I try to read 20-30 books per year. Inspired by [[How to Read a Book, Charles Van Doren, Mortimer J. Adler]], I try to highlight and annotate it heavily, especially for non-fiction books. Traditionally, the final "summary" was a hodgepodge of bullet points that are decipherable only by myself. With this site, I'm going to try to shape up one summary every week, and publish it externally. Feel free to shoot me a note if you have a favorite that you want to nudge me towards summarizing! ## Published Summaries * 🔥 [[Book Summaries/The Death of Ivan Ilych, Leo Tolstoy|The Death of Ivan Ilych, Leo Tolstoy]] * ⭐️ [[The Lessons of History, Will and Ariel Durant]] * [[What I Talk about When I Talk about Running, Haruki Murakami]] * 🔥 [[Human Compatible, Stuart Russell]] * 🔥 [[On Writing Well, William Zinsser]] * ⭐️ [[The Elements of Eloquence, Matt Forsyth]] * 🔥 [[Endurance, Alfred Lansing]] * ⭐️ [[Creative Selection, Ken Kocienda]] * [[Gut Feelings, Greg Gigerenzer]] * 🔥🔥 [[The WEIRDest People in the World, Joseph Henrich]] * ⭐️ [[The Great CEO Within, Matt Mochary]] * [[The Shortest History of England, James Hawes]] * ⭐️[[The Story of the Human Language, John McWhorter (Great Courses)]] * ⭐️[[Book Summaries/The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey]] * [[Nine Lives, Aimen Dean]] ## All Summaries ### 2025 * [[Goodbye to Berlin, Christopher Isherwood]] * 🔥 [[Book Summaries/The Death of Ivan Ilych, Leo Tolstoy]] * [[I am a Strange Loop, Douglas Hofstadter]] * [[Rebbe, Joseph Telushkin]] * [[Meditations for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman]] * ⭐️ [[The Lessons of History, Will and Ariel Durant]] * [[What I Talk about When I Talk about Running, Haruki Murakami]] * The Surrender Experiment, Michael Singer * [[Be Slightly Evil, Venkatesh Rao]] * 🔥 [[On Writing Well, William Zinsser]] * [[Nine Lives, Aimen Dean]] * [[Book Summaries/Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel|Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel]] * Table for Two, Amor Towles ### 2024 * Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue, John McWorther * [[The Shortest History of England, James Hawes]] * ⭐️ Transitions, William Bridges * Hail Mary, Andy Weir * ⭐️ Hold on to Your Kids, Gabor Mate - Waking Up, Sam Harris - Outlive, Peter Attia - The Coming Wave, Michael Bhaskar and Mustafa Suleyman - 🔥 [[Endurance, Alfred Lansing]] - The Song of Achilles (Enhanced Edition), - Tress of the Emerald Sea, Brandon Sanderson - Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, Brandon Sanderson - ⭐️ East of Eden, John Steinbeck - Deep Learning, Ian Goodfellow, Yoshua Bengio, and Aaron Courville - ⭐️ Mindfulness - Circe - Silo series - Wool - Shift - Dust - 7 Powers, Hamilton Helmer - The Light Over Lake Como - Scattered Minds, Gabor Mate - Who, Geoff Smart ### 2023 - 🔥 Elon Musk, Walter Isaacson - Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow - A Thousand Brains - Atlas of the Heart, Brene Brown - ⭐️ [[Creative Selection, Ken Kocienda]] - What Is ChatGPT Doing ... And Why Does It Work? - The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien (reread + Appendices) - Checklist Manifesto, Atul Ghawande - The Decision Book - Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-Earth - Continuous Discovery Habits, Teresa Torres - The Silmarillion (reread) - Escaping the Build Trap, Melissa Perri - ⭐️ [[The Great CEO Within, Matt Mochary]] - Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse - ⭐️ Intuitive Eating, Elyse Resch and Evelyn Tribole - Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking, Daniel C. Dennett - No Rules Rules, Reed Hastings - Four thousand weeks, Oliver Burkeman - How Do You Live? - The Language Instict, Steven Pinker ### 2022 - 1491, Charles C. Mann - Don't Make Me Think, Revisited, Steve Krug - The Burned-Out Blogger's Guide to PR, Jason Kincaid - The Bhagavad Gita, Eknath Easwaran Ed. - 🔥🔥 [[The WEIRDest People in the World, Joseph Henrich]] - Essentialism, Greg McKeown - Talking back, talking black, John McWorther - The Language Hoax, John McWorther - Amp it Up, Frank Slootman - How to Change Your Mind, Michael Pollan - Darwin's Cathedral, David Sloan Wilson - The Three-Body Problem, Cixin Liu and Ken Liu - The Dark Forest, Cixin Liu - Death's End, Cixin Liu - Hooked, Nir Eyal - Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor E. Frankl - The Mantram Handbook, Eknath Easwaran - The Dhammapada, Eknath Easwaran Ed. ### 2021 - How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk - The Long Game, Mitch McConnell - Promised Land, Barack Obama - The Lean Startup, Eric Ries - Liar's Poker, Michael Lewis - Photo Organizing Made Easy, Cathi Nelson - Why We Sleep, Matthew Walker - 🔥 The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt - ⭐️ When Breath Becomes Air, Paul Kalanithi - [[Gut Feelings, Greg Gigerenzer]] - Foundation, Isaac Asimov - Foundation and Empire, Isaac Asimov - 🔥 Antifragile, Nassim Nicholas Taleb - Innovation Stack, Jack McKelvey - ⭐️ [[The Elements of Eloquence, Matt Forsyth]] - Why We Get Mad, Ryan Martin - Utopia for Realists, Rutger Bregman - ⭐️ Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson - Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson - The Everything Store, Brad Stone ### 2020 - 24-6 Giving up Screens One Day a Week to Get More Time, Creativity, and Connection, Tiffany Shlain - 🔥 Human Compatible, Stuart Russell - How to Read a Book, Charles Van Doren, Mortimer J. Adler - How to Live a Good Life, Massimo Pigliucci, Skye Cleary, and Daniel Kaufman - Obviously Awesome, April Dunford - ⭐️ Thinking in Systems, Donella H. Meadows - Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihayli - 🔥Seeing Like a State, James Scott(annotated) - ⭐️How to Build a Car, Adrian Newey - Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates - ⭐️Never Split the Difference, Chris Voss - ⭐️Thinking in Bets, Annie Duke - To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee - Rosie Project, Graeme Simsion - Trillion Dollar Coach, Eric Schmidt - ⭐️Radical Candor, Kim Scott - 🔥Creativity Inc., Ed Catmull - Insanely Simple, Ken Segall - ⭐️The Emperor of All Maladies, Siddharta Mukherjee - How Will You Measure Your Life, Clayton Christensen - The Mom Test, Rob Fitzpatrick - Unfamiliar Fishes, Sarah Vowell - ⭐️ On the Road, Jack Kerouac - Enchiridion, Epictetus - Eddie Would Go, Stuart Coleman - The Ride of a Lifetime, Robert Iger - 🔥The Design of Everyday Things, Don Norman ### 2019 - ⭐️[[The Story of the Human Language, John McWhorter (Great Courses)]] - Innovator's Dilemma, Clayton Christensen - First 90 Days, Michael Watkins - Make Time, Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky - Lee Kuan Yew, Grand Master's Insights - Someone to run with, David Grossman - Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut - Indistractable, Nir Eyal - Ultralearning, Scott Young - Impro, Keith Johnstone - ⭐️Season of the Witch, David Talbot - ⭐️Meditations, Marcus Aurelius - The Federalist Papers, Publius - Hilbilly Elegy, JD Vance - ⭐️The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey - Exodus, Richard Friedman - ⭐️ Shoe Dog, Phil Knight - ⭐️ Deep Work, Cal Newport - Educated, Tara Westover - Atomic Habits, James Clear - Range, David Epstein - Who Wrote The Bible, Richard Friedman - Homo Deus, Yuval Noah Harari - Stories of Your Life and Others, Ted Chiang - Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni - Adventures in Memory, Hilde and Ylva Østby - ⭐️ Ben Franklin's Biography, Walter Isaacson - How to Raise an Adult, Julie Lythcott-Haims - Meetings Suck, Cameron Herold - We Need to Talk, Celeste Headlee - ⭐️The Order of Time, Carlo Rovelli - Subscribed, Tien Zhuo - Getting Things Done, David Allen - Among the Thugs, Bill Buford - 🔥 Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari - LeanGains Method, Martin Berkhan - Capitalism in America, Alan Greenspan ### 2018 - American Gods, 'Neil Gaiman' - Brain Rules, John Medina - ⭐️ The Kites, Romain Gary - The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Marie Kondo - ⭐️ Principles, Ray Dalio - 🔥 Inspired, Marty Cagan - Made to Stick, Chip Heath, Dan Heath - Dataclysm, Christian Rudder - ⭐️ Roadside Picnic, Sturgatsky Brothers - Influence, Robert Cialdini - Damn Right! Charlie Munger Biography, Janet Lowe - 🔥Guide to the Good Life, William Irvine - Blessing of a Skinned Knee, Wendy Mogel - Capital, Thomas Pikkety - The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz - Calorie Myth, Jonathan Bailor ## Future reading list Book Reading List (Anti-Library)