All Book reviews
I tried to organize these into roughly 'highly recommended', 'recommended' to 'interesting'. Generally speaking if a book is on the list, I learned something from it.
Highly recommended
- Painters and Hackers - Paul Graham
- Thinking in Bets - Annie Duke
- The Art of Frugal Hedonism - A Guide to Spending Less While Enjoying Everything More - Annie Raser-Rowland, Adam Grubb
- The Creative Act - A Way of Being - Rick Rubin
- Your money or your life - Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin
- Clear Thinking - Turning Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Results - Shane Parrish
- 100 Ways to Improve Your Writing - Proven Professional Techniques for Writing With Style and Power - Gary Provost
- How to Do Great Work - Paul Graham (not a book, but a long form article. still excellent!)
- The Great Mental Models Vol 1 - Shane Parrish
- Come Up for Air - How Teams Can Leverage Systems and Tools to Stop Drowning in Work - Nick Sonnenberg
- Slow productivity - Cal Newport
- Never eat alone - Keith Ferrazzi
- All About Love - New Visions - bell hooks
- How to Know a Person - The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen - David Brooks
- A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson
Recommended
- Me, But Better - The Science and Promise of Personality Change by Olga Khazan
- The Idea Machine - How Books Built Our World and Shape Our Future - Joel Miller
- Death by Comfort - Paul Taylor
- The Idiot Brain - Dean Burnett
- Architecture 101 - Nicole Bridge
- The Wisdom of the Bullfrog - William H. McRaven
- How to Organize Your Life, Mind and Home - 9 Organizing Principles To Help You Simplify Your Life, Increase Efficiency And Maximize Productivity -Paul Morrisey
- How to keep your cool - Seneca
- Managing up - How to get what you need from the people in charge - Melody Wilding
- Same as Ever - A guide to what never changes - Morgan Housel
- Co-Intelligence - Living and Working with AI - Ethan Mollick
- The Great Mental Models Volume 3 - Systems and Mathematics
- The Great Mental Models Volume 2 - Physics, Chemistry and Biology
- This is Strategy - Seth Godin
- Einstein - His Life and Universe - Walter Isaacson
- Stolen focus - why you can't pay attention and how to think deeply again - Johann Hari
- Brandwashed - Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy - Martin Lindstrom
- How to change - The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be - Katy Milkman
- Keep the Memories, Lose the Stuff - Declutter, Downsize, and Move Forward with Your Life - Matt Paxton
- Cues - Master the Secret Language of Charismatic Communication - Vanessa Van Edwards
- The Year of Less - Cait Flanders
- Hidden Potential - Adam Grant
- Energy - A Beginners Guide - Vaclav Smil
- Feel-Good Productivity - How to Do More of What Matters to You - Ali Abdaal
- Stillness is the key - Ryan Holiday
- Range - Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World - David Epstein
- Signature in the Cell - DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design - Stephen Meyer
- Wool omnibus - Hugh Howey
- The Productivity Project - Accomplishing More by Managing Your Time, Attention, and Energy - Chris Bailey
- Building a Second Brain - Thiago Forte
- The Writing of the Gods - Edward Dolnick
- A history of the world in 6 glasses - Tom Standage
- Through Masai Land - a Journey of Exploration Among the Snowclad Volcanic Mountains and Strange Tribes of Eastern Equatorial Africa - Joseph Thomson
- 101 essays that will change your life
- Hello Habits - Fumio Sasaki
- Beginners - The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning - Tom Vanderbilt
- Michealangelo - Gods Architect - William Wallace
- 7 Must-Know Strategies to Learn Anything Faster by Scott Young
- Oil - A Beginners Guide - Vacliv Smil
- The Complete Guide to Self-Control - Scott H Young Jakub Jilek
- The Complete Guide to Memory by Scott Young and Jakub Jilek
- Think for Yourself - Restoring Common Sense in an Age of Experts and Artificial Intelligence - Vikram Mansharamani
- Wabi Sabi - Japanese wisdom for a perfectly imperfect life
- 7 Must-Know Strategies to Learn Anything Faster by Scott Young
- Stuff Matters - Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World - Mark Miodownik
- The book of Beautiful Questions - Warren Berger
- Daily Rituals How Artists Work by Mason Currey
- The Complete Guide to Memory by Scott Young and Jakub Jilek
- The Complete Guide to Self-Control - Scott H Young Jakub Jilek
- How to Take Smart Notes - One Simple Technique to Boost Writing Learning and Thinking - Sonke Ahrens
- This is your mind on plants - Michael Pollen
- The obstacle is the way - Ryan Holliday
- Be more Japan - the art of japanese living
- My year with Eleanor - Noelle Hancock
- Why smart people can be so stupid - Robert Steinberg
- The Gift - 12 Lessons to save your life - Edith Eger
- The Antidote - Happiness for people who cant stand positive thinking - Oliver Burkeman
- How to Taste Coffee - Develop Your Sensory Skills and Get the Most Out of Every Cup - Jessica Easto
- Undeniable - How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed - Douglas Axe
- The Simple Guide to a Minimalist Life - Leo Babauta
- Kaizen The Japanese Method for Transforming Habits, One Small Step at a Time - Sarah Harvey
- Digital Zettelkasten - Principles, Methods Examples - David Kadavy
- Zero -The Biography of a Dangerous Idea - Charles Seife
- Simply Put - Why Clear Messages Win - and How to Design Them - Ben Guttmann
- How to Win Friends and Influence Fungi - Collected Quirks of Science, Tech, Engineering, and Math from Nerd Nite - Christ Balakrishnan
Interesting but dont go out of your way
- Creativity - A Short and Cheerful Guide - John Cleese
- How to be Idle - Tom Hodgkinson
- The Flinch - Julien Smith
- Love in Africa - Jeffrey Gettleman
- Crack the Funding Code - How Investors Think and What They Need to Hear to Fund Your Startup - Judy Robinett
- The science of Rapid Skill Acquisition
- The Minimalist Home A Room-by-Room Guide to a Decluttered Refocused Life
- Wabi Sabi -The Japanese Art of Impermanence
- The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli
- Personal Kanban - Mapping Work Navigating Life
- How Powerpoint makes you stupid - Franck Frommer
- Six Not-So-Easy Pieces Einstein's Relativity, Symmetry and Space-Time - Richard Feynman
- Hell Yeah or No - Whats Worth Doing - Derek Sivers
- HBRs 10 must reads on managing yourself
- A thousand brains - A new theory of intelligence - Jeff Hawkins
- A Curious Mind - The Secret to a Bigger Life - Brian Grazer
- Making it all work - David Allen
- Radical Simplicity - Small Footprints on a Finite Earth - Jim Merkel
- The Lazy Person's Guide to Investing - Paul Farrell
- A Year of Living Simply - The joys of a life less complicated - Kate Humble
- A Monk's Guide to A Clean House & Mind - Shoukei Matsumoto
- A Place of My Own - Michael Pollan