Hung Tran

books of 2021

I read 21 books this year and I learned a lot from them with the experiences I had in 2021.

Here are my favorite books:

Project Hail Mary is a beautiful combination between true science and storytelling. It’s filled with pure fun physics, biology, and chemistry through the compelling narrative of Grace - a true definition of a devoted science teacher. The whole nerdy science thing is too interesting and addictive that I spent a considerable amount of time pondering and sketching the numbers and concepts.

This book made me realize the meaning of "Read What You Love Until You Love to Read” from Naval and got me inspired to pursue and learn Physics in my free time.

Relationships: I’ve followed The School of Life youtube channel for a long time and am always fascinated by the quality they teach me about life lessons in emotional awareness and relationships. I’ve been through some breaking changes in relationships in 2021 and this book came at the right time to help me go through and answer many questions that I’ve struggled for a while to find out.

Relationships go deep into the concept of modern love in a psychological and fundamental way to inspect the reasons behind our thinking, assumptions, and behaviors in relationships. It gave me some eye-opening ideas about the human nature of relationships that it’s worth contemplating. I also like this book in its practicality to apply to real-life situations, like “How to Love” of Thich Nhat Hanh but “How to Love” is more about spirituality. After all, this book cannot give you all the answers to all the weird things and problems that happen in our relationships. But it gives you the mindset and tools to keep searching and loving with compassion, trust, respect, joy, and mindfulness.

The Airbnb story: I’ve known and admired Airbnb as well as Brian Chesky through Paul Graham of YC because of the story of founders and culture. The Airbnb story give me an insightful understanding of this controversial industry of short-term homestay renting but what made me more engaged in the mental story of the founders and how they build up from the silly idea of renting air mattresses to the business with a strong cultural foundation, particularly the last parts where they focus on each founder.

Chesky, like other founders that I admired, is a learning animal with an obsessive habit of reading and the method of finding the right person that is the best in the field to learn and to work with.

If you are too lazy to read this book, I highly recommend this brilliant interview of him in a startup class at Stanford.

Mini Habits: I only came across the “aha moment” of figuring out my habits when I read Mini Habits and then review Atomic Habits. This book with the cover that I never thought I would approach is dead simple in its message “Make the habit too easy and trivial that you cannot skip it”. Sometimes I feel it like cheating my brain that I trick myself to do the habit with the goal of doing 1 pushup a day but always end up with 50 pushups, hardcore workouts, and a 5K running in that day. And this strangely keeps happening with 4-5 habits that have streaks of over 60 days. So weird!

I also realize different books have different interpretations and meanings for people. Sometimes you got to read lots of articles and books, watch countless videos about habits to finally get something “clicks” with a very simple idea in a book that you thought you would never expect will have such a huge impact on you. The important thing is to constantly find the answer with a hungry mind.

Last but not least, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Series! I read The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Life, the Universe and Everything, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, Mostly Harmless. Douglas Adams seems like a humorous British guy that would throw a satirical joke at you once every 5 minutes while making you question everything that you’ve taken for granted. These books are weird. Most of the time you feel like it is ridiculous with everything as a joke. The plot is chaotic. It can throw a twist, a frog, a dolphin, or a towel at your face at any time but you cannot help but smile and keep following because the journey is too exciting. Like George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, or any other great English writer, Adam plays with words so skillfully and artfully that can make you literally feel blessed and grateful that you’ve been alive till that moment to read those lines. He did give you an absurd answer to the meaning of life, but it’s meaningless unless we are conscious enough to come up with a great question that matches with the answer. That is one of the most beautiful messages I got from the book series. It’s more important and harder to ask great questions rather than quickly conclude with a trivial answer. One of the great ways for humans to reach that capability is to increase our scope of consciousness, as Elon Musk pointed out multiple times, including in this interview.


2021 is a tough but hopeful year with multiple breaking changes happened that I had to spend a long time handling and pondering about them. But I still read on planes, on trains, on buses when I travel, at 4 am when I cannot sleep, while sad, while drunk, while boring, while happy. Reading books has always been the thing that keeps me sane and mindful. It is the most fundamental method for me to educate myself. I’m excited for getting closer to finding the frameworks of interpreting the truth and the universe, and I cannot wait to learn more and read more in 2022.