Don't discount a book because I'm bad at writing one-sentence summaries. I have read all the books on this list and I like them. If I don't like a book, I don't put it on the list.
When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you achieve it.
Stories of families--happy and unhappy--told from the thoughts and feelings of their members.
Fragile things are hurt by variation and randomness, while antifragile things gain from them.
A gentle and thorough introduction to Common Lisp, complete with exercises and examples.
Militant rebels hold the attendees of a private opera concert hostage for months. Gripping and entertaining.
Our world has a fractal design. A few large, uncertain events drive history.
I study this holy text everyday.
A young man impersonates a missing twin brother (thought to be dead) who would have inherited his family's fortune.
A privileged, 16-year-old punk struggles to find his path in life.
The world is simple. People can change. All problems are interpersonal relationship problems. Happiness is a feeling of contribution.
The goal of education is self-reliance. Love is the way to happiness.
A man seeks for fortune and status in 19th century Russia through a series of unconventional means.
How Xerox Parc attracted and created the most talented computer programmers and engineers in the world. They launched us into the computer age.
Having thoughtlessly lived a comfortable life, Ivan Ilyich is tormented as he slowly dies.
A collection of short stories--glimpses into private lives--about the people of Dublin around the turn of the 19th century.
Science-fiction/fantasy page turner. Science, religion, treachery, and cool fighting.
Brothers who love each other and also harbor jealousy and hatred. People see what they want to see.
Rosling helps us see the world as it really is. It highlights underrated problems and updates our world-view to be accurate for the world of today (2018).
Realistic explorations of feelings in a long-lasting marriage.
An American serves as an ambulance driver in the Italian army during the Great War. He falls in love, is wounded, the army retreats, etc.
A father struggles to relate to his modern son, who has been wrapped up in some ideals he encountered at university.
We often confuse signal and noise, especially in markets and high-level positions. It's your actions that matter, not your circumstances.
An American volunteer in the Spanish civil war is ordered to blow a bridge behind enemy lines. He enlists a band a guerrilla fighters to aid him.
A tale of the tragedy of unchecked ambition. And a commentary on the superficiality of humans.
Jean Vanier teaches what it means to live and love in a community.
This novel is both funny and deeply satisfying, with many nuggets of pure gold throughout.
Seeing reality clearly is too painful for this fatherless, working-class family, so they deal with illusions instead.
Lewis explores the nature of Heaven and Hell. Heaven is so real that it is more solid than anything on Earth. Hell is so much of nothing that one blade of grass in Heaven is bigger than all of Hell.
Hemingway hunts big game in Africa. Nonfiction; same great prose.
Essays full of insights about programming languages, computers, and startups.
A fierce Chechen warrior and commander defects to the side of his enemies to take revenge on his former leader.
A study of the rawness of human nature when taken outside the bounds of civilization.
A hilariously improbable galactic adventure.
Comprehensive overview of the Linux kernel and userspace. I learned a lot from reading it even after years of using Linux.
Find out your purpose and pursue it. Make sure you want what you think you want. Follow a strategy and adapt to emergent opportunities.
Malala shares her personal story intertwined with the beautiful story of her people. She wants all people to have the basic human right to obtain education.
Maya Angelou beautifully tells the story of her shockingly difficult childhood years. Her courage is inspiring.
A naive young man without malice and with love for everyone is buffeted by the Russian ruling class who make fun of him and try to take advantage of him.
Criado-Perez exposes the gender data gap in our world. Our current systems and mindsets are biased in myriad ways.
Questions on the premises of love and marriage.
A teacher in a downtrodden plantation community visits a wrongfully convicted man and tries to restore his dignity before he is executed.
A history of Elon Musk and his team during the intense early days of SpaceX.
An introverted, independent old man has lost his wife and his will to live. His neighbors befriend him and he finds reasons to keep living.
Satan goes to Moscow and generally wreaks havoc.
An omniscient view of the interpersonal relationships of the town. Illustrations of marriage, debt, pride, etc. All problems are interpersonal relationship problems :)
A vivid memoir of Hemingway's early days in Paris; his interactions with writers and poets and his young wife.
A vacuum cleaner salesman in Havana becomes a secret agent to earn some extra cash. Funny and filled with deep wisdom.
The formation and destruction of the marriage of Hemingway and Hadley Richardson.
An indigenous pearl-diver and his wife seek to fight the imperialist powers that enslave their people.
Parents struggle to understand their children who are growing up under different circumstances than they did, and the children long for freedom.
A priest tries to survive in a Mexican state where religion has been outlawed. As his presence endangers others, he is torn between running and giving himself up.
Inspiring fictional adventure filled with religious symbolism.
Page-turner space adventure full of plausible physics and biology.
This book offers a blueprint for making a more prosperous society: local innovations that meet real needs.
A well-written, gripping novel filled with longing, misunderstanding, and mystery.
A scientist accidentally discovers how to transmit information through spacetime using memory, and now needs to close Pandora's box.
A man grapples with the question of how seemingly ordinary people can treat other humans so inhumanely in the criminal justice system.
A man has great talents but can never accomplish anything. The evolution of friendships over time.
A priest's son in India leaves home to seek for more truth. He learns what cannot be taught.
You only have good information if you interact directly with reality. If you won't personally experience the downside of your decisions, you will never learn to make good decisions.
A personal memoir about the development of the Nighthawk, Blackbird, U2, and other planes at Lockeed's Skunk Works
Achievable patterns of thought (and its absence) that allow you to be happy. Happiness is our default state, we just have to remove the barriers we've created for our own happiness.
This is a brilliant piece of journalism and Kidder won the Pulitzer prize for it. It's a riveting tale of computer engineers.
Stargirl is a beautifully non-comformist, selfless teenager.
A man with dual natures (intellectual and wolf) discovers himself and learns how to live.
The life (and death) of a man for whom nothing matters beyond a slight preference for personal comfort.
An American aficianado takes his friends to the running of the bulls and bull fights in Spain. Things turn sour as a few of the friends are in love with the same woman.
A prank-filled autobiography by an adventerous physicist.
Lives of the nobility and the soldiers when Napoleon invades Russia. Lust and disgust for war. Deceits and regrets. Cannot be summarized.
A man living in a highly controlled futuristic society falls in love, trying to reconcile his feelings with schedules and order.
Faith is a letting go, an opening of the mind to truth.
Stories from Feynman's upbringing, marriage, and the NASA Challenger investigation.
How to maintain a strong middle-class in the information economy.