Latest Reads

I am shifting my book shelves away from goodreads. So far I just have books I have read, but I’ve highlighted my favorites and some I think are must reads. Hopefully I will add some reviews and longer form commentary in the future.

Favorites in bold, must reads in green.

  • The Penultimate Peril by Lemony Snicket
  • West with the Night by Beryl Markham
  • The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
  • Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World's Largest Owl by Jonathan C. Slaght
  • Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind by Hayao Miyazaki
  • Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
  • Ravelstein by Saul Bellow
  • King Lear by William Shakespeare
  • Night Train by Martin Amis
  • Herzog by Saul Bellow
  • The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes
  • The Victim by Saul Bellow
  • The Eternal Husband by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  • Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan
  • Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls: Stories by Alissa Nutting
  • The Grim Grotto by Lemony Snicket
  • The Slippery Slope by Lemony Snicket
  • Love with a Chance of Drowning by Torre DeRoche
  • Dancing Bears: True Stories of People Nostalgic for Life Under Tyranny by Witold Szabłowski
  • Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik
  • Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
  • The Carnivorous Carnival by Lemony Snicket
  • The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen
  • Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria by Noo Saro-Wiwa
  • Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed
  • Alone: The Classic Polar Adventure by Richard Evelyn Byrd
  • Sailing Alone around the World by Joshua Slocum
  • The Worms of Kukumlima by Daniel Pinkwater
  • The Hostile Hospital by Lemony Snicket
  • The Pearl by John Steinbeck
  • How To Build A Car by Adrian Newey
  • The Vile Village by Lemony Snicket
  • Pieces of the Action by Vannevar Bush
  • The Ersatz Elevator by Lemony Snicket
  • If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future by Jill Lepore
  • The Austere Academy by Lemony Snicket
  • The Miserable Mill by Lemony Snicket
  • The Wide Window by Lemony Snicket
  • The Reptile Room by Lemony Snicket
  • The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket
  • Thoughts of a Reformed Computer Scientist: On the Nature of Real and Artificial Intelligence by James H. Morris
  • On the Move: A Life by Oliver Sacks
  • The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald
  • The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne
  • Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai by Yamamoto Tsunetomo
  • Freedom's Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II by Arthur Herman
  • The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
  • The Martian by Andy Weir
  • Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne
  • Tau Zero by Poul Anderson
  • Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne
  • Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
  • Dune by Frank Herbert
  • In the Beginning...Was the Command Line by Neal Stephenson
  • Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck
  • We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
  • A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick
  • The Letters of Vincent van Gogh by Vincent van Gogh
  • An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management by Will Larson
  • Scientific Freedom by Donald W. Braben
  • Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals by Tyler Cowen
  • Get Together: How to build a community with your people by Bailey Richardson
  • The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal by M. Mitchell Waldrop
  • The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle by Steven Pressfield
  • The Making of Prince of Persia: Journals 1985-1993 by Jordan Mechner
  • The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn by Richard Hamming
  • The Art of Action: How Leaders Close the Gaps between Plans, Actions and Results by Stephen Bungay
  • Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck
    • IMO, skip this one. The magic of Cannery Row is not continued.
  • The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
  • The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
  • A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload by Cal Newport
  • Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear
  • All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age by Hubert L. Dreyfus
  • Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steven Johnson
  • Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport
  • The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer by Jeffrey K. Liker
  • So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love by Cal Newport
  • The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle
  • The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia by Ursula K. Le Guin
  • The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg
  • The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller
  • Every Tool's a Hammer: Life Is What You Make It by Adam Savage
  • The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work by Shawn Achor
  • The Seashell on the Mountaintop: A Story of Science, Sainthood, and the Humble Genius who Discovered a New History of the Earth by Alan Cutler
  • The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett
  • The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones
  • The Festival by H.P. Lovecraft
  • The Hound by H.P. Lovecraft
  • Azathoth by H.P. Lovecraft
  • The Nameless City by H.P. Lovecraft
  • Nyarlathotep by H.P. Lovecraft
  • A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There by Aldo Leopold
  • Dagon by H.P. Lovecraft
  • The Word for World Is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin
  • In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind by Eric R. Kandel
  • Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Layla F. Saad
  • Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein
  • Stalin's Secret War: Soviet Counterintelligence against the Nazis, 1941-1945 (Modern War Studies) by Robert W. Stephan
  • One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
  • A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit
  • White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo
  • Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Edward S. Herman
  • Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker
  • The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare by G.K. Chesterton
  • The Operator: Firing the Shots that Killed Osama bin Laden and My Years as a SEAL Team Warrior by Robert O'Neill
  • How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
  • Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win by Jocko Willink
  • The Decay of the Angel by Yukio Mishima
  • Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
  • The Temple of Dawn by Yukio Mishima
  • >Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs by Michael T. Osterholm
  • Runaway Horses by Yukio Mishima
  • The Secret Life of the Forest by Richard M. Ketchum
  • Indiscrete Thoughts by Gian-Carlo Rota
  • Time Regained by Marcel Proust
  • Paintings in Proust: A Visual Companion to 'In Search of Lost Time' by Eric Karpeles
  • Sun & Steel by Yukio Mishima
  • Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima
  • The Circle by Dave Eggers
  • A Room with a View by E.M. Forster
  • The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson
  • The Complete and Original Norwegian Folktales of Asbjørnsen and Moe by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen
  • The Captive / The Fugitive by Marcel Proust
  • Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen
  • The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life & Work by Joseph Campbell
  • The Secret History by Donna Tartt
  • The Agony and the Eggplant by Walter Hogan
  • Sodom and Gomorrah by Marcel Proust
  • Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey
  • Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell Jr.
  • Young Adults by Daniel Pinkwater
  • Frankenstein: The 1818 Text by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
  • The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust
    • This is the toughest one to get through since there are hundreds of pages from the same dinner party. The banter is fun though!
  • The Call of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft
  • The Color Out of Space by H.P. Lovecraft
  • At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft
  • La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman
  • Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars by Daniel M. Pinkwater
  • Young Adult Novel by Daniel Pinkwater
  • The Collectors by Philip Pullman
  • Once Upon a Time in the North by Philip Pullman
  • Lyra's Oxford by Philip Pullman
  • The Log from the Sea of Cortez by John Steinbeck
  • My First Summer in the Sierra by John Muir
  • Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
  • The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
  • The Wandering Earth: Classic Science Fiction Collection by Cixin Liu
  • The Story of the Treasure Seekers by E. Nesbit
  • Monet By Himself by Claude Monet (Editor: Kendall)
  • Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
  • The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness by Elyn R. Saks
  • The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom by Jonathan Haidt
  • Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini
  • The Aleph and Other Stories 1933-1969 by Jorge Luis Borges
  • Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  • The Essential F. A. Hayek by Friedrich A. Hayek
  • The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline
  • The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
  • Within a Budding Grove by Marcel Proust
  • The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
  • Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey
  • Death's End by Liu Cixin
  • The Dark Forest by Liu Cixin
  • The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin
  • The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
  • The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman
  • The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
  • Embodied Cognition by Lawrence A. Shapiro
  • Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
  • Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
  • Egalia's Daughters: A Satire of the Sexes by Gerd Brantenberg
  • Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan
  • East of Eden by John Steinbeck
  • The Icebound Land by John Flanagan
  • Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
  • When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
  • American Gods by Neil Gaiman
  • Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges
  • Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
  • Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard P. Feynman
  • Walden by Henry David Thoreau
  • Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel
  • Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values by Robert M. Pirsig
  • Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter
    • If you know first order logic, you can read only the dialogues of the first half since it's just a primer on it.
  • The Time of Contempt by Andrzej Sapkowski
  • Blood of Elves by Andrzej Sapkowski
  • Sword of Destiny by Andrzej Sapkowski
  • The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski
  • The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
  • Neuromancer by William Gibson
  • The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—But Some Don't by Nate Silver
  • How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking by Jordan Ellenberg
  • Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling
  • Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling
  • The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
  • Why? by Adam Rex
  • The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
  • Moby-Dick or, The Whale by Herman Melville
    • "naught's an angle to the iron way"
  • The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking
  • The Visible Unseen by Andrea Chapela
  • Picnic by William Inge
  • The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
  • The Essential Aeneid by Virgil
  • Snow Treasure by Marie McSwigan
  • The Islands of the Blessed by Nancy Farmer
  • The Land of the Silver Apples by Nancy Farmer
  • The Sea of Trolls by Nancy Farmer
  • Principles of Mathematical Analysis by Walter Rudin
  • The Stranger by Albert Camus
  • The Emperor of Nihon-Ja by John Flanagan
  • Halt's Peril by John Flanagan
  • The Kings of Clonmel by John Flanagan
  • Erak's Ransom by John Flanagan
  • The Siege of Macindaw by John Flanagan
  • The Sorcerer in the North by John Flanagan
  • The Battle for Skandia by John Flanagan
  • The Ruins of Gorlan by John Flanagan
  • The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel by William Goldbloom Bloch
  • Trimalchio's Feast by Petronius
  • Pseudolus by Plautus
  • When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times by Pema Chödrön
  • Atlantis Found by Clive Cussler
  • Valhalla Rising by Clive Cussler
  • Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
  • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
  • Treasure of Khan by Clive Cussler
  • Trojan Odyssey by Clive Cussler
  • Inca Gold by Clive Cussler
  • Sahara by Clive Cussler
  • Darkwing by Kenneth Oppel
  • Firewing by Kenneth Oppel
  • Starclimber by Kenneth Oppel
  • Sunwing by Kenneth Oppel
  • Skybreaker by Kenneth Oppel
  • Silverwing by Kenneth Oppel
  • Airborn by Kenneth Oppel
  • Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
  • Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
  • Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
  • The Illustrated A Brief History of Time/The Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen Hawking
  • An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield
  • Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott
  • A Briefer History of Time by Stephen Hawking
  • The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan
  • The Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen Hawking
  • Cosmos by Carl Sagan
  • Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
  • The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
  • The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
  • Scorpia Rising by Anthony Horowitz
  • The Burning Bridge by John Flanagan
  • Eragon by Christopher Paolini
  • A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
  • Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
  • Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
  • Tuesday by David Wiesner
  • The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg
  • Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
  • The Crucible: A Play in Four Acts by Arthur Miller
  • The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
  • The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer
  • The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
  • The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
  • Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
  • The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
  • Hamlet by William Shakespeare
  • 1984 by George Orwell
  • To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
  • The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald