Books

Running top five books

  1. With the Old Breed, Eugene B. Sledge
  2. Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
  3. Empire of the Summer Moon, S. C. Gwynn
  4. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry
  5. Shantaram, Gregory David Roberts

Full archive of completed reading

I've italicized books that I read in part but put down or come back to as reference. I've bolded books that I'd especially recommend.

2022

  • Murderbot Diaries: Exit Strategy, Martha Wells
  • Murderbot Diaries: Rogue Protocol, Martha Wells
  • Murderbot Diaries: Artificial Condition, Martha Wells
  • Murderbot Diaries: All Systems Red, Martha Wells
  • The First 90 Days, Michael D. Watkins (50%)
  • Mistborn, Brandon Sanderson
  • Fairytale, Stephen King
  • No Shortcuts to the Top, Ed Viesturs
  • Training for the New Alpinism: A Manual for the Climber as Athlete, Steve House, Scott Johnston (Reference text)
  • Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills 9th Ed. (This is a textbook and intended for ongoing reference. Apparently required reading for many aspiring mountain guides.)
  • In the Shadow of Denali, Jonathan Waterman
  • Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman
  • The Paris Apartment, Lucy Foley
  • The Guest List, Lucy Foley
  • Endurance, Alfred Lansing
  • Eiger Dreams, Jon Krakauer
  • Where Men Win Glory, Jon Krakauer
  • A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking (15%)
  • Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer
  • Bunker: What it takes to survive the apocalypse, Bradley Garrett (48%)

2021

  • 2034, Ackerman & Stavridis
  • Lone Survivor, Marcus Luttrell
  • Empire of the Summer Moon, S. C. Gwynn
  • Bomber Mafia, Malcolm Gladwell
  • With the Old Breed, Eugene B. Sledge
  • Skunk Works, Ben R. Rich
  • Under the Banner of Heaven, John Krakauer
  • Eagle against the Sun, Ronald H Spector
  • In the Woods, Tana French
  • Memories, Jack Scrivener
  • Manhunt, Peter L. Bergen
  • Ghost Wars, Steve Coll
  • Hogs in the Sand, Buck Wyndam
  • Shantaram, Gregory David Roberts
  • This is how you lose the time war, Max Gladstone
  • Ghost Fleet, PW Singer
  • Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton
  • Devil in the White City, Erik Larson
  • Rebel Yell, S.C. Gwynne

2020

  • For the Soul of Mankind, Melvyn Leffler
  • The Odyssey, Homer
  • The Bhagavad Gita, Eknath Eswaran
  • So Good They Can't Ignore You, Cal Newport
  • How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie
  • Shoe Dog, Phil Knight
  • The End is Always Near, Dan Carlin
  • Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety, Eric Schlosser
  • The Bomb: Presidents, generals, and the secret history of nuclear war, Fred Kaplan
  • Red Storm Rising, Tom Clancy
  • On Writing, Stephen King
  • The Elements of Style, Strunk and White
  • The Stand, Stephen King
  • The Cold War: A New History, John Lewis Gaddis
  • Return with Honor, Scott O'Grady
  • Tools of Titans, Tim Ferriss
  • Principles, Ray Dalio
  • The Art of War, Stephen Coonts

2019

  • Men Explain Things to Me, Rebecca Solnit
  • The Iliad, Homer
  • The Madness of Crowds, Douglas Murray
  • The Monster of Florence, Preston and Spezi
  • Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari
  • Shape Up, Ryan Singer
  • Amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon
  • Originals, Adam Grant
  • 10 arguments for deleting your social media accounts right now, Jaron Lanier
  • Deep Work, Cal Newport
  • E-Myth, Michael Gerber
  • Atomic Habits, James Clear
  • 12 rules for Life, Jordan Peterson
  • Waking Up, Sam Harris
  • Life, Keith Richards

2018

  • Make Time, Jake Knapp & John Zeratsky
  • Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
  • The Hunt for Red October, Tom Clancy
  • 40 ways of looking at Winston Churchill, Gretchen Rubin
  • House of Leaves, Mark Danielewski
  • Getting Things Done, David Allen
  • The Thirst, Jo Nesbo
  • The Snowman, Jo Nesbo
  • Inferno: The World at War 1939-1945, Max Hastings
  • The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin
  • Make, Pieter Levels
  • Ancillary Justice, Anne Leckie

Prior to 2018

This is the inventory of all books I've read prior to tracking them deliberately and a work in progress. Sometimes it takes seeing a book on a shelf in a bookstore or around the internet to recall that you've actually read it and so I'll update this list as that happens.

  • Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry
  • Ham on Rye, Charles Bukowski
  • On the Road, Jack Kerouac (the original scroll edition)
  • Looking Awry, Slavoj Zizek
  • Taoism: The Watercourse Way, Alan Watts
  • The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss
  • To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
  • The Alchemist, Paul Coelo
  • Lord of the Flies, William Golding
  • The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
  • The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
  • Siddartha, Herman Hesse
  • Candide, Voltaire
  • The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson
  • A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
  • The 48 Laws of Power, Robert Greene
  • Free Will, Sam Harris
  • Game of Thrones series, George R.R. Martin
  • The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis
  • The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien
  • The Lord of the Rings trilogy, J.R.R. Tolkein
  • The Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
  • The Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling
  • The Redwall Series, Brian Jacques (some of my favorite books as a kid)