Books

What I’ve read

This section is bound to be outdated. For a more-updated list, see my media listing page.

That said, here are some books I’ve read, sorted by category, and sorted within each category by how highly I recommend them. There’s a strong recency bias in what I remembered to put on this list.

Haskell

• Category Theory for Programmers
• Haskell Programming from First Principles
• Learn You a Haskell for Great Good
• Parallel and Concurrent Programming in Haskell
• Thinking with Types
• Pearls of Functional Algorithm Design
• Optics by Example
• Developing Web Apps with Haskell and Yesod
• Real World Haskell
• A Type of Programming
• Finding Success and Failure in Haskell

Other Programming Languages

• Type-Driven Development with Idris
• The C Programming Language
• HTML and CSS
• Beautiful Racket
• The C++ Programming Language
• Metaprogramming Ruby 2
• Ruby Pickaxe
• JavaScript: The Good Parts

Computer Science

• Types and Programming Languages
• Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
• Purely Functional Data Structures
• The Algorithm Design Manual
• Quantum Computing Since Democritus
• The Little Typer
• Computer Organization and Design
• Introduction to the Theory of Computation
• CLRS

Software Process

• The Pragmatic Programmer
• Waltzing With Bears
• Programming Pearls
• Cracking the Coding Interview

Math

• The Princeton Companion to Mathematics
• Basic Category Theory for Computer Scientists
• Div, Grad, Curl and All That
• Principles of Mathematical Analysis
• Flatland
• How to Prove It
• How to Solve It
• Naive Set Theory
• The Theory of Numbers
• The Math Book
• Options Futures and Other Derivatives
• Stewart’s Multivariable Calculus
• Differential Equations: Computing and Modeling
• Linear Algebra with Applications

Science

• Feynman Lectures on Physics
• The Road to Reality
• A Short History of Nearly Everything
• The Universe in a Nutshell
• A Brief History of Time
• The Usborne Science Encyclopedia
• Cosmos
• The Elegant Universe
• The Disappearing Spoon

Philosophy

• Death
• Wisdom of the West
• Nausea
• Consciousness Explained
• Discourse on Method
• Meditations on First Philosophy
• Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking
• Meditations
• Existentialism and Human Emotions

Ethics

• Ethics in the Real World
• Against Empathy
• Lying

Tennis

• String Theory
• Inner Game of Tennis

AI and ML

• Deep Learning
• Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach
• Cambridge Handbook of Artificial Intelligence
• Superintelligence
• Human Compatible
• Hands on Machine Learning with Scikit-Learn and Tensorflow
• Smarter Than Us
• Machine Intelligence for Healthcare

Fiction

(This section is especially incomplete)

• Infinite Jest
• 1984
• The Inferno
• Of Mice and Men
• Blood Meridian
• Animal Farm
• The Hobbit
• The Stranger
• Brave New World
• Foundation
• The Importance of Being Earnest
• The Odyssey
• Mythology
• The Stranger
• The Sea Wolf
• Tale of Two Cities
• Julius Caesar
• To Kill a Mockingbird
• Crime and Punishment
• The Great Gatsby
• The Road
• Taming of the Shrew
• The Three Musketeers

Economics

• The Economy
• Capital in the Twenty-First Century
• The Case Against Education

Puzzles, Games, etc.

• 1000 Play Thinks
• Hobby Games: The 100 Best
• The Practical Encyclopedia of Magic

Biographical

• Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!
• A Mathematician’s Apology
• Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
• Steve Jobs

Design

• The Design of Everyday Things
• The Shape of Design

Biology

• Behave
• The Selfish Gene
• Campbell Biology
• Dunmore and Fleischer’s Medical Terminology

Communication

• The Social Skills Guidebook
• The Charisma Myth
• Talking to Humans

Other

• Edible Wild Plants
• The Great Composers Fakebook
• The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
• Godel Escher Bach
• Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things
• A History of Modern Europe
• Egg: A Culinary Exploration of the World’s Most Versatile Ingredient
• Flash Boys
• The Art of Game Design
• Eats, Shoots & Leaves
• All of the Above
• Dictionary of Music