Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
— Søren Kierkegaard
Most of reading happens in the “forwards” direction: you bump into a book, spend some time with it, and move on. The understanding part tends to arrive later, if it arrives at all.
This page is a simple record of that forward motion. It collects books I’ve read and found interesting or useful, with occasional notes when I have something to say. Some entries are just a title and an author; others are longer attempts to work out what, if anything, a book has done to my thinking.
It is not meant to be complete, balanced, or definitive. It is just a way to keep track of what has passed through my hands, and to leave myself breadcrumbs for future me.
What this page is (and isn’t)
Each book listed here links to a set of notes. Those notes are written primarily for myself. They are:
- Not formal reviews or recommendations.
- Not promises that the book is universally “good” or “important”.
- Often partial, provisional, and subject to revision.
Sometimes I try to articulate what a book illuminates, how it unsettles me, or where it exposes the limits of my thinking. Sometimes I just jot down a quote or a stray thought. Both levels of detail are allowed here.
How the groupings work
The groupings below are rough, overlapping labels, not a strict ranking or a final judgement. They are there to give me (and you) a sense of how a book currently sits in my head:
- Formative – books that have, so far, durably reshaped how I think or act.
- Illuminating – books that give me useful lenses, patterns, or clarifications for situations I regularly encounter.
- Encountered – books I’ve read and engaged with, whose role is still emerging or more local.
A book could easily move between these over time, or belong to more than one. The labels are snapshots, not verdicts.
Formative
Books that have, in hindsight, reshaped how I think or act in a lasting way.
- Fooled by Randomness
- Stumbling on Happiness
- Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Essential Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger
- The Right It: Why So Many Ideas Fail and How to Make Sure Yours Succeed
- Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
- The Cold Start Problem: How to Start and Scale Network Effects
- Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts
- Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It
- A Brief History of Intelligence: Why the Evolution of the Brain Holds the Key to the Future of AI
- Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself
- Analysis I
- Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values
- Lila: An Inquiry into Morals
- Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
- User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product
- High Growth Handbook: Scaling Startups from 10 to 10,000 People
- Radical Candor: Fully Revised and Updated Edition: How to Get What You Want by Saying What You Mean
- Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell
- How Google Works
- Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead
Illuminating
Books that provide lenses, patterns, or clarifications I find myself returning to.
- The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
- Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder
- Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Everyday Life
- The Venture Mindset: How to Make Smarter Bets and Achieve Extraordinary Growth
- Measure What Matters
- Pattern Breakers: Why Some Start-Ups Change the Future
- Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
- You’re About to Make a Terrible Mistake!: How Biases Distort Decision-Making and What You Can Do to Fight Them
- The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right
- Self-Knowledge for Humans
- The Physics of Foraging: An Introduction to Random Searches and Biological Encounters
- Thinking, Fast and Slow
- Man and His Symbols
- The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone
Encountered
Books I’ve read and engaged with, where the longer-term impact (if any) is still emerging.
- Nuclear Renaissance: Technologies and Policies for the Future of Nuclear Power
- Civilized to Death: The Price of Progress
- Explaining the Future: How to Research, Analyse and Report on Emerging Technologies
- Experimentology: An Open Science Approach to Experimental Psychology Methods
- Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness
- Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction
Over time, some of these will probably drift between sections, and many more will join them. I don’t expect the structure to be stable; the whole point is to let it evolve as the reading does.