Books I’ve read recently

I’m going to be compiling a list of books that I’ve read recently on this page. Sometimes I may write brief descriptions / summaries / reviews. I take notes on almost any book I read, so if demand is high I can publish those as well.

A ** next to a book means I think it’s particularly important / awesome.

Winter 2015

Pragmatism, William James

The True Believer, Eric Hoffer

*Invisible Ink, Brian McDonald

A Wealth of Common Sense, Ben Carlson

Irrational Exuberance, Robert Shiller

The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need, Andrew Tobias

A Random Walk Down Wall Street, Burton Malkiel

The Little Book of Common Sense Investing, John Bogle

The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing, Mel Lindauer et. al

Visual Complexity, Manuel Lima

The Elements of Eloquence, Mark Forsyth

Summer 2015

Waking Up, Sam Harris

**The Meeting of East and West, FSC Northrop

Creativity Inc, Ed Catmull

*Lila, Robert Pirsig

Chase, Chance and Creativity, James Austin

Wherever You Go, There You Are, Jon Kabat-Zinn

The Alchemist, Paul Coelho

April 2015

Lincoln, David Herbert Donald

Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami

An Open Heart, The Dalai Lama

Cognition in the Wild, Edwin Hutchins

The Organized Mind, Daniel J. Levitin

March 2015

Elements Book I, Euclid

Different, Youngme Moon

The Self-Organizing Universe, Erich Jantsch

On The Shortness of Life, Seneca

February 2015

**The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami

**The Defense of Socrates, Plato

**The Wisdom of Insecurity, Alan Watts

January 2015

Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut

Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle, Stephen J. Gould

Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, R. Buckminster Fuller

December 2014

On Looking, Alexandra Horowitz

*The Innovator’s Dilemma, Clay Christensen

Working Days, John Steinbeck

*The History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell

*What I Talk About When I Talk About Writing, Haruki Murakami

November 2014

*On Writing, Stephen King

*The Most Important Thing, Howard Marks

Engines of Logic, Martin Davis

Explaining Social Behavior, Jon Elster

October 2014

Too Much to Know, Ann M. Blair

*The Essential Galbraith, John Kenneth Galbraith

September 2014

**The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky

Ballistics, Billy Collins

August 2014

Thoughts on Design, Paul Rand

Used Books, Marking Readers in Renaissance England, William H. Sherman

Berlin Diary, Wiliam Shirer

**Notes on the Synthesis of Form, Christopher Alexander

July 2014

The Case for Modern Man, Charles Frankel

Why Stock Markets Crash, Didier Sornette

This Is New York, E.B. White

June 2014

Against Method, Paul Feyerabend

The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas

Incredibly long (1200 pages!) but an engaging story. It’s very interesting to see how the 19th century French values and outlook differ from ours. I found a few quotes in here that I’m going to take with me.

April – May 2014

Heart of Darkness and Other Tales, Joseph Conrad

More Than You Know, Michael Mauboussin

Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, Daniel Dennett

*Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie

The War of Art, Stephen Pressfield

Since Graduating (January – March 2014)

**Principles, Ray Dalio

**The Lessons of History, Will and Ariel Durant

**Deep Simplicity, John Gribbin

Complexity: A Guided Tour, Melanie Mitchell

**Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman

Thinking in Systems, Donella Meadows

The Stranger, Albert Camus

****Poor Charlie’s Almanack, Charlie Munger

Post Office, Charles Bukowski

Summer 2013

** Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman, Richard Feynman

** The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Karl Popper

The Art of Thinking Clearly, Rolf Dobelli

Free Will, Sam Harris

Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro

**The Poverty of Historicism, Karl Popper

***Anti-Fragile, Nassim Taleb

***Black Swan, Nassim Taleb

***Fooled By Randomness, Nassim Taleb

The Unpublished Ogilvy, David Ogilvy

The Power of Habit, Charles Duhig

**Crucial Conversations, Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler

Blue Ocean Strategy, W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne

The Elements of Style, Strunk and White

Anything You Want, Derek Sivers