Bookshelf

A list of many of the books that I've read (which should be comprehensive since I began taking notes on them, in mid-2018). For those books I've taken electronic notes on, you can read the notes I took as well as general thoughts and (occasional) summaries; more book notes may appear as I get around to digitizing older, handwritten notes.

• Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success – Adam Grant
• Babel – R. F. Kuang
• Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning – Tom Vanderbilt
• The End of Craving: Recovering the Lost Wisdom of Eating Well – Mark Schatzker
• Lord of the Flies – William Golding
• The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood – James Gleick
• Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order – Steven Strogatz
• The Unfinished Game: Pascal, Fermat, and the Seventeenth-Century Letter that Made the World Modern – Keith Devlin
• Ishmael – Daniel Quinn
• The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom – Jonathan Haidt
• The Way Out: A Revolutionary, Scientifically Proven Approach to Healing Chronic Pain – Alan Gordon and Alon Ziv
• Firmament: The Hidden Science of Weather, Climate Change, and the Air that Surrounds Us – Simon Clark
• The Big Bang of Numbers: How to Build the Universe Using Only Math – Manil Suri
• Stumbling on Happiness – Daniel Gilbert
• Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking – Samin Nosrat
• So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love – Cal Newport
• The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want – Sonja Lyubomirsky
• Otherlands: Journeys in Earth's Extinct Ecosystems – Thomas Halliday
• Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution that Made China Modern – Jing Tsui
• Mondes d’ailleurs – Trinh Xuan Thuan
• Chasing the Sun: How the Science of Sunlight Shapes Our Bodies and Minds – Linda Geddes
• Visions of Infinity: The Great Mathematical Problems – Ian Stewart
• She Who Became the Sun – Shelley Parker-Chan
• Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth – Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou
• Klara and the Sun – Kazuo Ishiguro
• Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less – Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
• Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—And Keep—Love – Amir Levine and Rachel S. F. Heller
• The Book: A Cover-to-Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time – Keith Houston
• The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us – Richard O. Prum
• I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life – Ed Yong
• A Great Idea at the Time: The Rise, Fall and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books – Alex Beam
• Slime: How Algae Created Us, Plague Us, and Just Might Save Us – Ruth Kassinger
• Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks – Mark Buchanan
• What the Luck? : The Surprising Role of Chance in Our Everyday Lives – Gary Smith
• Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know – Adam Grant
• Sept brèves leçons de physique – Carlo Rovelli
• Rationality: What it Is, Why it Seems Scarce, Why it Matters – Steven Pinker
• Infinite Powers: How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe – Steven Strogatz
• Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence – Anna Lembke
• Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, Accelerate your Career – Scott H. Young
• Project Hail Mary – Andy Weir
• God Emperor of Dune – Frank Herbert
• Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives – Tim Harford
• 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act: Helping Canadians Make Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples a Reality – Bob Joseph
• Children of Dune – Frank Herbert
• The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics – Tim Harford
• Fouloscopie: Ce que la foule dit de nous – Mehdi Moussaïd
• Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language – Gretchen McCulloch
• Humble Pi: When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World – Matt Parker
• The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—But Some Don't – Nate Silver
• Shape: The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy, and Everything Else – Jordan Ellenberg
• Dune Messiah – Frank Herbert
• Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes – Daina Taimiņa
• Dune – Frank Herbert
• The History of Bees – Maja Lunde
• The Weil Conjectures: On Math and the Pursuit of the Unknown – Karen Olsson
• Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain – Lisa Feldman Barrett
• La plénitude du vide – Trinh Xuan Thuan
• Here’s Looking at Euclid: A Surprising Excursion Through the Astonishing World of Math – Alex Bellos
• The Shortest History of War – Gwynne Dyer
• The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload – Daniel Levitin
• The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave – Frederick Douglass
• Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by its Most Brilliant Teacher – Richard Feynman
• Show Your Work! : 10 Ways to Share your Creativity and Get Discovered – Austin Kleon
• The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything... Fast – Josh Kaufman
• Complexity: A Guided Tour – Melanie Mitchell
• Kuhn vs. Popper: the Struggle for the Soul of Science – Steve Fuller
• Ignorance: How it Drives Science – Stuart Firestein
• The Education of Augie Merasty: A Residential School Memoir – Joseph Auguste Merasty and David Carpenter
• A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor – Hank Green
• The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution – Richard Dawkins
• The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't – Julia Galef
• Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow – Yuval Noah Harari
• Infinitesimal: How a Dangerous Mathematical Theory Shaped the Modern World – Amir Alexander
• The Arithmetic of Listening: Tuning Theory & History for the Impractical Musician – Kyle Gann
• Analysis of Tonal Music: A Schenkerian Approach – Allen Cadwallader, David Gagné and Frank Samarotto
• The Art of Logic in an Illogical World – Eugenia Cheng
• Chop Suey Nation: The Surprising History and Vibrant Present of Small-Town Chinese Restaurants from Victoria, BC, to Fogo Island, NL – Ann Hui
• Perfect Rigor: A Genius and the Mathematical Breakthrough of the Century – Masha Gessen
• Ada’s Algorithm: How Lord Byron’s Daughter Ada Lovelace Launched the Digital Age – James Essinger
• The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food – Dan Barber
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks – Rebecca Skloot
• Self-Tracking – Gina Neff and Dawn Nafus
• Play It Loud: An Epic History of the Style, Sound, and Revolution of the Electric Guitar – Brad Tolinski and Alan di Perna
• Persepolis – Marjane Satrapi
• Pacific: Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal Dictators, Fading Empires, and the Coming Collision of the World's Superpowers – Simon Winchester
• Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain – Oliver Sacks
• The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself – Sean Carroll
• Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Old Ones – James Clear
• On Poetry – Glyn Maxwell
• An Absolutely Remarkable Thing – Hank Green
• The Discovery of Middle Earth: Mapping the Lost World of the Celts – Graham Robb
• Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX and the Quest for a Fantastic Future – Ashlee Vance
• The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life – Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson
• Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World – Cal Newport
• The Hate U Give – Angie Thomas
• How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – Sönke Ahrens
• Intelligence: A Very Short Introduction – Ian J. Dury
• The Girl in the Flammable Skirt – Aimee Bender
• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind – Yuval Noah Harari
• Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress – Steven Pinker
• Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes on the Cosmos – Seth Lloyd
• Le Petit Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
• Know This: Today's Most Interesting and Important Scientific Ideas, Discoveries and Developments – ed. John Brockman
• This Will Make You Smarter: New Scientific Concepts to Improve Your Thinking – ed. John Brockman
• Beowulf – tr. Seamus Heany
• The Lost Elements: The Periodic Table's Shadow Side – Marco Fontani, Mariagrazia Costa, and Mary Virginia Orna
• Why Beauty is Truth: A History of Symmetry – Ian Stewart
• A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History – Nicholas Wade
• The Cello Suites: J. S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece – Eric Siblin
• The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life – David Quammen
• Behave: The Biology of Humans at our Best and Worst – Robert M. Sapolsky
• The Music Lesson: A Spiritual Search for Growth Through Music – Victor L. Wooten
• The Handmaid's Tale – Margaret Atwood
• How to Fall in Love with Anyone – Mandy Len Catron
• Every Song Ever: Twenty Ways to Listen in an Age of Musical Plenty – Ben Ratliff
• This Idea is Brilliant: Lost, Overlooked and Underappreciated Scientific Concepts Everyone Should Know – ed. John Brockman
• Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance – Angela Duckworth
• Hallucinations – Oliver Sacks
• The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History – Elizabeth Kolbert
• A Human's Guide to Machine Intelligence – Kartik Hosanagar
• Just My Type: A Book About Fonts – Simon Garfield
• Bug Music: How Insects Gave Us Rhythm and Noise – David Rothenberg
• Le grand cahier – Agota Kristof
• David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants – Malcolm Gladwell
• The Inner Game of Tennis – W. Timothy Gallwey
• Capturing Music: The Story of Notation – Thomas Forrest Kelly
• Foundation – Isaac Asimov
• How Not to be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking – Jordan Ellenberg
• Separation and Inheritance: The Story of Jan and Aagje De Groot – Jan and Aagje DeGroot
• Bach and the Patterns of Invention – Laurence Dreyfus
• Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music – Mark Katz
• Music at the Limits – Edward W. Said
• In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto – Michael Pollan
• Words to Eat By: Five Foods and the Culinary History of the English Language – Ina Lipkowitz
• Raising Steam – Terry Pratchett
• The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined – Steven Pinker
• Papyrus: The Plant That Changed the World, from Ancient Egypt to Today's Water Wars – John Gaudet
• The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science – Armand Marie Leroi
• The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire – Ted Gioia
• Nature's Compass: The Mystery of Animal Navigation – James L. Gould and Carol Grant Gould
• Under the Greenwood Tree – Thomas Hardy
• The History of Jazz – Ted Gioia
• A Sand County Almanac – Aldo Leopold
• The Hidden Forest: The Biography of an Ecosystem – Jon R. Luoma
• Natural Acts: A Sidelong View of Science & Nature – David Quammen
• The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature – Steven Pinker
• White Noise – Don DeLillo
• Ways of the Hand – David Sudnow
• Two Billion Trees and Counting: The Legacy of Edmund Zavitz – John Bacher
• The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? – Jared Diamond
• Islands Beyond the Horizon: The Life of Twenty of the World's Most Remote Places – Roger Lovegrove
• Naming Nature: the Clash Between Instinct and Science – Carol Kaesuk Yoon
• Wormwood Forest: A Natural History of Chernobyl – Mary Mycio
• The Boilerplate Rhino: Nature in the Eye of the Beholder – David Quammen
• Monster of God: The Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind – David Quammen
• 1984 – George Orwell
• Animal Farm – George Orwell
• On the Road – Jack Kerouac
• The Last Stand: A Journey Through the Ancient Cliff-Face Forest of the Niagara Escarpment – Peter E. Kelly and Douglas W. Larson
• Outliers: The Story of Success – Malcolm Gladwell
• Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking – Malcolm Gladwell
• Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation – Paul Berliner
• The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World – R. Murray Schafer
• The Gathering Dark – Jeff Grubb
• The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho
• Fifth Business – Robertson Davies
• The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions – David Quammen
• The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea – Yukio Mishima
• The Silmarillion – J. R. R. Tolkien
• Like Water for Chocolate – Laura Esquivel
• The Pillars of the Earth – Ken Follett
• The House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende
• The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
• Life of Pi – Yann Martel
• The Metamorphosis – Franz Kafka
• Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid – Douglas Hofstadter
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer – Mark Twain
• Gulliver's Travels – Jonathan Swift
• The Neverending Story – Michael Ende tr. Ralph Manheim
• The Return of the King – J. R. R. Tolkien
• The Two Towers – J. R. R. Tolkien
• The Fellowship of the Ring – J. R. R. Tolkien
• The Hobbit, or There and Back Again – J. R. R. Tolkien