2018-2019 Master Reading List

Master Reading List 2018-2019

These are the books I’ve read (mostly listened to) over the past couple of years. I’m slowly going back and writing down my thoughts on them just to synthesize all the information. A lot of the Great Courses material is widely varied, and I’m doing my best to summarize that as well. I’ve bolded and highlighted my favorites and most life changing reads/listens.

Thoughts on Reading vs Listening

I’ve been mostly listening to books for a couple years, mostly because my alone time is usually walking the dog and commuting to work, which has been a walk or short bike ride for me since we moved to DC five years ago. I used to feel I needed to qualify that I had not really “read” a book but had “listened” to it, but stopped making as much of a distinction over time.

However, since going back to being an almost full time student, I do think there are some differences, for me at least, between reading a page and listening to information. I tend to hold onto information I’ve read on a page longer than information I’ve just heard.

Realizing I’m losing a lot of the information I’ve received from listening, I want to go back while things are still mostly fresh (I remember the key take aways from most of these reads) and attempt to write down my thoughts, synthesizing the information a bit more than I had when just listening.

I’m also interested in talking to more people about what I’ve been reading. Though I know most people won’t care, by at least putting something out there, I’m inviting conversations that might not otherwise take place.

Fiction, NonFiction, My General Interests

For a long time I’ve been primarily interested in history, political history, philosophy, mythology, business, and more recently math and technology. I’ve had no interest in fiction, and haven’t read fiction for quite a while. I believe I’m going to start back into fiction soon, maybe by the end of this year.

There is no fiction on this list.

The List

I’ll update the items on this list with links as I finish write ups. These are in no particular order, I had a list somewhere else and copied it and then added more recent  reads and things I missed from earlier. I’ll probably start with the bolded items and fill in the others.

  1. Shoe Dog
  2. Significant Figures
  3. The Master Algorithm
  4. Digital Gold
  5. The Truth About Your Future
  6. The Sale of a Lifetime
  7. The 4 Hour Workweek
  8. Little Black Book of Innovation
  9. The Conversion Code
  10. Built To Sell
  11. The Automatic Customer
  12. History’s Great Military Blunders
  13. Cultural Literacy for Religion
  14. David Foster Wallace Reader
  15. Mindset: New Psychology of Success
  16. 7 Principles for Making Marriage Work
  17. Critical Business Skills for Success
  18. Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It
  19. Building a Story Brand
  20. Thinking, Fast and Slow (reread)
  21. Disciplined Entrepreneurship
  22. Lean Startup
  23. Little History of Economics
  24. Understanding Democracy in America
  25. Economics Lecture Series
  26. Negotiating the Best Deal
  27. How the Stock Market Works
  28. Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economics Die
  29. Square and Tower
  30. Coming Apart
  31. The Right Stuff
  32. Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers
  33. The Persian Empire
  34. Persian Fire
  35. World War 1: The Great War
  36. A Peace to End All Peace
  37. Myth in Human History
  38. Utopia and Terror in the 20th Century
  39. Building a Story Brand
  40. Writing Great Fiction
  41. Art of Storytelling
  42. The Fall of the Pagans and the Origins of Medieval Christianity
  43. Norse Mythology
  44. Mythology by Edith Hamilton
  45. Mythology Collection: Greek, Celtic, Norse, Japanese, Hindu, Chinese, Mesopotamian and Egyptian Mythology
  46. Dreamland
  47. Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America
  48. Drug Dealer, MD
  49. Hillbilly Elegy
  50. Factfulness
  51. Fentanyl, Inc.
  52. The Radical King
  53. Fed Up: Emotional Labor, Women, and the Way Forward
  54. White Fragility
  55. Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boy’s Club of Silicon Valley
  56. How to Be Less Stupid About Race
  57. How to Be An Antiracist
  58. Between the World and Me
  59. We Were Eight Years in Power