Books

A list of books I’ve been reading. I tend to update it a few times a year.

⭐ Favorites - added at end of year
🎧 Audiobooks
🔁 Rereads

2026

Caro Claire Burke - Yesteryear
Simone Stolzoff - The Good Enough Job
Isaac Fitzgerald - American Rambler: Walking the Trail of Johnny Appleseed
Adharanand Finn - The Rise of the Ultra Runners
Karl Ove Knausgård - The School of Night. Deeply regret reading this.
⭐ Madeline Cash - Lost Lambs
David Lynch - Room to Dream
Agri Ismaïl - Hyper
Paul Murray - Skippy Dies
Lily King - Heart the Lover
Alain de Botton - Status Anxiety
Epictetus - The Manual: A Philosopher’s Guide to Life
Viktor E. Frankl - Man’s Search for Meaning

2025

Beatriz Serrano - Discontent
Jared Beasley - The Endurance Artist
Solvej Balle - On the Calculation of Volume (Book 3). Started losing interest on this phase.
Susan Choi - Flashlight. Pulled me into the tide
Chris DeVille - Such Great Heights: The Complete Cultural History of the Indie Rock Explosion
Alex Hutchinson - Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance
⭐️ Craig Mod - Things Become Other Things: A Walking Memoir. Beautiful, sad, funny, meditative.
Vincenzo Latronico - Perfection. Short, fun, too real to be funny. A perfect ending.
Charlotte Wood - Stone Yard Devotional
Jordan Mechner - Replay: Memoir of an Uprooted Family. An incredible family story with a unique format.
Keach Hagey - The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future
Andy Greenberg - Tracers in the Dark
Robin Wall Kimmerer - Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses
Kaveh Akbar - Martyr!. Surprisingly beautiful.
Kate Folk - Sky Daddy. Ballard x Fear of Flying = shock and laughter.
Adam Ross - Playworld. Entertaining, but couldn’t get over the creepiness of it all.
Richard Powers - Galatea 2.2. Thinking about LLMs in 1995(!).
Sarah Wynne-Williams - Careless People
Thich Nhat Hahn - At Home in the World
⭐️ Paul Murray - The Bee Sting. A depressing, tragic slog with masterful storytelling.
Solvej Balle - On the Calculation of Volume (Book 2). Surprised how well this pushed the premise deeper.
Solvej Balle - On the Calculation of Volume (Book 1). Magic Mountain in an afternoon?

2024

Playground - Richard Powers. Felt a little too overstory templated, but still grokking the ending.
🎧 Private Citizens - Tony Tulathimutte. A little dated now that 2008 Bay Area culture is ubiquitous. Not as good as rejection.
⭐️ Oliver Burkeman - Meditations for Mortals. Medicine for control freaks.
⭐️ Rejection - Tony Tulathimutte. Repulsive, escalating trainwrecks I couldn’t look away from, with big audible gasps and laughs.
The Chronicles of DOOM - S.H. Fernando
You Have Not Yet Head Your Favorite Song - Glenn MacDonald
The Last Dream - Pedro Almodóvar. A messy collection with two standout stories: “The Visit”, “The Life and Death of Miguel”.
The Overstory - Richard Powers
🤔 All Fours - Miranda July. Wished she just went on the road trip…
Build - Tony Fadell
Strange Pilgrims - Gabriel García Márquez
Tennis: Five Essays - David Foster Wallace. Mindblowing ending to the IJ-lite juniors memoir; Michael Joyce piece was a far richer Challengers.
Table for Two: Fictions - Amor Towles
Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture - Kyle Chayka
Training for the Uphill Athlete: A Manual for Mountain Runners and Ski Mountaineers - Steve House, Scott Johnston, Kilian Jornet
Japanese Death Poems: Written by Zen Monks and Haiku Poets on the Verge of Death - Yoel Hoffman
Hangover Square - Patrick Hamilton
The Making of Karateka - Jordan Mechner
Raising Raffi: The First Five Years - Keith Gessen. A refreshing and funny view amid many baby books.

2023

I didn’t get through many books this year, other than a few tomes. I picked up and dropped more books than ever, and skimmed lots of parenting and baby books. So it goes.

The Guest - Emma Cline
Every Man for Himself and God Against All - Werner Herzog
Trust - Hernan Diaz
The Crystal World - JG Ballard
Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology - Chris Miller
Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall - Zeke Faux
⭐️🎧 The Path to Power - Robert Caro
2666 - Roberto Bolaño
Rise of the Data Cloud - Frank Slootman
⭐️ Into Thin Air - John Krakauer
And Finally - Henry Marsh
Sandworm - Andy Greenberg
The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linus and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary - Eric S. Raymond.
Overcoming Gravity: A Systematic Approach to Gymnastics and Bodyweight Strength - Steven Low
Moonwalking with Einstein - Joshua Foer

2022

Status and Culture: How Our Desire for Social Rank Creates Taste, Identity, Art, Fashion, and Constant ChangeMarx, W. David - W. David Marx
Continuous Discovery Habits - Teresa Torres
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow - Gabrielle Zevin
Living in Data: A Citizen’s Guide to a Better Information Future
Stay True: A Memoir - Hu Hsu
The Trail Runner’s Companion - Sarah Lavender Smith
Heat 2 - Michael Mann
Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software - Nadia Eghbal
⭐ This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race - Nicole Perlroth
The Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann
Alright, Alright, Alright: The Oral History of Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused - Melissa Maerz
⭐ Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players - Stefan Fatsis
💔 What About the Rest of Your Life - Sung Kim
Exercised: How We Did Not Evolve to Exercise and What to Do About It - David E. Lieberman
A Walk in the Woods - Bill Bryson
The Feral Detective - Johnathan Lethem
⭐ Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals - Oliver Burkeman
Searching for the Sound - Phil Lesh
The Duel - Anton Chekhov
Sweat: A History of Exercise - Bill Hayes
The Idiot - Elif Batuman
Endurance - Alfred Lansing
Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino
Seven Games: A Human History - Oliver Roeder
Islands of Abandonment - Cal Flyn
A Year with Swollen Appendages - Brian Eno
Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism - Amanda Montell

2021

⭐🎧 Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty - Patrick Radden Keefe
The History of Bones - John Lurie
Waltzing with Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects - Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister
Leave Society - Tao Lin
⭐ Dirt: Adventures in Lyon as a Chef in Training, Father, Sleuth Looking for the Secret of French Cooking - Bill Buford
🎧 The Goal - Eliyahu M. Goldratt
Blood, Sweat, and Pixels - Jason Schreier
The Infinite Machine - Camila Russo
Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World - Jane McGonigal
Ask Iwata - Satoru Iwata
Yearbook - Seth Rogen
The History of the Future: Oculus, Facebook, and the Revolution That Swept Virtual Reality - Blake Harris
The Art of Thinking Clearly - Rolf Dobelli
Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture - David Kushner
Beloved - Toni Morrison
The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance - Ron Chernow
Higher Love: Climbing and Skiing the Seven Summits - Kit DesLauriers
Underland: A Deep Time Journey - Robert Macfarlane

2020

Sweat! The Illustrated History and Description of the Finnish Sauna, Russian Bania, Islamic Hammam, Japanese Mushi-Buro, Mexican Temescal, and American Indian & Eskimo Sweatlodge - Mikkel Aaland
The PayPal Wars - Eric Jackson
Payments Systems in the U.S. - Carol Coye Benson, Scott Loftesness, Russ Jones
Moneyland: The Inside Story of the Crooks and Kleptocrats Who Rule the World - Oliver Bullough
Wenger: My Life and Lessons in Red & White - Arsène Wenger
Der Klang der Familie: Berlin, Techno und die Wende - Felix Denk, Sven von Thülen
Are Your Lights On? - Gerald Weinberg
7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy - Hamilton W. Helmer
Sid Meier’s Memoir!: A Life in Computer Games - Sid Meier
Duveen: The Story of the Most Spectacular Art Dealer of All Time - S.N. Behrman
Getting High in the Himalayas - James Ramsey
⭐ A Random Walk Down Wall Street - Burton G. Malkiel
The Yoga of Eating: Transcending Diets and Dogma to Nourish the Natural Self - Charles Eisenstein
🎧 How to Be an Antiracist — Ibram X. Kendi
Becoming Ageless - Strauss Zelnick
Consider This - Chuck Palahniuk
The Master Game: Pathways to Higher Consciousness - Robert S. de Ropp
Paying with Plastic: The Digital Revolution in Buying and Borrowing - David S. Evans, Richard L. Schmalensee
Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor - Layla F Saad
Life, on the Line: A Chef’s Story of Chasing Greatness, Facing Death, and Redefining the Way We Eat - Grant Achatz, Nick Kokonas
The Making of Prince of Persia - Jordan Mechner
🎧 You May Also Like - Tom Vanderbilt
🎧 Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America - Christopher Leonard
Fragrant Harbour - John Lanchester
Gamelife - Michael Clune
Agency - William Gibson
Imaginary Museums - Nicolette Polek
The Quiet American - Graham Greene
⭐ Uncanny Valley - Anna Wiener
The Extraordinary Adventures of Arséne Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar - Maurice Leblanc
⭐ Acid for the Children: A Memoir - Flea
Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America - Christoper Wylie

2019

The Intelligent Investor - Benjamin Graham
🎧 Loserthink - Scott Adams
Capital - John Lanchester
⭐ The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York - Robert Caro
Autumn - Ali Smith
The Wall - John Lanchester
Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models: Gabriel Weinberg, Lauren McCann
Cherry - Nico Walker
Normal People - Sally Rooney
Fooled By Randomness - Nassim Nicholas Taleb
⭐ The Debt to Pleasure - Jonathan Lancaster
Machines Like Me - Ian McEwan
Finite and Infinite Games - James Carse
Hippie - Paulo Coelho
Can’t Hurt Me - David Goggins
The Wisdom of Insecurity - Alan Watts
🎧 Digital Minimalism - Cal Newport
⭐ Less: A Novel - Andrew Sean Greer
Small Fry - Lisa Brennan-Jobs
🎧 On the Move: A Life - Oliver Sacks
Factfulness - Hans Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund, and Ola Rosling
⭐🎧 Arbitrary Stupid Goal - Tamara Shopsin
Creative Selection - Ken Kocienda

2018

🎧 Born to Run - Bruce Springsteen
Lessons for the 21st Century - Yuval Harari
⭐️🎧 Thinking in Bets - Annie Duke
Raw: My Journey into the Wu-Tang - U-God
Beyond Jogging: The Innerspaces of Running - Mike Spino
⭐️ Killing Commendatore - Haruki Murakami
Draft No. 4 - John McPhee
It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work - Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson
Thinking in Systems - Donella H Meadows
Fashion Climbing: A Memoir with Photographs - Bill Cunningham
The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit - Michael Finkel
The Courage to be Disliked - Ichiro Kishimi, Fumitake Koga
High Growth Handbook - Elad Gil
Bruce Lee: A Life - Matthew Polly
Springfield Confidential - Mike Reiss
⭐️ Mother American Night - John Perry Barlow
⭐️🎧 How to Change Your Mind - Michael Pollan
Prediction Machines - Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb
⭐️ Trip: Psychedelics, Alienation, and Change - Tao Lin
🎧 Let My People Go Surfing - Yvon Chouinard
Total Running - Jim Lilliefors
The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life - Kevin Simler, Robin Hanson
Gut - Giulia Enders, Jill Enders, and David Shaw
⭐️ By The Smoke and The Smell - Thad Vogel
The Three-Body Problem - Cixin Liu
Pot on the Fire: John Thorne
🎧 Vacationland - Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches- John Hodgman
⭐️ Endurance - Scott Kelly
From Here to Eternity - Caitlin Doughty
Polishing the Mirror - Ram Dass
Sneakers - Howie Kahn
Silence: In the Age of Noise - Erling Kagge

2017

A Visit From the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan
🎧Porcelain: A Memoir - Moby
A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life - Waldman, Ayelet
The Four: How Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google Divided and Conquered the World - Scott Galloway
🎧 Bear: The Life and Times of Augustus Owsley Stanley III - Greenfield, Robert
Life is Not an Accident - Jay Williams
Tender is the Night - F. Scott Fitzgerald
⭐️ Do No Harm - Henry Marsh
The Design of Everyday Things - Don Norman
Day of the Locust - Nathaniel West
Why Buddhism is True - Robert Wright
⭐️ Open - Andre Agassi
Deep thinking - Gary Kasparov
⭐️ Insomniac City - Bill Hayes
Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice - Matthew Syed
⭐️ Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said - Philip K. Dick
Catching the Big Fish - David Lynch
Moonglow - Michael Chabon
Black Edge - Sheelah Kolhatkar
⭐️ Happy City - Charles Montgomery
The Attention Merchants - Tim Wu
Algorithms to Live by - Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths
Homo Deus - Yuval Noah Harari
⭐️ Sapiens - Yuval Noah Harari

2016

⭐️ How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big - Scott Adams
Stories of Your Life and Others - Ted Chiang
🎧⭐️ How Music Got Free - Stephen Witt
Misbehaving - Richard Thaler
Chaos Monkeys - Antonio Garcia Marquez
Disrupted - Dan Lyons
⭐️ Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
⭐️ Heads - Jesse Jarnow
A Gambler’s Anatomy - Jonathan Lethem
Bill Walton - Back from the Dead
Sprint - Jake Knapp
From Impossible to Inevitable - Aaron Ross
🎧 Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life - William Finnegan
Magic and Loss: The Internet as Art - Virginia Hefferman
⭐️🎧 Fortress of Solitude - Jonathan Lethem

2015

⭐️ 100 Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Right Stuff - Tom Wolfe
⭐️ 🎧 Born Standing Up - Steve Martin
Making Things Happen - Scott Birkun
The Shallows - Nicolas Carr
The Best Interface is No Interface - Golden Krishna
Humans Need Not Apply - Jerry Kaplan
Wind/Pinball - Haruki Murakami
Digital Gold - Nathaniel Popper
Solaris - Stanislaw Lem
The Futurological Congress - Stanislaw Lem
A Bone to Pick - Mark Bittman
⭐️ The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy - William Janeway
🎧 Elon Musk - Ashlee Vance
Four Steps to the Epiphany - Steve Blank
⭐️ The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
The Second Machine Age
How We Got to Now - Steven Johnson
Einstein - Walter Isaacson
The Innovators - Walter Isaacson
Dataclysm - Christian Rudder
Playing to Win - David Sirlin
Console Wars - Blake Harris

2014

⭐️ Fiasco - Stanislaw Lem
High Rise - JG Ballard
Cracking the PM Interview
Where You Go, There You Are - Jon Kabat Zinn
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki - Haruki Murakami
If on a Winter’s Night A Traveller - Italo Calvino
Dissident Gardens - Jonathan Lethem
Zero to One - Peter Thiel
Hocus Pocus - Kurt Vonnegut
Thinking Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman
Flash Boys - Michael Lewis
The Lean Startup - Eric Ries
Hooked - Nir Eyal
Taipei - Tao Lin
The Hard Thing About Hard Things - Ben Horowitz
Present Shock
Delivering Happiness - Tony Hsieh
Age of Context - Robert Scoble
This is How You Lose Her - Junot Diaz
Sam Walton: Made in America
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running - Haruki Murakami
Hot to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie

2013

David and Goliath - Malcolm Gladwell
Rework - Jason Fried
The Innovator’s Dilemma - Clayton Christenson
Eleven Rings - Phil Jackson
⭐️ Who Owns the Future? - Jaron Lanier
🤦‍♂️ 4 Hour Work Week
Back to Blood - Tom Wolfe
⭐️ Mindset - Carol Dweck
Bleeding Edge - Thomas Pynchon
The Everything Store - Brad Stone
The Circle - David Eggers
Hatching Twitter - Nick Bilton
⭐️ How Music Works - David Byrne