Books
A running list of books I've read over the past few years. Roughly sorted in descending chronological order.
Rubric
| ★ | Hated it | Would not recommend | Actively trying to forget |
| ★★ | Meh | Would probably not recommend | Very rarely think about |
| ★★★ | Liked it | I might recommend if asked | Rarely think about |
| ★★★★ | Really liked it | I would recommend | Sometimes think about |
| ★★★★★ | Loved it | I recommend whole-heartedly | Often think about |
| Title | Author | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| The Power Broker | Robert Caro | |
| The Innovators | Walter Isaacson | |
| My Brilliant Friend | Elena Ferrante | ★★★★ |
| Nausea | Jean-Paul Sartre | ★★★ |
| You Could Make This Place Beautiful | Maggie Smith | ★★★★ |
| Crime and Punishment | Fyodor Dostoevsky | ★★★★★ |
| A Swim in a Pond in the Rain | George Saunders | ★★★★★ |
| All Things Shining | Hubert Dreyfus & Sean Kelly | ★★★★ |
| The Body Keeps the Score | Bessel Van Der Kolk | ★★★ |
| Preparation for the Next Life | Atticus Lish | ★★★★ |
| The Metamorphosis | Franz Kafka | ★★★ |
| The Wager | David Grann | ★★★★ |
| Morality | Jonathan Sacks | ★★★ |
| To Cook a Bear | Mikael Niemi | ★★★★ |
| Den Lodande Människan | Patrik Svensson | ★★★★ |
| Bewilderment | Richard Powers | ★★★ |
| When Bad Things Happen to Good People | Harold Kushner | ★★ |
| The True Believer | Eric Hoffer | ★★★★ |
| The Denial of Death | Ernest Becker | ★★★ |
| The Brothers Karamazov | Fyodor Dostoevsky | ★★★★★ |
| Existentialism | Walter Kaufmann | ★★★ |
| Beyond Good and Evil | Friedrich Nietzsche | ★★★ |
| The Fall | Albert Camus | ★★★★ |
| The Plague | Albert Camus | ★★★★ |
| How Not to Kill Yourself | Clancy Martin | ★★★ |
| The Myth of Sisyphus | Albert Camus | ★★★★★ |
| The Consolations of Philosophy | Alain de Botton | ★★★★ |
| Man's Search for Meaning | Victor Frankl | ★★★ |
| From Socrates to Sartre | T.Z. Lavine | ★★★★ |
| Troll | Rasmus Daugbjerg | ★★★★ |
| Building Progressive Web Apps | Tal Ater | ★★★★ |
| Doughnut Economics | Kate Raworth | ★★★ |
| Saving Time | Jenny Odell | ★★★ |
| The Coddling of the American Mind | Greg Lukianoff & Jonathan Haidt | ★★★ |
| Here's Looking at Euclid | Alex Bellos | ★★★ |
| Hunt, Gather, Parent | Michealeen Doucleef | ★★★★ |
| The Happiest Baby on the Block | Harvey Karp | ★★★ |
| How to Write a Sentence | Stanley Fish | ★★★★ |
| Write for Your Life | Charles Wheelan | ★★★ |
| Beyond Success and Failure | Willard & Marguerite Beecher | ★★★★★ |
| The Birth Partner | Penny Simkin | ★★★★★ |
| Bringing Up Bébé | Pamela Druckerman | ★★★★ |
| Be Prepared | Gary Greenberg & Jeannie Hayden | ★★★ |
| The Expectant Father | Armin Brott & Jennifer Ash | ★★★ |
| The War for Gloria | Atticus Lish | ★★★★★ |
| Braiding Sweetgrass | Robin Wall Kimmerer | ★★★★ |
| I Didn't Do the Thing Today | Madeline Dore | ★★★ |
| A Guide to the Good Life | William B. Irvine | ★★★ |
| The Alchemist | Paulo Coelho | ★★★ |
| The Picture of Dorian Gray | Oscar Wilde | ★★★ |
| A Primer for Poets and Readers of Poetry | Gregory Orr | ★★★★ |
| Meditations | Marcus Aurelius | ★★★ |
| Why Are We Yelling? | Buster Benson | ★★★ |
| Alone Together | Sherry Turkle | ★★★★ |
| Saving Us | Katherine Hayhoe | ★★★ |
| The Antidote | Olver Burkeman | ★★★★ |
| Attached | Amir Levine | ★★★★ |
| Networks of New York | Ingrid Burrington | ★★ |
| The Hidden Life of Trees | Peter Wohlleben | ★★★★ |
| Four Thousand Weeks | Oliver Burkeman | ★★★★★ |
| Wintering | Katherine May | ★★★★ |
| Eating Animals | Jonthan Safran Foer | ★★★★★ |
| Never Let Me Go | Kazuo Ishiguro | ★★★ |
| The Shortest History of England | James Hawkes | ★★★ |
| Walden | Henry David Thoreau | ★★★★★ |
| If the Oceans Were Ink | Carla Power | ★★★★ |
| The Last Kings of Shanghai | Jonathan Kaufman | ★★★★ |
| Pachinko | Lee Min-Jin | ★★★★★ |
| The House of Islam | Ed Husain | ★★★★ |
| Attention | Joshua Cohen | ★★★ |
| The Gene | Siddhartha Mukherjee | ★★★★ |
| Mexican Gothic | Silvia Moreno-Garcia | ★★★★★ |
| American Primitive | Mary Oliver | ★★★★ |
| Essentialism | Greg McKeown | ★★ |
| Hold Me Tight | Sue Johnson | ★★★★ |
| Around the World in 80 Words | Paul Anthony Jones | ★★★ |
| The 99% Invisible City | Roman Mars | ★★★ |
| Klara and the Sun | Kazuo Ishiguro | ★★★★ |
| At Home | Bill Bryson | ★★★★ |
| Other Minds | Peter Godfrey-Smith | ★★★ |
| Discipline Equals Freedom | Jocko Willink | ★★★ |
| Fewer, Better Things | Glenn Adamson | ★★★ |
| The Call of the Wild | Jack London | ★★ |
| The Uninhabitable Earth | David Wallace-Wells | ★★★★★ |
| What Does It Feel Like to Die? | Amy Dear | ★★★★ |
| Digital Minimalism | Cal Newport | ★★★★ |
| A Little Bit of Mindfulness | Amy Lee Mercree | ★★ |
| How to Do Nothing | Jenny Odell | ★★★★★ |
| The Song of Achilles | Madeline Miller | ★★★★ |
| The Thursday Murder Club | Richard Osman | ★★★★ |
| Exhalation | Ted Chiang | ★★★★ |
| Mindsets and Missiles | Kenneth Michael Absher | ★★★ |
| Becoming | Michelle Obama | ★★★ |
| Tinkers | Paul Harding | ★★★ |
| The End is Always Near | Dan Carlin | ★★★★ |
| Until the End of Time | Brian Greene | ★★★ |
| SPQR | Mary Beard | ★★★★ |
| Circe | Madeline Miller | ★★★★ |
| Can I Recycle This? | Jennie Romer | ★★★★ |
| The Book of Eels | Patrick Svensson | ★★★★★ |
| Just Mercy | Bryan Stevenson | ★★★★ |
| The Signal and the Noise | Nate Silver | ★★★ |
| Flash Boys | Michael Lewis | ★★★★ |
| Atomic Habits | James Clear | ★★★★ |
| Hannibal | Eve MacDonald | ★★★ |
| Upheaval | Jared Diamond | ★★★ |
| Say Nothing | Patrick Radden Keefe | ★★★★★ |
| White Fragility | Robin DiAngelo | ★★★★ |
| Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell | Susanna Clarke | ★★★★★ |
| Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? | Philip K. Dick | ★★★★ |
| Dark Matter | Blake Crouch | ★ |
| The Road | Cormac McCarthy | ★★★★★ |
| Rubicon | Tom Holland | ★★★★ |
| The Lessons of History | Will & Ariel Durant | ★★★ |
| The Historian | Elizabeth Kostova | ★★ |
| The Devil in the White City | Erik Larson | ★★★★ |
| Man-Eaters of Kumaon | Jim Corbett | ★★★ |
| The Handmaid's Tail | Margaret Atwood | ★★★ |
| The General vs. the President | H.W. Brands | ★★★★ |
| The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up | Marie Kondō | ★★★★ |
| Word by Word | Kory Stamper | ★★★★★ |
| East of Eden | John Steinbeck | ★★★★★ |
| The Passage | Justin Cronin | ★★★★ |
| Enduring Love | Ian McEwan | ★★★★ |
| Nutshell | Ian McEwan | ★★★★ |
| Norse Mythology | Neil Gaiman | ★★★★ |
| I Wrote This for You | pleasefindthis | ★ |
| 1982 | George Orwell | ★★★ |
| Animal Farm | George Orwell | ★★ |
| On Chesil Beach | Ian McEwan | ★★★★★ |
| The Big Short | Michael Lewis | ★★★★ |
| Atonement | Ian McEwan | ★★★★★ |
Reading backlog
- Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
- The Innovators, Walter Isaacson
- The Trouble With Being Born, Emil Cioran
- Seeing Like a State, James C Scott
- Capital in the 21st Century, Thomas Piketty
- Reading Genesis, Marilynne Robinson
- Justice, Michael Sandel