Main / Bookshelf

Books I’m currently reading

• The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
• Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, James C. Scott
• The Ethics of Money Production, Jörg Guido Hülsmann
• Der Zauberberg, Thomas Mann
• Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind, Tom Holland
• Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, Max Tegmark
• The Man Who Solved The Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution, Gregory Zuckerman

Books I’ve read

This is an incomplete list of books I’ve read (and reread) since 2009 in reverse chronological order. My favorite books are marked with an asterisk.

2019

• The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms, Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• The Elementary Particles, Michel Houellebecq
• Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson
• Permanent Record, Edward Snowden
• Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, William Finnegan (*)
• What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars, Jim Paul and Brendan Moynihan
• Inventing Bitcoin: The Technology Behind The First Truly Scarce and Decentralized Money Explained, Yan Pritzker
• Il barone rampante, Italo Calvino
• Scotland: A Very Short Introduction, Rab Houston
• Bitcoin Billionaires: A True Story of Genius, Betrayal, and Redemption, Ben Mezrich
• Exhalation: Stories, Ted Chiang
• The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger, Marc Levinson
• The Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947, Christopher Clark
• My Struggle: Book 4, Karl Ove Knausgaard
• My Struggle: Book 3, Karl Ove Knausgaard
• Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62, Frank Dikötter
• Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, John Carreyrou
• Kokoro, Natsume Sōseki (*)
• Atomic Habits, James Clear
• Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World–and Why Things Are Better Than You Think, Hans Rosling
• Company of One: Why Staying Small is the Next Big Thing for Business, Paul Jarvis
• The Mastermind: The Hunt for the World’s Most Prolific Criminal, Evan Ratliff
• 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, Jordan B. Peterson

2018

• Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
• Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Norse Mythology, Neil Gaiman
• Cryptoassets: The Innovative Investor’s Guide to Bitcoin and Beyond, Chris Burniske and Jack Tatar
• The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, David Mitchell
• Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson
• The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking, Saifedean Ammous
• Il Gattopardo, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
• The Norman Conquest: A Very Short Introduction, George Garnett
• Portnoy’s Complaint, Philip Roth
• Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue, Ryan Holiday
• Liar’s Poker, Michael Lewis
• Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, Haruki Murakami
• On the Move: A Life, Oliver Sacks
• Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life, Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• Butcher’s Crossing, John Williams
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values, Robert M. Pirsig
• Lacci, Domenico Starnone
• Eleven Kinds of Loneliness, Richard Yates
• Travels in Siberia, Ian Frazier

2017

• The Best We Could Do, Thi Bui
• Narziß und Goldmund, Hermann Hesse (*)
• Pachinko, Min Jin Lee
• Le città invisibili, Italo Calvino
• Inadequate Equilibria: Where and How Civilizations Get Stuck, Eliezer Yudkowsky
• Conquest: Montezuma, Cortés, and the Fall of Old Mexico, Hugh Thomas
• The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro
• ZeroZeroZero, Roberto Saviano
• Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War, Karl Marlantes (*)
• The Three-Body Problem, Cixin Li
• A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age, Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman
• The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead
• The Nix, Nathan Hill
• Peter Camenzind, Hermann Hesse
• My Struggle: Book 2, Karl Ove Knausgaard
• My Struggle: Book 1, Karl Ove Knausgaard
• Demian, Hermann Hesse
• American Pastoral, Philip Roth
• Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, Yuval Noah Harari
• No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy
• Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
• Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel, Rolf Potts
• Stories of your Life and Others, Ted Chiang (*)
• Snow Country, Yasunari Kawabata
• Stoner, John Williams (*)
• The Penguin History of New Zealand, Michael King
• Siddharta, Hermann Hesse (*)
• Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future, Peter Thiel
• Tools of Titans, Tim Ferriss
• The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew, Lee Kuan Yew
• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harari
• American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis
• Alan Turing: The Enigma, Andrew Hodges
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz
• The Road, Cormac McCarthy

2016

• Das Versprechen, Friedrich Dürrenmatt
• Stiller, Max Frisch
• Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, Calvin Newport
• The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
• Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money, Nathaniel Popper
• So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love, Calvin Newport
• To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
• Das Glasperlenspiel, Hermann Hesse (*)

2015

• Reise an den Rand des Universums, Urs Widmer
• Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt, Michael Lewis
• East of Eden, John Steinbeck (*)
• Cannery Row, John Steinbeck
• The Manipulated Man, Esther Vilar
• The Opposing Shore, Julien Gracq
• Herzog, Saul Bellow
• Von Männern, die keine Frauen haben, Haruki Murakami

2014

• Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
• Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates
• Stoner, John Williams (*)
• Asia’s Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific, Robert D. Kaplan
• Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl
• Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
• Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder, Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• Im Westen nichts Neues, Erich Maria Remarque
• Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson
• A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
• Women, Charles Bukowsky
• Der Verschollene, Franz Kafka

2013

• Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet, Julian Assange
• Understanding Power, Noam Chomsky
• Il deserto dei tartari, Dino Buzzati (*)
• Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie
• Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
• Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
• Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami
• Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck (*)
• Siddharta, Hermann Hesse (*)
• Ghetto at the Center of the World: Chungking Mansions, Hong Kong, Gordon Mathews
• Der Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse (*)

2012

• Drachenläufer, Khaled Hosseini
• Il cimitero di Praga, Umberto Eco
• Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, Susan Cain
• The 4-Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss
• The $100 Startup, Chris Guillebeau
• The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
• 1Q84 Book 3, Haruki Murakami
• 1Q84 Book 2, Haruki Murakami
• 1Q84 Book 1, Haruki Murakami
• No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy
• L’étranger, Albert Camus
• Ich bin dann mal weg: Meine Reise auf dem Jakobsweg, Hape Kerkeling
• Die Geschichte der Schweiz: Von den Anfängen bis heute, Volker Reinhardt
• O Banqueiro Anarquista, Fernando Pessoa
• Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age, Douglas Rushkoff
• On The Road, Jack Kerouac

2011

• The Hobbit, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
• Into The Wild, Jon Krakauer
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
• Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
• Stay Small: A Developer’s Guide to Launching a Startup, Rob Walling
• The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing, Benjamin Graham
• A Mathematician’s Apology, G.H. Hardy
• Civil Disobedience, Henry David Thoreau
• Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, Ayn Rand
• I am a Strange Loop, Douglas R. Hofstadter
• Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius
• Notes from the Underground, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts, Joseph von Eichendorff
• The Law, Frédéric Bastiat
• Animal Farm, George Orwell
• Alles Leben ist Problemlösen, Karl R. Popper
• From the Earth to the Moon, Jules Verne
• Poker, Phil Gordon
• Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets, Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, Tim Wu
• Daode Jing, Sunzi
• Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne
• From Dictatorship to Democracy, Gene Sharp
• Quantitative Trading: How to Build Your Own Algorithmic Trading Business, Ernest P. Chan
• Shop Class as Soulcraft, Matthew B. Crawford
• Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell
• Soros on Soros, George Soros

2010

• Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, Steven Levy
• Getting Real: The Smarter, Faster, Easier Way to Build a Successful Web Application, Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson
• Rework, Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson
• A Mathematician Plays The Stock Market, John Allen Paulos
• Andorra, Max Frisch
• Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, Edwin Lefèvre
• Flatland, Edwin Abbott Abbott
• Unterm Rad, Hermann Hesse
• Utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill
• Fortune’s Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street, William Poundstone
• Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
• La giara, Luigi Pirandello
• A Concise Guide to Macroeconomics, David A. Moss
• The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare
• The Elements of Style, William Strunk Jr., E. B. White
• The Prince, Niccolò Machiavelli
• Creative Capital: Georges Doriot and the Birth of Venture Capital, Spencer E. Ante
• Othello, William Shakespeare
• Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World, Liaquat Ahamed
• The Cuckoo’s Egg, Cliff Stoll
• Rework, Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson
• Liar’s Poker, Michael Lewis
• Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution, Francis Fukuyama
• The Art of War, Sun Tzu
• Triumph of the Optimists: 101 Years of Global Investment Returns, Elroy Dimson, Paul Marsh, Mike Staunton
• Discourse on the Method, René Descartes
• Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
• The Battle for Investment Survival, Gerald M. Loeb
• Betrachtung, Franz Kafka
• The Art of Contrary Thinking, Humphrey B. Neill
• Ecce homo: Wie man wird, was man ist, Friedrich Nietzsche
• Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier, Suelette Dreyfus
• Essays on Political Economy, Frédéric Bastiat
• The Greatest Trade Ever: The Behind-the-Scenes Story of How John Paulson Defied Wall Street and Made Financial History, Gregory Zuckerman
• The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, Michael Lewis
• Halliburton’s Army, Pratap Chatterjee
• Homo Faber, Max Frisch
• Der Richter und sein Henker, Friedrich Dürrenmatt
• A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World, William J. Bernstein
• The Law, Frédéric Bastiat
• The Heretics of Finance, Andrew W. Lo, Jasmina Hasanhodzic
• The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• You Are Not a Gadget, Jaron Lanier
• Lord of the Flies, William Golding
• Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System–and Themselves, Andrew Ross Sorkin
• Don’t Just Roll The Dice: A Usefully Short Guide to Software Pricing, Neil Davidson
• Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days, Jessica Livingston

2009

• The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels
• Status Anxiety, Alain De Botton
• The Gambler, Fyodor Dostoevsky
• Nerds on Wall Street, David J. Leinweber
• Psychologie der Massen, Gustave Le Bon
• Marcovaldo, Italo Calvino
• Makers, Cory Doctorow
• The Cash Nexus, Niall Ferguson
• Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson
• The Art of Learning, Josh Waitzkin
• Hegemony or Survival, Noam Chomsky
• Dantons Tod, Georg Büchner
• The Unincorporated Man, Dani Kollin, Eytan Kollin
• Der Tod in Venedig, Thomas Mann
• Tribes, Seth Godin
• The Education of a Speculator, Victor Niederhoffer
• Shop Class as Soulcraft, Matthew B. Crawford
• Das Abenteuer der Erkenntnis, Jürgen A. Alt
• Der Prozeß, Franz Kafka
• Die Verwandlung, Franz Kafka
• Nineteen Eighty Four, George Orwell
• The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe
• Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins
• Kleider machen Leute, Gottfried Keller
• Herr und Knecht, Leo N. Tolstoi
• The Mind of the Mathematician, Michael Fitzgerald, Ioan James
• Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
• Practical Speculation, Victor Niederhoffer, Laurel Kenner
• The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
• The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life, Alice Schroeder
• Fortune’s Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street, William Poundstone
• The Art of War, Sun Tzu
• A Demon of Our Own Design, Richard Bookstaber
• The Misbehavior of Markets, Benôit Mandelbrot
• Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell
• Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, Edwin Lefèvre
• My Life as a Quant, Emanuel Derman