From October 1st, 2013 to October 1st, 2016 I kept track of every book I read. The final tally was 211 books. My favorites, in no particular order, were the following:
- Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking - Susan Cain
- The Compound Effect - Darren Hardy
- The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
- Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
- Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets - Nassim Taleb
- Liar's Poker - Michael Lewis
- The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference - Malcolm Gladwell
- The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
- Thinking, Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman
- Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn
- To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
- The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King - Rich Cohen
- A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
- The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival - John Vaillant
- The 48 Laws of Power - Robert Greene
- East of Eden - John Steinbeck
- Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 3 - Robert Caro
- When Breath Becomes Air - Paul Kalanithi
- Sunny's Nights: Lost and Found at a Bar on the Edge of the World - Tim Sultan
- Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything - Joshua Foer
- The Power of One: A Novel - Bryce Courtenay
Here are a few things I learned about reading from the past three years:
- Read a wide variety of both fiction and nonfiction.
- If you don’t enjoy reading, you aren’t reading the right books.
- The problem you are struggling with? Somewhere at some time someone had the same problem and wrote a book on it. Go find that book and read it.
- Few things create instant rapport like having read the same book as someone else.
- Kindles are really great but not the same.
- Certain books deserve rereading.