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?
I pulled Notes on the Death of Culture by Mario Vargas Llosa off a library shelf somewhat serendipitously after reading…
Lands of the Western National Forests by Robert Mullenbach is a directory-style reference book covering the national forests west of…
How to Read Water by Tristan Gooley is the third book in his natural navigation trilogy, alongside The Natural Navigator…
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.
How to Read Nature is the third book in Tristan Gooley’s nature-reading trilogy, alongside The Natural Navigator and How to…
The premise of Wealth Ladder is deceptively simple: the rules of personal finance depend on what wealth tier you’re currently in.
I picked up The Best American Short Stories 2015 at a used bookstore sale. The price was right, the premise was appealing – a curated collection of the best short fiction published that year – and I’ve always been curious about the short story as a format.
I picked up Ilustrado by Miguel Syjuco for the same reason I pick up most literary fiction I know nothing about — it won a pile of awards and the setting intrigued me. A murder mystery that opens in New York City and winds its way back to Manila? That sounded like exactly the kind of ambitious, globe-spanning novel I’d enjoy.
Sacred Places of a Lifetime by National Geographic is an excellent coffee table style reference book showcasing some of the great sacred places around the world.
The Complete Stories is the only collection that includes every short story Flannery O’Connor ever wrote — including “The Geranium,” which she submitted as part of her master’s thesis at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. If you’re going to read her, this is the one to get.
I don’t usually read best-selling political books of the moment. They feel too tied to whatever news cycle is happening right now, and I’d rather read something that has aged a bit.
But it feels like we’re at a genuine inflection point in American politics. The party coalitions that formed in the late 60s and early 70s—now going on 50 years old—are breaking down.
Consolations is a collection of short essays and poems. Each entry is just a page or two—a few hundred words at most. But Whyte packs an incredible amount of meaning into that small space.
I picked this book up after hearing the author interviewed on a podcast — and by “picked up” I mean it was on sale on Amazon and seemed worth a quick read.
I picked up The Discourses by Epictetus from Standard Ebooks, then ended up buying the print Penguin edition as well. Stoic philosophy has had waves of popularity over the years, and I love that the most recent wave has brought a blossoming of new translations, resources, and accessible texts.
The core premise is straightforward: humans create stories and frameworks that aren’t literally true, but are still incredibly useful. Not useful in a “white lie” kind of way. Useful in a “this is how civilization actually functions” kind of way.
I’ve found that printed travel books do something that no algorithm can – they help you discover places you don’t know that you don’t know.
I picked up America’s Great Forest Trails by Tim Palmer after seeing it on a shelf at my local bookstore. It’s a coffee table reference book highlighting America’s great forest trails—of which we have thousands and thousands of miles.
Deep Tech by Pablos Holman is a book by one of the most perennial hard tech entrepreneurs in America. Holman is known for his work at Blue Origin and Intellectual Ventures, and he currently runs a venture capital firm focused on what he calls “hard tech” — using technology to solve problems in the physical world rather than in the software or digital world that has been the focus of Silicon Valley for so long.
How to Read the Bible by Harvey Cox is an accessible, nuanced, and genuinely creative introduction to engaging with the best-selling and most influential single book in the world.
