Notes on fiction books can contain spoilers. I maintain a Commonplace: a collection of quotes and aphorisms that I’ve found to be accurate or interesting.

Non-fiction Books

Acting

• Audition
• How to be the Greatest Improviser
• Improvisation and the Theatre
• The Art of Acting

Argumentation

• A Rulebook for Arguments
• Argumentation: The Study of Effective Reasoning

Arts

• Imaginative Realism #read/2010s
• Making Comics #read/2022
• Understanding Comics #read/2022

Ayurveda

• Textbook of Ayurveda Vol 1: Principles of Ayurveda
• The Complete Book of Ayurvedic Home Remedies

Biographies

• Andrew Carnegie
• Avoid Boring People
• Eisenhower in War & Peace
• Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World #read/2022
• Leonardo da Vinci
• The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
• The Reluctant Mr Darwin
• The Surrender Experiment: do what your personal self doesn’t want to. #read/2021
• Usain Bolt: Faster than Lightning

Biology

• Dopamine Nation #read/2022
• Dreamland
• Food Rules: eat food, not too much, mostly plants. #read/2015 ★★★★★
• Outlive
• The Body
• The Selfish Gene ★★★★★
• The Telomere Effect
• Why we Sleep

Business

• How to Measure Anything
• Measure what Matters
• Playing to Win
• The Lean Startup ★
• The Outsiders
• UX for Lean Startups

Career

• Deep Work
• Range ★★★★
• So Good They Can’t Ignore You
• The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

Coaching

• Coaching for Performance
• The Trillion Dollar Coach

Cooking

• Deliciously Ella
• The 4h Chef
• The Food Lab
• The Pizza Bible
• The Slow-Carb Cookbook

Creativity

• A Technique for Producing Ideas
• Cognitive Surplus
• Lateral Thinking ★★★★★
• Steal like an artist
• The Creative Curve
• The Map of Innovation

Culture

• In the Plex
• Leadership: The Power of Emotional Intelligence
• Team Geek
• The Culture Code
• Turn the Ship Around ★★★★★
• Work Rules!

Cross-disciplinary mental models

• Antifragile ★★★★★
• Skin in the Game ★★★★★
• The Black Swan
• The Signal and the Noise

Decision making

• Risk Savvy
• Smart Choices
• Thinking in Bets

Design

• Insanely Simple
• Logo Design Love #read/2020
• New York School of Interior Design
• The Interior Design Handbook

Education

• Out of our Minds
• The Smartest Kids in the World

Engineering

• Structures: Or Why Things Don’t Fall Down
• The Box

Exercise

• Hardstyle Abs
• Kettlebell Simple & sinister
• Relax into Stretch
• What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Guides

• Living and Working in Switzerland

Habits

• Atomic Habits
• The Power of Habit

History

• 15 Battles That Changed History
• Debt
• El Último Caballero
• Guns, Germs & Steel: The Fates of Human Societies ★★★★★
• History’s Greatest Voyages of Exploration
• Homo Deus
• How Asia Works
• In the Garden of Beasts
• Lone Survivor
• Musashi
• Sapiens ★★★★★
• The Fall and Rise of China
• The Great Stagnation
• The History of the Ancient World
• The Lessons of History
• The Other Side of History
• Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
• Why the Dutch are Different

Humor

• Calypso
• Emergency Laughter

Investing

• Against the Gods
• Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor ★★★★★
• Enough
• How to Read a Financial Report
• Invirtiendo a Largo Plazo
• Poor Charlie’s Almanack ★★★★★
• Richer, Wiser, Happier
• Security Analysis
• The Art of Execution
• The Dhandho Investor
• The Education of a Value Investor
• The Intelligent Investor
• The Little Book That Beat The Market
• The Psychology of Money
• The Snowball

Language learning

• Fluent Forever

Learning & Mastery

• How We Learn
• Mind Gym
• Peak: Secrets From the New Science of Expertise
• Relentless
• Talent Is Overrated ★★★★★
• The Art Of Learning
• The Champion’s Mind
• The Checklist Manifesto ★★★★★
• The Inner Game of Tennis
• The Little Book of Talent
• Ultralearning ★★ #read/2023
• Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
• Zen in the Art of Archery #read/2023

Marketing

• Known
• Un-Marketing

Math

• Against the Gods
• All of Statistics
• Bayesian Data Analysis
• Deep Simplicity
• How to calculate quickly
• Secrets of Mental Math

Note-taking

• How to Take Smart Notes
• The Mind Map Book
• The Sketchnote Handbook
• The Sketchnote Workbook

Philosophy

• 30 Lessons for Living
• Buddha in Blue Jeans
• Discipline Equals Freedom: formatting errors (digital edition) and content read like a disconnected talk. #read/2021 #abandoned
• Essentialism ★★★★★
• Extreme Ownership ★★★★★
• Goodbye things
• Letters to his son on the art of living
• Living With a SEAL
• Man’s Search for Meaning ★★★★★
• Meditations ★★★★★
• On the Shortness of Life
• One Small Step Can Change Your Life
• The Art of Living: Vipassana Meditation
• The Art of Living (Thich Nhat Hanh)
• The Art of War
• The Enchiridion ★★★★★
• The Infinite Game
• The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari
• The Obstacle is the Way
• The Power of Now ★★★★
• The Road to Character
• The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck
• The Wander Society: hodgepodge of mindfulness ideas centered on walking and observing. The title is a gimmick, the author made up the society for the book despite what she tells throughout the book. #read/2022
• What to do when it’s your turn
• Wherever You Go, There You Are ★★★★★
• Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

Photography

• Perfect Exposure
• The Photographer’s Eye
• The Photographer’s Mind

Politics

• Media Control
• Profit over people

Problem-solving

• Are your lights on? ★★★★★
• Diaminds
• How to Solve It

Productivity

• Manage Your Day-to-Day
• Getting Things Done ★★★★
• The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
• The Effective Executive
• To-Do List Formula

Psychology

• Blink
• Character Strengths and Virtues
• David and Goliath
• Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience ★★★★★
• Influence
• Made to Stick
• Mastermind: How to think like Sherlock Holmes
• Mindset ★★★★★
• Moonwalking with Einstein
• Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul #read/2021 ★★★★
• Power: why some people have it and others
• Power vs Force
• Principles
• Radical acceptance ★★★★
• Superforecasting: how to improve your prediction skills. #read/2020
• The As If Principle
• The Happiness Advantage
• The Likeability Factor
• The Meaning of Life: Perspectives from the World’s …
• The Meaning Revolution
• The Wisdom of Crowds
• Thinking Fast and Slow
• What Got You Here Won’t Get You There
• What to Say When You Talk to Yourself ★★★★★

Reading

• Breakthrough Rapid Reading
• How to read literature like a professor: recognize symbols & patterns. #read/2021 #abandoned
• The Lifetime Learner’s Guide to Reading and Learning
• The Well-Educated Mind ★★★★★
• Too Much Information
• Too Much to Know

Relationships

• Boundaries
• Crucial Conversations
• Essential Manners for Men
• Etiquette
• Getting to yes
• Give and Take
• How to win friends and influence people
• It’s not all about me
• Just Listen ★★★★★
• Multipliers
• Never Eat Alone
• Never Split the Difference
• The Fine Art of Small Talk
• The Power of Kindness
• The Serious Business of Small Talk
• Who’s Got Your Back

Science

• A Short History of Nearly Everything ★★★★★
• Death by Black Hole
• Factfulness
• How to run a paper mill
• Scale: The Universal Laws of Life, Growth, and Death in Organisms
• The Art of Scientific Investigation ★★★★★
• The Body
• The Demon-Haunted World
• The Half-Life of Facts ★★★★★
• The Science of Energy
• Tools of Titans
• Tribe of Mentors
• What if?

Self-improvement

• Awaken the Giant Within ★★★★★
• Daily Self-Discipline
• Ego is the Enemy
• Re-awaken the Giant Within
• The Way we’re Working Isn’t Working

Sex

• Come as you are
• Porn Star Secrets of Sex
• Taoist Secrets of Love: Cultivating Male Sexual Energy
• The Sexual Key
• What Women Want in a Man
• Women’s Anatomy of Arousal

Software engineering

• An introduction to computational Learning Theory
• Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach
• Clean Code ★★★★
• Code Complete ★★★★★
• Cracking the Coding Interview
• Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs ★★★★★
• The Pragmatic Programmer

Speaking

• Freeing the Natural Voice
• It’s the way you say it
• Speaking with Skill
• Voice Work

Storytelling

• Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting

Survivalism

• Escape the Wolf #read/2023

Tabletop roleplaying games

• Play Unsafe
• Tome of Adventure Design
• The Lazy Dungeon Master

Writing

• Brief
• Draft No. 4
• On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
• On Writing Well
• Self-Editing for Fiction Writers
• The Elements of Style
• The Sense of Style

Yoga

• Anatomy of Hatha Yoga
• Autobiography of a Yogi: inspiring as a teenager, unable to finish it now because of distracting SRF manipulations everywhere. #read/1990s, #read/2021
• Kundalini-Yoga Parampara
• Letters from the Yoga Masters
• Mind - Its Mysteries and Control
• Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (Bryant) ★★★★★
• The Collected Works of Sri Ramana Maharshi #read/2021
• The Roots of Yoga
• The Yoga of The Yogi #read/2021
• Yoga Nidra by Swami Satyananda #read/2023

Fiction Books

Comics

• Asterix
• Lucky Luke
• The Adventures of Tintin
• Various Marvel and DC Comics Superheroes comics
• Various popular Spanish comics from the 80s like Mortadelo y Filemón, Capitán Trueno, Zipi y Zape, Pepe Gotera y Otilio, 13 Rue del Percebe, Mafalda

Other fiction

• 1Q84
• A Christmas Carol
• A Man in Full
• A Tale of Two Cities
• A Wild Sheep Chase ★★★★★
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
• All The Light We Cannot See ★★★★ #read/2016
• Animal Farm
• Anna Karenina
• Catch-22 ★★★
• Crime and Punishment
• Crónica de una muerte anunciada
• Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency
• Don Quijote
• Dubliners
• El Otono Del Patriarca (The Autumn of the Patriarch) ★
• Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know
• Foundation
• Frankenstein
• Good Omens
• Going Postal
• Gulliver’s Travels
• La Celestina
• La Regenta
• Lolita: disgusted after 5%. #read/2010s #abandoned
• Overstory: style coldly neutral but also too elaborate, can’t engage when combined with stories about death and illnesses. #read/2022 #abandoned
• Musashi
• Rashomon and Other Stories
• Red Notice
• Siddharta
• Something Wicked This Way Comes
• Short fiction - Philip K. Dick: #read/2021
• Termination Shock: uninteresting sample. #read/2021 #abandoned
• The Alchemist #read/2021
• The Complete Sherlock Holmes
• The Colour of Magic: first book that made me ROFL. ★★★★★ #read/1990s
• The Hand Maid’s Tale: unengaging. #abandoned
• The Little Prince
• The Metamorphosis
• The Old Man & The Sea ★★★★★ #read/2010s
• The Penguin Book of Dutch Short Stories #abandoned
• The Princess Bride ★★★★★ #read/2010s
• The Satanic Verses
• The Secret Garden: #read/2010s
• The Sun Also Rises
• The Eye of the World (The Wheel of Time): loved as a teenager, boring in 2021. #read/1990s #read/2021
• Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

Science Fiction

• 1984
• 2001: Space Odyssey: gripping plot, awe-inspiring world, specially from Jupiter onwards. A bit too didactic about space travel. #read/2022
• A Clockwork Orange: too violent. #abandoned
• Ancillary Justice
• Brave New World
• Cosmos
• Dune
• Ender’s Game ★★★★★
• Foundation
• Hyperion
• I, Robot
• Journey to the Center of the Earth
• Neuromancer: too many drugs, unlikeable characters, hard to visualize. #abandoned #read/2022
• Ready Player 1 ★★★★★
• Seveneves
• Snow Crash ★★★★★
• Starship Troopers
• Stranger in a Strange Land: started out as an interesting and hilarious adventure but it slowly devolved into a series of lectures on diplomacy, religion, and relationships. #read/2022 #abandoned
• Stories of your Life and Others
• The Fall of Hyperion
• The Fifth Elephant
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
• The Martian ★★★★★
• The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
• Ubik ★★★★
• War of the Worlds