Advice

Read what you like. Then read broadly. Then read what you like.

Do not read what is displayed at the airport.

Trust that you will retain what is most important.

Do not finish the book for the sake of the book.

Make paper books as easy to access as possible.



Certified Classics

  • The Plague by Albert Camus
  • The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch
  • The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch
  • The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  • Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  • The Diary of Young Girl by Anne Frank
  • Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin
  • The Ancient City by Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges
  • Lying by Sam Harris
  • Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
  • A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
  • Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
  • The Trial by Franz Kafka
  • One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  • Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
  • Wind, Sand, and Stars by Antoine De Saint-Exupéry
  • Hyperion by Dan Simmons
  • The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
  • Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy


Worthwhile, for one reason or another

  • Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
  • Persuasion by Jane Austen
  • Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
  • The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
  • Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom
  • Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
  • The Managerial Revolution by James Burnham
  • The Fall by Albert Camus
  • The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
  • The Stranger by Albert Camus
  • Exhalation by Ted Chiang
  • The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  • A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
  • Enchiridion by Epictetus
  • As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
  • Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman by Richard Feynman
  • What Do You Care What Other People Think? by Richard Feynman
  • The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
  • Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
  • The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
  • The Pursuit of Italy by David Gilmore
  • The Second Coming of the KKK by Linda Gordon
  • The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham
  • Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
  • A Mathematician’s Apology by GH Hardy
  • For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
  • The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
  • Dune by Frank Herbert
  • The True Believer by Eric Hoffer
  • Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter
  • Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
  • Brave New World by Arduous Huxley
  • Uzumaki by Junji Ito
  • Leonardo DaVinci by Walter Isaacson
  • Letter from Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King Jr
  • The Castle by Franz Kafka
  • One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
  • Think on These Things by Krishnamurti
  • To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
  • Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  • Plagues and Peoples by William H. McNeil
  • The Way to Love by Anthony De Mello
  • Awareness by Anthony de Mello
  • The Captive Mind by Czeslaw Milosz
  • The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
  • Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
  • Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
  • 1984 by George Orwell
  • Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker
  • The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
  • The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan
  • How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan
  • A New World Begins by Jeremy Popkin
  • Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
  • Harry Potter by JK Rowling
  • Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
  • No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre
  • Dirty Hands by Jean-Paul Sartre
  • What Makes Sammy Run by Budd Schulberg
  • Lenin by Victor Sebestyen
  • Letters from a Stoic by Seneca
  • Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
  • Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb
  • Black Swan by Nassim Taleb
  • Antifragile by Nassim Taleb
  • Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb
  • Zero to One by Peter Thiel
  • The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
  • The Cossacks by Leo Tolstoy
  • Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance
  • Cats Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
  • Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
  • The Double Helix by James Watson
  • The Way of Zen by Alan Watts
  • The Book by Alan Watts
  • Physics of Wall Street by James Owen Weatherall
  • The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
  • Stoner by John Williams
  • The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse
  • Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers by Tom Wolfe


Not for me

  • God’s Debris by Scott Adams
  • Facing the Anthropocene by Ian Angus
  • Getting Things Done by David Allen
  • Payoff: The Hidden Logic that Shapes Our Motivations by Dan Ariely
  • The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski
  • Bobos in Paradise (skimmed) by David Brooks
  • The Blue Zones Solution by Dan Buettner
  • Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich by McCloskey and Carden
  • How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie
  • Influence by Robert Cialdini
  • Principles: Life & Work by Ray Dalio
  • The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
  • Managing Oneself by Peter Drucker
  • The Lessons of History by Will & Ariel Durant
  • Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss
  • The Meaning of It All by Richard Feynman
  • Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman
  • Six Not So Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman
  • Barbarian Days (DNF)by William Finnegan
  • Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer
  • The Crystal Frontier (DNF) by Carlos Fuentes
  • Bomber Mafia by Malcolm Gladwell
  • Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
  • Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell
  • Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
  • Genius by James Gleick
  • Chaos by James Gleick
  • 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari
  • Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari
  • Waking Up by Sam Harris
  • Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt
  • Made to Stick by Chip & Dan Heath
  • The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday
  • Stillness is the Key by Ryan Holiday
  • Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday
  • Einstein by Walter Isaacson
  • Thinking, Fast & Slow by Daniel Kahneman
  • The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
  • The Vital Question by Nick Lane
  • His Master’s Voice (DNF) by Stanislaw Lem
  • The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
  • Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart by Gordon Livingston
  • The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
  • Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
  • The Science of Can and Can’t by Chiara Marletto
  • Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney
  • What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars by Paul and Moynihan
  • 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson
  • When by Daniel Pink
  • Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It by Kamal Ravikant
  • How Innovation Works by Matt Ridley
  • The Name of the Wind (DNF) by Patrick Rothfuss
  • The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli
  • Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli
  • How to Invest by David Rubenstein
  • Behave by Robert Sapolsky
  • What is Life? by Erwin Schrödinger
  • Nudge by Cass Sunstein & Richard Thaler
  • Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil Degrasse Tyson
  • Art of War by Sun Tzu
  • String Theory by David Foster Wallace
  • I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong
  • On Writing Well by William Zinsser



Chronological order