what I think would benefit others the most to read themselves. It's easy to call them my favorites, but they're usually the books that I can't get out of my head and find myself still thinking about weeks and months after finishing the final page.

My top 3 reads from 2020:

Favorite Fiction:

The Glass Hotel

Luster

All Adults Here

Favorite NonFiction:

Eat a Peach

Ask For More

Uncanny Valley

Honorable Mentions:

Leave The World Behind

Run Studio Run

Writers & Lovers

Glass Hotel wasn't as good as Station Eleven (which was fantastic) but it was still incredibly good. Luster was too good to be a debut novel (haven't read sex like this in I don't know when, plus the 20-something in NYC publishing setup was catnip for me) and I loved the family dynamic (almost Happiest Season / Family Stone-like) throughout All Adults Here.

Eat a Peach was very honest in its writing, capturing the lightning in a bottle + trust the process approach to building the David Chang empire. I didn't know much about him at all before this memoir, but everyone should learn from his mistakes in building a company culture. Ask For More by Alex Carter is brilliant in its framework and advice, I keep thinking about this one (especially "How did you handle this the last time" question). And Uncanny Valley is basically too smart (Dave Eggers-like) for its own good, but a rare fresh take on the 2.0 tech world we now take for normal.

Honorable Mentions make it so I can tack on just three more books I loved and Leave The World Behind was familiar and frightening in its exactitude for NYC parents of a certain type that include me. Writers & Lovers was poetic, light, and a fun love triangle - essentially I love books about writers being writers. And Run Studio Run gave me the process, as I jumped from a big corporate structure into driving things inside a small creative agency. The transition felt like going from public sector to private and RSR was my mentor in the change - so much so we have everyone in the leadership team using it as their BH bible.

act three

In a year of big changes when the world changed forever, I'm grateful that as my life narrowed to family + work (no traveling, or events, or concerts, or sports, or even restaurants and nights out!) that both of those big pieces of my life were so strong and fulfilling.

2020 made me a better person.

When day care closed and we left the city as a family, to work and live together 24/7, I became a better father by simply always being here. I saw my 6 month old son learn to crawl, then stand up, and then walk in the span of our time away together this year. With no commute or office space until August, I was with my toddler every moment I wasn't working and she was awake. Being a good dad starts with just being there, and I'm glad I had a pandemic paternity leave to create these memories as a family.

For days, then weeks, and eventually months - my entire life was work + family. It made me a better partner to my wife. It was the 4 of us, trading off cooking, cleaning, feeding the kids, putting the infant down for naps, changing diapers, trying to get everyone outside for fresh air, doing baths, and at the same time comparing work calendars constantly for who had to be on what call and when, and which Disney+ movie was going to babysit our eldest. Two full time remote working parents with two kids under 4 that needed our full time attention and we somehow got it done.

The only people we spent any time indoors with this year were immediate family. I became a better son by having to communicate more, plan better, and coordinate visits and quarantines and testing and the nanny and school and work. I feel so lucky to not be able to count the family game nights that have replaced a once-full-social calendar. The support of our parents have gotten us through these tough times.

And I became a better worker, client manager, leader, communicator, project manager, consultant, and marketer by necessity in rising to the occasion. However big I could've been dreaming when I accepted this new job in February, the actual job has been bigger. It demanded more. And it has given more. My experience has been a case of, you get out what you put in and then some. I'm so lucky to be well matched for this role, to be challenged daily, and to now carry around the anxieties of my company and all our clients 24/7 (working on that!) because that drives me to do more, give more, and be more for all of them. Even our team holiday party was a blast!

So as I look ahead to next year, when hindsight will truly be 20 20, I have three goals for my life.

1. At Work, I want to look ahead. I want better foresight, planning, and control. So much of 2020 has been re-acting, testing, and optimizing. In 2021, I will be more proactive and we will all be better for that.
2. At Home, I want to be present. That means phone put and kept away. That means work is in a good place, not spilling over into my family time and nights. We got a nanny so I can work at work and be in the moment when I'm home. I'm so lucky with the kids and family I have, I need to give them all that I can when I can. There's nothing happening on Twitter.
3. With Friends, I want to reestablish. This is one slightly outside my control, as it would require the world fixing itself on this pandemic issue. Friends have always been a big part of my life and they've been mostly absent from it since the start of the pandemic. Sure, we've tried our video chats and I get plenty of texts, but when our world starts to open back up again (fingers crossed), I want to remember what it was like and put the work into these important relationships to rebuild them back better.

So far this holiday I've won and lost games of Skipbo, Mexican Train, Rummikub, Cribbage, and Candyland. We'd attempt a puzzle, but unless we finished it in one night, we'd have no where to keep the pieces away from the kids.

Reading right now I'm alternating between reading The Plague Year (anytime The New Yorker prints 30,000 words from Lawrence Wright, it is appointment reading) and the oral history of The Office, a show I have not watched in many years but remember fondly and considering I love oral histories this one is helping me to revisit the show and understand what a creative miracle it is that it exists at all.

I want to thank you, especially if you've made it this far to the end of my email, for coming on this journey with me. If you're here then you've survived the single deadliest year in American history... and that's not nothing - it's everything. I know everyone knows someone (or that knows someone) that won't be joining us in 2021, so let's keep them in our hearts and make the year as amazing as we can make it for them and for everyone else still here.

Stay safe. And keep reading.

Staying Socially Distant - Peter

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