Bookshelf

Naval Ravikant says, “Good books are worth re-reading. Great books are worth re-buying.”

In the past, I read a lot. Recently, I’ve tried to read less and be more deliberate about the things I do read. This is a list of my favorite books, not an exhaustive list of the books on my shelf. If it’s bolded, it was so good I would re-buy it.

If books aren’t your thing, here are a few other things I’ve enjoyed.

 
 
 

Philosophy

  • Man’s Search for Meaning

  • The Prince

  • Letters from a Stoic

  • The Tao of Seneca (audiobook)

  • Meditations (Hays version)

  • Waking Up

  • Ego is the Enemy

  • The Timeless Way of Building

History & Future

  • Sapiens

  • Homo Deus

  • 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

  • Guns, Germs, and Steel

  • The Lessons of History

Science, Education & Environment

  • Fooled by Randomness

  • Wine Bible

Biography & Memoir

  • Open

  • Leonardo Da Vinci

  • Educated

  • Hillbilly Elegy

  • Elon Musk (outdated now, but great nonetheless)

  • “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”

  • Medium Raw

  • Kitchen Confidential (audiobook)

  • Steve Jobs

  • The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

  • The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America’s Banana King

  • Greenlights (audiobook)

  • What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Fiction

  • The Sun Also Rises

  • One Hundred Years of Solitude

  • Love in the Time of Cholera

  • Call Me by Your Name

  • The Kite Runner

  • A Thousand Splendid Suns

  • Shantaram

  • The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

  • How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

  • The Great Gatsby

  • Zorba the Greek

  • The Goldfinch

  • The Secret History

  • What Makes Sammy Run?

  • Brave New World

  • Lord of the Flies

  • The Remains of the Day

  • When We Were Orphans

  • The Overstory

  • Men Without Women

  • Norwegian Wood

  • Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

  • Sputnik Sweetheart

  • The Wind Up Bird Chronicle

  • Killing Commendatore

Business & Technology

  • Principles (Audiobook)

  • Let My People Go Surfing

  • Zero to One

  • The 4-Hour Workweek

  • Losing My Virginity

  • The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing

  • Positioning

  • Ogilvy on Advertising

Non-Fiction

  • Outliers

  • The Death and Life of Great American Cities

  • Walkable City

  • Levels of the Game

  • Hackers & Painters

  • Happy City

  • Triumph of the City

Self-Help & Personal Effectiveness

  • How to Win Friends and Influence People

  • The Magic of Thinking Big

  • The Checklist Manifesto

  • The War of Art

  • The Inner Game of Tennis

  • Atomic Habits