Reading List
In late 2014, I started reading books again. Like, a lot of books. If I’m honest, I'd drifted away from the required reading lists in high school and especially in college as life got busier, but found my way back thanks largely to picking up Robin Sloan's Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore on a whim. I devoured that book and found myself wanting more. And the more I read, the more my writing improved, so I kept the habit.
Over time, I even picked up a hobby of reviewing books and I've been published by The Atlantic (on Robin Sloan's Sourdough), The Millions (on Doree Shafrir's Startup), and Big Cartel (on Claire L. Evans’ Broad Band).
Below is every book I read between 2014–2020, with favorites marked with a star. ☆
2020
Southern Horror Stories (Lisa W. Tetting)
The Girl Next Door (Jack Ketchum)
The Jaunt (Stephen King)
The Human Chair (Edogawa Rampo)
There Will Come Soft Rains (Ray Bradbury)
No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention (Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer)
☆ Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big (Bo Burlingham)
Post: A Short Story of No Consequence at All (Shea Serrano)
DMZ Colony (Don Mee Choi)
Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man (Mary L. Trump)
Diversity, Inc.: The Failed Promise of a Billion-Dollar Business (Pamela Newkirk)
The Slinky Lady (Jeanne Marie Laskas)
How to Not Always Be Working: A Toolkit for Creativity and Radical Self-Care (Marlee Grace)
How to Be an Antiracist (Ibram X. Kendi)
American Trademark Designs (Barbara Baer Capitman)
Bloomberg by Bloomberg (Michael R. Bloomberg)
☆ That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea (Marc Randolph)
2019
Parable (Jess Walter)
Randomize (Andy Weir)
☆ Columbine (Dave Cullen)
A Wedding Thing (Shea Serrano)
Nightcrawlers (Rosecrans Baldwin)
King of Dreams (Christie Thompson)
The Two Million Dollar Intern (David Gauvey Herbert)
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (Anne Lamott)
The Soul of Man under Socialism (Oscar Wilde)
South and West: From a Notebook (Joan Didion)
President Barack Obama: The Kindle Singles Interview (David Blum)
How Google Works (Eric Schmidt)
Absence of Malick: Why did movie director Terrence Malick disappear after his first two brilliant movies? (David Handelman)
I Will Teach You to Be Rich, Second Edition: No Guilt. No Excuses. No B.S. Just a 6-Week Program That Works. (Ramit Sethi)
The Resistance: Digital Dissent in the Age of Machines (Joel Achenbach)
Anthony Bourdain: The Kindle Singles Interview (David Blum)
The Nazi Connection (Gloria Steinem)
A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing (Burton G. Malkiel)
Identity Thief (Rachel Rosenthal)
James Baldwin, An Original (Gloria Steinem)
Reflections on the Art of Going Broke (Vince Passaro)
How I Became a Writer (Gloria Steinem)
Work Doesn't Work: From The Working Poor (David K. Shipler)
Good Bones (Maggie Smith)
The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon (Brad Stone)
☆ Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs (Ken Kocienda)
The Way We Live Now: from The Age of American Unreason in a Culture of Lies (Susan Jacoby)
The Bad News: From Moral Disorder (Margaret Atwood)
The Freedom to Be Free: From Thinking Without a Banister (Hannah Arendt)
The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim (Agatha Christie)
2018
This World is Full of Monsters (Jeff VanderMeer)
What to Do When I’m Gone: A Mother’s Wisdom to Her Daughter (Suzy Hopkins and Hallie Bateman)
The Warren Buffett Way (Robert G. Hagstrom)
Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley (Antonio García Martínez)
☆ Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft’s Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone (Satya Nadella)
Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys’ Club of Silicon Valley (Emily Chang)
Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers (Seth Godin)
The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion (Margaret Killjoy)
Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone (Brené Brown)
Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency (Joshua Green)
Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet (Claire L. Evans)
The Year of Less: How I Stopped Shopping, Gave Away My Belongings, and Discovered Life Is Worth More Than Anything You Can Buy in a Store (Cait Flanders)
The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of Americas Wealthy (Thomas J. Stanley)
Annihilation (Jeff VanderMeer)
Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy (Sheryl Sandberg)
☆ Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup (John Carreyrou)
Content Everywhere: Strategy and Structure for Future-Ready Content (Sara Wachter-Boettcher)
☆ Severance (Ling Ma)
Bare Bones (S.O.Bailey)
The Postmortal (Drew Magary)
The Hillside (Jane Smiley)
Madhouse (Miguel Estrada)
☆ The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns (John C. Bogle)
☆ When Breath Becomes Air (Paul Kalanithi)
Ask Polly’s Guide to Your Next Crisis (Heather Havrilesky)
☆ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Frederick Douglass)
2017
Startup (Doree Shafrir)
☆ Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (Greg McKeown)
The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life (Twyla Tharp)
Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success (Ken Segall)
Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living (Manjula Martin)
☆ The Mothers (Brit Bennett)
United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good (Cory Booker)
Choose Yourself (James Altucher)
Difficult Women (Roxane Gay)
☆ Universal Harvester (John Darnielle)
300 Arguments (Sarah Manguso)
The Braindead Megaphone (George Saunders)
The Art of Thinking Clearly (Rolf Dobelli)
☆ Fever Dream (Samanta Schweblin)
Decisions: Life and Death on Wall Street (Janet M. Tavakoli)
The Kingdom of Happiness: Inside Tony Hsieh's Zapponian Utopia (Aimee Groth)
Fire Season: Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout (Philip Connors)
☆ Too Much and Not the Mood (Durga Chew-Bose)
The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (Seth Godin)
American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road (Nick Bilton)
Train Dreams (Denis Johnson)
The Elements of Eloquence: Secrets of the Perfect Turn of Phrase (Mark Forsyth)
Hunger (Roxane Gay)
Sourdough (Robin Sloan)
Tampa (Alissa Nutting)
The Ego Is the Enemy (Ryan Holiday)
☆ A Colony in a Nation (Chris Hayes)
The Balloonists (Eula Biss)
The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics (Mark Lilla)
Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead (Charlene Li)
Perennial Seller: The Art of Making and Marketing Work That Lasts (Ryan Holiday)
☆ Lovecraft Country (Matt Ruff)
The Prophet (Kahlil Gibran)
☆ Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process (John McPhee)
You Should Have Left (Daniel Kehlmann)
Notes from No Man's Land: American Essays (Eula Biss)
The Boy Kings: A Journey into the Heart of the Social Network (Katherine Losse)
The Origin of Others (Toni Morrison)
Iterating Grace: Heartfelt Wisdom and Disruptive Truths from Silicon Valley's Top Venture Capitalists (Koons Crooks)
☆ We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy (Ta-Nehisi Coates)
2016
Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street's Post-Crash Recruits (Kevin Roose)
How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia (Mohsin Hamid)
Museum of the Weird (Amelia Gray)
Community: The Structure of Belonging (Peter Block)
The Internet of Garbage (Sarah Jeong)
How to Write a Novella in 24 Hours: And other questionable & possibly insane advice on creativity for writers (Andrew Mayne)
They're Made Out of Meat (Terry Bisson)
Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration (Ed Catmull)
Timely Escape (Sandra Nikolai)
Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content (Ann Handley)
3 Truths and a Lie (Lisa Gardner)
The Grownup (Gillian Flynn)
The Revenant (Michael Punke)
The Decagon House Murders (Yukito Ayatsuji)
Battleborn (Claire Vaye Watkins)
Contagious: Why Things Catch On (Jonah Berger)
Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble (Dan Lyons)
Elon Musk: Inventing the Future (Ashlee Vance)
Inherited Disorders: Stories, Parables & Problems (Adam Ehrlich Sachs)
Glitch (Hugh Howey)
This Great Love (Valerie Geary)
Lincoln's Little Girl (Cecelia Holland)
Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation (Steven Johnson)
Fates and Furies (Lauren Groff)
All Roads Lead Home (Lisa Mecham)
Not Coming Soon to a Theater Near You (Neal Pollack)
Highway with Green Apples (Bae Suah)
Magic and Loss: The Pleasures of the Internet (Virginia Heffernan)
Negroland (Margo Jefferson)
Daily Rituals: How Artists Work (Mason Currey)
☆ The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (Michelle Alexander)
☆ Heroes of the Frontier (Dave Eggers)
The Ghost: How a California Golden Boy Became America's Most Unlikely-and Elusive-Fugitive (Paige Williams)
You May Also Like: Taste in an Age of Endless Choice (Tom Vanderbilt)
We Can't Go Home Again (Max Andrew Dubinsky)
The Beautiful Years (Katia Lief)
Letters to a Young Artist (Anna Deavere Smith)
Nice Girls (Sachin Waikar)
Mr. Kim (Mingzhao Xu)
☆ The Hike (Drew Magary)
☆ The Fire Next Time (James Baldwin)
Throttle (Joe Hill)
Multiverses; or, Possible Worlds (James McAdams)
Guns (Stephen King)
Pick Me Up: A Pep Talk for Now and Later (Adam J. Kurtz)
Rattlesnake Stories (Anna Mitchael)
Rooster Stories: Farm-Raised Tales of Life, Love, and Motherhood (Anna Mitchael)
Shine (Jodi Picoult)
Flagged and Removed (Darcie Wilder)
All Involved (Ryan Gattis)
Bedtime for Batman (Michael Dahl)
The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly? (Seth Godin)
The Artist's Way (Julia Cameron)
2015
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (Dave Eggers)
The Thank You Economy (Gary Vaynerchuk)
Steal Like An Artist (Austin Kleon)
Show Your Work (Austin Kleon)
Phoenix (Chuck Palahniuk)
☆ Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever? (Dave Eggers)
100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write: On Umbrellas and Sword Fights, Parades and Dogs, Fire Alarms, Children, and Theater (Sarah Ruhl)
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing (Marie Kondo)
How to Be Black (Baratunde Thurston)
Station Eleven (Emily St. John Mandel)
☆ On Immunity: An Inoculation (Eula Biss)
☆ Man V. Nature: Stories (Diane Cook)
Art & Fear (David Bayles & Ted Orland)
☆ Kaleidoscope (Ray Bradbury)
☆ The Shape of Design (Frank Chimero)
The Fortune Cookie Principle (Bernadette Jiwa)
The War of Art (Steven Pressfield)
☆ Start with Why (Simon Sinek)
☆ Becoming Steve Jobs (Brent Schlender & Rick Tetzeli)
Helvetica, Objectified, Urbanized: The Complete Interviews (Gary Hustwit)
☆ Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)
Manage your Day-to-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind (Jocelyn K. Glei, et al.)
Wreckage (Emily Bleeker)
The Light of the World: A Memoir (Elizabeth Alexander)
Between Here and the Yellow Sea (Nic Pizzolatto)
Bullet in the Brain (Tobias Wolff)
Thoughts on Design (Paul Rand)
The Ghost Network (Catie Disabato)
Lean In (Sheryl Sandberg)
☆ Between the World and Me (Ta-Nehisi Coates)
☆ Gutshot (Amelia Gray)
Creative Confidence (Tom Kelley & David Kelley)
Jab, Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook (Gary Vaynerchuk)
The Customer Support Handbook (Sarah Hatter)
The Crossroads of Should and Must (Elle Luna)
The Fishermen (Chigozie Obioma)
☆ The Egg (Andy Weir)
☆ Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking (Susan Cain)
The Chef (Andy Weir)
☆ The World According to Mister Rogers (Fred Rogers)
☆ Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear (Elizabeth Gilbert)
The Souls of Black Folk (W.E.B. Du Bois)
☆ Citizen: An American Lyric (Claudia Rankine)
☆ Eileen (Ottessa Moshfegh)
The Rover (Drew Magary)
☆ We Should All Be Feminists (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)
Imitation (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)
☆ Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory (Caitlin Doughty)
☆ A Little Life (Hanya Yanagihara)
Hollywood Ending (Michael Thomsen)
Pick Me (Kalisha Buckhanon)
Ghosts in the Forest (Corinne Purtill)
Bad Feminist (Roxane Gay)
Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work (Whitney Johnson)
Gawker: An Oral History (Brian Abrams)
☆ Nicely Said: Writing for the Web with Style and Purpose (Nicole Fenton, Kate Kiefer Lee)
Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us (Seth Godin)
2014
☆ Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Robin Sloan)
Ajax Penumbra 1969 (Robin Sloan)
☆ Luther (Neil Cross)
The Martian (Andy Weir)
☆ Wolf in White Van (John Darnielle)
☆ Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Robert M. Pirsig)
☆ The Circle (Dave Eggers)