Personally, I thought Range was a fantastic book. I agree that it was repetitive at times but that drum beating of the theme was welcome and showed the un/kind learning environment thesis in many areas of human learning.
I gave copies of the book out to my group at work in 2019 and everyone in the group loved it (so they told me!). My team members appreciated the other examples beyond the Woods-Federer example and my boss brings up those examples from time to time.
The central core idea of un/kind learning environments is a crucial one and has really helped me when I have to learn new things too. As my career is not generally in a kind learning environment, it has made me more confident to graze for new information far and wide, like here on HN (:
I keep telling people that 2020 is our chance to both address the lousy situation many are in, and to recognize what is truly important in our lives. The fact that many people did in fact have a very lousy year and you did not also falls into that category. Why do you think your year was not lousy, and what can we learn from it?