We’re all looking for some sort of distraction from the daily deluge of coronavirus news and stress, and ways to occupy ourselves while stuck at home during the lockdown. For Bill Gates, reading is of course the greatest escape.
A prolific reader even when his day-to-day activities aren’t limited by a global pandemic, Gates is back with his annual summer reading list. But in a new Gates Notes blog post, the Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist goes beyond his usual five book recommendations.
PREVIOUSLY: Bill Gates reflects on what he read in 2019
Gates admits that COVID-19 occupies a good deal of the conversations and meetings he’s having these days as he helps search for a solution to the crisis. But for those who want to learn more about what we’re going through or just tap into what else has Gates’ attention, he gets asked a lot about what he’s reading or watching.
Some of what’s on his list will provide insight into our unprecedented times, while elsewhere there are offerings related to business, economics, meditation, memorization, space and spy thrillers. Gates is even keeping up with the Netflix series “Ozark.”
Here’s a summary of what Gates shared on his blog:
Summer reading list
- “The Choice,” by Dr. Edith Eva Eger. “Partly a memoir and partly a guide to processing trauma. … I think many people will find comfort right now from her suggestions on how to handle difficult situations.”
- “Cloud Atlas,” by David Mitchell. “The kind of novel you’ll think and talk about for a long time after you finish it. … If you’re in the mood for a really compelling tale about the best and worst of humanity, I think you’ll find yourself as engrossed in it as I was.”
- “The Ride of a Lifetime,” by Bob Iger. “One of the best business books I’ve read in several years. … I think anyone would enjoy his stories about overseeing Disney during one of the most transformative times in its history.”
- “The Great Influenza,” by John M. Barry. “We’re living through an unprecedented time right now. But if you’re looking for a historical comparison, the 1918 influenza pandemic is as close as you’re going to get.”
- “Good Economics for Hard Times,” by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo. “Two of the smartest economists working today. … Fortunately for us, they’re also very good at making economics accessible to the average person.”
Other books
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(Amazon Image) “The Headspace Guide to Meditation and Mindfulness,” by Andy Puddicombe. Once a skeptic about meditation, Gates now does it as often as he can.
- “Moonwalking with Einstein,” by Joshua Foer. “If you’re looking to work on a new skill, you could do worse than learning to memorize things.”
- “The Martian,” by Andy Weir. Gates calls out one line from the botanist character stranded on Mars as being particularly relevant to the novel coronavirus: “I’m going to science the s*** out of this.”
- “A Gentleman in Moscow,” by Amor Towles. “The main character in this novel is living through a situation that now feels very relatable: He can’t leave the building he’s living in.”
- “Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things that Happened,” by Allie Brosh. “You’ll wish it went on longer, because it’s funny and smart as hell. I must have read Melinda [Gates] a dozen hilarious passages out loud.”
TV shows and movies
- “Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak.” The documentary series on Netflix “introduces you to four people who are working super-hard in different parts of the world to prevent epidemics” … providing a “sense of the inspiring work that heroic doctors, researchers, and aid workers are doing to prevent the very thing we’re all going through right now.”
- “Spy Game.” Gates calls the Robert Redford and Brad Pitt film one of his favorite movies, with “lots of good suprises. … I’ve probably seen it 12 times.”
- Gates is also keeping up with such shows as “A Million Little Things,” “This is Us” and “Ozark,” and he has plans to start “I, Claudius.”
