First off, let’s discuss why this list exists. It exists because in late 2016 I started keeping a detailed list of books that I wanted to read. This was one of the smartest things I have done in my life,because it greatly reduced the friction of picking up a book. I’ve always loved to read but would often finish a book and then not start another for weeks. This list enabled me to just keep reading without having to take a break to figure out a new book. It also greatly improved the quality of my reading, I was able to stockpile the best books when I found them and not have to worry about remebering the title months later. Now here is the list.
- Lords of Finance
- What Does It All Mean? by Thomas Nagel
- Justice by Michael Sandel
- The Life You Can Save by Peter Singer
- Outliers: The Story of Success
- When to Rob a Bank: …And 131 More Warped Suggestions and Well-Intended Rants
- The Devil in the White City
- Poorly Made in China
- The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right (3/18/17)
- Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach (3/25/17)
- The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads
- Site Reliability Engineering by Google
- Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War by Mary Roach
- A History of the World in 6 Glasses
- The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation
- The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage
- The Dictator’s Handbook (7/4/17)
- Ethics in the Real World by Peter Singer (7/7/14)
- At the Existentialist Café by Sarah Bakewell (8/5/17)
- Ego is enemy by Ryan Holiday (8/5/17)
- Genius At Play: The Curious Mind of John Horton Conway
- COD: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World
- Days of Rage
- The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
- The Complacent Class
- The Phoenix Project
- Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
- Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right
- What’s the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America
- Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the Amer ican City
- $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America
- Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers
- Narconomics by Tom Wainwright
- Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance
- Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction
- The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires
It totals up to 36 books read in 2017. This is disappointing because my goal for 2017 was a book a week. My goal for 2018 hasn’t changed and I’ve already knocked 2 books out of the way. My favorite title in this list is Lords of Finance which is a fascinating take on central banking. A close second was The Idea Factory which is a great history of Bell Labs. I think the one that I was most disappointed by was Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance which was almost unreadable. I think there are some valuable lessons in that book but at points it was a real slog to get though it.
Here is to a 2018 full of reading.