2018 Year in Review: Books + Podcasts

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I wish I could say I hit my annual reading goal, but I broke my 2 year streak. In 2016 I doubled my goal by reading 24 books, and also hit my 2017 goal of 30 books. My 2018 goal was to read 40 books, but I only read 12. If you're not my friend on Goodreads, are we really friends? 

  1. Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain

  2. Origin by Dan Brown

  3. Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

  4. Well That Escalated Quickly by Francesca Ramsey

  5. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

  6. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

  7. The Last Black Unicorn by Tiffany Haddish

  8. An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield

  9. The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferris

  10. Tie Your Shoes Kid by Meta Sarmiento

  11. Wild by Cheryl Strayed

  12. America is Not the Heart by Elaine Castillo

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While my reading list falls way short of my ambitious 40 books this year, I also flooded my brain cells with podcasts. Here are some of my favorites of 2018, including some notable episodes.

  1. NPR’s Hidden Brain

  2. Malcom Gladwell’s Revisionist History

  3. New York Time’s Still Processing

  4. Refinery 29’s Strong Opinions Loosely Held

  5. Amanda Seales' Small Doses

  6. KQED’s Bay Curious

  7. Serial

NPR’s Hidden Brain — Great podcast that dives into our subconscious minds, including socio-cultural-psychological influences and phenomenons. Calculating over 70 episodes that range from 25-60mins long, Shankar Vedantam’s voice has been in my head for up to 4,200 minutes. If you want to join the club, I’d start with these episodes.

  • Tunnel Vision

  • Think Fast with Daniel Kahneman

  • The Sorting Hat

Malcom Gladwell’s Revisionist History — Having already read three Malcolm Gladwell books, I was excited to learn he had a podcast. He’s widely known as a thought-provoking, prolific writer/journalist, and his podcast add even more dimension to how he conceptualizes his ideas.

  • Food Fight

New York Time’s Still Processing — I was introduced to this podcast by several people telling me I HAD to listen to the Asian American’s episodes. So I did.

  • Asian-Americans Talk About Racism, and We Listen - Part 1 and 2

  • We Unpack Black Male Privilege

Refinery 29’s Strong Opinions Loosely Held — Admittedly, I wasn’t a huge fan of the whole idea of podcasts until I started listening to Strong Opinions Loosely Held.

  • Please Exit Through the Feminist Gift Shop

  • When Your Pop Culture Doesn’t Agree With Your Politics

  • Famous Online, Broke IRL

  • Just Shut Up

Amanda Seales' Small Doses — After writing a blogpost about fuckboys, a friend recommended I listened to Amanda Seales’ interview with James Bland who plays a fuckboy character on Insecure.

  • Side Effects of Not Having Kids

  • Side Effects of Being a Realist

  • Side Effects of Fuckboys (with James Bland)

KQED’s Bay Curious —

  • Have Ride-Hailing Apps Made Traffic Worse?

  • America’s Emperor, San Francisco’s Treasure: Who Was Emperor Norton?

Serial — Took a break from listening to hella introspective podcasts and finally delved into some crime and murder.