The Philippines by Lonely Planet
I grew up in the Philippines. I last visited about 20 years ago. So when I saw the latest Lonely…
Nonfiction
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Why Homer Matters by Adam Nicholson
I picked up Why Homer Matters by Adam Nicolson on a lark at the library. It was during the PR hype for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, and it looked like a solid book.
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Beyond Belief by Nir Eyal
Beyond Belief: The Science-Backed Way to Stop Limiting Yourself and Achieve Breakthrough Results by Nir Eyal is a book about the science-backed version of positive thinking – the idea that your thoughts can create real-world effects.
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A World Appears by Michael Pollan
Pollan has a rare talent. He goes beyond journalism into something harder to name — a deep, patient synthesis of science, history, and lived experience that makes even the most tangled topics feel useful and graspable. He did it with food in The Omnivore’s Dilemma. He did it with drugs. And A World Appears is him doing it with the biggest, strangest question of all: what is it actually like to have a mind?
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The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord
Debord’s central argument is that the “spectacle” goes well beyond what most of us picture when we hear that word — the Super Bowl, the Olympics, a presidential election. He argues that any representation of the world that turns people into passive spectators qualifies.
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Appalachian Trail Backcountry Shelters, Lean-Tos & Huts by Sarah Decker
Sarah Decker went out and photographed and documented every single shelter on the Appalachian Trail — all 2,200 miles of it. The result is a beautiful, deeply niche reference book that, for the right reader, is an absolute treasure.
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Great Hiking Trails of the World by Karen Berger
Great Hiking Trails of the World by Karen Berger is a coffee table reference book put out by Rizzoli. I’ve collected nine of these Rizzoli books now, and they’re all lovely — the kind of thing you keep on the coffee table not as decoration but because you actually flip through them.
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Miracles & Wonder by Elaine Pagels
Pagels is one of the original researchers of the Nag Hammadi manuscripts and a lot of the Coptic and Gnostic texts that scholars are still working through today. She’s been doing serious, primary-source work in this space for decades. I did not know she was still actively publishing so it’s genuinely impressive to see her add another strong book to an already massive bibliography.
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A History of the World in 500 Walks by Sarah Baxter
The premise is straightforward: if history happened in real places, you can go stand in those places. And when you do, history stops being a mental movie and starts feeling like what it actually was — real people, real terrain, probably a lot more boring and weird than your imagination gives it credit for.
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Gospel of Thomas Edited by Stevan Davies
I picked up the Gospel of Thomas recently while working through Diarmaid MacCulloch’s Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. I hadn’t read the Gospel of Thomas in a very long time, and MacCulloch’s treatment of the early church controversies reminded me just how much insight this text provides.
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India: A Cultural Journey by Putumayo
India: A Cultural Journey is a coffee table reference book — large-scale photography paired with written context at the opening of each chapter. It’s not a history. It’s not a travel guide. It’s more of a visual immersion into what India looks and feels like culturally.
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Electra by Sophocles
Electra follows the family of Agamemnon after the Battle of Troy — specifically his daughter Electra, who is consumed by grief and rage over her father’s murder and her desire for justice.
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Siblings Without Rivalry by Adele Faber
If you’ve read How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk (also by Faber), you already know the format: real-world scenarios, illustrated examples, and a very practical, non-preachy tone. Siblings Without Rivalry follows the same approach and lands just as well.
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Soul Boom by Rainn Wilson
I stumbled across Rainn Wilson’s podcast Soul Boom the way I stumble across most things I didn’t know I was interested in — serendipitously. One episode led to another, and after just a few episodes I had a decent sense of what he’s been up to since The Office wrapped. The short version: he’s been on a genuine, years-long mission to make big philosophical and spiritual questions feel normal to talk about. Soul Boom is the book version of that mission.
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Ready, Fire, Aim by Michael Masterson
Back when I was a freshman in college, I picked up Ready, Fire, Aim by Michael Masterson (a pen name) while falling down a very specific rabbit hole — the world of 1980s South Florida hustle-culture business people. Mail order, media, direct response marketing. Not exactly the role models section of a business school syllabus. But it’s one that I picked up – and stuck with me.
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Click by Ori Baufmann
Click by Ori and Rom Brafman is a fun, fast little pop science book about why some relationships just…click. Why do some people go from strangers to fast friends in an afternoon while others stay awkward acquaintances for years?
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Notes On The Death of Culture by Mario Vargas Llosa
I pulled Notes on the Death of Culture by Mario Vargas Llosa off a library shelf somewhat serendipitously after reading…
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This Land: A Guide to Western National Forests by Robert Mohlenbrock
Lands of the Western National Forests by Robert Mullenbach is a directory-style reference book covering the national forests west of…
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How To Read Water by Tristan Gooley
How to Read Water by Tristan Gooley is the third book in his natural navigation trilogy, alongside The Natural Navigator…
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The Natural Navigator by Tristan Gooley
The Natural Navigator by Tristan Gooley is part of a trilogy — alongside How to Read Water and How to Read Nature — and the whole series is about learning to read the world around you rather than a screen in your hand.
