“The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of past centuries.” ― René Descartes
Your mind is the combination of all your sensory inputs. If you’re an avid reader, then what you’ve read is a big part of that. Put another way: you are what you read.
By reading everything someone else has read, you’ll have the same raw inputs they did. Obviously, genetics and luck play a role in life. But to get the best outcome with what you have, reading plays a big part.
You could read the books that influenced others — like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos. Or you could start by reading what I’ve read.
Here are my 104 favorite books after a decade of reading.
⭐ = Books that have had the biggest influence on how I think.
Adulting
Young Money (Jack Raines)
The Defining Decade (Meg Jay)
Artificial Intelligence
The Scaling Era (Dwarkesh Patel)
Superintelligence (Nick Bostrom)
The Master Algorithm (Pedro Domingos)
Biography
⭐ Warren Buffett (Roger Lowenstein)
Elon Musk (Walter Isaacson)
Benjamin Franklin (Walter Isaacson)
⭐ Pour Your Heart Into It (Howard Schultz)
⭐ Shoe Dog (Phil Knight)
How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big (Scott Adams)
Business
The Personal MBA (Josh Kaufman)
The Effective Executive (Peter Drucker)
Career
⭐ Every Good Endeavor (Timothy Keller)
⭐ 8 Steps to High Performance (Marc Effron)
Range (David Epstein)
Grit (Angela Duckworth)
Christianity
Mere Christianity (C.S. Lewis)
⭐ The Purpose Driven Life (Rick Warren)
New Seeds of Contemplation (Thomas Merton)
⭐ Perfectly Yourself (Matthew Kelly)
He Leadeth Me (Fr. Water Ciszek)
Introduction to the Devout Life (Saint Francis De Sales)
The Way To Love (Anthony De Mello)
Continuous Improvement
⭐ Atomic Habits (James Clear)
The Power of Habit (Charles Duhigg)
The Kaizen Way (Robert Maurer PhD)
Zen in the Art of Archery (Eugen Herrigel)
Corporate Finance
Seeing the Big Picture (Kevin Cope)
The Smartest Guys in the Room (Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind)
Creativity
Originals (Adam Grant)
The War of Art (Steven Pressfield)
Culture
Vagabonding (Rolf Potts)
The Culture Map (Erin Meyer)
Decision Making
Thinking in Bets (Annie Duke)
Economics
Abundance (Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson)
In This Economy? (Kyla Scanlon)
Kids These Days (Malcolm Harris)
The Use of Knowledge in Society (Friedrich Hayek)
Entrepreneurship
Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution (Uri Levine)
Zero to One (Peter Thiel)
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant (Eric Jorgenson)
The Upstarts (Brad Stone)
Fiction
⭐ The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
Dune (Frank Herbert)
Foundation (Isaac Asimov)
The Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
Happiness
⭐ Man’s Search for Meaning (Viktor Frankl)
⭐ Flow (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi)
⭐ Lost Connections (Johann Hari)
Ikigai (Francesc Miralles and Hector Garcia)
History
Sapiens (Yuval Noah Harari)
Same As Ever (Morgan Housel)
The Lessons of History (Will and Ariel Durant)
Democracy In America (Alexis de Tocqueville)
Leadership
Above the Line (Urban Meyer)
Extreme Ownership (Jocko Willink & Leif Babin)
The Captain Class (Sam Walker)
True North (Bill George)
Marketing
The Dip (Seth Godin)
Purple Cow (Seth Godin)
All Marketers are Liars (Seth Godin)
Performance
The Passion Paradox (Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness)
Philosophy
Tao Te Ching (Lao Tzu)
The Snow Leopard (Peter Matthiessen)
The Monk & the Riddle (Randy Komisar)
Politics
The Point of it All (Charles Krauthammer)
Productivity
Deep Work (Cal Newport)
Slow Productivity (Cal Newport)
Psychology
⭐ How to Win Friends and Influence People (Dale Carnegie)
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Erving Goffman)
Drive (Daniel Pink)
Influence (Robert Cialdini)
Switch (Chip & Dan Heath)
Marriage
The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work (Nan Silver & John M. Gottman, PhD)
⭐ The Porn Trap (Wendy & Larry Maltz)
⭐ Every Man’s Battle (Stephen Arterburn and Fred Stoeker)
The 80/80 Marriage (Kaley Klemp and Nate Klemp PhD)
The Man’s Guide To Women (John Gottman & Julie Gottman)
Mindset
⭐ Mindset (Dr. Carol Dweck)
Relationships
⭐ Boundaries (Dr. Henry Cloud & Dr. John Townsend)
Whole Again (Jackson MacKenzie)
The Spirituality of Imperfection (Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham)
Sales
Cold Calling Sucks (And That’s Why It Works) (Armand Farrokh and Nick Cegelski)
SPIN Selling (Neil Rackham)
How To Become a Rainmaker (Jeffrey Fox)
Stoicism
⭐ Meditations (Marcus Aurelius)
⭐ The Art of Living (Epictetus)
Strategy
Blue Ocean Strategy (W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne)
Success
Barking Up the Wrong Tree (Eric Barker)
Outliers (Malcolm Gladwell)
Virtue Ethics
⭐ The Four Cardinal Virtues (Josef Pieper)
⭐ Boys to Men (Tim Gray and Curtis Martin)
Moral Character (David Brooks)
Wealth
The Wealth Ladder (Nick Maggiulli)
The Art of Spending Money (Morgan Housel)
The Psychology of Money (Morgan Housel)
The Millionaire Next Door (Thomas Stanley)
No Worries (Jared Dillian)
The Five Types of Wealth (Sahil Bloom)
Writing
Bird by Bird (Anne Lamott)
How to Take Smart Notes (Sönke Ahrens)
A Technique For Producing Ideas (James Webb Young)
As always… thanks for reading!
— Grant Varner