2022 Reading List

Starting in 2020 I created an annual reading list, a ritual that I carried over into 2021. Curating the list is a lot of fun and it gets me thinking deliberately about my information diet. However, in both years I ended up reading only a fraction of the books on the list. In retrospect, here are a few reasons why:

• What are my important roles and responsibilities? In Nick DeWilde’s article, The T-shaped Information Diet, he recommends identifying the important roles and responsibilities in your life. These are the areas to go deep in. A few examples of my roles include Technologist, Writer, and Student. This article fundamentally reshaped how I thought about my information diet.
• Learning vs Leisure. I love reading for learning or for fun. While I do enjoy reading books about economics and technology and many concepts are applicable to my life, I prefer reading purely for enjoyment in the evening.
• Hard books. In past years, I included a handful of “difficult” books - books that require dedication and focus to complete like Homer’s The Odyssey or Plato’s the Republic. And while I like the sentiment, I had hard time motivating myself to read these books. It just isn’t a priority for me right now.

Keeping these points in mind, I created a 2022 reading list:

Technology

• The Idea Factory - Jon Gertner
• Skunk Works - Ben R. Rich & Leo Janos
• How the Internet Happened - Brian McCullough
• Digital Gold - Nathaniel Popper
• The Making of the Atomic Bomb - Richard Rhodes
• Dealers of Lightning - Michael A. Hiltzik

Science Fiction

• Ready Player One - Ernest Cline
• Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
• The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

Biographies and Memoirs

• A Ghost in the Throat - Doireann Ní Ghríofa
• The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann - Ananyo Bhattacharya
• I Am Malala - Malala Yousafzai
• The Body Papers - Grace Talusan

Fiction

• Beloved - Toni Morrison
• The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman
• Klara and the Sun - Kazuo Ishiguro
• Siddharta - Herman Hesse
• Interpreter of Maladies - Jhumpa Lahiri
• Long Way Down - Jason Reynolds
• These Precious Days - Ann Patchett
• The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde

International

• The Death of Ivan Ilych - Leo Tolstoy
• How Do You Live? - Genzaburo Yoshino
• One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez
• Labyrinths - Jorge Luis Borges

Other

• The Big Short - Michael Lewis
• The Right Stuff - Tom Wolfe
• The Psychology of Money - Morgan Housel
• Show Your Work! - Auston Kleon