2020 Reading List

So many books, so little time - Frank Zappa

Reading is easily my most powerful practice. Through books I’ve learned from history’s greatest teachers, traveled through time and space, and had my world view turned on its head time and time again.

I’ve always been reactive in selecting which books to read, but this year I want to change that. For me, curating this list is like creating my own self education curriculum.

My criteria for choosing books has evolved over time. Here’s how I made this list:

• The older the better.
• What are areas of weakness?
• What are my strengths and how can I double down on them?
• What books have others recommended?
• What are the foundational texts in an industry/genre?
• What do I want to learn more about?

I wonder how my criteria will change this time next year…

**books I’ve dropped

Health and Fitness

• The Omnivore’s Dilemma - Michael Pollan

Economics

• Antifragile - Nassim Taleb**
• The Black Swan - Nassim Taleb
• Debt: The First 5,000 Years - David Graeber

Science Fiction

• The Three-Body Problem - Cixin Liu
• Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
• Stories of Your Life and Others - Ted Chiang
• The Last Question - Isaac Asimov
• The Last Answer - Isaac Asimov

Classics

• Don Quixote - Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra**
• The Iliad - Homer
• Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson

Fiction

• The Sandman - Neil Gaiman
• Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
• On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous - Ocean Vuong
• The Mezzanine - Nicholson Baker

Philosophy

• Meditations - Marcus Aurelius**
• Thus Spoke Zarathustra - Friedrich Nietzsche
• The Art of War - Sun Tzu
• The Republic - Plato
• The Almanack of Naval Ravikant - Eric Jorgenson
• Striking Thoughts - Bruce Lee
• On the Shortness of Life - Seneca

History

• The Lessons of History - Will Durant
• Why Nations Fail - Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson
• Guns, Germs and Steel - Jared Diamond

Biographies and Memoirs

• When Breath Becomes Air - Paul Kalanithi
• Just Kids - Patti Smith
• Creativity Inc. - Ed Catmull
• The Ride of a Lifetime - Robert Iger
• The Art of Learning - Josh Waitzkin
• An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth - Chris Hadfield
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
• Can’t Hurt Me - David Goggins
• Total Recall - Arnold Schwarzenegger
• Leonardo Da Vinci - Walter Issacson
• What I Talk About When I Talk About Running - Haruki Murakami
• Promise Me, Dad - Joe Biden

Psychology

• Predictably Irrational - Dan Ariely
• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion - Robert B. Cialdini
• Algorithms to Live By - Brian Christian
• Knowledge And Decisions - Thomas Sowell
• Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger - Peter Bevelin
• The Power of Myth - Joseph Campbell
• The Courage to Be Disliked - Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga

Spirituality

• Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality - Anthony De Mello
• The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying - Sogyal Rinpoche

Art and Writing

• The Gift - Lewis Hyde
• The War of Art - Steven Pressfield
• On Writing Well - William Zinsser
• The Elements of Eloquence - Mark Forsyth
• On Photography - Susan Sontag
• Impro - Keith Johnstone
• Bird by Bird - Anne Lamott
• Your Music and People - Derek Sivers

Science and Technology

• The Emperor of All Maladies - Siddhartha Mukherjee**
• The Uninhabitable Earth - David Wallace Wells**
• Silent Spring - Rachel Carson
• The Making of the Atomic Bomb - Richard Rhodes
• Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World - Kevin Kelly
• The Future of Humanity - Michio Kaku
• Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth - Buckminster Fuller

Other

• Tribes - Seth Godin
• Get Together - Bailey Richardson, Kevin Huynh & Kai Elmer Sotto
• Talking to Strangers - Malcolm Gladwell
• Inspired - Marty Cagan

Image Credit to Derek Sivers 2018