“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” Søren Kierkegaard
This past week, I turned 35.
The last 12 months have been some of the hardest of my life, mostly on purpose. I still don’t have clarity on where any of it leads. But the gap between who I was 12 months ago and who I am today is stark enough that the slope itself is reassuring. I am learning. I am growing.
It’s hard to see that from inside the struggle. I keep telling myself that the anxiety, the discomfort, the not knowing, all of it is part of the thing. Without it you never learn what you need to learn to become who you’re supposed to become.
I didn’t really start reading until I was 23. I still remember the first two books I bought at McNally Jackson’s in SoHo. Gratitude by Oliver Sacks and The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts. I’d spent the day in New York looking at sublets, wandered into the store by accident, found those two books, and they changed my life. I’ve read hundreds since. Saying I’m a bit obsessed with learning undersells it. Until recently, I figured this was just what everyone did. Turns out it isn’t. And maybe, just maybe, this love of reading is a signal about who I actually am, away from the status and the distraction.
So to memorialize the power of books and mark the turn of the year, I went back through every book I could find that I’ve read in the last 12 years and picked the 35 that had the most impact on me. The ones I come back to when I’m struggling or need inspiration.
Tyler Cowen coined the term “quake book,” and Ryan Holiday popularized it: a book that completely alters the way you see the world. The more you read, the rarer they get. Every book below was one for me.
My hope is that at least one of them calls out to you. If it does, buy it or borrow it from your local library. Books have the power to transform people, and people are the only hope we have of transforming the world, no matter what the AI labs try to tell us.
In no particular order.
When Breath Becomes Air, Paul Kalanithi
Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life, James Hollis
Let Your Life Speak, Parker Palmer
The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Robert Caro (4 volumes)
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Edmund Morris
A Sense of Where You Are, John McPhee.
The Simple Path to Wealth, JL Collins.
Gratitude, Oliver Sacks
What Makes Sammy Run?, Budd Schulberg.
Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl
Tribe, Sebastian Junger
The Education of a Coach, David Halberstam
Levels of the Game, John McPhee
The Road, Cormac McCarthy
How Will You Measure Your Life?, Clayton Christensen
Pappyland, Wright Thompson
Four Thousand Weeks, Oliver Burkeman
Eleven Rings, Phil Jackson
George Marshall: Defender of the Republic, David Roll
Antifragile, Nassim Taleb
The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton
A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, Donald Miller
The Orthodox Way, Kallistos Ware
The Everything Store, Brad Stone
The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Psychology of Money, Morgan Housel
Truman, David McCullough
Open, Andre Agassi
Not Fade Away, Laurence Shames and Peter Barton
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig
From Strength to Strength, Arthur Brooks
On Writing, Stephen King
Ego Is the Enemy, Ryan Holiday
Born Standing Up, Steve Martin
The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
-Foley