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Book Recs

I like to read. I try to diversify the subject matter to fully utilize my time on Earth by reading the good work of my fellow Earthlings, and accruing knowledge to better understand how the world works. 

This is a list of the books I highly recommend:

Nonfiction

- Simply Einstein: Relativity Demystified, Richard Wolfson

- The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, Jonathan Haidt

- Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams, Matthew Walker

- The Epigenetics Revolution: How Modern Biology is Rewriting our Understanding of Genetics,
Disease and Inheritance, Nessa Carey

- The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood, James Gleick

- What is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics, Adam Becker

- Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman

- The Little Book of Talent, Daniel Coyle

- The Demon-Haunted World, Ann Druyan and Carl Sagan

- Business Adventures, John Brooks

- When Breath Becomes Air, Paul Kalanithi

- Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body's Most Underrated Organ, Giulia Enders

- How Physics Makes Us Free, Jenann Ismael

- Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed To Reverse Global Warming

- Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air , David J.C MacKay [the author has made it freely available]

- Merchants of Doubt, Erik Conway and Naomi Oreskes

- How Children Succeed, Paul Tough

- Desert Solitaire, Edward Abbey

- The Clock of Long Now, Steward Brand

- Keynes Hayek: The Clash That Defined Modern Economics, Nicholas Wapshott

- Quantum Computing since Democritus, Scott Aaronson

- Never Split the Difference, Christopher Voss and Tahl Raz

- The Psychology of Money, Morgan Housel

- Shoe Dog, Phil Knight

- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot

- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harari

- Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of The Internet, Katie Hafner

- Freakonomics: A Rogue Economics Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, Steven D. Levitt

- The Book of Tea, Kakuzo Okakura

- Our Moon has Blood Clots, Ajay Pandita

- Principles, Ray Dalio

- The War of Art, Steven Pressfield

- Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman, Richard Feynman

- Clearing the Air: The Beginning and the End of Air Pollution, Tim Smedley

- How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking -- for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers, Sonke Ahrens

- A Moveable Feast, Ernst Hemingway

- A Discourse on the Method, Rene Descartes

- The Intel Trinity, Michael Malone

- The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Information, Jon Gertner

- Thirty Years that Shook Physics, George Gamow

- An Introduction to General System's Thinking, Gerald Weinberg

- Why Nuclear Power has been a Flop, Jack Devanney [the author has made it freely available]

- Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street, Sheelah Kolhatkar

- Figuring, Maria Popova

- The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution, Gregory Zuckerman

- Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath, Ted Koppel

Fiction

- The Waves, Virginia Woolf 

- A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf

- The Paris Hours, Alex George

- Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf

- Everything I Never Told You, Celeste Ng

- World War Z, Max Brooks

- Notes from Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky

- Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky

- Call Me By Your Name, Andre Aciman

- Dept. of Speculation

- Idaho, Emily Ruskovich

- A Single Man, Christopher Isherwood

- Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov

- Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

- The Plague, Albert Camus

- 1984, George Orwell (and also read all his essays)

- To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf

- The Midnight Library, Matt Haig

- The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood

- The Three-Body Problem, Liu Cixin

- 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke

- The Death of Ivan Ilych, Leo Tolstoy

- The Book Thief, Markus Zusak

- The Gods Themselves, Isaac Asimov

- The Overcoat, Nikolai Gogol

- Dubliners, James Joyce

- The Veldt, Ray Bradbury (not a book, per se)

- The Silent Patient, Alex Michaelides

- Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen 

- Idgah, Munshi Premchand

- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams


If you know a kid, gift them:

- The Wednesday Wars, Gary D. Schmidt 

- The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin

- The Golden Hour Series, Maiya Williams 

- The 39 Clues, multiple authors

- A Series of Unfortunate Events, Lemony Snicket

- The Percy Jackson series, Rick Riordan

- The Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling

- The Dragon Keeper series, Carole Wilkinson

- Bud, Not Buddy, Christopher Paul Curtis

- The Artemis Fowl Series, Eoin Colfer

- The Candy Shop War, Brandon Mull







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