2025

• And There Was Light by Jacques Lusseyran: incredible book about resilience and joy

• The Science of Enlightenment by Shinzen Young: interesting ideas to improve one's meditation skills

• Siddharta By Hermann Hesse: re-read it. Favorite idea: "I can think, I can wait, I can fast".

• Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned by Kenneth Stanley

• Rouge Brésil by Rufin: interesting and fun fiction

2024

• Paradises Lost by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt

• The Book of Symbols by The Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism

• Jung, Un Voyage vers Soi by Frédéric Lenoir

• Walt Disney by Neal Gabler

• Marie Antoinette by Stefan Zweig

• The Contrarian (Peter Thiel) by Max Chafkin

• A Playful Path by Bernard de Koven

• Founding Sales by Peter Kazanjy

• Symbol Sourcebook by Henry Dreyfuss

2023

• Society of Mind by Marvin Minsky

• Idea Makers by Stephen Wolfram #biography

• How to Do Great Work by Paul Graham (short essay)

• A Mathematician's Apology by Godfrey Harold Hardy

• La Cité Antique by Fustel de Coulanges

• The Martian by Andy Weir

• The Egg by Andy Weir

• Build by Tony Fadell (read chapter 3!)

• Dune saga (first 4 books) by Frank Herbert

• Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

2022

• Disciplined Entrepreneurship by Bill Aulet (Read the whole thing!!)

• Games: Agency as Art by Thi Nguyen

• La Théorie de L'Information by Aurélien Bellanger

• Le Grand Paris by Aurélien Bellanger

• Lettre à D. by André Gorz

• How to love by Thich Nhat Hanh

• Scouting for Boys by Robert Baden-Powell

• A brief history of Time by Stephen Hawking

2021

• The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch

• Finite and Infinite Games by Carse

• Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield

• The Almanack of Naval Ravikant

• Save the Cat by Blake Snyder

• Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg

• Write Useful Books by Rob Fitzpatrick

2020

• The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick

• Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

• Black Swan and Anti-fragile by Nassim Taleb

• Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

• Tempo by Venkatesh Rao

• All Paul Graham essays

• Hitch-Hikers's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

• The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman: a classic book that gives us the vocabulary to describe what is good and bad design.

• Refactoring UI by Adam Wathan & Steve Shoger: a useful application of some of the tools outlined above for user interface design. Super practical as it gives bad vs good examples for readers to see how can interfaces be improved, one step at a time.

2019

• Rimbaud le fils by Pierre Michon

• Zero to One by Peter Thiel

• The Hard Thing about Hard Things by Horowitz

• Thinking in Systems by Meadows

As you can see, the books in this list are mostly influential on tech bros in Silicon Valley. I'm naturally drawn to these books, and I can't help it. They're often the same types of books: biographies, science fiction, business strategy and science books.