Books

Jun 26, 2022

Some of the books I’ve read. WARNING: Notes on fiction books can contain spoilers. Books with a ⭐ means they significantly enriched my life.

Art

  • Imaginative Realism #read/2010s
  • Love Design Love #read/2020
  • Making Comics #read/2022
  • Understanding Comics #read/2022
  • Vector Basic Training

Ayurveda

  • Textbook of Ayurveda Vol 1: Principles of Ayurveda
  • The Complete Book of Ayurvedic Home Remedies

Biographies

  • Avoid Boring People
  • ⭐ Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor
  • Eisenhower in War & Peace
  • Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World #read/2022
  • Leonardo da Vinci
  • The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
  • The Surrender Experiment: do what your personal self doesn’t want to. #read/2021
  • Usain Bolt: Faster than Lightning

Biology

Businesses

  • In the Plex

Chaos theory

  • Deep Simplicity

Coaching

  • Coaching for Performance

Communication

  • Brief
  • Crucial Conversations
  • Getting to yes
  • ⭐ Just Listen
  • The Serious Business of Small Talk
  • The Fine Art of Small Talk

Cooking

  • The Food Lab
  • The Pizza Bible
  • The Slow-Carb Cookbook

Creativity

  • A Technique for Producing Ideas
  • Cognitive Surplus
  • ⭐ Lateral Thinking
  • Steal like an artist
  • The Creative Curve
  • The Map of Innovation

Cross-disciplinary mental models

  • ⭐ Antifragile
  • The Black Swan
  • The Infinite Game
  • The Signal and the Noise

Decision making

  • Risk-savvy
  • Smart Choices

Deliberate Practice, Expertise & Learning

  • Daily Self-Discipline
  • Deep Work
  • How We Learn
  • Mind Gym
  • Peak: Secrets From the New Sience of Expertise
  • Relentless
  • ⭐ Talent Is Overrated
  • The Art Of Learning
  • The Champion’s Mind
  • ⭐ The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right
  • Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength

Economics

  • The Great Stagnation

Education

  • The Smartest Kids in the World

Fiction

  • 1Q84
  • A Christmas Carol
  • A Man in Full
  • A Tale of Two Cities
  • ⭐ A Wild Sheep Chase
  • All The Light We Cannot See #read/2016
  • Anna Karenina
  • Crime and Punishment
  • Crónica de una muerte anunciada
  • Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency
  • Dubliners
  • Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know
  • Foundation
  • Frankenstein
  • Gulliver’s Travels
  • Lolita: disgusted after a few pages. #read/2010s #abandoned
  • Rashomon and Other Stories
  • Something Wicked This Way Comes
  • Short fiction - Philip K. Dick: #read/2021
  • Termination Shock: unengaging. #read/2021 #abandoned
  • The Alchemist #read/2021
  • The Colour of Magic: first book that made me ROFL. #read/1990s
  • The Hand Maid’s Tale: unengaging. #abandoned
  • The Metamorphosis
  • ⭐ The Old Man & The Sea: #read/2010s
  • ⭐ The Princess Bride. #read/2010s
  • The Secret Garden: #read/2010s
  • The Sun Also Rises
  • The Wheel of Time: loved as a teenager, boring in 2021. #read/1990s #read/2021

Forecasting

  • Superforecasting: how to improve your prediction skills. #read/2020

Habits

  • Atomic Habits
  • The Power of Habit

Hobbies

  • The Wander Society: hodgepodge of mindfulness ideas centered on walking and observing. Even though this is non-fiction, the “Wander Society” was invented by the author. #read/2022

History

  • 15 Battles That Changed History
  • El Último Caballero
  • ⭐ Guns, Germs & Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
  • ⭐ Homo Deus
  • How Asia Works
  • In the Garden of Beasts
  • Lone Survivor
  • Musashi
  • ⭐ Sapiens
  • ⭐ The Lessons of History
  • Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Human-computer interactions

  • UX for Lean Startups

Humour

  • Calypso
  • Emergency Laughter

Investing

  • The Art of Execution
  • ⭐ Richer, Wiser, Happier #read/2021
  • The Education of a Value Investor
  • The Intelligent Investor

Language learning

  • Fluent Forever

Marketing

  • Known
  • Un-Marketing

Motivation

  • Discipline Equals Freedom: formatting errors (digital edition) and content read like a disconnected talk. #read/2021 #abandoned
  • What to do when it’s your turn

Memory

  • Moonwalking With Einstein

Mental math

  • How to calculate quickly
  • Secrets of Mental Math

Note taking

  • How to Take Smart Notes
  • The Sketchnote Handbook
  • The Sketchnote Workbook

Philosophy

  • 30 Lessons for Living
  • Ego is the Enemy
  • ⭐ Essentialism
  • ⭐ Extreme Ownership
  • Goodbye things
  • Letters to his son on the art of living
  • Living With a SEAL
  • ⭐ Man’s Search for Meaning
  • ⭐ Meditations
  • One Small Step Can Change Your Life
  • ⭐ Poor Charlie’s Almanack
  • ⭐ The Enchiridion
  • The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari
  • The Obstacle is the Way
  • The Road to Character
  • The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck

Photography

  • The Photographer’s Eye
  • The Photographer’s Mind

Physical Exercise

  • Hardstyle Abs
  • Kettlebell Simple & sinister
  • Relax into Stretch

Politics & Social Sciences

  • Media Control
  • Profit over people

Problem solving

  • ⭐ Are your lights on?
  • Diaminds
  • How to Solve It

Productivity

  • ⭐ Getting Things Done
  • The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
  • The Effective Executive

Psychology

  • ⭐ Awaken the Giant Within
  • Blink
  • David and Goliath
  • ⭐ Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
  • Influence
  • Made to Stick
  • Mastermind: How to think like Sherlock Holmes
  • ⭐ Mindset
  • ⭐ Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul #read/2021
  • Power: why some people have it and others
  • Principles
  • ⭐ Radical acceptance
  • ⭐ Range
  • Re-awaken the Giant Within
  • ⭐ Skin in the Game
  • So Good They Can’t Ignore You
  • The Happiness Advantage
  • The Meaning of Life: Perspectives from the World’s …
  • The Meaning Revolution
  • The Wisdom of Crowds
  • What Got You Here Won’t Get You There
  • ⭐ What to Say When You Talk to Yourself

Rationality

  • A rulebook for arguments

Reading

  • Breakthrough Rapid Reading
  • How to read literature like a professor: recognize symbols & patterns. #read/2021 #abandoned
  • The Lifetime Learner’s Guide to Reading and Learning
  • ⭐ The Half-Life of Facts
  • ⭐ The Well-Educated Mind
  • Too Much Information
  • Too Much to Know

Relationships

  • Essential Manners for Men
  • Etiquette
  • Give and Take
  • How to win friends and influence people
  • It’s not all about me
  • Multipliers
  • Never Eat Alone
  • Never Split the Difference
  • Team Geek
  • The Culture Code
  • ⭐ Turn the Ship Around
  • Who’s Got Your Back

Roleplaying games

  • How to be the Greatest Improviser
  • Improvisation and the Theatre
  • Play Unsafe
  • Tome of Adventure Design
  • The Lazy Dungeon Master

Science

  • ⭐ A Short History of Nearly Everything
  • How to run a paper mill
  • Scale: The Universal Laws of Life, Growth, and Death in Organisms
  • Structures: Or Why Things Don’t Fall Down
  • ⭐ The Art of Scientific Investigation
  • The Demon-Haunted World
  • What if?

Science Fiction

  • 1984
  • 2001: Space Odyssey: gripping plot, awe-inspiring world, specially from Jupiter onwards. A bit too didactic about space travel. #read/2022
  • A Clockwork Orange: too violent. #abandoned
  • Ancilliary Justice
  • Brave new World
  • Cosmos
  • Dune
  • ⭐ Ender’s Game
  • Foundation
  • I, Robot
  • Neuromancer: too many drugs, unlikelable characters, hard to visualize. #abandoned #read/2022
  • ⭐ Ready Player 1
  • Seveneves
  • ⭐ Snow Crash
  • Starship Troopers
  • ⭐ The Martian
  • ⭐ Ubik
  • War of the Worlds
  • The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Sex

  • Come as you are
  • The Sexual Key
  • What Women Want in a Man
  • Women’s Anatomy of Arousal

Software

  • ⭐ Clean Code
  • Code Complete
  • Cracking the Coding Interview
  • ⭐ Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs
  • TypeScript Deep Dive

Speaking

  • It’s the way you say it
  • Speaking with Skill

Spirituality

  • The Art of Living: Vipassana Meditation
  • The Art of Living (Thich Nhat Hanh)
  • ⭐ The Power of Now
  • ⭐ Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life
  • Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

Startups

  • ⭐ The Lean Startup

Storytelling

  • Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting

Strategy

  • The Art of War

Thinking

  • The Mind Map Book

Toolbelts

  • Tools of Titans
  • Tribe of Mentors

Travel

  • Living and Working in Switzerland

Writing

  • Draft No. 4
  • On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
  • Self-Editing for Fiction Writers
  • The Elements of Style
  • The Sense of Style

Yoga

  • Autobiography of a Yogi: inspiring as a teenager, unable to finish it now because of distracting SRF manipulations everywhere. #read/1990s, #read/2021
  • Mind - Its Mysteries and Control
  • ⭐ Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (Bryant)
  • The Collected Works of Sri Ramana Maharshi #read/2021
  • The Yoga of The Yogi: #read/2021