A Short List of My Favorite Things From 2021.
Given that this is my last post of the year — a year that, while it was not exactly stellar, was far better than 2020 — it seemed only natural to do a year-end list of some kind. But it doesn’t feel as if I read enough or saw enough stuff that came out in 2021 to make a Best Books or Best Movies of the Year list, so what I thought I’d do instead was put together a list of five of the cultural and intellectual “things” (a weird word, but as you’ll see, “texts” isn’t accurate, and “products” seemed too consumerist) that made 2021 more interesting, engaging, and intellectually stimulating. And so, without further throat-clearing, here they are:
Four Thousand Weeks, by Oliver Burkeman: I wrote a longer review of Four Thousand Weeks for Strategy & Business earlier this year, which you can read here. And I’ve included it on this list because it’s the book I read this year that I still think about the most. The “four thousand weeks” of Burkeman’s title is the length of time you’re likely to be alive, if you’re an average person living in a developed country. And the point of using that number is that it seems to make startlingly clear just how little time we get on the planet. “28,000 days” makes it seem as if we have an endless amount of time in which to accomplish all our hearts desire. “4000 weeks” (for me, it’s now closer to 1500) is a far more finite number.
