I find myself often getting asked what books I read while battling cancer, or that I would recommend in general. I do a lot of highlighting and annotating. One of the benefits of that is I can essentially pull a book off the shelf and re-read it by skimming for the highlights and notes. So here’s a list of books I think worth reading that I tend to reference from time to time. The list is not structured in any particular way. Sometimes a great book can come at the wrong time, and, conversely some part of a really mediocre book can really resonate. These titles are all recommended (I’ve left the duds off for now). I’ve market with * the ones that are excellent/must reads, the number of them indicating strength of recommendation. Also, this is a list I can vouch for having read. The list of books I want to read is WAY longer. I’ll add to this list periodically so it stays somewhat up to date.
- Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds: Navy seal talks about the mental aspects of toughness
- Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration: Lessons learned from creative collaboration in major projects
- The Cancer-Fighting Kitchen, Second Edition: Nourishing, Big-Flavor Recipes for Cancer Treatment and Recovery
- The Elements of Style*: how to write
- The order of time: brilliant and poetic take on time, marrying physics with intuition
- Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn*
- Asimov’s New Guide to Science (Penguin Press Science)
- The Art of Thinking Clearly: compact lessons in running your mental operating system a bit tighter
- Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts: A poker champion talks about decision-making
- Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow*
- Living with a SEAL: 31 Days Training with the Toughest Man on the Planet: hilarious take on living with a seal
- Sam Walton: Made In America*
- Creative Selection: Inside Apple’s Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs: insider view on building product directly with Jobs.
- Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue
- The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business
- Managing oneself
- The Brothers Karamazov
- Why We Run: A Natural History*: inspiring book about a champion runner who trains by studying physiology
- Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age:
- Mastery
- How to stop worrying & start living
- Night**
- Flash Boys
- The Innovator’s Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth
- Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Lifein Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies
- Meditations**
- The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story
- Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence
- The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds*
- Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs
- Great at Work: How Top Performers Do Less, Work Better, and Achieve More
- American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer*
- Buddhism for Beginners: A Complete Course on the Heart of the Buddha’s Teachings
- A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing
- Principles: Life and Work**
- Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us
- Unshakeable: Creating Peace of Mind In a World of Volatility
- The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.
- Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill
- Ready Player One (Ready Player One, #1)
- High Performance Habits: How Extraordinary People Become That Way
- The Character of Physical Law*
- Being Digital
- The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
- The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance
- The Way of the Champion: Lessons from Sun Tzu’s the Art of War and Other Tao Wisdom for Sports & Life
- Bad Science: Quacks, Hacks, and Big Pharma Flacks
- Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character**
- Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World
- Product Leadership: How Top Product Managers Launch Awesome Products and Build Successful Teams
- High Output Management**: CEO of Intel Andy Grove on management fundamentals. Probably the best book on management I’ve read.
- The Player of Games(Culture, #2)
- World Order: Whatever your view of Henry Kissinger, he offers an insider’s perspective of the forces shaping the structure of the 20th century political landscape.
- User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product
- Originals: How Nonconformists Move the World
- Winning with Data: Transform Your Culture, Empower Your People, and Shape the Future
- In Praise of Shadows
- The Joy of x: A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity
- Payoff: The Hidden Logic That Shapes Our Motivations
- The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction: Neil Gaiman shorts
- I Will Teach You To Be Rich
- Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
- Data Analysis Using Regression and Multilevel/Hierarchical Models
- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
- Moments of Reprieve: A Memoir of Auschwitz
- A Sense of the Mysterious: Science and the Human Spirit*: For anyone that’s toiled away in labs or done science this captures an essential part of the beauty of that struggle to understand. Wonderful writing.
- Positive Discipline
- Thinking, Fast and Slow***: Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman reveals how we really think. Highly recommended.
- The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change*:
- Man’s Search for Meaning***: I read this and skimmed through highlighted passages many times lying in bed during treatment. Powerful.
- How to Win Friends and Influence People
- Designing Your Life: Build a Life that Works for You
- Stories of Your Life and Others
- Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With The Heart Of A Buddha
- The Right Stuff
- The Prophet
- Tao Te Ching
- Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers
- The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance
- How Will You Measure Your Life?
- ReWork
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance*
- Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win
- Tap Dancing to Work: Warren Buffett on Practically Everything, 1966-2012: A Fortune Magazine Book
- Howard Hughes: His Life and Madness
- Foundation (Foundation, #1)
- My Struggle: Book 1
- Exploring Everyday Things with R and Ruby
- Shipping Greatness: Practical lessons on building and launching outstanding software, learned on the job at Google and Amazon
- The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement*: A surprisingly engaging business book in the form of a narrative
- Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative
- The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
- On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft*: Stephen King on writing. Enough said.
- Critical Chain
- The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms
- Letters from a Stoic: Seneca on stoic philosophy
- The Art Of The Long View: Planning For The Future In An Uncertain World
- Warren Buffett and the Interpretation of Financial Statements: The Search for the Company with a Durable Competitive Advantage
- The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses
- Inspired: How To Create Products Customers Love
- Are You Smart Enough to Work at Google?
- How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed
- Isaac Newton*: James Gleick on Newton
- Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity*
- Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives
- Wool Omnibus Edition (Silo, #1; Wool, #1-5)
- Steve Jobs
- Benjamin Franklin: An American Life*: An honest look at one of America’s greatest men; inspiring.
- The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity
- True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership
- Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success*: head coach of the Chicago Bulls championship dynasty from the eyes of the great orchestrator. You don’t need to be a sports find leadership wisdom here.
- The Art Of Product Management: Lessons From A Silicon Valley Innovator
- Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness
- Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves*: Pioneering geneticist George Church on synthetic biology
- Dancing Naked in the Mind Field: Thoughts from a Nobel laureate, highly unconventional thinker and the inventor of PCR.
- Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder
- The Effective Executive*: one of the best business books out you could hope to read.
- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing (Magic Cleaning #1) – spark joy!
- Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion
- For the Love of Physics
- The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World
- Dreaming Yourself Awake: Lucid Dreaming and Tibetan Dream Yoga for Insight and Transformation
- Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think
- The Ego Is the Enemy
- Rebbe: The Life and Teachings of Menachem M. Schneerson, the Most Influential Rabbi in Modern History
- Idea Makers: Personal Perspectives on the Lives & Ideas of Some Notable People
- Letters to My Son: A Father’s Wisdom on Manhood, Life, and Love*: thoughtful and touching essays on being a father.
- Einstein: His Life and Universe*
- Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies*: regardless your views on AI taking over the world this is a cogent study in the art of persuasive argument.
- Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future*: Peter Thiel on startups.
- The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload
- Ender’s Shadow (Shadow, #1)*: the whole series is really engaging
- The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon
- The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers**: the distinction between peacetime vs. wartime CEO resonates
- Red Mars (Mars Trilogy, #1)
- Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future
- Reamde: probably Stephenson’s most accessible and fun book
- SoMa
- Seveneves**: powerful SF from one of the best writers in the business
- Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead
- The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution
- What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions*: really fun and smart. Brought this on vacation and read with the kids
- Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World
- The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility**: Highly recommended
- The Selfish Gene**
- Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions
- Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power
- How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci: Seven Steps to Genius Every Day
- The Design of Everyday Things*
- The Art of Learning: A Journey in the Pursuit of Excellence**: beautiful study in how to learn by Josh Waitzkin, chess prodigy.
- Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words
- MONEY Master the Game: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom
- Awaken the Giant Within: How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical and Financial Destiny!*: Listened to this as audiobook many times over the years. If you can look past the cult of personality there’s lots of great stuff here.