Book Recommendations!

Goodread recommendations: https://shepherd.com/bboy/2023

Discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38600246

My picks over the years:

• Think and Grow Rich - Napoleon Hill
• The One Thing - Gary Keller with Jay Papasan
• Managing Oneself - Peter F. Drucker
• Be My Guest - Conrad Hilton
• Personal Power II - Tony Robbins
• Eat Stop Eat - Brad Pilon
• Alexander the Great - I.B. Tauris (most boring book, but there is something else hidden)
• Why We Sleep - Matthew Walker
• 0 to 1 (Zero to One) - Peter Thiel with Blake Masters
• Secrets of the Millionaire Mind - T. Harv Eker
• Power of Subconscious Mind - Joseph Murphy
• Gary Klein’s Sources of Power - Gary Klein
• Dante Inferno - Dante Alighieri
• Aristotle’s Politics book? - Aristotle
• Never Split The Difference - Chris Voss (with Tahl Raz)
• Surrounded by Idiots - Thomas Erikson
• $100M Offers - Alex Hormozi
• Man’s Search for Meaning - Viktor E. Frankl
• The Courage to Be Disliked - Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga
• The Gift of Fear - Gavin de Becker

Who said that was all?

Pewdiepie’s book review (2025), hard to read (so pick it up as a challenge):

• Tao Te Ching - Laozi (Lao Tzu)
• In the Buddha’s Words - Bhikkhu Bodhi (editor)
• Meditations on First Philosophy - René Descartes
• Discourses of Epictetus - Epictetus (recorded by Arrian)
• The Republic - Plato
• The Critique of Pure Reason - Immanuel Kant
• The Nicomachean Ethics - Aristotle
• The Iliad - Homer
• The World as Will and Idea - Arthur Schopenhauer
• Thus Spake Zarathustra - Friedrich Nietzsche
• Siddhartha - Hermann Hesse
• Phenomenology of Spirit - G. W. F. Hegel

Brain:

• How to Listen, Hear, and Validate - Unknown (couldn’t identify from the filename)
• How to Read a Book - Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren
• Inventing Right and Wrong - J. L. Mackie
• The Power of Logic - Frances Howard-Snyder, Daniel Howard-Snyder, Ryan Wasserman

Creative:

• Constructive Anatomy - George B. Bridgman
• Figure Drawing: Design and Invention - Michael Hampton
• On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft - Stephen King
• Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting - Robert McKee

Hinduism

• Bhagavad-Gita As It Is - A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada
• Srimad Bhagavatam (Bhagavata Purana, all 12 cantos) - A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (traditionally attributed to Veda Vyasa)
• Gita Sadhak Sanjivani - Swami Ramsukhdas
• The Principal Upanishads - S. Radhakrishnan (editor and translator)
• The Rig Veda - Traditional text, likely Ralph T. H. Griffith’s translation
• The Yajur Veda (Taittiriya Sanhita) - Traditional text, likely Arthur Berriedale Keith’s translation
• Hymns of the Samaveda - Traditional text, likely Ralph T. H. Griffith’s translation
• The Hymns of the Atharva Veda - Traditional text, likely Ralph T. H. Griffith’s translation

Language

• Genki I: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese - Eri Banno, Yutaka Ohno, Yoko Sakane, Chikako Shinagawa (you have two copies)
• Phonemic Chart - English with Liz
• English Vocabulary in Use: Pre-Intermediate and Intermediate - Stuart Redman
• Word Power Made Easy - Norman Lewis

Life

• Allodial Secrets - Unknown (couldn’t identify from the filename)
• Tao of Jeet Kune Do (Expanded Edition) - Bruce Lee
• Atomic Habits - James Clear
• Rich Dad Poor Dad - Robert T. Kiyosaki
• Secrets Xposed: The Awakening - Unknown (couldn’t identify from the filename)
• Brief Answers to the Big Questions - Stephen Hawking
• Talking to Strangers - Malcolm Gladwell

Management and behaviour

• The Practice of Management - Peter Drucker
• Organizational Behavior - Stephen P. Robbins
• High Output Management - Andrew Grove
• Getting to Yes - Roger Fisher and William Ury
• Crucial Conversations - Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler
• Power: Why Some People Have It and Others Don’t - Jeffrey Pfeffer
• Leadership and Self-Deception - The Arbinger Institute
• Drive - Daniel H. Pink

Auto memoir and autobiography

1. Stay True - Hua Hsu
2. How to Say Babylon - Safiya Sinclair
3. Bad Blood - John Carreyrou
4. Somewhere Towards the End - Diana Athill
5. The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy - Pietra Rivoli
6. Far from the Tree - Andrew Solomon
   (these books I found from Pick a random book blog)

Related: Light Novel Recommendations, Engineering Books