These are the books I feel strongly enough about to write real notes on. Everything else below is an “I also love” list.
Reviews I actually wrote
A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again (David Foster Wallace)
Wallace nails the everyday human experience in a way that’s simultaneously trivial and profound. What I like most is that he rarely “tells you what to think.” He sets the scene so the absurdity of the world speaks for itself. While reading, I kept having the feeling of: I’ve noticed this about people and society, but I couldn’t quite say it. He’s also unusually vulnerable, almost to the point of making you uneasy for him. Even when he’s covering tennis, TV, David Lynch, cruises, he’s not describing facts. He’s describing how they fit into the world and into our rationalizations, including the intentional ignorance we use to keep enjoying things.
Consider the Lobster (David Foster Wallace)
A strong sampling of what makes him great. The variety is part of the point, because you get to watch him apply that same vivid, pulling prose to very different situations. He makes the mundane feel dimensional, and he reliably drags you deeper into the world he’s describing.
The Pale King (David Foster Wallace)
A surprisingly approachable but still complex exploration of boredom, meaning, and life inside mega-bureaucracy. What I find impressive is his “show without telling” control. He’ll start a scene and you think, where is he going with this, and then he closes the loop in a way that makes the earlier weirdness feel necessary. Even though it’s unfinished, it still feels like the intended message largely lands, and it’s genuinely enjoyable, not just “important.”
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Hunter S. Thompson)
A total fever dream in the best way. It’s a boundaryless, Dionysian plunge into chaos that doesn’t bother moralizing or forcing a hero’s arc. What felt refreshing is the blunt honesty. Two men doing whatever comes to mind, no filter, no lessons pasted on top. I don’t want this mode to dominate literature, but as a one-off experience it’s deeply satisfying, mostly because it gives you unusually close access to thought, impulse, and momentum.
Escape from Freedom (Erich Fromm)
A sharp examination of the obsession with freedom and the darker ways people try to escape from it. The core idea stuck with me because it reframes “freedom” as something people often say they want, then actively avoid when it shows up with responsibility attached.
Crucial Confrontations (Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler)
A practical guide to why certain conversations feel so hard, plus what to change so you can actually have them. I liked it because it’s oriented toward action and reframing, not just advice that sounds good.
The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships (Neil Strauss)
Good relationship insights, but what made it work for me is the weaving of narrative and wisdom. It doesn’t read like a sterile list of rules. It’s more like watching someone learn in real time, then extracting what matters.
Superforecasting (Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner)
A thorough, careful breakdown of how the best forecasters think. I appreciated how he anticipates critiques and addresses them directly, and does it charitably. It’s the kind of book that leaves you with usable mental habits, not just concepts.
Rationality: From AI to Zombies (Eliezer Yudkowsky)
Huge payoff if you can tolerate density. The most useful ideas for me were: noticing beliefs you hold because you want them, not because they’re justified; being suspicious of arguments that float above measurable reality; and asking what a belief does in the world. The book’s “ruthless efficiency” can be frustrating, but it’s also what makes it feel close to reality.
American Kingpin (Nick Bilton)
An outstanding story about an obsessed, highly intelligent libertarian who built something massive and dark. It’s a book where the only honest pitch is: you have to read it to understand how wild it gets.
Forever Nomad (Tynan)
I liked the specificity. It’s practical, easy to read, and it still taught me things even with experience. It feels distilled, not padded.
Atomic Habits (James Clear)
Clear synthesis of habit-building without pretending you can suddenly become a willpower machine. The practical value is that it starts from the premise that most people don’t develop endless discipline, then offers a system that works anyway. It also includes ideas I hadn’t seen packaged as clearly elsewhere.
The Deficit Myth (Stephanie Kelton)
A very strong intro to core fiscal-policy concepts for countries with unpegged fiat currency, and she explains without skipping the key points. Two things were true for me at once: the repetition got tiresome, and the book still changed how I think. I walked away less convinced that “deficits” are inherently the problem, and more interested in focusing on inflation, employment, innovation, equality, and real outcomes. I also think recent inflation history makes the “print as much as you want” framing feel more constrained than she suggests. Net, it made me want more debate and follow-up.
The Deep Places (Ross Douthat)
What hit hardest was the tone: he describes suffering without making himself the hero. The bravery is in the honesty, and the intellectual curiosity stays intact even when things get ugly. I also appreciated that he explores Lyme in a way that feels personally intense but still surprisingly even-handed. The takeaway I got was: trust medicine, but advocate for yourself and stay skeptical when the situation is complex. It made the reality of medical blind spots feel more concrete.
The 2-Hour Cocktail Party (Nick Gray)
This matched my experience as someone who hosts. It reduces guesswork with clear steps: who to invite, what to say, timing, and how to keep the energy up. It’s comprehensive in a way that made me immediately want to implement it.
Statistics for Public Policy (Thomas J. Kane, Robert S. O’Neill, et al.)
A practical bridge between academic statistics and real decision-making. The emphasis on starting simple, then moving deeper, is the right pedagogy. The clearest value is in how it frames correlation vs causality and how to present data to different audiences. Not exciting, but extremely usable.
A Man in Love (Karl Ove Knausgård)
A beautifully written meditation on middle age, love, and the quiet details that make a life. It’s less about plot than about precision, and that’s what I value in it.
Four Thousand Weeks (Oliver Burkeman)
A phenomenal examination of life’s transience and priorities.
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant (Eric Jorgenson)
Loaded with unique insights about life, money, and happiness, and as coming from a real free-thinker.
I also love
Kitchen Confidential (Anthony Bourdain)
The Millionaire Next Door (Thomas J. Stanley, William D. Danko)
Getting Things Done (David Allen)
Influence (Robert Cialdini)
Don’t Shoot the Dog! (Karen Pryor)
The Tao of Pooh (Benjamin Hoff)
Six Pillars of Self-Esteem (Nathaniel Branden)
The Way of the Superior Man (David Deida)
Never Eat Alone (Keith Ferrazzi)
The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing
The Emotionally Abusive Relationship (Patricia Evans)
Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison)
The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
Million Dollar Consulting (Alan Weiss)
Introduction to the Devout Life (Francis de Sales)
The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway)
On the Incarnation (Athanasius)
Love and Responsibility (Karol Wojtyła)
The Seven Storey Mountain (Thomas Merton)
Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov)
Being and Time (Martin Heidegger)
Your Money or Your Life (Vicki Robin, Joe Dominguez)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)
The 4-Hour Workweek (Tim Ferriss)
The Tipping Point (Malcolm Gladwell)
Guns, Germs, and Steel (Jared Diamond)
The Perks of Being a Wallflower (Stephen Chbosky)
Scientific Advertising (Claude C. Hopkins)
Predictably Irrational (Dan Ariely)
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
Fooled by Randomness (Nassim Nicholas Taleb)
Infinite Jest (David Foster Wallace)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
The Omnivore’s Dilemma (Michael Pollan)
Outliers (Malcolm Gladwell)
Man’s Search for Meaning (Viktor Frankl)
Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoevsky)
Dune (Frank Herbert)
The Flavor Bible
I Will Teach You to Be Rich (Ramit Sethi)
The Bogleheads’ Guide to Retirement Planning
Breakthrough Advertising (Eugene Schwartz)
You Are Not So Smart (David McRaney)
Ruhlman’s Twenty (Michael Ruhlman)
Models (Mark Manson)
1Q84 (Haruki Murakami)
The Boron Letters (Gary Halbert)
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain)
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (Marie Kondo)
Work Rules! (Laszlo Bock)
Never Split the Difference (Chris Voss)
Factfulness (Hans Rosling)
Nine Lies About Work (Marcus Buckingham, Ashley Goodall)
Things The Rich Don’t Want You To Know (Noah Kagan)
Jack Maguire 