Reading

Since 2009 I’ve been keeping a public list of every book I finish reading, in chronological order.

This year's list →

Favorites:

These are some books that I’d recommend to most people, or that made an impact on how I think about the world:

The Mirror & the LightHilary Mantel
How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention EconomyJenny Odell
Arbitrary Stupid GoalTamara Shopsin
How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re BuiltStewart Brand
The Last SamuraiHelen DeWitt
Wolf HallHilary Mantel
The Fire Next TimeJames Baldwin
The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New AmericaGeorge Packer
How to Live: Or a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an AnswerSarah Bakewell
The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. 3: Master of the SenateRobert Caro
Speak, Memory: An Autobiography RevisitedVladimir Nabokov
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de ZoetDavid Mitchell
Cadence & SlangNick Disabato
The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility, the Ideas Behind the World’s Slowest ComputerStewart Brand
HamletWilliam Shakespeare
The Sense of an EndingJulian Barnes
The Shape of DesignFrank Chimero
Design is a JobMike Monteiro
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of ColorblindnessMichelle Alexander
Pale FireVladimir Nabokov
MeditationsMarcus Aurelius
The Social Life of InformationPaul Duguid and John Seely Brown
Common as Air: Revolution, Art, and OwnershipLewis Hyde
Chronicles, Vol. 1Bob Dylan
For Whom the Bell TollsErnest Hemingway
Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American FamiliesJ. Anthony Lukas
The White AlbumJoan Didion
Slouching Towards BethlehemJoan Didion
A Stroll With William JamesJacques Barzun
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert OppenheimerKai Bird & Martin Sherwin