Library

4 minute read

“I’ve developed a great reputation for wisdom by ordering more books than I ever had time to read, and reading more books, by far, than I learned anything useful from, except, of course, that some very tedious gentlemen have written books. This is not a new insight, but the truth of it is something you have to experience to fully grasp.”

Meditation and the social mind

  • Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Shunryū Suzuki
  • The Science of Enlightenment: How Meditation Works, Shinzen Young
  • Right Concentration: A Practical Guide to the Jhanas, Leigh Brasington
  • In the Buddha’s Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon, Bhikkhu Bodhi
  • Eastern Body, Western Mind, Anodea Judith
  • Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts, Thich Nhat Hanh
  • Already Free: Buddhism Meets Psychotherapy on the Path of Liberation, Bruce Tift
  • Seeing That Frees: Meditations on Emptiness and Dependent Arising, Rob Burbea
  • Be Here Now, Ram Dass
  • The Elephant in the Brain, Robin Hanson
  • Pyschoanalytic Diagnosis: Understanding Personality Structure in the Clinical Process, Nancy McWilliams
  • Inner Gold: Understanding Psychological Projection, Robert A. Johnson
  • The Dance of Anger, Harriet Lerner
    • In addition to being practical and insightful, The Dance of Anger makes an appearance in her son’s autofictional The Topeka School.
  • Impro, Keith Johnstone

Biographies and auto-biographies

  • The Singapore Story and From Third World to First, by Lee Kuan Yew
    • The “Zero to One” of building a first world nation.
  • Personal History by Katharine Graham (1917-2001), former leader of the Washington Post.
  • Steve Jobs and Einstein, both by Walter Isaacson
  • Mao: The Unknown Story, by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday
  • Just Kids, by Patti Smith
  • Inside the Aquarium, by Viktor Suvorov (Vladimir Rezun)
    • A tank company commander, then a GRU intelligence officer. 1970s.
  • Korzybski, by Bruce Kodish. From 1879.
  • A Higher Loyalty, by James Comey
  • Hillybilly Elegy, by JD Vance
  • Diary of Anaïs Nin, Volume VI. 1955-1966.

Non-fiction

Autofiction

  • Trip, Taipei, and Leave Society, all by Tao Lin
  • My Struggle, Karl Ove Knausgård
  • Early Work, Andrew Martin
  • Real Life, Brandon Taylor
  • 10:04, The Topeka School, and other works by Ben Lerner
  • Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion

Fiction

  • The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
  • Dream of the Red Chamber, Cao Xueqin
  • Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
  • Infinite Jest, DFW
  • East of Eden, Steinbeck
  • The Iliad
  • The Odyssey
  • Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
  • Rosa Alchemica, William Butler Yeats
  • The Nameless City, H.P. Lovecraft
  • Gilead, Marilynne Robinson
  • The Culture novels by Ian Banks
  • The Machine Stops, E. M. Forster
  • The Gentle Seduction, Marc Stiegler
  • Remembrance of Earth’s Past by Liu Cixin (i.e. The Three Body Problem)
  • Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson
  • The Nexus Trilogy by Ramez Naam
  • Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel
  • The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls, both by Lois McMaster Bujold

“I feel sometimes as if I were a child who opens its eyes on the world once and sees amazing things it will never know any names for and then has to close its eyes again.”

Social fiction

  • Normal People and other works by Sally
  • Very Good, Jeeves! by P. G. Wodehouse
    • Or literally any other Jeeves novel
  • Houllebecq’s Submission
  • Call Me By Your Name, André Aciman
  • Vox, Nicholson Baker
    • The book Monica Lewinsky gifted Bill Clinton.
  • Big Little Lies, Liane Moriarty
  • The Outsiders, S.E. Hinton
  • Small Gods, Terry Pratchett

Fanfiction & internet fiction

Kids’ books

  • Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
  • Tomorrow When the War Began, by John Marsden
  • Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling

Great manuals

A Guide to Modern Cookery

  • Released in 1903 by elite chef Auguste Escoffier, this manual covers a style of French cooking more elaborate and uncompromising than anything I found in Paris. It’s interesting to compare his recipe for a simple blond roux with the bastardized version now taught by the Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts.

You Don’t Know JS by Kyle Simpson

  • Programming books are probably defunct due to LLMs, but I have fond memories of using this series to go from “can read React documentation” to “no one has a more thorough understanding of the event loop than I” in a couple of days. Great resources for intermediate practitioners are so underrated.

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