Bookshelf
Quick Notes
I love when people share bookshelves. So I thought I'd share mine!
This list is every book I started. I finished ~90% of them. Historically, I would read every book cover to cover. But that started to feel silly. I kept slogging through books that I didn't like. So now I'm starting to leave more unfinished. My finish-percent will drop over time.
If you have any recommendations, send me an email!
About book ranking
I've bucketed them based roughly on how much I liked them. But honestly, it might be a bigger reflection on me than the book. Personal context matters a lot. For example, what are my current interests? What have I already read?
I deeply enjoyed Enlightenment Now. Was it because it's a great book? Or because it was the first book I read outside school? It's hard to say. But I've read a lot more history now. If someone gave it to me today, it would be pretty boring.
Or books about meditation. I read a few and they were great! But after five, I stopped hearing new Ideas. I basically lost all interest. So was the 6th a bad book? That seems a bit unfair.
I think imperfect data is better than none. But keep in mind, this ranking is very imperfect. I'm sorry if I didn't like your favorite book :)
Personal Favorites
These are the books I think back to the most. They were also pretty enjoyable to read.
Thinking Fast and Slow
Daniel Kahneman
Noise
Daniel Kahneman
From Third World to First
Lee Kuan Yew
The Rise and Fall of American Growth
Robert J. Gordon
Steve Jobs
Walter Isaacson
Zero to One
Peter Thiel
The Score Takes Care of Itself
Bill Walsh
Great Books
I enjoyed all these books and blanket recommend them.
The Dream Machine
M. Mitchell Waldrop
The Outsiders
William Thorndike
Poor Charlie's Almanack
Walter Isaacson
The Rational Optimist
Matt Ridley
Enlightenment Now
Steven Pinker
Creativity Inc.
Ed Catmull
Shoe Dog
Phil Knight
The Founders
Jimmy Soni
Elon Musk
Walter Isaacson
Einstein
Walter Isaacson
Leonardo Da Vinci
Walter Isaacson
Benjamin Franklin
Walter Isaacson
The Checklist Manifesto
Atul Gawande
How to Win Friends and Influence People
Dale Carnegie
The Untethered Soul
Michael Singer
The Voice of Knowledge
Don Miguel Ruiz
The Mastery of Love
Don Miguel Ruiz
The Four Agreements
Don Miguel Ruiz
The Power of Now
Eckhart Tolle
The Inner Game of Tennis
Timothy Gallwey
Face to Face
Brian Grazer
Sapiens
Yuval Noah Harari
Quality Books
This is my biggest bucket. I enjoyed them.
I recommend them, but only if you're interested in the topic.
Leadership
Henry Kissinger
Business Adventures
John Brooks
A Promised Land
Barack Obama
The Better Angels of our Nature
Steven Pinker
The Art of Doing Science and Engineering
Richard Hamming
Guns, Germs, and Steel
Jared Diamond
Out of Mao's Shadow
Philip Pan
Age of Ambition
Evan Osnos
American Against America
Wang Huning
Homo Deus
Yuval Noah Harari
21 Lessons for the 21st Century
Yuval Noah Harari
Mindstorms
Seymour Papert
The Sovereign Individual
William Rees-Mogg & James Dale Davidson
Scientific Freedom
Donald Braben
Where is My Flying Car
J. Storrs Hall
Principles
Ray Dalio
The Changing World Order
Ray Dalio
The Selfish Gene
Richard Dawkins
The Idea Factory
Jon Gertner
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
Richard Feynman
Build
Tony Fadell
The Wizard of Menlo Park
Randall Stross
Story
Robert McKee
Rationality
Steven Pinker
Originals
Adam Grant
Only the Paranoid Survive
Andy Grove
Foundation
Isaac Asimov
Foundation and Empire
Isaac Asimov
Second Foundation
Isaac Asimov
Dune
Frank Herbert
Atlas Shrugged
Ayn Rand
The Goal
Eliyahu Goldratt
Endurance
Alfred Lansing
Founding Sales
Peter Kazanjy
The Mom Test
Rob Fitzpatrick
Stuff Matters
Mark Miodownik
The Big Score
Michael S. Malone
Can't Hurt Me
David Goggins
Educated
Tara Westover
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
Eric Jorgenson
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster
Bill Gates
Superintelligence
Nick Bostrom
Seasteading
Joe Quirk
Lifespan
David Sinclair
Models
Mark Manson
Range
David Epstein
Lying
Sam Harris
Yes!
Goldstein, Martin, and Cialdini
Mindset
Carol Dweck
The Hard Thing About Hard Things
Ben Horowitz
High Output Management
Andy Grove
The Advantage
Patrick Lencioni
Invent and Wander
Jeff Bezos
The Cold Start Problem
Andrew Chen
Blitzscaling
Reid Hoffman
Hackers and Painters
Paul Graham
The Minimalist Entrepreneur
Sahil Lavingia
Alright Books
These books were alright, but I don't recommend them. Usually its because I found them boring. Sometimes its because I didn't learn anything. Or maybe I thought there were better books on the same topic.
How to Stop Worrying and Start Living
Dale Carnegie
Don't Make Me Think
Steve Krug
Life 3.0
Max Tegmark
Emotional Intelligence
Daniel Goleman
Six Easy Pieces
Richard Feynman
Secrets of Sand Hill Road
Scott Kupor
Think like a Monk
Jay Shetty
The Age of AI
Henry Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, Daniel Huttenlocher
Fooled by Randomness
Nassim Taleb
The Richest Man in Babylon
George Clason
Founders at Work
Jessica Livingston
Deep Learning
Aaron Courville, Ian Goodfellow, & Yoshua Bengio
Dare to Lead
Brene Brown
The Lessons of History
Will & Ariel Durant
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Thomas Kuhn
The Beginning of Infinity
David Deutsch
On Writing Well
William Zinsser
Atomic Habits
James Clear
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
Mark Manson
Books I disliked
I did not enjoy these books. Few seemed outright wrong. My common complaints are usually that they seemed unclear, impractical, or tedious to read. Sometimes I just disliked the writing style.
12 Rules for Life
Jordan Peterson
Start with Why
Simon Sinek
The Design of Everyday Things
Don Norman
Skin in the Game
Nassim Taleb
Getting Things Done
David Allen
The Now Habit
Neil Fiore
Meditations
Marcus Aurelius
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Stephen Covey
The Courage to be Disliked
Ichiro Kishimi
Managing Oneself
Peter Drucker
Four Steps to the Epiphany
Steven Blank
Business @ the Speed of Thought
Bill Gates
The Social Contract
Jean-Jaques Rousseau