Books I've Read

Here is a selection of non-fiction books I found interesting.

Mono titles are programming-related books. Outstanding ones are highlighted. Great reads are subtly highlighted.

2025 (39 books)

Learning Systems Thinking by Diana Montalion
PostgreSQL Mistakes and How to Avoid Them by Jimmy Angelakos
The Confident Mind by Nate Zinsser
Effective Kotlin by Marcin Moskala
Product Driven by Matt Watson
Do Story by Bobette Buster
Engineering Management for the Rest of Us by Sarah Drasner
The First 90 Days by Michael D. Watkins
A Master's Secret Whispers by Kapil Gupta
There Is No HOW (Outstanding) by Kapil Gupta
When Things Fall Apart (Great) by Pema Chödrön
The Creative Act by Rick Rubin
Vertical Growth by Michael Bunting and Carl Lemieux
An Elegant Puzzle by Will Larson
The Making of a Manager by Julie Zhuo
Replacing Guilt by Nate Soares
Homo Prospectus (Great) by Martin Seligman, Peter Railton, Roy Baumeister and Chandra Sripada
Hell Yeah or No by Derek Sivers
SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham
Awareness by Anthony de Mello
Stand The F*ck Out by Louis Grenier
Modern LaTeX by Matt Kline
Gentling the Bull by Irmgard Schloegl
Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson
Tiny Experiments by Anne-Laure Le Cunff
The Challenger Sale by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson
Connect by David L. Bradford and Carole Robin
The Socratic Method by Ward Farnsworth
The Do-It-Yourself Lobotomy by Tom Monahan
Simply Said by Jay Sullivan
Soul without Shame by Byron Brown
Inner Work by Robert A. Johnson
The Highly Sensitive Person by Elaine N. Aron
Bending Reality by Victoria Song
Spark for the Fire by Ian Wharton
That One Should Disdain Hardships by Musonius Rufus
How to Make a Video Game All By Yourself by Matt Hackett
Under Saturn's Shadow by James Hollis
Programming in Lua by Roberto Ierusalimschy

2024 (80 books)

Don't Send a Resume by Jeffrey J. Fox
Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller
Rust Brain Teasers by Herbert Wolverson
How to Live an Extraordinary Life by Anthony Pompliano
Writing for Developers by Piotr Sarna and Cynthia Dunlop
Permission to Feel by Marc Brackett
How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish
Refactoring by Martin Fowler
Implementing Lean Software Development by Mary Poppendieck and Tom Poppendieck
The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp and Mark Reiter
The Molecule of More by Daniel Z. Lieberman and Michael E. Long
Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals by Heidi Grant Halvorson
The Gardener and the Carpenter by Alison Gopnik
Information Architecture for the World Wide Web by Peter Morville and Louis Rosenfeld
Co-Intelligence by Ethan Mollick
This Is Strategy by Seth Godin
CSS in Depth (Great) by Keith Grant
Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman
The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman and Michael Bhaskar
Tiny CSS Projects by Martine Dowden and Michael Gearon
The Five Love Languages by Gary D. Chapman
American Kingpin (Great) by Nick Bilton
Never Enough by Andrew Wilkinson
Full Stack Web Development with Remix by Andre Landgraf
The First Minute by Chris Fenning
Understanding Distributed Systems (Great) by Roberto Vitillo
Cashvertising by Drew Eric Whitman
RabbitMQ in Action by Jason Williams
Scalability Rules by Martin L. Abbott and Michael T. Fisher
The Idea Writers (Great) by Teressa Iezzi
The Secret of Selling Anything (Great) by Harry Browne
Gap Selling by Keenan
Organizing Genius by Warren G. Bennis and Patricia Ward Biederman
The Messy Middle by Scott Belsky
A Whack on the Side of the Head (Great) by Roger Von Oech
Get It Done by Ayelet Fishbach
Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky
Wordcraft by Jack Hart
Against Empathy by Paul Bloom
Herding Tigers (Great) by Todd Henry
One Plus One Equals Three by Dave Trott
The Accidental Creative by Todd Henry
Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke
Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
The Catalyst by Jonah Berger
The Power of Fun by Catherine Price
Master of Change (Great) by Brad Stulberg
Procrastination (Great) by Fuschia M. Sirois
Wanting (Great) by Luke Burgis
Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned (Great) by Kenneth O. Stanley and Joel Lehman
Selling the Invisible by Harry Beckwith
The Crux by Richard Rumelt
The Art & Business of Ghostwriting (Great) by Nicolas Cole
Get Better at Anything (Great) by Scott H. Young
Unleashing the Ideavirus by Seth Godin
Accelerate by Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble and Gene Kim
Lean Marketing by Allan Dib
Creative Selection by Ken Kocienda
Insanely Simple by Ken Segall
The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs by Carmine Gallo
Dive Into Systems (Great) by Suzanne J. Matthews, Tia Newhall and Kevin C. Webb
Think Faster, Talk Smarter (Great) by Matt Abrahams
How to Make Sense of Any Mess by Abby Covert
First You Write a Sentence. by Joe Moran
Write to Sell by Andy Maslen
Supercommunicators by Charles Duhigg
Philosophy and the Real World (Great) by Bryan Magee
The Beginning of Infinity (Outstanding) by David Deutsch
Magic Words by Jonah Berger
Think Wrong by John Bielenberg, Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson, Mike Burn and Greg Galle
Slow Productivity by Cal Newport
Team Topologies (Great) by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais
The Art of Explanation (Great) by Ros Atkins
Cloud Native Go by Matthew A. Titmus
Feel-Good Productivity by Ali Abdaal
The Practice of Programming by Brian W. Kernighan and Rob Pike
Tidy First? by Kent Beck
What You Do Is Who You Are by Ben Horowitz
The Art of Taking Action by Gregg Krech
A Small Matter of Programming by Bonnie A. Nardi

2023 (58 books)

Build the Life You Want by Arthur C. Brooks
Chatter by Ethan Kross
Hidden Potential by Adam Grant
The Power Law by Sebastian Mallaby
Designing Data-Intensive Applications (Great) by Martin Kleppmann
Staff Engineer by Will Larson
Hypermedia Systems by Carson Gross
Beyond Effective Go by Corey S. Scott
Practical SQL (Great) by Anthony DeBarros
100 Go Mistakes and How to Avoid Them (Great) by Teiva Harsanyi
The Software Engineer's Guidebook by Gergely Orosz
Writing for Busy Readers (Great) by Todd Rogers and Jessica Lasky-Fink
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind (Great) by Shunryu Suzuki
A Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi
The Status Game by Will Storr
The Anthology of Balaji by Eric Jorgenson and Balaji Srinivasan
How to Change by Katy Milkman
Clear Thinking by Shane Parrish
Work Clean by Dan Charnas
Radical Candor by Kim Scott
The Progress Principle by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer
Quit by Annie Duke
The Elements of Eloquence by Mark Forsyth
Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson
Good Strategy Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt
The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership by Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman and Kaley Klemp
The Song of Significance by Seth Godin
Talent (Great) by Tyler Cowen and Daniel Gross
Seductive Interaction Design by Stephen P. Anderson
Scaling People (Great) by Claire Hughes Johnson
Slack by Tom DeMarco
Kanban by David J. Anderson
The Power of Character Strengths by Ryan M. Niemiec and Robert McGrath
Concurrency in Go by Ada Notrex
The Road Back to You by Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile
The Three Laws of Performance (Outstanding) by Steve Zaffron and Dave Logan
Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy
How to Decide (Great) by Annie Duke
Working Backwards by Colin Bryar and Bill Carr
The Tao of Coaching by Max Landsberg
7 Powers (Great) by Hamilton Helmer
Storytelling with Data by Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic
Your Future Self by Hal Hershfield
Calm Technology by Amber Case
Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans
10x Is Easier Than 2x by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy
TomorrowMind by Gabriella Rosen Kellerman and Martin Seligman
Snow Leopard by Nicolas Cole, Christopher Lochhead and Eddie Yoon
How to Speak Machine by John Maeda
Copywrong to Copywriter by Tait Ischia
High Performance Habits (Great) by Brendon Burchard
Go in Action by Brian Ketelsen, Erik St. Martin and William Kennedy
Self-Compassion (Great) by Kristin Neff
Mastering Go by Mihalis Tsoukalos
Daily Rituals by Mason Currey
The Second Book of the Tao by Stephen Mitchell
Touch Design for Mobile Interfaces by Steven Hoober
The Myth of Normal (Great) by Gabor Maté and Daniel Maté

2022 (87 books)

The Functional Art by Alberto Cairo
Nicely Said by Nicole Fenton and Kate Kiefer Lee
The Brand Gap by Marty Neumeier
Zag by Marty Neumeier
Copywriting (Great) by Gyles Lingwood and Mark Shaw
Creative Doing (Great) by Herbert Lui
Design Unbound: Volume 1 by Ann M. Pendleton-Jullian and John Seely Brown
Designing Interfaces by Jenifer Tidwell
Editing by Design (Great) by Jan V. White and Alex W. White
Orbiting the Giant Hairball (Great) by Gordon MacKenzie
Invent and Wander by Jeff Bezos and Walter Isaacson
Scorecard Marketing by Daniel Priestley
Writing that Works by Kenneth Roman
The Unpublished David Ogilvy by David Ogilvy
Transcend by Scott Barry Kaufman
The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris
The How of Happiness (Great) by Sonja Lyubomirsky
Triggers by Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter
The Personal MBA (Great) by Josh Kaufman
Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? (Great) by Julie Smith
Expert Secrets by Russell Brunson
Hey Whipple, Squeeze This (Great) by Luke Sullivan
Freemium Economics by Eric Benjamin Seufert
Positive Psychology (Great) by Rona Hart
Solving the Procrastination Puzzle by Timothy A. Pychyl
Writing Without Bullshit by Josh Bernoff
Be Your Future Self Now by Dr. Benjamin Hardy
On Revision by William Germano
Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants to Be by Steven Pressfield
The Inner Game of Tennis (Great) by W. Timothy Gallwey
Where Wizards Stay Up Late by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon
The Big Score by Michael S. Malone
100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know about People (Great) by Susan Weinschenk
Blood, Sweat, and Pixels by Jason Schreier
Hatching Twitter by Nick Bilton
The HeART of Laser-Focused Coaching (Great) by Marion Franklin
Co-Active Coaching by Henry Kimsey-House, Karen Kimsey-House, Phillip Sandahl and Laura Whitworth
Developing Coaching Skills by Dietmar Sternad
The Scout Mindset by Julia Galef
Masters of Doom (Great) by David Kushner
The Dream Machine (Outstanding) by M. Mitchell Waldrop
Database Design for Mere Mortals by Michael J. Hernandez
Designing for Behavior Change (Great) by Stephen Wendel
Using SQLite by Jay A. Kreibich
Coaching for Performance by Sir John Whitmore
Design for How People Learn (Great) by Julie Dirksen
Designing Interface Animation by Val Head
Pitch Anything (Great) by Oren Klaff
The Making of Prince of Persia by Jordan Mechner
Product-Led SEO by Eli Schwartz
Build by Tony Fadell
Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte
The Arts of PostgreSQL by Dimitri Fontaine
Everybody Writes (Great) by Ann Handley
How to Write Copy That Sells by Ray Edwards
Emotional Design (Great) by Donald A. Norman
Atomic Habits by James Clear
Drive by Daniel H. Pink
Breakthrough Copywriting by David Garfinkel
Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy
The Choice Factory by Richard Shotton
Copywriting Secrets by Jim Edwards
Creativity by John Cleese
Alchemy (Great) by Rory Sutherland
$100M Offers (Great) by Alex Hormozi
Way of the Wolf by Jordan Belfort
A Self-Help Guide for Copywriters (Great) by Dan B Nelken
The Copywriter's Toolkit by Margo Berman
This Is Marketing by Seth Godin
Constructing the User Interface with Statecharts (Great) by Ian Horrocks
The Dip by Seth Godin
Designing with the Mind in Mind by Jeff Johnson
Sketching User Experiences (Great) by William Buxton
Personal Socrates by Marc Champagne
The Principles of Product Development Flow (Great) by Donald G. Reinertsen
Happier, No Matter What by Tal Ben-Shahar
SQL Pocket Guide by Jonathan Gennick
Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier
Badass: Making Users Awesome (Outstanding) by Kathy Sierra
Escaping the Build Trap by Melissa Perri
Stop Asking Questions by Andrew Warner
The Great CEO Within: The Tactical Guide to Company Building by Matt Mochary
The Jobs To Be Done Playbook by Jim Kalbach
Happy by Derren Brown
It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
The Anthropocene Reviewed (Great) by John Green

2021 (60 books)

The Cold Start Problem by Andrew Chen
The Shape of Design by Frank Chimero
Mind in Motion by Barbara Tversky
The Gap and The Gain by Dr. Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan
The Minimalist Entrepreneur by Sahil Lavingia
Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy
Designing User Interfaces (Great) by Dario Calonaci
101 Things I Learned in Business School by Preis Michael W Frederick Matthew
Move Fast by Jeff Meyerson
Better Web Typography for a Better Web by Matej Latin
101 Things I Learned in Advertising School by Tracy Arrington and Matthew Frederick
101 Things I Learned in Product Design School by Sung Jang, Martin Thaler and Matthew Frederick
Disciplined Entrepreneurship by Bill Aulet
Several Short Sentences About Writing (Outstanding) by Verlyn Klinkenborg
Don't Make Me Think (Great) by Steve Krug
The Elephant in the Brain by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson
The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt
Kanban in Action by Joakim Sunden and Marcus Hammarberg
Lean UX by Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden
Making Work Visible by Dominica DeGrandis
Running Lean (Great) by Ash Maurya
Scrumban by Corey Ladas
On Writing by Stephen King
The Lean Product Playbook by Dan Olsen
The Courage to Be Happy (Great) by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga
The Courage To Be Disliked (Outstanding) by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga
What Great Storytellers Know by Bernadette Jiwa
Make It Stick by Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III and Mark A. McDaniel
Write Useful Books by Rob Fitzpatrick
Personal Kanban by Jim Benson and Tonianne DeMaria Barry
The Referral Engine by John Jantsch
Getting Things Done by David Allen
The Bullet Journal Method (Great) by Ryder Carroll
A Technique for Producing Ideas by James Webb Young
Zero to Sold (Great) by Arvid Kahl
Hacking Growth (Great) by Morgan Brown and Sean Ellis
Inspired by Marty Cagan
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgenson and Naval Ravikant
The Mom Test (Great) by Rob Fitzpatrick
Traction by Justin Mares and Gabriel Weinberg
Junior (Great) by Thomas Kemeny
Hello, Startup (Great) by Yevgeniy Brikman
Contagious by Jonah Berger
The Copywriter's Handbook by Robert W. Bly
The Sovereign Individual (Great) by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg
Debt by David Graeber
Working in Public (Great) by Nadia Eghbal
100 Ways to Improve Your Writing by Gary Provost
How to Read a Book (Great) by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren
Indistractable by Nir Eyal
The Rational Optimist (Great) by Matt Ridley
The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel
Personality Isn't Permanent by Benjamin Hardy
The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley and Jonathan Littman
Creative Confidence (Great) by David Kelley and Tom Kelley
How Innovation Works (Great) by Matt Ridley
Just Listen by Mark Goulston
The Art and Business of Online Writing by Nicolas Cole
Where Good Ideas Come from by Steven Johnson
Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks

2020 (46 books)

Sprint by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky
Atomic design by Brad Frost
Grit by Angela Duckworth
Marketing Made Simple (Great) by Donald Miller and Dr. J.J. Peterson
Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller
How We Change by Dr Ross Ellenhorn
Tao Te Ching (Outstanding) by Lao Tzu
Refactoring UI (Great) by Adam Wathan and Steve Schoger
The Minto Pyramid Principle by Barbara Minto
The Choice (Great) by Edith Eva Eger and Esmé Schwall Weigand
Scientific Advertising by Claude C. Hopkins
A Philosophy of Software Design (Great) by John K. Ousterhout
The Art of War by Sun Tzu
The Selfish Gene (Great) by Richard Dawkins
The Moment of Lift (Outstanding) by Melinda French Gates
Make Time by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky
Ultralearning (Great) by Scott H. Young
The 10X Rule (Great) by Grant Cardone
Made to Stick (Great) by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
Peopleware (Great) by Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister
Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
So Good They Can't Ignore You by Cal Newport
The Mythical Man-Month (Great) by Frederick P. Brooks Jr.
The Soul of A New Machine by Tracy Kidder
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
Value Proposition Design by Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur, Gregory Bernarda and Alan Smith
Everything is Figureoutable by Marie Forleo
Peak by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool
The One Thing by Gary Keller
Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It (Great) by Kamal Ravikant
The Practicing Mind by Thomas M. Sterner
The Hard Thing about Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
The Upside of Stress by Kelly McGonigal
Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke
Can't Hurt Me (Great) by David Goggins
How to Take Smart Notes (Great) by Sönke Ahrens
Range (Great) by David Epstein
Stillness is the Key (Great) by Ryan Holiday
The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy
Purple Cow by Seth Godin
Barking Up the Wrong Tree by Eric Barker
Conscious (Great) by Annaka Harris
Effective Java (Great) by Joshua Bloch
Keep Going (Great) by Austin Kleon
Man's Search For Meaning (Great) by Viktor E. Frankl
The Lion Tracker's Guide To Life (Great) by Boyd Varty

2019 and before (81 books)

Linchpin by Seth Godin
Nonviolent Communication by Marshall B. Rosenberg
The Organized Mind by Daniel J. Levitin
Why We Sleep (Great) by Matthew Walker
A Field Guide To Getting Lost (Great) by Rebecca Solnit
A Guide to the Good Life (Great) by William B Irvine
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
Building Microservices by Sam Newman
Business Model Generation (Great) by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur
Business Model You by Timothy Clark, Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur
Chaos Monkeys (Great) by Antonio Garcia Martinez
Cracking the Coding Interview by Gayle Laakmann McDowell
Discourses and Selected Writings (Great) by Epictetus
Effective Python by Brett Slatkin
Ego is the Enemy (Great) by Ryan Holiday
Essentialism (Great) by Greg McKeown
Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Fluent Python by Luciano Ramalho
Getting Past No by William Ury
Good Prose by Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd
Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests by Steve Freeman and Nat Pryce
Hackers & Painters (Great) by Paul Graham
High Output Management by Andrew S. Grove
How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
Influence by Robert B. Cialdini
Letters from a Stoic (Outstanding) by Seneca
Long Story Short (Great) by Margot Leitman
Managing Oneself by Peter Ferdinand Drucker
Mastery by Robert Greene
Meditations (Outstanding) by Marcus Aurelius
Naked, Drunk, and Writing (Great) by Adair Lara
Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss and Tahl Raz
On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored by Adam Phillips
On the Move (Great) by Oliver Sacks
One Small Step Can Change Your Life by Robert Maurer Ph.D.
Perennial Seller by Ryan Holiday
Pivot (Great) by Jenny Blake
Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby by Sandi Metz
Principles (Outstanding) by Ray Dalio
Prisoner's Dilemma (Great) by William Poundstone
Quiet (Great) by Susan Cain
Radical Acceptance (Great) by Tara Brach
River Out of Eden by Richard Dawkins
Sapiens (Outstanding) by Yuval Noah Harari
Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon
Socrates by Paul Johnson
Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard P. Feynman
The 48 Laws Of Power (Outstanding) by Robert Greene
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Great) by Stephen R. Covey
The Art of Strategy by Avinash K. Dixit and Barry J. Nalebuff
The Daily Stoic (Great) by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
The Effective Executive by Peter F. Drucker
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick M. Lencioni
The Four Agreements (Great) by Don Miguel Ruiz
The Go Programming Language (Great) by Brian W. Kernighan and Alan Donovan
The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
The Lessons of History by Will Durant and Ariel Durant
The Lonely City (Great) by Olivia Laing
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver W. Sacks
The Mastery of Love (Great) by Don Miguel Ruiz
The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday
The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
The Road to Character (Great) by David Brooks
The Rust Programming Language (Great) by Steve Klabnik and Carol Nichols
The Score Takes Care of Itself by Bill Walsh, Steve Jamison and Craig Walsh
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (Great) by Mark Manson
Thinking in Systems by Donella H. Meadows
Thinking, Fast and Slow (Outstanding) by Daniel Kahneman
This Is It (Great) by Alan Watts
When Breath Becomes Air (Outstanding) by Paul Kalanithi
Willpower by Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney
Maxims (Outstanding) by François de La Rochefoucauld
Zero to One (Great) by Thiel Peter Thiel
Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance
Extreme Programming Explained by Kent Beck and Cynthia Andres
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (Great) by Marie Kondo
Clean Code by Robert C. Martin
The Pragmatic Programmer by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas
Test-driven Development by Kent Beck