My 2020 reading record

History and humanities

1. Shi Zhan: "Pivot: 50 Lectures on the Outline of Chinese History"

The traditional way of telling history is either the political, economic, technological, and cultural context in the textbook, or the jokes in historical novels, boiling, and those things of a certain dynasty, but It has opened up the Central Plains and grasslands, China and the West, politics and economy, and looked down on China in a dimensional way for 3,000 years, which is extremely addictive and transparent to read.

2. Fan Jun: "Sitting on the Dragon Chair: The Stormy Life of the Ming and Qing Emperors"

The first volume is written about the Sixteenth Emperor of daming (Douban score 8.0), and the lower volume is written about the Twelve Emperors of the Great Qing Dynasty (Douban score 9.1).

Compared with the general historiography bestsellers, the beauty of this set of books is that the author is familiar with the system and human feelings of the Ming and Qing dynasties, and the second is that the author's writing is extremely beautiful and smooth.

3. Zhang Jiawei: History and Legend

Zhang Gongzi used more than fifty historical stories to sort out and analyze the subtleties of Chinese and foreign history and the unique temperament of talented women in a simple and simple way, as usual, which is very suitable for reading before going to bed.

4. Young Fury Horse: The Poetry of Tang and Song Poets

The author is said to be a big V of poetry, and his writing style is somewhat similar to that of the six gods Lei Lei, whose main business reads Jin Yong and his side job reads Tang poetry. It is easy and interesting to read, and you can inadvertently feel the author's insight.

For example, he wrote about Li Shangyin: "His poems rarely use strange characters, but they are difficult to translate, and they never let middlemen make a difference." It's a bit like Wong Kar Wai's films, which can only be understood as unspeakable. ”

He wrote about Qin Guan: "Worthy of being a gentle master, releasing his hormones and burning your calories with one shot."

5. Xu Feng: "The Chronicle of the Prosperity of Jiangnan"

This is a collection of essays reflected by the small city of Yang Envy refracting the changes in Jiangnan, the author's writing is very elegant, after reading it, I feel that my lips and teeth are fragrant, enough to cleanse my body of the craftsmanship accumulated over the years by writing speeches and comments without knowing it.

The reason why I read this book is because I caught the 35th birthday of China Urban and Rural Finance News, and I remembered the first manuscript I submitted to the newspaper that year, "Dreaming of Jiangnan in the Sound of Selling Flowers".

Lifelong learning

1. Xie Chunlin: "Cognitive Dividend"

Xie is said to be the fastest-growing popular author ever known.

His article has a strong logic and persuasiveness, and I read his column in Moganshan in 2019, and there is a feeling of blood boiling.

This book is a collection of self-management books, covering a wide range of topics. I was most impressed by the following points: doing more of the things that can produce an accumulative effect and making full use of the "compound interest effect"; learning is to better judge problems and solve problems, not to show off; knowledge must be connected to form a system.

2. Nine Sides: "Growing Upwards"

Nine-sided is a young network big V, born as a code farmer, amateur likes to write things. At first, he was unknown, but he could not stand the accumulation and persistence of many years, and finally became an excellent writer.

This book is very suitable for young people. One of the things I was touched on was to believe in the compound interest effect. If I stick to the habit of reading a book and writing a book review every week, I may be able to become an Internet celebrity; second, online writing must be simple and easy to understand. Being able to tell the profound truth in words that everyone can understand is the skill.

3. Wang Shuo: Cross-border Learning

Wang Shuo is the editor-in-chief of Caixin Media and a well-known scholar. The book comes from the 30 Days of Cognitive Training he got.

This is actually a general education course. The 30 lessons are divided into "penetrating thinking", "method tools", "thought experiments", "paradoxes of the times" and "alternative perspectives", each of which involves the core part of the relevant theory, and the knowledge concentration is extremely high.

Every time I listened to a lecture, I was attracted to the books he mentioned, ran away to read them for a while, and then came back. I studied on and off for a month, but I still felt a flash of light and needed to look back and look closer.

4. Effie: "Straight to the Essence"

This book, like many similar books, is about how to improve thinking and reshape the underlying operating system.

After all, "The Godfather" has a saying: "People who spend half a second to see through the essence of things, and people who spend a lifetime can't see the essence of things, are doomed to a completely different fate." ”

The book introduces three different ways of thinking, namely migration thinking, ascending dimension thinking, and reverse thinking, which I personally think is quite reasonable.

5. Li Yuan: "Efficient Reading Lessons for Busy People"

Li Yuan, founder of Xiaobai Intensive Reading, former knowledge planner of Luo Ji Thinking, and historian.

There's an interesting saying in the book: I can't stop reading the secretary precisely because you want to remember too many things. Setting aside 30% of the time to find author information can increase reading efficiency by 30 times.

The book introduces two intensive reading methods, one is the canoe method, down the river from the beginning to the end, proposing a series of "what" and "why" and thinking; the other is the submarine method, starting from 2/3, jumping over to find the relevant chapters.

Self-managing

1. Fan Deng: "Accompanying Children to Grow Up For Life"

Fan Deng was once the champion of the International College Debate Competition, worked as a host in CCTV, worked as a teacher at Beijing Jiaotong University, and later went to the sea to start a business, founded the "Fan Deng Reading Club" named after himself, attracting many fans.

This book is about parent-child education, its biggest feature is to quote the views of many well-known education experts and monographs, with strong theoretical and enlightening, the book is also interspersed with many cases of their own children, so it is also convincing and operable.

2. Luxembourg: Nonviolent Communication

This method of communication is widely used, and it is said that it has also been used in the field of diplomacy, and Dr. Luxemburg himself has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

The content of the book is simple, mainly through various cases to explain how to carry out "nonviolent communication". In fact, you can master two ways of expression:

One is to express yourself honestly. "When I see/hear/think... I feel... Because I need/value... Would you like to...? ”

The second is to listen to others with concern. "When you see/hear/think... You feel... Do you? Because I need/value... So, you think..."

3. Christensen: How Do You Measure Your Life

Professor Christensen is a world master of management, a well-known professor at Harvard Business School, and has been named one of the "50 Most Influential Business Thinkers of Our Time" by harvard business review.

The book is divided into three parts: one is to find a career that you really love (what is the foundation factor, what is the motivation factor); the second is to run a good family (intimate relationships are the source of our happiness); and the third is to live an upright life (adhering to principles is the most important thing in life, and the best way to resist temptation is: never take the most dangerous first step).

4. Tepler: The Law of Minimalist Work

Templer has a set of "rules of life series", which is extremely popular in European and American countries. Reading it occasionally makes people feel uplifted.

For example, this book, I did not read it the night before, and the next morning I got up at 5 o'clock to read it, just like playing chicken blood.

5. Jonathan Lauch: "Your Happiness Curve"

The so-called happiness curve, a U-shaped curve found by the author, most of the happiness of individuals reaches the bottom between the ages of 40 and 50, and then gradually rises.

This bottom area is actually what we often call the midlife crisis.

The reason for this phenomenon, in the translator's words, lies in the heart of comparison. People are nearly middle-aged, the overall situation has been determined, will produce anxiety and dissatisfaction in comparison; the second is the loss of life goals and the conflict of values. Things that feel meaningful when you are young will find that they don't make sense in middle age, and suddenly you don't know what you should pursue.

6. Li Xin: "Sense of Humor"

Li Xin is a well-known teacher of improv comedy and talk show in China. At that time, CCTV had a program "Thank God You're Here", hosted by Cui Yongyuan, and the program director was her.

The biggest takeaway from this book is "yes, and? The way of thinking, that is, just say yes, don't say no, and then follow the other person's words and then say it further down, this is the basic training method of improv comedy.

Wang Shuo's "30 Days of Cognitive Training" also mentions that those who say no gain security because they stay in the same place they are familiar with; those who say yes can start an adventure towards a new world.

7. The Guide of Philosophy: The Stoic Way of Life & The Tranquility of Life: The Living Art of Stoic Philosophy

Stoic is the knowledge of how to live this life well, originating in Greece.

The school, named after Stoa Poikile, refers to the gallery of paintings on the north side of the central square of Athens, where Zeno, the founder, often lectured to his disciples.

Stoic is neither as devotional as cynicism nor as materialistic as hedonism. Stoic advocates things rather than things, both enjoying the beauty of reality and perceiving its fleeting. Life should pursue a virtuous life and wait for the favor of the goddess of destiny. Do your best and obey your destiny.

The book talks about many techniques: self-discipline, humorous response to insults, negative imagination, distinguishing between facts and comments, etc.

psychology

1. Liu Jia: General Knowledge of Psychology

Professor Liu Jia's academic background is very prominent: the "Hundred Talents Program Inductee" of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the "Yangtze River Scholar" Distinguished Professor of the Ministry of Education, the Dean of the School of Psychology of Beijing Normal University, and the chief scientist of the "Strongest Brain".

In this book, he summarizes and proposes four axioms of psychology:

First, genes set initial parameters for the mind. The goal of genes is to better replicate and pass on to themselves, and people act in the service of genes. Crowd behavior, loss aversion, etc., can be explained from a genetic point of view.

Second, the brain provides physiological constraints for the mind. Physical experience can activate psychological sensations, such as: biting a pencil with your teeth can make yourself happy, while holding a pencil with your lips will make you depressed. Caddy's High Energy Pose, the whole book is about this.

Third, psychology can distort reality. Our mental world is not an objective, faithful response to the external physical world, but is constructed based on the imprint of genes, past experiences, the current physical world, and the constraints of the brain. The Pygmalion effect, the endowment effect, the sour grape psychology, etc.

Fourth, society is the ultimate attribution of psychology. Whether it's the infamous Milgram experiment or the famous Stanford Prison experiment, the effects of the environment on people can be seen.

2. Chen Haixian: "The Amazing Me"

The net name motivation is in Hangzhou. A well-known psychologist with a doctorate in psychology from Zhejiang University, who has opened "Positive Psychology" at Zhejiang University, is known as one of the most popular general studies courses.

The author of the book "Jingjin" commented on the book: "Let's say, after reading so many books for so many years, only when I read this book did I suddenly have this feeling: it should be translated into 100 languages for people in all corners of the world to see." Our chaotic and contradictory world needs such a book too much. "Would highly recommend.

3. Amy Caddy: High Energy Pose

Cady, a social psychologist and harvard business school professor, whose TED talk "Shaping Yourself with Body Language" was viewed nearly 50 million times, a talk that changed many people's lives and is still one of the most acclaimed talks in TED history.

It's very tedious to write, including all sorts of trials, feedback from different populations, and so on, but for us, just keep the conclusion in mind:

Body language affects not only how others perceive us, but also how we feel about ourselves. Just by maintaining an extended, high-energy posture for just a few minutes, you can adjust your state and create a strong mentality.

Mathematics Science

1. Wu Jun: "30 Lectures on General Mathematics"

Wu Jun, former senior researcher at Google, former vice president of Tencent, computer scientist and best-selling author.

It is recommended to study this course of Teacher Wu Jun, not only those familiar knowledge points, but also many unheard of celebrity anecdotes, but also the training and improvement of thinking styles, which will eventually make you have a complete change in your perception of mathematics.

2. Dunham: The Journey of Genius Guidance

The author is a Ph.D. from Ohio State University, a professor at Mulenburg College in the United States, and a world-renowned expert in the history of mathematics.

The authors carefully selected some outstanding mathematicians and the great theorems they created, such as Euclid, Archimedes, Newton, and Euler. And these great theorems not only string together the rings of history, but also string together the various fields covered by the discipline of mathematics.

3. Shi Jun: "Actually, you don't understand evolution"

It is said that European and American societies measure a person's scientific literacy mainly in two aspects: whether they understand some quantum mechanics and whether they understand some evolutionary theory. In my opinion, the latter is more important.

Because if you really understand the theory of evolution, you will understand that the development of nature is randomly changing and naturally selected, and human society is the same, and there is no clear direction of development. In this respect, it is very different from the idea of classical socialism.

Matt Ridley also said in his famous book Bottom Up, "Evolution is far more common and far-reaching than most people realize." It's not just limited to the genetic system, but it can explain almost all of the ways in which human culture has changed: from morality to technology, from money to religion. The development of human culture is gradual, incremental, undetermined, naturally occurring, and driven by natural selection by competing ideas."

Economics and finance

1. Lu Rong: Lecture Notes on Behavioral Finance

Lu Rong is the principal of the "Get" App course "Lu Rong Behavioral Finance" and the professor of the Finance Chair (Chief) of Shanghai University of Finance, and it is said that her course is difficult to find.

There are many insights in the book, such as:

There is no upper limit to information, but there is ability. You continue to accumulate all kinds of information, but your ability will be capped. To a certain extent, the information that arrives afterwards does not increase your ability, but it continues to increase your self-confidence. Eventually, your level of confidence will exceed your actual level. That's why people are necessarily overconfident.

Why does everyone think they can make money from the stock market? Why do leeks grow out of stubble after stubble? Here's why.

2. Xu Gao: "25 Lectures on Macroeconomics: A Chinese Perspective"

There are many models, deductions, and formulas in the book, which are very academic, and it is not the same way as our current research, but the conclusions still give me a lot of inspiration, and I have the feeling of opening up the second vein of Ren Dou.

3. Hong Hao: "Prediction"

Hong Hao, chief of BOCOM International, was praised by Bloomberg as "the one who accurately predicted the peak of the bubble in 2015".

What impressed me most about this book was his long-term perspective, which was often decades and hundreds of years, large cycles set in cycles, medium cycles set small cycles, and the homework was extremely fine.

The argument in the final chapter is interesting: Volcker tamed inflation and suppressed society's inflation expectations in a long-term trend, which in turn had three social consequences—bonds outperforming stocks for a long time, U.S. consumption of Chinese production, and a widening gap between rich and poor.

4. Zhigu Trends: "China's Urban Reshuffle" & "Who is the Chinese City Leader"

Analysis of regions or cities is very popular online because everyone is only interested in what they are related to. Chitani is a leader in doing this kind of research.

There is no shortage of insights in the book, but it is written concisely and clearly, and it is very easy to read. I also like the articles on their public accounts, there are almost no more than three lines of paragraphs, which is very suitable for this era of faster and faster pace and people are becoming more and more impatient.

5. He Fan: 30 Lectures on Macroeconomics

This is the lesson that Professor He Fan got, which talked about the six modules of growth, policy, crisis, openness, application and future prospects in macroeconomics.

Macro research is my old profession, and I am familiar enough with Teacher He Fan, so I quickly finished reading it. The most impressive sentence, "Macro research is not a programmer writing algorithms, but more like a game of playing gophers", a very vivid metaphor.

6. Ma Huiwen: "The University Question in the Small Concept of Economics"

In the form of teacher-student dialogue, the author has made a detailed explanation of these basic concepts such as "cost", "price" and "rationality", which can be regarded as a kind of original and original intention.

Investment management

1. Liu Xiaochun: Management Notes of a Banker

President Liu is an excellent banker cultivated by my farmers.

The book covers the current economic and financial hot topics and all aspects of bank management, and deeply explores how to build a modern financial system, how to understand the structural reform of the financial supply side, the logic and scale of financial supervision, how to transform and upgrade the banking industry, and the five closed loops that break through the bottleneck of financial technology.

The feeling of prominence is that of the untouchables and has its own unique insights.

2. Chen Lin: "How Do We Do Banks Today"

This is the fourth book in the Financial Road series, published by CITIC Publishing House in November 2019. The author is Chen Lin, a bank strategy consulting expert, a financial writer, and the executive vice president of Rongzhidao Consulting.

The book analyzes in detail the development of China's banking industry and the changes in operation and management according to the time context from 2013 to 2019. The writing is brisk and there is no lack of insight.

But this book is a bit excessive for the founder of Rongzhi Dao, Jin Haireng, the book can often see "hearing this, Jin Haireng's eyes lit up", "This is also what Jin Haireng admires", "Jin Haireng's words are in a word", etc., it seems that Jin Knows everything in his hands, to be honest, it is a bit affecting the reading experience.

3. Lin Haomo: "The Last Lesson of Retail Investors"

The conclusion is one sentence:

For ordinary retail investors, they cannot rely on their own investment to obtain excess returns, and the goal of retail investors should be to obtain an average return. If you do not operate according to this goal, you will not even get the average return.

So, don't bother to pick stocks, just buy ETF funds for passive investment. Judging from the stock market operation at the beginning of 2021, investing in ETFs is definitely better than choosing stocks yourself.

4. Guan Qingyou: "Stock Investment Lesson: Be a Trend Friend"

Mr. Guan has recently published several books for ordinary investors, with the purpose of "systematically combing through the history, data and cases left to us by the market, and then helping you draw a complete and clear investment map."

5. Fang Minghui: "Asset Management Can't Be So Interesting"

This is a good popular science book, which introduces the business types and operation modes of the asset management industry, including public funds, bank wealth management, trust, insurance, securities asset management, private funds, etc. If you want to understand the field of asset management, you can take a look.

6. Fang Minghui: "12 Days of Financial Excellence"

Roughly turned over, impressed by a sentence:

"In fact, the positioning of financial management is not offense, but defense. Proper financial management can protect our wealth and lives. ”

For example, your annual income after tax in 2020 is 500,000 yuan, even if you invest all of it, it is difficult to get a return of 500,000 yuan in 2021. But as long as you stay a job, you can earn another $500,000 in 2021.

Therefore, for the vast majority of people, they should still honestly earn income from work, and it is difficult to expect to get a counterattack in life through financial management.

Popular fiction

1. Keigo Higashino: "After School"

This is Higashino's debut work, the early campus Benge Secret Room Reasoning. The language is simple, the plot is not complicated, and it belongs to a well-behaved secret room murder mystery novel.

The only thing higashino fans talk about is that the motive for the killing is slightly incomprehensible. Some people say that those who can't watch "After School" are either too old or too small, and the difference lies in the different understandings of the motives for killing.

2. Keigo Higashino: The Secret

At the time of writing this novel, Higashino had just divorced his wife, who had been married for more than 10 years, so the book was very sadistic and once made people tearful.

The narrative is bland, but there is still a sentence that hits me: "Always doing the same thing with the same group of people in the same place for a long time, sometimes there is a feeling of being abandoned by the world." 」 ”

3. Keigo Higashino: "Red Finger"

The family looked ordinary: Maehara and his wife were middle-aged, with an old mother with dementia and an underage son.

The calm was completely shattered in one afternoon: the son strangled a little girl in his home. The former couple was determined to remove the body and cover up the crime.

Maehara's confession was reasonable and impeccable, and the police could have closed the case, but when the criminal police officer Kaga saw Maehara's mother's reddened fingers, he understood the truth.

4. Keigo Kashino: NewComers

In one of the Kaga Detective Collections, Higashino writes about the life of ordinary people in Tokyo, and it is very warm to read.

5. Jun Ikeito: Naoki Hanzawa

There are not many novels set in the bank, this one is not badly written, and there are many complaints about the bank in the book, which feels very kind.

It has been made into a TV series, starring Masato Sakai, and is said to be a rare masterpiece in Japanese dramas in recent years.

6. Yang Benfen: "Autumn Garden"

This book is a bit similar to Jiang Shumei's "Poor Time, Chaotic Time". The authors are grandmothers, non-professional writers, who only started writing after the elderly age, and have achieved success. But comparatively speaking, Grandma Jiang's words are "more energetic".

7. Ma Boyong: Antiques Central Bureau

This time, Prince Ma started from antiques and built a treasure universe.

The story is very attractive, and after reading it, you will find that there are some logical inadequacies, similar to "The Twelve Hours of Chang'an", but driven by the pleasure of reading, you will be eager to finish it.

9. Zijin Chen Reasoning Trilogy: "Undocumented Crime", "Bad Boy", "Long Night Hard to See"

The story structure of "None" is extremely similar to Keigo Higashino's "The Dedication of Suspect X", and can even be said to be an imitation.

The bridge section of Zhu Chaoyang's handwritten diary in "Bad" also pays tribute to Higashino's "Malice". The hit web drama "The Hidden Corner" is based on it, and it is said that the changes are not small, because the novel is indeed too dark. Completely faithful to the original work, it is likely that it will not pass the trial.

"Long" is a novel that makes people's backs chill, and it is said that many publishing houses at that time did not dare to publish it.

The ending finally brings down the culprit, but it is due to the upper echelons of the tiger fight, and it has nothing to do with the efforts of these ordinary people for more than a decade, even at the cost of their lives.