Books 2020-2023
In honor of Matt’s 40th birthday, and per his request, I’m giving him a blog post as a gift.––And I’m blogging again for the first time in a while! I liked his idea a few weeks ago to publish all his favorite books from the past few years. I, too, neglected to publish yearly book lists these last four years so, here goes. (Absolute favorites have an asterisk * next to them).
2020 & 2021 (I can’t remember now which ones were which years)
- The Road* – Cormac McCarthy – how funny I started January 2020 with this book first
- The White Darkness* – David Grann
- A Man for All Markets – Edward Thorp
- Killers of the Flower Moon* – David Grann
- The Ride of a Lifetime – Robert Iger
- The Uninhabitable Earth – David Wallace-Wells
- Bitter Brew – William Knoedelseder
- Measure What Matters – John Doerr
- The Coddling of the American Mind* – Jonathan Haidt
- Hackers – Steven Levy
- The Brain Fog Fix – Mike Dow
- The Great Influenza* – John M. Barry
- Chaos Monkeys – Antonio García Martínez
- Smarter Faster Better – Charles Duhigg
- Brunelleschi’s Dome* – Ross King
- The Innocent Man* – John Grisham
- The First Tycoon* – T.J. Stiles
- The Square and the Tower – Niall Ferguson
- The Revenge of Analog – David Sax
- The Year Without Pants – Scott Berkun
- The Overstory* – Richard Powers
- How We Got to Now – Steven Johnson
- What I Talk About When I Talk About Running* – Haruki Murakami
- The (Mis)Behavior of Markets – Benoit B. Mandelbrot
- Make Your Bed – William H. McRaven
- The Plaza* – Julie Satow
- The Idea Factory* – Jon Gertner
- The Inevitable – Kevin Kelly
- Empire of Pain* – Patrick Radden Keefe
- Valley of Genius* – Adam Fischer – loved the first-hand storytelling feel
- Red Notice – Bill Browder
- Billion Dollar Whale – Tom Wright
- Radical Candor – Kim Malone Scott
- Black Edge – Sheelah Kolhatkar
- On Writing* – Stephen King
- The Space Barons – Christian Davenport
- Outline – Rachel Cusk
- Calypso – David Sedaris
- Travels with Charley* – John Steinbeck – one of the two reasons why our camper van is called “Rocinante”
- A Random Walk Down Wall Street – Burton G. Malkiel
- It Starts with the Egg – Rebecca Fett
- Thinking in Bets – Annie Duke
- The Library Book – Susan Orlean
- The Devil in the White City* – Erik Larson
- Cribsheet – Emily Oster
- Circe* – Madeline Miller – just an excellent retelling; I always recommend this one
- Born Standing Up – Steve Martin
- Say Nothing* – Patrick Radden Keefe – like a Grann or Remnick, I think I would pick up and read any of his works
- The Fire Next Time* – James Baldwin
- The Fragile Earth* – David Remnick
- No One Is Talking About This – Patricia Lockwood
- How to Avoid a Climate Disaster – Bill Gates
- Working in Public – Nadia Eghbal
- Blood and Oil – Bradley Hope
- No Rules Rules – Reed Hastings
- Is This Anything? – Jerry Seinfeld
- The Psychology of Money – Morgan Housel
- The Snowball* – Alice Schroeder
- Great Society* – Amity Shlaes
- No-Drama Discipline – Daniel Siegel
- The Year of Magical Thinking* – Joan Didion
- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas* – Hunter S. Thompson
- Driven – Alex Davies
- Empire* – Donald L. Bartlett
- Skunk Works* – Ben R. Rich
- In the Garden of Beasts – Erik Larson
- Leonardo da Vinci – Walter Isaacson
2022
- The Doors of Perception* – Aldous Huxley
- Nausea* – Jean-Paul Sartre
- The Spy and the Traitor* – Ben Macintyre
- Born to Run – Christopher McDougall
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance – Robert M. Pirsig
- Men Explain Things to Me* – Rebecca Solnit
- What If? – Randall Monroe
- 1776 – David McCullough
- Snow Crash* – Neal Stephenson
- Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World – Jack Weatherford
- Greenlights – Matthew McConaughey
- Catch and Kill – Ronan Farrow
- Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card
- Between the World and Me* – Ta-Nehisi Coates
- The Code Breaker – Walter Isaacson
- Norse Mythology* – Neil Gaiman
- Waiting for Godot* – Samuel Beckett
- Why We Sleep* – Matthew Walker
- How To Talk So Little Kids Will Listen – Joanna Faber
2023
- The Second Mountain – David Brooks
- Eat the Buddha* – Barbara Demick
- Rise and Kill First* – Ronen Bergman
- Other Minds* – Peter Godfrey Smith
- Cannery Row* – John Steinbeck
- Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life* – William Finnegan
- American Prometheus* – Kai Bird
- Season of the Witch* – David Talbot
- Burn Rate – Andy Dunn
- Orange Sunshine* – Nicholas Schou
- The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test* – Tom Wolfe
- Hell’s Angels* – Hunter S. Thompson
- The Billionaire Raj* – James Crabtree
- SPQR – Mary Bears
- Don Quixote* – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
- Going Infinite – Michael Lewis
- The Bond King – Mary Childs
- The Wager* – David Grann
- Like a Rolling Stone – Jann Wenner
- Cult Classic* – Sloane Crosley
- The Guest – Emma Cline
- Normal Family* – Chrysta Bilton
- Your Table Is Ready – Michael Cecchi-Azzolina
- Electrify – Saul Griffith
- The Ministry for the Future* – Kim Stanley Robinson
- Outlive* – Peter Attia
- Slouching Towards Bethlehem* – Joan Didion
- Let Me Tell You What I Mean* – Joan Didion
- Nothing to Envy – Barbara Demick
- Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow – Gabrielle Zevin
Until next year!