Summer. Time for travels, family, sun and outdoor activities, and reading. Nothing quite like sitting in a café, on your terrace or lying in your mom’s hammock with a good book. And so I did:

The Richest Man in Babylon (Clason) An old classic, using parabels to describe what is important in planning your finances. It gets a tad repetitive, but that’s because it was initially published as stand-alone brochures. (4/5)

A message from Ukraine (Zelensky) Speeches given by the President from right before the Russian invasion until a year ago. A must read, for the excellent quality of the speech writing, and for the heart and humanity underwriting it. (4.5/5)

Ultra Processed people (van Tulleken) An important book on ultra processed food and the industry behind it, and how the latter used the former to take humanity away from what we should really be eating. (4.5/5)

Born in blackness (French) An exposé of the importance of Africa in the development of the modern world, with particular emphasis on the slave trade. The only thing I miss are more personal accounts. (4/5)

Beyond Order (Petersen) In/famous-from-Internet Jordan B Petersen holds forth on how to live your life. There are gems here, but you have to sift through a lot of verbiage to get to it. (3/5)

Renegades (Obama/Springsteen) I hesitate to call it non fiction, but… it’s a written version of a podcast featuring the two American icons. Nice, chatty – and ultimately not very much content. (2.5/5, +1 per author you’re a huge fan of)

And that was my July. Holidays are good like that. ☀️