Bookshelf

Inspired by Patrick Collison’s bookshelf, I’m sharing some books I enjoyed. I’d keep them on my bookshelf if I didn’t read them as audiobooks and ebooks.

At the time I read them, certain books seemed unusually good (marked with *) and others seemed particularly great (marked with **).

Caveat. I’ve changed quite a bit since reading some of them, so my impression could be different today. Needless to say, I obviously don’t agree with every single thing said or implied in these books.

Non-Fiction: Business and Tech

  • Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think
  • Angel: How to Invest in Technology Startups
  • Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup *
  • Becoming Steve Jobs
  • Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making
  • Culture Code
  • Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future *
  • Empowered: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products
  • Getting Things Done
  • Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters
  • Hard Thing About Hard Things
  • Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow **
  • Inspired: How To Create Products Customers Love
  • Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
  • Lost and Founder
  • Never Split the Difference *
  • Shoe Dog **
  • The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Boundaries of Global Business
  • The Inevitable
  • The Mom Test *
  • Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Growth
  • What Technology Wants
  • Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon

Non-Fiction: Other

  • Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder
  • Becoming
  • Behave
  • Blank Slate
  • Capitalism in America: A History
  • Chasing Excellence
  • Doing Good Better *
  • Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, and Humanism *
  • Factfulness
  • Free Will
  • Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
  • How Music Works: The Science and Psychology of Beautiful Sounds
  • How to Avoid a Climate Disaster
  • How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics
  • Lifespan: Why We Age―and Why We Don’t Have To *
  • Permanent Record
  • Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
  • Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind **
  • Solve for Happy
  • Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction
  • Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!
  • Talking to Strangers
  • The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe
  • The Book of Joy
  • The Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail
  • The Gene: An Intimate History
  • The Happiness Hypothesis
  • The Mind Illuminated: A Complete Meditation Guide
  • The Spy and the Traitor *
  • Thinking, Fast and Slow *
  • This Is Your Brain on Music
  • Waking Up *
  • Why Buddhism is True **
  • Your Brain at Work *

Fiction

  • 1984
  • Brave New World
  • Death’s End
  • Exhalation: Stories *
  • Project Hail Mary **
  • Republic
  • Siddhartha
  • Stories of Your Life and Others
  • Sum
  • The Egg by Andy Weir
  • The Martian *
  • The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories