Thank you for the nice words about last week’s e-mail! Really thankful for all of you and happy new year!
Shorter post this week, here are my favorite books of 2025 and my 2026 reading list.
(Here is a list of my favorite 97 books of all time)
Favorite books of 2025
- The Will of the Many (Sci-fi/Fun): an amazing sci-fi story.
- Cradle Series (Fantasy/Fun): a huge 12-book series. Slows down a little in the final 3 books, but books 1-8 are great.
- Be 2.0 (Entrepreneurship/starting a business): one of the OG books on starting a business, sad it took me this long to read it.
- Rumi (Poetry): My poetry skills are awful, but Rumi is some of the first poetry that I’ve read and been like “wow.”
- Antifragile (Philosophy/Science): I’ve read quite a few of Nassim Taleb’s books, and this is easily the best one. His writing is a bit precociou,s but the concepts are very interesting.
- Dotcom Secrets (Internet business): game-changing for me and my internet business.
- Tax-Free Wealth (Taxes/money): in order to get the most benefit out of an accountant (in the USA), it’s essential that you learn about how taxes work. This book saves me ~10-30k a year.
- The Right Stuff (history/NASA): a great non-fiction on the history of NASA and pilots.
- Stoner (fiction/literature): Reread it again this year, one of my favorite books ever. Something about the emotional depth and storytelling actually transports me to another world.
- To Kill a Mockingbird: I read this in high school and was annoyed that I was forced to read it. Read it again this year and can’t believe what an idiot kid teenager I was, amazing.
- Dark Matter (sci-fi/fun): fastest page-turner I’ve read all year.
- SoloTuber (entrepreneurship/YouTube): The author is a really cool guy I hear.
- Boron Letters (entrepreneurship/marketing): taught me a ton! Written by a marketing expert while he was in prison.
Reading List 2026
- Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life (reading it right now, SO GOOD, but I’m also a surfing fanatic): a surfing devotee’s autobiographical world journey.
- Mom Test: How to talk to customers and learn if your business is a good idea.
- Various biographies: Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Dyson, Akio Morita
- War and Peace: Apparently, this is the best translation. I will commit a month to reading this over the summer!
- Exhalation: I’ve been recommended this book now 6 times.
- The Second World War by Antony Beevor: WWII, even if it wasn’t real life, is such an interesting story about war, politics, geography, economics, corruption, and everything. I hear this is one of the best books on it.
- Lonesome Dove: a masterful western.
- An Immense World: Mind-blowing and mind-expanding non-fiction about how animals sense and explore the world.
- On Liberty, Utilitarianism, and Other Essays: trying to expand my philosophical chops.
- East of Eden: apparently one of the best books and stories of all time, I’m excited to read it!
- Essays of Montaigne: No way I’ll make it through all these essays, but another series I’ve been excited to read.
- Some Shakespeare (watching first, then reading second): Macbeth (2021 on Apple TV → read), Julius Ceaser (Marlon Brando 1953 → then read), Hamlet (David Tennant 2009 → read), Othello (Lauren Fishburn 1995 → read), King Lear (Ian McKellen 2008 → read). Books are Folger Shakespeare Library or the Arden Shakespeare.
- Shogun: I LOVED Musashi, apparently this book is along those same lines.
Any books I should add to the list? What are you reading?