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Bookshelf

I am an avid reader and love sharing my book recommendations with anyone who is willing to listen to me rant about the newest book I have picked up or revisit one of my classics. I have included books at the bottom that I am yet to read which I either currently own or have earmarked to read in the future. 

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Before diving into the list of books I would like to quickly elaborate on my philosophy of reading and choosing the books I read more broadly. 

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  1. I never feel the need to finish a book. If I find a book too slow, I find myself staunchly disagreeing with the concepts or the book is simply poorly written, I do not finish the text. You only get so many books in your life to read (see WaitButWhy) and so if you find yourself not enjoying a book -- put it down. 
     

  2. My opinions on books and writers change over time. When I first read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, I found it enlightening, expertly written, and influential. Four years later I picked up the Fountainhead and realized my opinion had completely changed! I found the text plodding, blunt, and the underlying philosophy of the text disturbing. Opinions and taste can change over time and reading books by the same author, on similar topics, or the same book multiple times can do a very good job of capturing how your own perspective on the world has shifted. 
     

  3. I do not like to read recently released texts. Too often I have been burned by the NYTimes bestseller list (James Patterson anyone?). See this article by Tim Ferris that elaborates on this concept. 
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  4. Although you may notice quite a few business books on this list, in the past two years I have looked at business books in a more skeptical light. I find them filled with platitudes that many times are not very informative. While they bill themselves as making people smarter and more efficient, I find I often don't expand my knowledge from these books. I find this article a good expose on the genre.

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I have bolded books that I have found especially transformative, impactful, or just enjoyable reads. You may notice my proclivity to fantasy/post-apocalyptic and non-fiction :). 

 

Books I Have Read

  • The Martian chronicles 

  • Siddhartha 

  • The Autobiography of Malcolm X 

  • Wherever You Go There You Are

  • Cats Cradle 

  • The House at the End of the Lane 

  • White Fragility

  • Animal Farm

  • Stamped from the Beginning -- A Definitive History of Racism in the United States

  • 7 years in Tibet 

  • The Selfish Gene

  • Leonardo Da Vinci 

  • The Road 

  • Moonwalking with Einstein

  • Waking Up

  • Endurance 

  • Alas Babylon 

  • Parable of the Sower

  • The Old Man and the Sea 

  • The Fifth Season 

  • Sapiens

  • The Magicians Trilogy

  • 7 Habits of Highly Successful People 

  • The Buried Giant

  • Mother night 

  • Kitchen confidential 

  • Steve Jobs

  • Buddhism without Beliefs

  • Maus 

  • Good to Great

  • Home Deus

  • Timelapse 

  • Night 

  • Platos Republic 

  • Benjamin Franklin

  • Mans Search for Meaning 

  • Inherent Vice 

  • Earth Sea Chronicles

  • The Sports Gene

  • Dune

  • The Illiad

  • Walden Two

  • Never Let Me Go

  • Moneyball 

  • The Autobiography of Gucci Mane

  • Timequake 

  • Art of Happiness 

  • The Odyssey

  • Sum 

  • In Cold Blood

  • Mistborn Trilogy

  • How to Win Friends and Influence People 

  • Tuesday’s with Morrie

  • Tai Pan 

  • Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance  

  • Educated 

  • Lolita 

  • Creativity Inc

  • The Defining Decade

  • Lies of Locke Lamora

  • 10% happier 

  • Earth Abides

  • The Strand 

  • The Way of Kings

  • Destiny of the Republic 

  • Catcher in the Rye 

  • Winners Take All 

  • Shogun 

  • White Fragility

  • The Handmaids Tale

  • Stranger in a Strange Land 

  • Doors of Perception

  • American Kingpin 

  • Evicted

  • American gods 

  • The Long Walk

  • The Words of My Perfect Teacher

  • Brave New World

  • Atlas Shrugged

  • The Name of the Wind

  • Hitchhikers Guide to the galaxy 

  • The Plague

  • Stormlight Archive 

  • City of Thieves

  • Game of Thrones Series

  • The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon's Last Uncontacted Tribes

  • The Wise Mans Fear

  • Parable of the Talents

  • Good Omens 

  • Papillion

  • The Alchemist

  • Neverwhere

  • How to Change Your Mind

  • Full Castrophe Living 

  • Frankenstein 

  • 1984

  • Unbroken

Books On My List

  • Beloved 

  • The Emporer of All Maladies 

  • The Art of Doing Science and Engineering

  • The Fire Next Time

  • The Sympathizer

  • A Brief History of Everything

  • Long Walk to Freedom

  • Godel Escher Bach

  • The Brothers Karamazov 

  • Surely You Are Joking Mr. Feinman

  • The Kite Runner

  • The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America

  • The Motorcycle Diaries 

  • The Metamorphosis

  • Kindred

  • The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery

  • How to Kill a Mockingbird 

  • Gravitys Rainbow

  • Papillion

  • Musashi

  • The Book Theif

  • Geisha

  • Einstein 

  • Thank You For Smoking

  • Boys in the Boat

  • The Tale of Genji 

  • The New Jim Crow 

  • Infinite Jest

  • The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

  • Walden

  • The Quaran

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