You are what you eat. To that end, here’s a list of the books I’ve read recently. I read everything from techno thrillers and pulp sci-fi to general fiction and non-fiction about startups, technology, philosophy, interesting people and the world. From time to time I write brief summaries / reviews, and I rate each book out of five *****. Send recommendations!
2019:
- Starship Troopers, Robert Heinlein [fiction] ****
- Tortilla Curtain, TC Boyle [fiction] ***
- Who, Geoff Smart [non-fiction] *****
- Half Of A Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie [fiction] ****
- Exhalation, Ted Chiang [fiction] *****
- Invisible Planets, Anthology [fiction] *****
- The Drifters, James Michener [fiction] ****
- The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe [non-fiction] *****
- Seabiscuit, Laura Hillenbrand [non-fiction] *****
- REAMDE, Neal Stephenson [fiction] ****
- The Lowlands, Jhumpa Lahiri [fiction] ****
- An American Family, Khizir Khan [memoir] *****
- Less, Andrew Sean Greer [fiction] ****
2018:
- Playing Doc’s Games, William Finnegan [non-fiction] ****
- Star Wars: From A Certain Point Of View, Anthology [linked short stories]
- How To Live Safely In A Science Fictional Universe, Charles Yu [fiction] ****
- Do No Harm, Henry Marsh [memoir] *****
- Appointment in Samarra, John O’Hara [fiction] *****
- Waiting, Ha Jin [fiction] *****
- Masks, Fumiko Enchi [fiction] ****
- Swing Time, Zadie Smith [fiction] ***
- My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante [fiction] *****
- Sapiens, Yuval Harari [non-fiction] *****
- I’m Thinking of Ending Things, Iain Reid [fiction] ***
- Swamplandia!, Karen Russel [fiction] ****
- Lake Success, Gary Shteyngart [fiction] ****
- A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary For Lovers [fiction] ***
- Some Prefer Nettles, Junichiro Tanizaki [fiction] ****
- Adultery, Paulo Coehlo [fiction] ****
- The Martian, Andy Weir [fiction] ****
- The Complete Patrick Melrose Novels, Edward St Aubyn [fiction] ****
- NW, Zadie Smith [fiction] *****
- The Postmortal, Drew Magary [fiction] **
- The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde [fiction] *****
- Timeline, Michael Crichton [fiction] ***
- Meditations, Marcus Aurelius [memoir] *****
- We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, Phillip Gourevitch [non-fiction] *****
- Slicing Pie, Mike Moyer [non-fiction] ****
- 10:04, Ben Lerner [fiction] *****
- All The Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr [fiction] ****
- No Longer At Ease, Chinua Achebe [fiction] ****
- Travels With Charley, John Steinbeck [memoir] ***
- Brotopia, Emily Chang [non-fiction] *****
- Brief Encounters With Che Guevara, Ben Fountain [short stories] ****
- How Will You Measure Your Life, Clayton Christiansen [non-fiction] ***
- Chaos Monkeys, Antonio Garcia Martinez [non-fiction] ****
- Fire and Fury, Michael Wolff [non-fiction] ***
2017:
- Life and Times of Michael K, JM Coetzee [fiction] *****
- Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell [fiction] ****
- Collected Poems, W.B Yeats [poems] *****
- Pachinko, Min Jin Lee [fiction] *****
- Hawaii, James Michener [fiction] ****
- Her Body And Other Parties, Carmen Machado [short stories] ****
- Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe [fiction] *****
- World War Z, Max Brooks [fiction] *****
- Disgrace, JM Coetzee [fiction] *****
- Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Fenyman, Richard Fenyman [memoir] *****
- Water Music, TC Boyle [fiction] ****
- Dark Matter, Blake Crouch [fiction] ***
- Cumulus, Eliot Peper [fiction] ****
- Shogun, James Clavell [fiction] *****
- Hillbilly Elegy, JD Vance [non-fiction] ***
- Free Will, Sam Harris [non-fiction] ****
- Motherless Brooklyn, Jonathan Lethem [fiction] ****
- Elon Musk: SpaceX, Tesla, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future [non-fiction] ****
- Thousand Cranes, Yasunari Kawabata [fiction] *****
- End of Eddy, Edouard Louis [fiction] ***
- Drive, Adam Grant [non-fiction] ****
- The Buried Giant, Kazuo Ishiguro [fiction] ****
- Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes [fiction] *****
- The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseni [fiction] ****
- Seveneves, Neal Stephenson [fiction] *****
- The Sellout, Paul Beatty [fiction] *****
- The Refugees, Viet Nguyen [fiction] ****
- The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz [non-fiction] *****
- Trigger Warning, Neil Gaiman [fiction] ****
- Snow Country, Yasunari Kawabata [fiction] *****
- East of Eden, John Steinbeck [fiction] *****
- A Tale For The Time Being, Ruth Ozeki [fiction] ****
- Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson [fiction] ****
Last updated: June 2019