Since it's almost Xmas & we're either buying gifts or telling loved ones what we'd like, I thought I'd share a list of books that are on my list this year. Just titles / authors.
Life Hacks & Mindset
Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success - Shane Snow
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success - Carol S. Dweck
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do, and How to Change - Charles Duhigg
The Conquest of Happiness - Bertrand Russell
Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise - Anders Ericsson, Robert Pool
A Guide To The Good Life: The Ancient Art Of Stoic Joy - William B. Irvine
The Fine Art of Small Talk - Debra Fine
The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living - Randy Komisar, Kent Lineback
The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom - Don Miguel, Jr. Ruiz
Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind - Scott Barry Kaufman, Carolyn Gregoire
Science / Maths
How Not to be Wrong: The Hidden Maths of Everyday Life - Jordan Ellenberg
How the Universe Got Its Spots: Diary of a Finite Time in a Finite Space - Janna Levin
Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words - Randall Munroe
Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down - J.E. Gordon
The Gene: An Intimate History - Siddhartha Mukherjee
Futurology & Trends
Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies - Nick Bostrom
Who Owns the Future? - Jaron Lanier
Investing
The Intelligent Investor - Benjamin Graham
Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor - Tren Griffin
UX & Design
Webs of Influence: The Secret Strategies That Make Us Click - Nathalie Nahai
Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas - Natasha Dow Schull
100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People - Susan Weinschenk
Seductive Interaction Design - Stephen Anderson
Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience - Jeff Gothelf
Product Design for the Web: Principles of Designing and Releasing Web Products - Randy J. Hunt
Living with Complexity - Donald A. Norman
Getting Real: The Smarter, Faster, Easier Way to Build a Successful Web Application - Jason Fried, Heinemeier David Hansson, Matthew Linderman
The Mom Test: How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you - Rob Fitzpatrick
Software
Soft Skills:The software developer's life manual - John Z. Sonmez
Biography / Autobiography
How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life - Scott Adams
Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike - Phil Knight
Startupland: How Three Guys Risked Everything to Turn an Idea into a Global Business - Mikkel Svane, Carlye Adler
Human Behaviour
Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior - Geoffrey Miller
The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature - Geoffrey Miller
Memes in Digital Culture - Limor Shifman
Social Physics: How Good Ideas Spread-The Lessons from a New Science - Alex Pentland
Public Speak / Pitching
The Art of the Pitch: Persuasion and Presentation Skills that Win Business - P. Coughter
Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal - Oren Klaff
Talk Like Ted: The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World's Top Minds - Carmine Gallo
Innovation / Disruption
Killing Giants: 10 Strategies to Topple the Goliath in Your Industry - Stephen Denny
The Innovator's DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators - Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen, Clayton M. Christensen
Big Bang Disruption: Strategy in the Age of Devastating Innovation - Larry Downes, Paul Nunes
Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies - Jim Collins
Ten Types of Innovation: The Discipline of Building Breakthroughs - Larry Keeley, Helen Walters, Ryan Pikkel
Blue Ocean Strategy: How To Create Uncontested Market Space And Make The Competition Irrelevant - W. Chan Kim, Renée Mauborgne
Crossing the Chasm - Geoffrey A. Moore
Thinking Strategically: Competitive Edge in Business, Politics and Everyday Life - Avinash K. Dixit
Accelerate: Building Strategic Agility for a Faster-Moving World - John P. Kotter
Leadership
Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action - Simon Sinek
The Wisdom of Failure: How to Learn the Tough Leadership Lessons Without Paying the Price - Laurence G. Weinzimmer, Jim McConoughey
@adryan Sounds like a great list. Thanks for researching and sharing. This sub is great for posts like this!
Btw If you had to choose 5 that you would read first, what would those 5 be?
@nicole351 Ah thanks Yeah I'm a sucker for reading lists. If I was to choose just 5 from the list to read first I'd choose:
Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor - Tren Griffin (because he's a genius & Warren Buffet's right-hand man)
Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action - Simon Sinek (because Sinek's TED talk on inspiring action is so clear & powerful)
Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words - Randall Munroe (Because Randall Munroe is xkcd, 'nuff said)
The Conquest of Happiness - Bertrand Russell (Because Russell was a polymath genius, I loved 'The Happiness Advantage' by Shawn Achor, and who doesn't want to be happy?)
Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies - Nick Bostrom (Because Bostrom popularized both the simulation argument & risks of super-intelligent AI that even folks like Elon Musk take as serious hypotheses these days)
Art of the Start is one of the very first startup books I read years and years ago, and my main takeaway was that Guy Kawasaki calls everyone bozo. Lol.
The Lean Startup is a classic for sure, and I'd also put Steve Blank's The 4 Steps to the Epiphany up alongside it when it comes to creating the foundation for lean / customer-development-centric startup creation.
@adryan I guess Sapiens by Yuval Noah is a great read for startups as it helps you understand evolution of mankind. You'll be able to connect the dots with a lot of things that we do today - why we continue to do so! How data will further help us predict human actions.
@fair2light Hey - I haven't heard of Little Bets, I'll have to check that out
I've got Hard Things..etc on my shelf, and I've started it twice but every time I think "I'm not ready to read this yet". Hopefully it won't be too long before I actually need the advice
@adryan Little Bets - process of creating ideas: creative person is not born, it's developed, and that kind of stuff.. Very good.
Hard Things... - heavy book, it's all about problems, problems and problems. I'd suggest to get audio book, it's easier to consume
@neochris Oh yeah nice pick - I read it earlier this year and I thought it was great, although NNT is insufferably pretentious at times I guess that happens when you're smarter than literally everyone haha
@adryan NNT is a legend! He does bang on about economists being worthless, but I like his writing style. I can't think of another author who has made me laugh so much (or at all) whilst discussing such a dry/serious subject.
@jesselynn Hey The list grows naturally throughout the year, but the general theme for me is mindset, leadership, life-hacks, entrepreneurship, science and programming.
My general process is to try to read as much material as possible that will have the greatest impact on my day-to-day life and my long-term goals - like an 80/20 principle for reading.
I read non-fiction 90% of the time, and if I do read fiction then I make sure it's a classic because I don't have time to read something that might be good. E.g. my latest fiction reads were 'The Remains of the Day' by Kazuo Ishiguro and 'Blood Meridian' by Cormac McCarthy.
Here are some of my favourite sources for book suggestions:
Ryan Holiday's reading list - Holiday does a newsletter that always has at least 1 suggestion that adds value to my life
FourHourWorkWeek Podcast - Tim Ferriss interviews many interesting people, and the show notes are filled with reading suggestion gold
Yeah I'm a sucker for reading lists. If I was to choose just 5 from the list to read first I'd choose: