Favourite Books
I read a lot. This page collects the absolute best books I’ve read: the ones that I’d recommend unreservedly, defined how I think about certain subjects, or became emotional touchstones.
Fiction & Poetry
- Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych; Anna Karenina
- Anne Carson, The Beauty of the Husband; The Glass Essay
- John Berger, Here Is Where We Meet
- J.D. Salinger, Seymour: An Introduction & Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenter; Franny & Zooey
- Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts
- A.S. Byatt, Possession
- William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven & Hell, Auguries of Innocence, etc.
- Anton Chekhov, Stories esp. Gooseberries/Man in a Case/About Love
- Fyodor Dostoevsky, parts of The Brothers Karamazov
- W.G. Sebald, Austerlitz, Rings of Saturn, The Emigrants
- Franz Kafka, Stories esp. The Hunger Artist
- Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient
- Karl Ove Knausgaard, My Struggle Books I and II
- TS Eliot, major poems esp. Four Quartets
- Adrienne Rich, The Dream of a Common Language
- Shakespeare, major plays esp. King Lear, Macbeth, The Tempest
- J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace; Elizabeth Costello; Summertime
- Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials
- Thomas Gardner, Poverty Creek Journal
- Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones
- Zadie Smith, White Teeth
Non-Fiction + Other
- Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building; The Nature of Order
- Larissa Macfarquhar, Strangers Drowning + her New Yorker profiles, particularly of Derek Parfit & Ittetsu Nemoto
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Joan Didion, certain essays esp. On Keeping a Notebook, Goodbye To All That
- Richard Feynman, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!; Lectures on Physics
- Daniel Ingram, Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha
- Stephen Booth, Precious Nonsense
- Jane Jacobs, Death and Life of American Cities
- Haruki Murakami, Underground
- Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons
- The Paris Review Interviews, I & II
- Harold Pinter, Betrayal
- M. Mitchell Waldrop, The Dream Machine
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Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations; Blue & Brown Books
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David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity
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Nassim Taleb, Antifragile; The Bed of Procrustes
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Ray Carney, Cassavetes on Cassavetes
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Ray Dalio, Principles
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The Gospels
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Paul Cronin, Herzog on Herzog
- Keith Johnstone, Impro
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Andy Grove, High Output Management
- Douglas Hofstadter, Godel, Escher, Bach
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Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering
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Paul Graham, Essays