2019 Reading List

As a distance runner, I spend a lot of time on my feet. Some hours are spent talking with friends, others enjoying the scenery. For the majority of the time though, I’m listening to audiobooks.

Here’s a list of books I read this year. Feel free to reach out to me for personal recommendations, or check out last year’s list for more good reads. Speaking of which… you can follow me on Goodreads for up to date book ratings.

1. The Book Thief, Markus Zusak (recommended)
2. Fooled by Randomness, Nassim Taleb (recommended)
3. Becoming, Michelle Obama (recommended)
4. The Road to Character, David Brooks
5. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Douglas Adams
6. Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble, Daniel Lyons
7. Thanks, Obama: My Hopey, Changey White House Years, David Litt (recommended)
8. The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World, Brad Stone
9. Who Thought This Was a Good Idea?: And Other Questions You Should Have Answers to When You Work in the White House, Alyssa Stone
10. Dreams From My Father, Barack Obama (recommended)
11. Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams, Matthew Walker (recommended)
12. The Golden State, Lydia Kiesling (recommended)
13. Made to Stick, Chip Heath and Dan Heath
14. Moneyball, Michael Lewis
15. Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World, Mark Kurlansky
16. The Travels of A T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade, Pietra Rivoli (recommended)
17. Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World, Mark Miodownik (recommended)
18. The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz
19. Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe, Roger McNamee (recommended)
20. Meditations, Marcus Aurelius (recommended)
21. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales, Oliver Sacks (recommended)
22. The Overstory, Richard Powers (recommended)
23. The Start-Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career, Reid Hoffman
24. Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, Anand Giridharadas (recommended)
25. K2: Life and Death on the World’s Most Dangerous Mountain, David Roberts and Ed Viesturs
26. The Passion Paradox: A Guide to Going All In, Finding Success, and Discovering the Benefits of an Unbalanced Life, Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness (recommended)
27. 26 Marathons: What I Learned About Faith, Identity, Running, and Life from My Marathon Career, Meb Keflezighi (recommended)
28. AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order, Kai-Fu Lee (recommended)
29. Circe, Madeline Miller (recommended)
30. Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It, Chris Voss (recommended)
31. Siddhartha, Herman Hesse (recommended)
32. Less, Andrew Sean Greer
33. The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb
34. How to American: An Immigrant’s Guide to Disappointing Your Parents, Jimmy O. Yang
35. When Breath Becomes Air, Paul Kalanithi (recommended)
36. Things a Little Bird Told Me: Confessions of the Creative Mind, Biz Stone
37. Let My People Go Surfing, Yvon Chouinard
38. Deep Work, Cal Newport (recommended)
39. Exhalation: Stories, Ted Chiang (recommended)
40. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies, Jared Diamond
41. The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls (recommended)
42. Late Bloomers: The Power of Patience in a World Obsessed with Early Achievement, Rich Karlgaard
43. How Bad Do You Want It: Mastering the Psychology of Mind over Muscle, Matt Fitzgerald (recommended)
44. The Tao of Pooh, Benjamin Hoff (recommended)
45. Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely (recommended)
46. Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, David Epstein
47. If Our Bodies Could Talk: A Guide to Operating and Maintaining a Human Body, James Hamblin (recommended)
48. A Life Without Limits: A World Champion’s Journey, Chrissie Wellington (recommended)
49. Naturally Tan, Tan France
50. Algorithms to Live By, Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths
51. Number the Stars, Louis Lowry (recommended)
52. Journey to the Center of the Earth, Jules Verne (recommended)
53. The Little Book of the Hidden People: Twenty Stories of Elves from Icelandic Folklore, Alda Sigmundsdottir
54. Being Mortal, Atul Gawande (recommended)
55. Conspiracy, Ryan Holiday (recommended)
56. The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, George Packer (recommended)
57. All You Can Ever Know: A Memoir, Nicole Chung
58. The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller (recommended)
59. Let Your Mind Run: A Memoir of Thinking My Way to Victory, Deena Kastor
60. Tip of the Iceberg: My 3,000-Mile Journey Around Wild Alaska, the Last Great American Frontier, Mark Adams
61. Anatomy of Terror: From the Death of Bin Laden to the Rise of the Islamic State, Ali Soufan
62. Dune, Frank Herbert (recommended)
63. Dune Messiah, Frank Herbert
64. The Testaments, Margaret Atwood
65. Stillness is the Key, Ryan Holiday (recommended)
66. So Good They Can’t Ignore You, Cal Newport (recommended)
67. The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming, David Wallace-Wells (recommended)
68. Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin (recommended)
69. Super Pumped: The Battle For Uber, Mike Isaac (recommended)
70. The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway (recommended)
71. Off to Be The Wizard, Scott Meyer
72. Hiking with Nietsche, John Kaag
73. On Intelligence, Jeff Hawkins (recommended)
74. The Man Who Solved the Market, Gregory Zuckerman (recommended)
75. A Dream About Lightning Bugs, Ben Folds
76. Ghost Month, Ed Lin (recommended)