Reading

I read a lot. This is a curated list of favorites, plus my notes on books I've read recently. Got a recommendation? Tell me.

Notes

• A Philosophy of Software Design
  John Ousterhout · 2018
• Alan Watts: Man is a Hoax (Being in the Way, Ep. 20)
  Alan Watts
• Atlassian CEO on the SaaS Apocalypse, AI Agents & What Comes Next
  Mike Cannon-Brookes
• Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs
  Ken Kocienda · 2018
• Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World
  Cal Newport · 2019
• How the Economic Machine Works
  Ray Dalio
• I Will Teach You to Be Rich
  Ramit Sethi
• Just Keep Buying
  Nick Maggiulli
• Leadership Is Language: The Hidden Power of What You Say — and What You Don't
  L. David Marquet · 2020
• The First 90 Days
  Michael Watkins
• The Mom Test: How to Talk to Customers & Learn if Your Business is a Good Idea When Everyone is Lying to You
  Rob Fitzpatrick · 2013
• The Timeless Way of Building
  Christopher Alexander · 1979
• You Are Solving The Wrong Problem
  Aza Raskin
• Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
  Peter Thiel (with Blake Masters) · 2014

Favorites

Philosophy & Culture

• Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
• Lila: An Inquiry into Morals
• The Meeting of East and West: An Inquiry Concerning World Understanding
• The Tao of Physics
• Way of the Peaceful Warrior

Computing

• The Making of Prince of Persia
• Masters of DOOM
• Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
• The Humane Interface
• Game Over: How Nintendo Conquered the World
• A Small Matter of Programming
• Microserfs
• Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government
• Netscape Time
• Bad Blood
• Influence Empire: Tencent and China's Tech Ambition

Leadership & Entrepreneurship

• Turn the Ship Around!
• Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
• The Mom Test
• Crossing the Chasm
• High Output Management
• Orbiting the Giant Hairball
• Getting to Yes
• Failure is not an Option
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things

History

• The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
• The Greeks
• Russia and the West
• The Russian Revolution
• The Longest War
• Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany
• Red Notice

Misc. Non-Fiction

• Mindfulness in Plain English
• Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
• How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes
• The Elegant Universe
• Guns, Germs, and Steel
• The Message of the Sphinx

Fiction

• The Three Body Problem
• The Ministry for the Future
• Seveneves
• We Are Legion (We Are Bob)
• Project Hail Mary
• The Martian
• Flowers for Algernon
• The Dark Tower Series
• Galatea 2.2
• Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
• Snow Crash
• Nexus
• Siddhartha
• American Gods
• Sekret Machines
• Nyxia
• To Sleep in a Sea of Stars
• A Gentleman in Moscow
• Children of Time
• The Cuckoo's Egg