I frequently get asked about book recommendations beyond what I’ve posted to Medium. Despite reading a fair bit, I always feel guilty when nothing comes to mind. So, here I will try to maintain a fairly complete catalog of books I have read that are worth picking up. This list started in mid-2023, so I’m undoubtedly going to miss some gems from prior years but with the Pareto principle, the most important ones will be included. I always enjoy piecing through other people’s recommendations and browsing bookshelves, so this is intended to be a digital version of that.
The list is broken into rough themes, and I’ll flag some with colors to identify the best and those that are above average: Green meaning great, light blue meaning substantially above average.
For a deeper look at what I’m actively reading check out my goodreads here.
To see my train of thought and life at the time when I read any book since 2020, check out my annual medium posts here.
Categories
Productivity
- Atomic Habits
- Deep Work
Thinking
- Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
- Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder
- Never Split The Difference
- Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
- Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products
- Lateral Thinking: Creativity Step by Step
- Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life
- The Innovator’s Dilemma
Business / Culture
- See-Saw: A perspective on success, leadership and corporate culture
- What You Do Is Who You Are
- Good to Great
- Rework
- It Doesn’t Have To Be Crazy At Work
- Remote: Office Not Required
- The Hard Thing About Hard Things
- What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School
- Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
- Jeff Bezos and the age of Amazon
Life Planning
- Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
- Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life
Management
- The Making of a Manager
Idea Generation
- Zero To One
- A Technique for Producing Ideas
Analytics
- The Signal and the Noise
Web3 / Crypto
- The Basics of Bitcoins and Blockchains: An Introduction to Cryptocurrencies and the Technology that Powers Them
- The Infinite Machine: How an Army of Crypto Hackers Is Building the Next Internet with Ethereum
History
- Sapiens
- How the Irish Saved Civilization
Sleep
- Why We Sleep
Breathing
- Breath: The New Science Of A Lost Art
Wealth
- The Psychology of Money
- I Will Teach You To Be Rich
Health / Longevity
- The Body: A Guide for Occupants
- Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don’t Have To
Sports
- Three Ring Circus
- Champagne Football
Other non-fiction
- The Undoing Project
- Flash Boys
- Boomerang
- The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires
Auto-biography / Almanac
- The Almanac of Naval Ravikant
- When Breath Becomes Air
Fiction
- The Alchemist
- Dark Matter
- The Guest List
- Brave New World
- Project Hail Mary
- The Martian
- Ready Player One