This is a running list of the books I’ve read this year. The stars indicate something I’d near-universally recommend. I hope to get better about posting reading notes, in which case I’ll link to those.
If you’re really curious you can find past reading lists from 2018 and 2019. I also keep an index of all the reading notes I’ve posted.
- The Rise of the Image, the Fall of the Word by Mitchell Stephens.
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.
- A History of Reading by Alberto Manguel.
- Black Swan Green by David Mitchell.
- The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction by Alan Jacobs.
- Deep Work by Cal Newport.
- Smarter Faster Better by Charles Duhigg.
- The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg.
- Atomic Habits by James Clear. ★
- Letters from a Stoic by Seneca.
- Dreamland by Sam Quinones.
- Dignity by Chris Arnade. ★
- 24/6 by Tiffany Shlain.
- Destined for War by Graham Allison.
- Peter Camenzind by Hermann Hesse.
- Vaccinated by Paul A. Offit.
- The Art of Stillness by Pico Iyer.
- Upstream by Dan Heath.
- Narcissus and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse.
- The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami.
- What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami.
- Lost Horizon by James Hilton.
- On The Good Life by Cicero.
- The Journey to the East by Hermann Hesse.
- Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. ★
- White Noise by Don DeLillo.
- How to Be an Epicurean by Catherine Wilson.
- Exhalation by Ted Chiang.
- The Obstacle Is The Way by Ryan Holiday.
- Naïve Super by Erlend Loe.
- Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill.
- Peak: The New Science of Expertise by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool. ★
- On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong.
- The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro.
- High Growth Handbook by Elad Gil.
- Weather by Jenny Offill.
- Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling.
- How to Be Bored by Eva Hoffman.
- Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling.
- How to Not Always Be Working by Marlee Grace.
- Buyology by Martin Lindstrom.
- The Dawn Watch by Maya Jasanoff.
- Barcelona by Robert Hughes.
- The Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle.
- The Great Mental Models by Farnam Street.
- Draft No. 4 by John McPhee.
- The Writing Life by Annie Dillard.
- How to Write an Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee.
- Indistractable by Nir Eyal.
- The Bells of Old Tokyo by Anna Sherman.
- Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling.