Books That Shaped the Way I Think

Note: This is a personal reading list. The reflections in future updates will represent my own impressions, not an academic review or the views of the authors or publishers.

I read for different reasons: to understand a technical idea, to see how another person faced a difficult life, or simply to enter a world larger than my own. I especially like hard science fiction for its intriguing technical ideas, physics and science, world-building, and attempts to forecast the future. I most enjoy stories that take Artificial Intelligence seriously; to me, AI remains one of the largest omissions from many science-fiction worlds. I am less drawn to long scenic descriptions, minute details of someone’s appearance, or ornate prose that does not move the story or idea forward.

This list is intentionally unfinished. I have not yet had time to bring everything together, and many more books are still in storage. I will try to make time to organize the full list and add a short personal reflection and the most important lesson I took from each book to share with everyone.

AI, science, and technology

Superintelligence — Nick Bostrom
Human Compatible — Stuart Russell
Life 3.0 — Max Tegmark
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind — Yuval Noah Harari
A Brief History of Time — Stephen Hawking
Cosmos — Carl Sagan
Structures: Or Why Things Don’t Fall Down — J.E. Gordon
Ignition! — John D. Clark

Philosophy and meaning

Thus Spoke Zarathustra — Friedrich Nietzsche
The Rebel — Albert Camus
The Myth of Sisyphus — Albert Camus
Man’s Search for Meaning — Viktor E. Frankl
The Brothers Karamazov — Fyodor Dostoevsky
No Longer Human — Osamu Dazai
The Trial — Franz Kafka
The Fountainhead — Ayn Rand

Fiction and humanity

The Lord of the Rings — J.R.R. Tolkien
Foundation — Isaac Asimov
Dune — Frank Herbert
The Little Prince — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Life of Pi — Yann Martel
The Call of the Wild — Jack London
The Kite Runner — Khaled Hosseini
A Man Called Ove — Fredrik Backman
Angels & Demons — Dan Brown
The Da Vinci Code — Dan Brown
Inferno — Dan Brown
Origin — Dan Brown

Builders, history, and business

Steve Jobs — Walter Isaacson
Einstein: His Life and Universe — Walter Isaacson
Liftoff — Eric Berger
Masters of Doom — David Kushner
Zero to One — Peter Thiel and Blake Masters
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin — Benjamin Franklin
The Art of War — Sun Tzu

A reading list is not a ranking. Some books may remain with me because of one page, one image, or one question rather than because I agree with every argument. The useful part is the conversation that continues after the book is closed.