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What Reading 419 Books Taught Me

2026

BooksAboutMe

Not much that I can remember. I retain a vanishingly small amount of what I read. More than once I've heard about a great sounding book and then, when I go to buy it for my Kindle, find that I've already read it.

I've experimented with practices to help me remember the non-fiction I read, like writing a summary. But it never became a habit. I enjoy reading, but I don't enjoy writing summaries for the sake of retention.

But I still learn from the books I can't remember. To take an example, 5 years ago I wanted to understand the Israel-Palestine conflict. So I read a book called 'The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Very Short Introduction' about it. During the time I was reading the book I knew, for the first time, why the situation was so complex.

Of course, I've now forgotten everything in the book. But even though I no longer know why its so complex, I still understand why its so complex.

Knowing something is different from understanding something. And although for me it's easy to forget knowledge I once had, it's much harder to lose understanding.

In 2019 I started writing down the books I finished. I do get a sense of satisfaction from looking over all the things I once knew.

I've shared the list below. Every book here is at least decent because I read it to the end.

Additionally, I listen to the audiobook of The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle, a few times each year.

2026 — 18 books

Q3'26 (3)

• The Courage to Be Disliked — Ichiro Kishimi, Fumitake Koga [reread]
• My Husband — Maud Ventura, Emma Ramadan
• Culpability (Oprah’s Book Club): A Novel — Bruce Holsinger

Q2'26 (6)

• When Crack Was King: A People's History of a Misunderstood Era — Donovan X. Ramsey
• Famesick: A Memoir — Lena Dunham
• Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers — Caroline Fraser
• Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations — Ronen Bergman
• Wild Dark Shore: Reese's Book Club Pick (A Novel) — Charlotte McConaghy
• Among Friends: A Novel — Hal Ebbott

Q1'26 (9)

• Why Not Say What Happened?: A Memoir — Ivana Lowell
• Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage — Belle Burden
• Flesh: A Novel (Booker Prize Winner) — David Szalay
• Spectacular Things: Reese's Book Club: A Novel — Beck Dorey-Stein
• Perfection — Vincenzo Latronico, Sophie Hughes
• Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin — Sue Prideaux
• The Haves and Have-Yachts: Dispatches on the Ultrarich — Evan Osnos
• The End of Normal: A Wife's Anguish, A Widow's New Life — Stephanie Madoff Mack
• Writers & Lovers: A Novel — Lily King

2025 — 30 books

Q4'25 (2)

• My Thoughts Exactly: Lily Allen's Brutally Honest Tell-All Memoir — Lily Allen
• Margo's Got Money Troubles — Rufi Thorpe

Q3'25 (3)

• Educated: A Memoir — Tara Westover
• The Spinach King: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty — John Seabrook
• Dope in the Age of Innocence — Damien Enright

Q2'25 (12)

• Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism — Jeffrey Toobin
• The Panama Papers: Breaking the Story of How the Rich and Powerful Hide Their Money — Frederik Obermaier, Bastian Obermayer
• When the Going Was Good: An Editor's Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines — Graydon Carter
• The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy — Michael Lewis
• Young Mungo — Douglas Stuart
• When We Cease to Understand the World — Benjamín Labatut
• Faithfull: An Autobiography — Marianne Faithfull
• Men We Reaped: A Memoir — Jesmyn Ward
• I Regret Almost Everything: A Memoir — Keith McNally
• Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune — Anderson Cooper, Katherine Howe
• The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy and Caste in America — Edward Digby Baltzell
• Everything I Know About Love: A Memoir — Dolly Alderton

Q1'25 (13)

• Good Material: A Read with Jenna Pick: A novel — Dolly Alderton
• Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do About It — Richard V. Reeves
• The Shooting Party — Isabel Colegate
• The Motherload: Episodes from the Brink of Motherhood — Sarah Hoover
• Martyr!: A novel — Kaveh Akbar
• Fierce Attachments: A Memoir (FSG Classics) — Vivian Gornick
• All That Glitters: A Story of Friendship, Fraud, and Fine Art — Orlando Whitfield
• Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class — Rob Henderson
• Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother — Amy Chua
• A Gorgeous Excitement: A Novel — Cynthia Weiner
• Armed with Good Intentions — Wallo267
• Playworld: A Novel — Adam Ross
• Demon Copperhead: A Novel — Barbara Kingsolver

2024 — 40 books

Q4'24 (10)

• Conversations with Friends — Sally Rooney
• Beautiful World, Where Are You — Sally Rooney
• Patrick Melrose Volume 1: Never Mind, Bad News and Some Hope — Edward St Aubyn
• Intermezzo — Sally Rooney
• Never Enough: From Barista to Billionaire — Andrew Wilkinson
• Health and Safety: A Breakdown — Emily Witt
• Creation Lake: A Novel — Rachel Kushner
• Lazarus Man: A Novel — Richard Price
• I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition — Lucy Sante
• Kingmaker: Pamela Harriman's Astonishing Life of Power, Seduction, and Intrigue — Sonia Purnell

Q3'24 (10)

• Nuclear War: A Scenario — Annie Jacobsen
• The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir — Griffin Dunne
• Chronicles of the Juice Man: A Memoir — Juicy J, Soren Baker
• Long Island Compromise: A Novel — Taffy Brodesser-Akner
• All Fours: A Novel — Miranda July
• Plays Well with Others: A Novel — Sophie Brickman
• Your Table Is Ready: Tales of a New York City Maître D' — Michael Cecchi-Azzolina
• Very Bad Company: A Novel — Emma Rosenblum
• The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession — Michael Finkel
• Blue Sisters: A Novel — Coco Mellors

Q2'24 (12)

• Black Ops: The Life of a CIA Shadow Warrior — Ric Prado
• The Trading Game: A Confession — Gary Stevenson
• Battle for the Bird: Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk, and the $44 Billion Fight for Twitter's Soul — Kurt Wagner
• The Dealmaker: Lessons from a Life in Private Equity — Guy Hands
• Sociopath: A Memoir — Patric Gagne
• The Counting House — Gary Sernovitz
• For the Love of Money: A Memoir — Sam Polk
• The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions — Jonathan Rosen
• Manhattan Monologues: Stories — Louis Auchincloss
• The Burnout Society — Byung-Chul Han
• Early Sobrieties: A Novel — Michael Deagler
• The MANIAC — Benjamin Labatut

Q1'24 (8)

• A Year On Earth With Mr. Hell — Young Kim
• Strip Tees: A Memoir of Millennial Los Angeles — Kate Flannery
• Lucky Me: A Memoir of Changing the Odds — Rich Paul
• Private Equity: A Memoir — Carrie Sun
• Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. — Ron Chernow
• Brightness Falls (Vintage Contemporaries) — Jay McInerney
• The Auctioneer: Adventures in the Art Trade — Simon de Pury
• The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder — David Grann

2023 — 40 books

Q4'23 (12)

• Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon — Michael Lewis
• Down the Drain — Julia Fox
• Practical Real Estate Law (MindTap Course List) — Daniel F. Hinkel
• Exit Interview: The Life and Death of My Ambitious Career — Kristi Coulter
• Cleopatra and Frankenstein — Coco Mellors
• The World for Sale: Money, Power and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources — Javier Blas, Jack Farchy
• Age of Vice: A GMA Book Club Pick (A Novel) — Deepti Kapoor
• The Fund: Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates, and the Unraveling of a Wall Street Legend — Rob Copeland
• The Business of Expertise: How Entrepreneurial Experts Convert Insight to Impact + Wealth — David C. Baker
• Dead in the Water: A True Story of Hijacking, Murder, and a Global Maritime Conspiracy — Matthew Campbell, Kit Chellel
• Among the Bros: A Fraternity Crime Story — Max Marshall
• Days of the Trap: Freedom Is Just A Million Dollars Away — Johnny Mitchell

Q3'23 (10)

• Whore of New York: A Confession — Liara Roux
• The Sullivanians: Sex, Psychotherapy, and the Wild Life of an American Commune — Alexander Stille
• Bad Summer People: A Novel — Emma Rosenblum
• Billionaires' Row: Tycoons, High Rollers, and the Epic Race to Build the World's Most Exclusive Skyscrapers — Katherine Clarke
• Wild Game: My Mother, Her Secret, and Me — Adrienne Brodeur
• Elon Musk — Walter Isaacson
• Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt — Michael Lewis
• Adversity for Sale: Ya Gotta Believe — Jeezy
• Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall — Zeke Faux
• The Guest: A Novel — Emma Cline

Q2'23 (10)

• Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Media Empire and the Redstone Family Legacy — James B Stewart, Rachel Abrams
• Pineapple Street: A Novel — Jenny Jackson
• The Kingdom of Prep: The Inside Story of the Rise and (Near) Fall of J.Crew — Maggie Bullock
• Burn Rate: Launching a Startup and Losing My Mind — Andy Dunn [Bonobos]
• Structuring and Raising Debt & Equity for Real Estate — Rob Beardsley
• The Birth of a Building: From Conception to Delivery — Ben Stevens
• The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream — Patrick Radden Keefe
• Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story — Kurt Eichenwald [Enron]
• Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel — Kurt Vonnegut [reread]
• A Childhood: The Biography of a Place — Harry Crews, Tobias Wolff

Q1'23 (8)

• The Last Days of Night: A Novel — Graham Moore
• Three Women — Lisa Taddeo
• Yoga — Emmanuel Carrère, John Lambert
• Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion — Sam Harris
• I Don't Take Requests: A Memoir — Tony Marnoch (DJ Fat Tony), Michael Hennegan
• A Very Nice Girl: A Novel — Imogen Crimp
• Lives Other Than My Own: A Memoir — Emmanuel Carrere, Linda Coverdale
• Fleishman Is in Trouble: A Novel — Taffy Brodesser-Akner

2022 — 79 books

Q4'22 (12)

• Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality — W. R. D. Fairbairn
• Greenlights — Matthew McConaughey
• Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us — Rachel Aviv
• Stay True: A Memoir — Hua Hsu
• Wild: The Life of Peter Beard: Photographer, Adventurer, Lover — Graham Boynton
• Fire Island: A Century in the Life of an American Paradise — Jack Parlett
• The Accidental Superpower: The Next Generation of American Preeminence and the Coming Global Disorder — Peter Zeihan
• The Hand — Georges Simenon
• On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy — Carl R. Rogers
• Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation — Sophie Lewis
• Fundamentals of Data Engineering — Joe Reis, Matt Housley
• Life: The Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality — Neal Gabler

Q3'22 (15)

• Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair — Sarah Schulman
• Tanqueray — Brandon Stanton, Stephanie Johnson
• Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks — Patrick Radden Keefe
• Undoing Drugs: The Untold Story of Harm Reduction and the Future of Addiction — Maia Szalavitz
• Fellowship Point: A Novel — Alice Elliott Dark
• What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing — Oprah Winfrey and Bruce D. Perry
• Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional — Isaac Fitzgerald
• Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity — Andrew Solomon
• Growing Up Getty: The Story of America's Most Unconventional Dynasty — James Reginato
• Nobody's Looking at You: Essays — Janet Malcolm
• Bully Market: My Story of Money and Misogyny at Goldman Sachs — Jamie Fiore Higgins
• Making It (NYRB Classics) — Norman Podhoretz
• Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization — Scott Barry Kaufman
• Trust — Hernan Diaz
• Lying — Sam Harris

Q2'22 (20)

• Punch Me Up To The Gods: A Memoir — Brian Broome, Yona Harvey
• The Urge: Our History of Addiction — Carl Erik Fisher
• Dilettante: True Tales of Excess, Triumph, and Disaster — Dana Brown
• The History of Bones: A Memoir — John Lurie
• Pachinko (National Book Award Finalist) — Min Jin Lee
• Pour Me, A Life — A. A Gill
• Never Let Me Go — Kazuo Ishiguro
• Outline: A Novel (Outline Trilogy Book 1) — Rachel Cusk
• A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother — Rachel Cusk
• The Business Secrets of Drug Dealing: An Almost True Account — Matt Taibbi
• Calvinism: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) — Jon Balserak
• Bad Sex — Clancy Martin
• White Out: The Secret Life of Heroin — Michael W Clune
• Tim – The Official Biography of Avicii — Måns Mosesson
• The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor--the Truth and the Turmoil — Tina Brown
• The Dirtbag's Guide to Life: Eternal Truth for Hiker Trash, Ski Bums, and Vagabonds — Tim Mathis
• Pain, Parties, Work: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953 — Elizabeth Winder
• Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black, new edition: Collected Stories (Semiotext(e) / Native Agents) — Cookie Mueller
• Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World — Tara Isabella Burton
• Dealers — Peter Madsen

Q1'22 (32)

• 100 Boyfriends — Brontez Purnell
• The Map and the Territory (Vintage International) — Michel Houellebecq, Gavin Bowd
• To Paradise: A Novel — Hanya Yanagihara
• Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals — Oliver Burkeman
• On a Wave — Thad Ziolkowski
• The Drop: How the Most Addictive Sport Can Help Us Understand Addiction and Recovery — Thad Ziolkowski [surfing]
• Fuccboi: A Novel — Sean Thor Conroe
• Razorblade Tears: A Novel — S. A. Cosby
• Stop-Time: A Memoir — Frank Conroy [reread]
• Neither Wolf nor Dog 25th Anniversary Edition: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder — Kent Nerburn, Robert Plant
• The Meaning of Happiness: The Quest for Freedom of the Spirit in Modern Psychology and the Wisdom of the East — Alan Watts
• The Lincoln Highway: A Novel — Amor Towles
• Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game — Michael Lewis
• The Red Parts: Autobiography of a Trial — Maggie Nelson
• The Hitch 22: A Memoir — Christopher Hitchens
• Lucky Jim (New York Review Books Classics) — Kingsley Amis
• Palimpsest: A Memoir — Gore Vidal
• Libra (Contemporary American Fiction) — Don DeLillo
• The Rachel Papers (Vintage International) — Martin Amis
• On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint — Maggie Nelson
• Georges Bataille — Stuart Kendall
• The Wisdom of No Escape: And the Path of Loving Kindness — Pema Chödrön
• Humiliation (BIG IDEAS//small books) — Wayne Koestenbaum
• Like Being Killed — Ellen Miller
• There Is Nothing For You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century — Fiona Hill
• Unforbidden Pleasures — Adam Phillips
• A Promised Land — Barack Obama
• Broken Glass: Mies van der Rohe, Edith Farnsworth, and the Fight Over a Modernist Masterpiece — Alex Beam
• How Should a Person Be?: A Novel from Life — Sheila Heti
• American Psycho (Vintage Contemporaries) — Bret Easton Ellis
• Raising a Thief — Paul Podolsky
• Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting — Pamela Druckerman

2021 — 120 books

Top 10 Books 2021

• New York, New York, New York: Four Decades of Success, Excess, and Transformation — Thomas Dyja
• The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth — Sam Quinones
• Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations (Routledge Classics) — bell hooks
• Solitary: A Biography (National Book Award Finalist; Pulitzer Prize Finalist) — Albert Woodfox
• Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life — Luke Burgis
• The House of Gucci: A Sensational Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour, and Greed — Sara Gay Forden
• Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession — Janet Malcolm
• Industrial Society and Its Future: The Unabomber Manifesto — Theodore John Kaczynski
• Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software — Nadia Eghbal
• Detransition, Baby: A Novel — Torrey Peters

Q4'21 (22)

• Blacktop Wasteland: A Novel — S. A. Cosby
• The Picture of Dorian Gray — Oscar Wilde
• Dancing with the Gods: Reflections on Life & Art — Kent Nerburn
• The Caesars Palace Coup: How a Billionaire Brawl Over the Famous Casino Exposed the Power and Greed of Wall Street — Max Frumes
• Cable Cowboy: John Malone and the Rise of the Modern Cable Business — Mark Robichaux
• Trip: Psychedelics, Alienation, and Change — Tao Lin
• Eeeee Eee Eeee: A Novel — Tao Lin
• Leave Society: A Novel — Tao Lin
• Great Gatsby — F. Scott Fitzgerald [reread]
• Enemy of All Mankind: A True Story of Piracy, Power, and History's First Global Manhunt — Steven Johnson
• Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption — Bryan Stevenson
• New York, New York, New York: Four Decades of Success, Excess, and Transformation — Thomas Dyja
• Faggots — Larry Kramer [cofounder Gay Men’s Health Crisis, ACTUP, etc.]
• The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth — Sam Quinones
• No Rules: A Memoir — Sharon Dukett
• Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China — Desmond Shum
• Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations (Routledge Classics) — bell hooks
• Capote's Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era — Laurence Leamer
• Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty — Anderson Cooper, Katherine Howe
• Surprise, Kill, Vanish: The Secret History of CIA Paramilitary Armies, Operators, and Assassins — Annie Jacobsen
• Emotion: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) — Dylan Evans
• The Places In Between — Rory Stewart

Q3'21 (30)

• Confessions of a Yakuza — Junichi Saga, John Bester
• Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Therapies (Theories of Psychotherapy Series®) — Jeremy D. Safran, Jennifer Hunter
• The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia — Candace Fleming
• Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind — Shunryu Suzuki, David Chadwick [reread]
• Solitary: A Biography (National Book Award Finalist; Pulitzer Prize Finalist) — Albert Woodfox
• Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life — Luke Burgis
• Darkest Web : Drugs, death and destroyed lives ... the inside story of the internet's evil twin — Eileen Ormsby
• Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America — Chris Arnade
• Dead End Gene Pool: A Memoir — Wendy Burden
• Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service — Carol Leonnig
• Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York — Elon Green
• How to Be Yourself: Life-Changing Advice from a Reckless Contrarian — Simon Doonan
• The Big House: A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home — George Howe Colt
• Why People Die by Suicide — Thomas Joiner
• A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness — S. Nassir Ghaemi
• Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman — Yvon Chouinard
• Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania — Erik Larson
• The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz — Erik Larson
• The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age — James Dale Davidson, Lord William Rees-Mogg
• The Emperor of Scent: A Story of Perfume, Obsession, and the Last Mystery of the Senses — Chandler Burr
• The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion — Eliot Brown, Maureen Farrell
• Upper Bohemia: A Memoir — Hayden Herrera
• Golden Boy: A Murder Among the Manhattan Elite — John Glatt
• Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success — Phil Jackson, Hugh Delehanty
• How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World: A Handbook for Personal Liberty — Harry Browne
• Anything But a Wasted Life — Sita Kaylin
• Group: How One Therapist and a Circle of Strangers Saved My Life — Christie Tate
• This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race — Nicole Perlroth
• Widow Basquiat: A Love Story — Jennifer Clement
• The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden — Peter L. Bergen

Q2'21 (36)

• Jung: A Very Short Introduction — Anthony Stevens
• Confessions of an English Opium-Eater — Thomas De Quincey
• Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays — Joan Didion
• The House of Gucci: A Sensational Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour, and Greed — Sara Gay Forden
• Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work — Matthew B. Crawford
• Are Prisons Obsolete? — Angela Y. Davis
• The Long Weekend: Life in the English Country House, 1918-1939 — Adrian Tinniswood
• Snow Crash: A Novel — Neal Stephenson
• Walk Through Walls: A Memoir — Marina Abramovic
• Confessions Of an Art Addict — Peggy Guggenheim
• Infinity Net: The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama — Yayoi Kusama, Ralph McCarthy
• E.A.R.L.: The Autobiography of DMX — DMX
• Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction — Judith Grisel
• Fascism: A Very Short Introduction — Kevin Passmore
• Outrageous Fortune: Growing Up at Leeds Castle — Anthony Russell
• An Embarrassment of Mangoes: A Caribbean Interlude — Ann Vanderhoof
• Walking in Circles: Finding Happiness in Lost Japan — Todd Wassel
• The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Very Short Introduction — Martin Bunton
• Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX — Eric Berger
• Freedom — Sebastian Junger
• The Journalist and the Murderer — Janet Malcolm
• The Operator: Firing the Shots that Killed Osama bin Laden and My Years as a SEAL Team Warrior — Robert O'Neill
• The Marquis de Sade: A Very Short Introduction — John Phillips
• Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession — Janet Malcolm
• The Courage to Be Disliked — Ichiro Kishimi, Fumitake Koga [reread]
• Socialism: A Very Short Introduction — Michael Newman
• Speedboat (NYRB Classics) — Renata Adler
• The Elementary Particles — Michel Houellebecq
• F*ck It, I'll Start Tomorrow: A True Story — Action Bronson, Bonnie Stephens
• Ecce Homo (The Autobiography of Friedrich Nietzsche) — Friedrich Nietzsche, Anthony M. Ludovici
• Anarchism: A Very Short Introduction — Colin Ward
• Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery — Catherine Gildiner
• One of Them: An Eton College Memoir — Musa Okwonga
• The Pale-Faced Lie: A True Story — David Crow
• Twelve Cases: A Psychiatrist’s True Stories of Mental Illness and Addiction [and Other Human Predispositions] — Daniel Mierlak
• Industrial Society and Its Future: The Unabomber Manifesto — Theodore John Kaczynski

Q1'21 (32)

• Red Pill: A novel — Hari Kunzru
• Deacon King Kong: A Novel — James McBride
• The Beneficiary: Fortune, Misfortune, and the Story of My Father — Janny Scott
• Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith — Andrew Wilson
• Marx: A Very Short Introduction — Peter Singer
• Privacy: A Very Short Introduction — Raymond Wacks
• Cheerful Money: Me, My Family, and the Last Days of Wasp Splendor — Tad Friend
• Lunar Park: A Novel — Bret Easton Ellis
• Aristocracy: A Very Short Introduction — William Doyle
• Hourglass: Time, Memory, Marriage — Dani Shapiro
• Successful Traders Size Their Positions - Why and How? — Tom Basso, Brenda K. Russell-Basso, Laurens Bensdorp
• How to DeFi — CoinGecko
• Fake Accounts: A Novel — Lauren Oyler
• Shuggie Bain: A Novel (Booker Prize Winner) — Douglas Stuart
• The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality — Katharina Pistor
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream — Hunter S. Thompson, Ralph Steadman [reread]
• Under and Alone: The True Story of the Undercover Agent Who Infiltrated America's Most Violent Outlaw Motorcycle Gang — William Queen
• Memoirs of a Geisha — Arthur Golden
• Detransition, Baby: A Novel — Torrey Peters
• Building a Life Worth Living: A Memoir — Marsha M. Linehan PhD
• The Rules of Attraction: A Novel — Bret Easton Ellis
• Cryptography: A Very Short Introduction — Sean Murphy, Fred Piper
• Serotonin: A Novel — Michel Houellebecq
• The Glossy Years: Magazines, Museums and Selective Memoirs — Nicholas Coleridge
• On Violence — Hannah Arendt
• Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software — Nadia Eghbal
• Luster: A Novel — Raven Leilani
• The End of Alchemy: Money, Banking, and the Future of the Global Economy — Mervyn King
• Rules for Modern Life: A Connoisseur's Survival Guide — Sir David Tang
• Who Can You Trust?: How Technology Brought Us Together and Why It Might Drive Us Apart — Rachel Botsman
• Eat a Peach: A Memoir — David Chang, Gabe Ulla
• Minor Characters: A Beat Memoir — Joyce Johnson, Ann Douglas

2020 — 64 books

Q4'20 (19)

• Rules of Civility: A Novel — Amor Towles
• The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma — Bessel van der Kolk
• The House of Getty — Russell Miller
• After Camelot: A Personal History of the Kennedy Family--1968 to the Present — J. Randy Taraborrelli
• My Fair Junkie: A Memoir of Getting Dirty and Staying Clean — Amy Dresner
• When Einstein Walked with Gödel: Excursions to the Edge of Thought — Jim Holt
• Submission: A Novel — Michel Houellebecq, Lorin Stein
• The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy — Christopher Lasch
• The Diana Chronicles — Tina Brown
• Squeeze Me: A novel — Carl Hiaasen
• The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century — Kirk Wallace Johnson
• Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody — Helen Pluckrose, James A. Lindsay
• The Bottoms: A novel — Joe R. Lansdale
• Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City — Matthew Desmond
• Dear Child: A Novel — Romy Hausmann
• 1984 — George Orwell [reread]
• McMafia — Misha Glenny
• Columbine — Dave Cullen
• Pandemics: A Very Short Introduction — Christian W. McMillen

Q3'20 (25)

• Fortune's Children: The Fall of the House of Vanderbilt — Arthur T. Vanderbilt
• Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man — Mary L. Trump
• Professional Idiot: A Memoir — Stephen "Steve-O" Glover, David Peisner
• Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed — Lori Gottlieb
• The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War — Ben Macintyre
• The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit — Michael Finkel
• Cherry: A novel — Nico Walker [Guy fights in Afghanistan then comes back to US]
• Lady in Waiting: My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown — Anne Glenconner
• White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America — Nancy Isenberg
• Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family — Robert Kolker [Midcentury family with 12 children, 6 of whom are schizophrenic]
• The Long Hard Road Out of Hell — Marilyn Manson, Neil Strauss, et al.
• The Greatest Trade Ever: The Behind-the-Scenes Story of How John Paulson Defied Wall Street and Made Financial History — Gregory Zuckerman
• The Infinite Machine: How an Army of Crypto-hackers Is Building the Next Internet with Ethereum — Camila Russo
• A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier — Ishmael Beah
• Daddy: Stories — Emma Cline
• Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not! — Robert T. Kiyosaki
• The Lessons of History — Will Durant, Ariel Durant
• What It Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence — Stephen A. Schwarzman
• Class: A Guide through the American Status System — Paul Fussell
• Street Poison: The Biography of Iceberg Slim — Justin Gifford
• Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic — Ben Westhoff
• Filthy Beasts: A Memoir — Kirkland Hamill
• Gatecrasher: How I Helped the Rich Become Famous and Ruin the World — Ben Widdicombe
• Identity is the New Money (Perspectives) — David Birch, Ed Conway
• Awareness: Conversations with the Masters — Fr. Anthony de Mello, SJ

Q2'20 (8)

• The Rector of Justin: A Novel — Louis Auchincloss
• The Frackers: The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters — Gregory Zuckerman
• Meyer Lansky: The Thinking Man’s Gangster — Robert Lacey
• Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich — Norman Ohler, Shaun Whiteside
• A Gentleman in Moscow: A Novel — Amor Towles
• The Chiffon Trenches: A Memoir — André Leon Talley
• Scar Tissue — Anthony Kiedis, Larry Sloman
• Moneyland: The Inside Story of the Crooks and Kleptocrats Who Rule the World — Oliver Bullough

Q1'20 (12)

• MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed bin Salman — Ben Hubbard
• The Operator: David Geffen Builds, Buys, and Sells the New Hollywood — Thomas R. King
• The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking — Saifedean Ammous, James Fouhey, Audible Studios
• Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams — Matthew Walker
• Kaiser Karl: The Life of Karl Lagerfeld — Raphaelle Bacque
• Alexander McQueen: Blood Beneath the Skin — Andrew Wilson
• The Castle on Sunset: Life, Death, Love, Art, and Scandal at Hollywood's Chateau Marmont — Shawn Levy
• Acid for the Children: A Memoir — Flea
• Smacked: A Story of White-Collar Ambition, Addiction, and Tragedy — Eilene Zimmerman
• As Needed for Pain: A Memoir of Addiction — Dan Peres
• House of Outrageous Fortune: Fifteen Central Park West, the World's Most Powerful Address — Michael Gross
• The Mastermind: Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal. — Evan Ratliff

2019 — 28 books

• Renewable Energy: A Primer for the Twenty-First Century — Bruce Usher
• Risk Game: Self Portrait of an Entrepreneur — Francis J. Greenburger
• The Outlaw Ocean: Journeys Across the Last Untamed Frontier — Ian Urbina
• The Russian Court at Sea: The Last Days of a Great Dynasty: The Romanov’s Voyage into Exile — Frances Welch
• Four Friends: Promising Lives Cut Short — William D. Cohan
• American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century — Maureen Callahan
• Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators — Ronan Farrow
• Filthy Rich: A Powerful Billionaire, the Sex Scandal That Undid Him, and All the Justice That Money Can Buy: The Shocking True Story of Jeffrey Epstein — James Patterson
• Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster — Adam Higginbotham
• Practical Statistics for Data Scientists: 50 Essential Concepts — Peter Bruce, Andrew Bruce
• The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution — Gregory Zuckerman
• Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business — Neil Postman, Andrew Postman
• When the Astors Owned New York: Blue Bloods and Grand Hotels in a Gilded Age — Justin Kaplan
• Convenience Store Woman: A Novel — Sayaka Murata, Ginny Tapley Takemori
• Hurricanes: A Memoir — Rick Ross, Neil Martinez-Belkin
• As a Man Thinketh — James Allen, Luke Cardy
• Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber — Mike Isaac
• Practical Tableau: 100 Tips, Tutorials, and Strategies from a Tableau Zen Master — Ryan Sleeper
• Out East: Memoir of a Montauk Summer — John Glynn
• Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage — Alfred Lansing
• Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World — Rutger Bregman
• The Courage to Be Disliked: The Japanese Phenomenon That Shows You How to Change Your Life and Achieve Real Happiness — Ichiro Kishimi, Fumitake Koga
• Bunny Mellon: The Life of an American Style Legend — Meryl Gordon
• Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting out of the Box — The Arbinger Institute
• Learning SQL: Master SQL Fundamentals — Alan Beaulieu
• King of Capital: The Remarkable Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of Steve Schwarzman and Blackstone — David Carey, John E. Morris
• Mastering the Market Cycle: Getting the Odds on Your Side — Howard Marks
• Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup — John Carreyrou

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