Index
Published Apr 3, 2021 Updated Jan 1, 2026

Books

Currently Reading

  • The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, Sylvia Plath

Want to Read

  • A Decade of Research, Giuliana Lavendel
  • A Great Leap Forward, Alexander J. Field
  • A Photographer’s Life, Annie Leibovitz
  • A Treatise of Human Nature, David Hume
  • A Vast Machine, Paul N. N Edwards
  • Age of Ambition, Evan Osnos
  • Alibaba, Duncan Clark
  • An Everlasting Meal, Tamar Adler
  • Artful Sentences, Virginia Tufte
  • Becoming Trader Joes, Joe Coulombe
  • Bicycle Design, Hans-Erhard Lessing and Tony Hadland
  • Book of Why, Judea Pearl
  • Buckminster Fuller’s Universe, L. Steven Sieden
  • Business Adventures, John Brooks
  • Chaos: Making a New Science, James Gleick
  • Cities for People, Jan Gehl
  • Cultural Amnesia, Clive James
  • Curious Minds, Danielle Bassett and Perry Zurn
  • Dance to the Tune of Life, Denis Noble
  • Dancing in the Glory of Monsters, Jason K. Stearns
  • Dealers of Lightning, Michael A. Hiltzik
  • Debt, David Graeber
  • Descartes’ Error, Antonio Damasio
  • Design for a Brain, W. Ross Ashby
  • Exercises in Style, Raymond Queneau
  • Expert Political Judgment, Philip E. Tetlock
  • Fact, Fiction, and Forecast, Nelson Goodman
  • Feynman Lectures on Computation, Richard Feynman
  • For Discrimination, Randall Kennedy
  • Foucault’s Pendulum, Umberto Eco
  • Games: Agency as Art, C. Thi Nguyen
  • Global Catastrophic Risks, Nick Bostrom
  • Governing the Commons, Elinor Ostrom
  • Hard Landing, Thomas Petzinger Jr.
  • How Life Works, Phillip Ball
  • How the Leopard Changed Its Spots, Brian Goodwin
  • How to Build A Brain, Chris Eliasmith
  • Human Transit, Jarrett Walker
  • I Didn’t Do It for You, Michela Wrong
  • If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens … WHERE IS EVERYBODY?, Stephen Webb
  • In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz, Michela Wrong
  • Incompleteness, Rebecca Goldstein
  • Introduction to Urban Science, Luis M. A. Bettencourt
  • Intuition Pumps And Other Tools for Thinking, Daniel Dennett
  • Jony Ive, Leander Kahney
  • Justice as Fairness, John Rawls
  • Language and Problems of Knowledge, Noam Chomsky
  • Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
  • Life Itself, Robert Rosen
  • Life, Death, and Other Inconvenient Truth, Shimon Edelman
  • Longitude, Dava Sobel
  • Marshall McLuhan, Douglas Coupland
  • Master of the Senate, Robert Caro
  • Materials for the Study of Variation, William Bateson
  • Matterhorn, Karl Marlantes
  • Medieval Technology and Social Change, Lynn Townsend White Jr.
  • Memory Machines, Belinda Barnet
  • Men, Machines, and Modern Times, Elting Morison
  • Metamagical Themas, Douglas R Hofstadter
  • Middlemarch, George Eliot
  • Mind-body Problem, Rebecca Goldstein
  • Mindstorms, Seymour Papert
  • Money for Everyone, Malcolm Torry
  • Moral Mazes, Robert Jackall
  • Myth of the Machine, Lewis Mumford
  • Nixonland, Rick Perlstein
  • Obedience to Authority, Stanley Milgram
  • On Intelligence, Jeff Hawkins & Sandra Blakeslee
  • On Not Being Someone Else, Andrew H. Miller
  • Only Revolutions, Mark Z. Danielewski
  • Orality and Literacy, Walter Ong
  • Order without Design, Alain Bertaud
  • Organizing Genius, Warren Bennis
  • Origins of Genius, Dean Keith Simonton
  • Out of Mao’s Shadow, Philip P. Pan
  • Pacific, Simon Winchester
  • Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track, Richard Feynman
  • Plagues and Peoples, William H. McNeill
  • Plagues upon the Earth, Kyle Harper
  • Plato at the Googleplex, Rebecca Goldstein
  • Poor Charlie’s Almanack, Charles Munger
  • Postcards from Tomorrow Square, James Fallows
  • Quantum Computing Since Democritus, Scott Aaronson
  • Reality Is Not What It Seems, Carlo Rovelli
  • River Town, Peter Hessler
  • Robustness and Evolvability in Living Systems, Andreas Wagner
  • Science : A History 1534-2001, John Gribbin
  • Science and the City, Laurie Winkless
  • Seeing Like a State, James C. Scott
  • Sideways, Josh O’Kane
  • Straw Dogs, John Gray
  • Stuff Matters, Mark Miodownik
  • Technics and Civilization, Lewis Mumford
  • Technology and the Virtues, Shannon Vallor
  • The Animal Mind, Margaret Floy Washburn
  • The Arabs, Eugene Rogan
  • The Ascent of Information, Caleb Scharf
  • The Big Score, Michael S. Malone
  • The Burnout Society, Byung-Chul Han
  • The Children’s Machine, Seymour A. Papert
  • The Chip, T. R. Reid
  • The City in History, Lewis Mumford
  • The Closing Circle, Barry Commoner
  • The Collapse of Complex Societies, Joseph Tainter
  • The Color of Law, Richard Rothstein
  • The Commons in an Age of Uncertainty, Franklin Obeng-Odoom
  • The Complexity of Cooperation, Robert Axelrod
  • The Cowshed, Ji Xianlin
  • The Cult of Smart, Fredrik deBoer
  • The Cultural Revolution: A People’s History, 1962―1976, Frank Dikötter
  • The Difference, Scott Page
  • The Directiveness Of Organic Activities, Russell Russell
  • The Disappearing Spoon, Sam Kean
  • The Dream Machine, M. Mitchell Wardrop
  • The Educated Mind, Kieran Egan
  • The Elements of Style, William Strunk Jr.
  • The Elephant in the Brain, Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson
  • The Emotional Brain, Jospeh Ledoux
  • The Ethical Algorithm, Aaron Roth and Michael Kearns
  • The Evolution of Great World Cities, Christopher Kennedy
  • The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan
  • The Genetic Lottery, Kathryn Paige Harden
  • The Humane Interface, Jef Raskin
  • The Hunters, James Salter
  • The Ideas of Biology, John Tyler Bonner
  • The Internet of Elsewhere, Mr. Cyrus Farivar
  • The Intimate City, Michael Kimmelman
  • The Journalist And The Murderer, Janet Malcolm
  • The Lessons of History, Ariel Durant and Will Durant
  • The Long Way, Bernard Moitessier
  • The Making of Urban Japan, Andre Sorensen
  • The Man Behind the Microchip, Leslie Berlin
  • The Mythical Man Month, Fred Brooks
  • The Network State, Balaji Srinivasan
  • The Ocean of Life, Callum Roberts
  • The Old Way, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
  • The Ontogeny of Information, Susan Oyama
  • The Origins of Life, John Maynard Smith
  • The Planet Remade, Oliver Morton
  • The Power Broker, Robert Caro
  • The Precipice, Toby Ord
  • The Principles of Psychology, William James
  • The Psychic Life of Micro-organisms, Alfred Binet
  • The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Robert J. Gordon
  • The Scramble for Africa, Thomas Pakenham
  • The Smartest Kids in the World, Amanda Ripley
  • The Tinkerer’s Accomplice, J. Scott Turner
  • The Touchstone of Life, Werner R. Loweenstein
  • The Trouble With Physics, Lee Smolin
  • The Undoing Project, Andrew Lewis
  • The Way of a Pilgrim
  • The World Is Flat, Thomas Friedman
  • Theory of Fun for Game Design, Raph Koster
  • Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin
  • Toward a Theory of Instruction, Jerome Bruner
  • Trading Places, Clyde Prestowitz
  • Tragedy of the Commons, Garrett Hardin
  • Triumph of the City, Edward Glaeser
  • Urban Infrastructure: Reflections for 2100, Sybil Derrible
  • Weather of the San Francisco Bay Region, Harold Gilliam
  • Wetware, Dennis Bray
  • What Technology Wants, Kevin Kelly
  • Why Nations Fail, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson
  • WikiLeaks, David Leigh and Luke Harding
  • Wind, Sand And Stars, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
  • Zero to One, Peter Thiel

Did Not Finish

I’ve come to realize that the books you choose to read are as important as the books you don’t. If a book isn’t interesting to me, even if highly reviewed, I’m okay with dropping it.

  • Bowling Alone, Robert D. Putnam
  • Gödel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter
  • The End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama
  • The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn

Read

2025

  • The Woman in the Dunes, Kobo Abe
  • How to Hide An Empire, Daniel Immerwahr
  • The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro
  • Excellent Sheep, William Deresiewicz
  • The Death of the Artist, William Deresiewicz
  • Convenience Store Woman, Sayaka Murata
  • All Systems Red, Martha Wells
  • Skunk Works, Ben Rich
  • Mating, Norman Rush
  • A Jane Austen Education, William Deresiewicz
  • The End of Solitude, William Deresiewicz
  • The Idea Factory, Jon Gertner
  • This Is How You Lose The Time War, Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
  • Piranesi, Susanna Clark
  • The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern
  • Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl
  • The Lexington Letter, Anonymous
  • Make Something Wonderful, Steve Jobs
  • Arrival of the Fittest, Andreas Wagner
  • The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Richard Rhodes
  • Emotional Design, Donald Norman
  • Make Something Wonderful, Steve Jobs
  • Ways of Being, James Bridle
  • The Intentional Stance, Daniel Dennett
  • Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain

2024

  • A Mathematician’s Apology, G. H. Hardy
  • A photographer’s life, 1990-2005, Annie Leibovitz
  • Cities for People, Jan Gehl
  • Designing the New American University, Michael Crow
  • Exhalation, Ted Chiang
  • Exordia, Seth Dickinson
  • Extraterrestial Languages, Daniel Oberhaus
  • How To Fail at Almost Everything And Still Win Big, Scott Adams
  • Human Transit, Jarrett Walker
  • Justice, Michael Sandel
  • Models, Mark Manson
  • Seeing Like A State, James Scott
  • The Art of Doing Science and Engineering, Richard Hamming
  • The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kundera
  • The Color of Law, Richard Rothstien
  • The Elephant in the Brain, Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson
  • The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook, Brandon Sanderson
  • The High Cost of Free Parking, Donald Shoup
  • The Secret of Our Success, Joseph Henrich
  • The Sunlit Man, Brandon Sanderson
  • The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, John Mearsheimer
  • The Way of Kings, Brandon Sanderson (reread)
  • What are Universities For?, Stefan Collini
  • What Technology Wants, Kevin Kelly
  • Yuki the Painter, Brandon Sanderson

2023

  • A City Is Not A Computer, Shannon Mattern
  • A Crack in Creation, Jennifer Doudna and Samuel H. Sternberg
  • A Prayer for the Crown-Shy, Becky Chambers
  • A Psalm for the Wild Built, Becky Chambers
  • Autobiography of Red, Anne Carson
  • Chip War, Chris Miller
  • Dune, Frank Herbert
  • Emergence, Steven Johnson
  • Fooled By Randomness, Nassim Nicholas Taleb
  • Freakonomics, Steven D. Levitt
  • Friendly Ambitious Nerd, _@visakanv_
  • Hail Mary, Andy Weir
  • Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace
  • Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino
  • Perhaps the Stars, Ada Palmer
  • Stella Maris, Cormac McCarthy
  • Stories of Your Life, Ted Chiang
  • The Biggest Ideas in the Universe, Sean Carroll
  • The Design of Everyday Things, Dan Norman
  • The Emperor of All Maladies, Siddhartha Mukherjee
  • The Gene, Siddhartha Mukherjee
  • The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Richard Rhodes
  • The Man Who Planted Trees, Jean Giono
  • The Man Who Solved The Market, Gregory Zuckerman
  • The Passenger, Cormac McCarthy
  • The Song of the Cell, Siddhartha Mukherjee
  • There Is No Antimemetics Division, qntm
  • Tress of the Emerald Sea, Brandon Sanderson
  • Walkable City, Jeff Speck
  • Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned, Joel Lehman and Kenneth O. Stanley

2022

  • A Pattern Language, Christopher Alexander, Murray Silverstein, and Sara Ishikawa
  • A Room With A View, E. M. Forster
  • Complexity: A Guided Tour, Melanie Mitchell
  • Emergent Tokyo, Jorge Almazán
  • Enlightenment Now, Steven Pinker
  • From Literature to Biterature, Peter Swirski
  • Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond
  • House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski
  • In Praise of Slowness, Carl Honore
  • Jade City, Fonda Lee
  • Jade Legacy, Fonda Lee
  • Jade War, Fonda Lee
  • McNamara’s Folly, Hamilton Gregory
  • On Not Knowing, Emily Ogden
  • On Writing, Stephen King
  • Pour Your Heart into It, Howard Schultz
  • Seven Surrenders, Ada Palmer
  • Shop Class as Soulcraft, Matthew Crawford
  • Sync, Steven Strogatz
  • The Alchemy of Air, Thomas Hager
  • The Beginning of Infinity, David Deutsch
  • The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs
  • The Evolution of Cooperation, Robert Axelrod
  • The Geography of Nowhere, James Howard Kunstler
  • The Playbook, Jennifer Jacquet
  • The Serengeti Rules, Sean B. Carroll
  • The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, John M. Gottman and Nan Silver
  • The Will To Battle, Ada Palmer
  • Too Like the Lightning, Ada Palmer
  • Where Is My Flying Car?, J. Storrs Hall
  • Why Only Us, Robert C. Berwick and Noam Chomsky
  • Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig

2021

  • A Promised Land, Barack Obama
  • Algorithms to Live By, Brian Christian
  • Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman
  • Battleground, Jim Butcher
  • Because Internet, Gretchen McCulloch
  • Blood Rites, Jim Butcher
  • Changes, Jim Butcher
  • Cold Days, Jim Butcher
  • Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  • Dead Beat, Jim Butcher
  • Death Masks, Jim Butcher
  • Don Quixote, Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra
  • Four Thousand Weeks, Oliver Burkeman
  • Free Food for Millionaires, Min Jin Lee
  • Full Moon, Jim Butcher
  • Ghost Story, Jim Butcher
  • Grave Peril, Jim Butcher
  • Meditations, Marcus Aurelius
  • Men Without Women, Haruki Murakami
  • Mindware, Andy Clark
  • Oathbringer, Brandon Sanderson
  • Other Minds, Peter Godfrey-Smith
  • Peace Talks, Jim Butcher
  • Proven Guilty, Jim Butcher
  • Rhythm of War, Brandon Sanderson
  • Shadows of Self, Brandon Sanderson
  • Skin Games, Jim Butcher
  • Small Favor, Jim Butcher
  • Storm Front, Jim Butcher
  • Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives, David Eagleman
  • Summer Night, Jim Butcher
  • The Alloy of Law, Brandon Sanderson
  • The Bands of Mourning, Brandon Sanderson
  • The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien
  • The Final Empire, Brandon Sanderson
  • The Hero of Ages, Brandon Sanderson
  • The Innovators, Walter Isaacson
  • The Odyssey, Homer
  • The Rosie Effect, Graeme Simsion
  • The Rosie Result, Graeme Simsion
  • The Three-Body Problem, Liu Cixin (reread)
  • The Two Towers, J.R.R. Tolkien
  • The Way of Kings, Brandon Sanderson
  • The Well of Ascension, Brandon Sanderson
  • This Is Your Brain on Music, Daniel Levitin
  • Tiny Habits, BJ Fogg
  • Turn Coat, Jim Butcher
  • Walden, Henry David Thoreau
  • White Night, Jim Butcher
  • Words of Radiance, Brandon Sanderson

2020

  • 10% Happier, Dan Harris
  • 1984, George Orwell
  • A Deadly Education, Naomi Novik
  • A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles
  • Atomic Habits, James Clear
  • Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
  • Catch-22, Joseph Heller
  • Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
  • Death’s End, Liu Cixin
  • Digital Minimalism, Cal Newport
  • Essentialism, Greg McKeown
  • Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
  • If on a winter’s night a traveler, Italo Calvino
  • Irresistible, Adam Alter
  • Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
  • Little Fires Everywhere, Celeste Ng
  • Lord of the Flies, William Golding
  • Make Time, Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky
  • Mastery, George Leonard
  • Mindfulness in Plain English, Henepola Gunaratana
  • One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey
  • Peak, K. Anders Ericsson
  • Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
  • Ready Player One, Ernest Cline
  • Rest, Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
  • Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari
  • Study in Scarlet, Arthur Conan Doyle
  • The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
  • The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
  • The Catcher in The Rye, J. D. Salinger
  • The Circle, Dave Eggers
  • The DaVinci Code, Dan Brown
  • The Dark Forest, Liu Cixin
  • The Distraction Addiction, Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
  • The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
  • The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, V. E. Schwab
  • The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
  • The Midnight Library, Matt Haig
  • The Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
  • The Three-Body Problem, Liu Cixin
  • Thinking in Systems: A Primer, Donella Meadows
  • When No One is Watching, Alyssa Cole
  • Why We Sleep, Matthew Walker
  • Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë

2019

  • Deep Work, Cal Newport
  • How To Become a High School Superstar, Cal Newport
  • So Good They Can’t Ignore You, Cal Newport
  • The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, Ursula K. Le Guin
  • The Rosie Project, Graeme Simsion
  • Make Something Wonderful, Steve Jobs