Reading list
They say the quickest way to gain knowledge is to read lessons that other people have figured out. Below are the books I've read and actually made notes from. Pre-2018 is a bit of a black hole. The "impact" score is somewhere between a rating and how much it's changed my thinking. I'd suggest all books are worth reading but ones that have had a strong impact on me are rated 9, or above.
2025
So far this year it’s about abundance and how technology / innovation / design has created things that my great-grandparents wouldn’t have been able to even imagine
| Date | Title | Author | Impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 2025 | Abundance | Ezra Klein; Derek Thompson | — |
| Mar 2025 | This Is Marketing | Seth Godin | 6 |
| Mar 2025 | A Story Is A Deal | Will Storr | 9 |
| Feb 2025 | Fully Automated Luxury Communism | Aaron Bastani | 10 |
| Feb 2025 | Deep Utopia | Nick Bostrom | 5 |
| Jan 2025 | Reality+ | David Chalmers | 7 |
| Jan 2025 | Life 3.0 | Max Tegmark | 7 |
| Jan 2025 | Revenge Of The Tipping Point | Malcolm Gladwell | 6.5 |
2024
I tried to use 2024 to focus on a lot of blind-spots. That meant: physics, maths and probability.
| Date | Title | Author | Impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 2024 | Life As No-One Knows It | Sara Imari Walker | 9 |
| Dec 2024 | The Singularity Is Nearer | Ray Kurzweil | 9.5 |
| Nov 2024 | Exponential | Azeem Azhar | 8 |
| Nov 2024 | A Brief History Of Intelligence | Max Bennet | 10 |
| Oct 2024 | The Art Of Uncertainty | David Spegelhalter | 6 |
| Oct 2024 | Everything Is Predictable | Tom Chivers | 8.5 |
| Oct 2024 | About Face | Alan Cooper | 7 |
| Sep 2024 | On the Edge | Nate Silver | 8 |
| Sep 2024 | Nexus | Yuval Noah Harari | 9 |
| Sep 2024 | Prisoners Of Geography | Tim Marshall | 4 |
| Aug 2024 | Numbers Don't Lie | Vaclav Smil | 7 |
| Aug 2024 | The Talent Code | Daniel Coyle | 7.5 |
| Aug 2024 | The Atomic Human | Neil Lawrence | 10 |
| Aug 2024 | Good Economics for Hard Times | Abhijit Banerjee; Esther Duflo | 6.5 |
| Aug 2024 | A Brief History of Everyone who Ever Lived | Adam Rutherford | 6 |
| Aug 2024 | Fuck Being Humble | Stefanie Sword-Williams | 4 |
| Jul 2024 | On Confidence | The School of Life | 6 |
| Jul 2024 | Energy and Civilization | Vaclav Smil | 8 |
| Jul 2024 | How Innovation Works | Matt Ridley | 9.5 |
| Jul 2024 | Not the End of the World | Hannah Ritchie | 10 |
| Jul 2024 | The Order of Time | Carlo Rovelli | 9.5 |
| Jul 2024 | The Experience Machine | Andy Clark | 10 |
| Jul 2024 | Slack | Tom Demarco | 7.5 |
| Jun 2024 | Revenge of Analog | David Sax | 8 |
| Jun 2024 | Anthrovision | Gillian Tett | 7 |
| Jun 2024 | Physics of Climate Change | Lawrence Krauss | 6 |
| Jun 2024 | where wizards stay up late | Katie Hafner | 6 |
| Jun 2024 | Exactly | Simon Winchester | 9 |
| Jun 2024 | Uncommon sense common nonsense | Jules Goddard; Tony Eccles | 9 |
| Jun 2024 | Power Paradox | Dacher Keltner | 8 |
| Jun 2024 | Broad Band | Claire Evans | 6 |
| Jun 2024 | How migration really works | Hein de Haas | 9 |
| Jun 2024 | The Information | James Gleick | 8 |
| Jun 2024 | The Challenger Sale | Matthew Dixon | 8 |
| May 2024 | The Grid | Matt Watkinson | 9 |
| May 2024 | Ten short lessons in renewable energy | Stephen Peake | 6.5 |
| May 2024 | The Soul of a New Machine | Tracy Kidder | 8 |
| May 2024 | Gap Selling | Jim Keenan | 8 |
| May 2024 | Architecture from prehistory to climate emergency | Barnabas Calder | 9 |
| May 2024 | Bullshit Jobs | David Graeber | 8.5 |
| May 2024 | Scale | Geoffrey West | 9.5 |
| May 2024 | Mindset Matters | Gemma Leigh Roberts | 3 |
| May 2024 | Mastering Uncertainty | Matt Watkinson; Csaba Konkoly | 10 |
| May 2024 | Ruined by Design | Mike Monteiro | 8 |
| May 2024 | Working Backwards | Bill Carr | 7 |
| May 2024 | Material World | Ed Conway | 9 |
| May 2024 | The Silo Effect | Gillian Tett | 7 |
| May 2024 | Obliquity | John Kay | 8 |
| May 2024 | On Writing | Stephen King | 7 |
| May 2024 | Payback | Margaret Atwood | 4 |
| Apr 2024 | Measure What Matters | John Doerr | 5 |
| Apr 2024 | Connect The Dots | Scott Chambers | 5 |
| Apr 2024 | Designing Processes | Christian Bergmann | 8 |
| Apr 2024 | Against Method | Paul Feyerabend | 8 |
| Apr 2024 | The God Equation | Michio Kaku | 9 |
| Apr 2024 | The Speed of Trust | Stephen Covey | 6 |
| Apr 2024 | Trust | Katherine Hawley | 7 |
| Apr 2024 | Hypothesis Driven Development | Alex Cowman | 4 |
| Apr 2024 | Supercommunicators | Charles Duhigg | 6.5 |
| Apr 2024 | The Crux | Richard Rumelt | 6.5 |
| Mar 2024 | The Long Game | Dorie Clark | 6.5 |
| Mar 2024 | Sense + Respond | Jeff Gothelf; Josh Seiden | 8.5 |
| Mar 2024 | Six Easy Pieces | Richard Feynman | 7.5 |
| Mar 2024 | Growth Hacking Marketing | Ryan Holiday | 6 |
| Mar 2024 | Full House | Stephen Jay Gould | 6.5 |
| Mar 2024 | The Wisdom of Crowds | James Surowiecki | 7.5 |
| Mar 2024 | Bird By Bird | Anne Lamott | 7 |
| Feb 2024 | Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World | David Epstein | 10 |
| Feb 2024 | Master of Change | Brad Stulberg | 7 |
| Feb 2024 | Same as Ever | Morgan Housel | 7.5 |
| Feb 2024 | Entangled Life | Merlin Sheldrake | 8.5 |
| Feb 2024 | Growth Levers | Matt Lerner | 7 |
| Feb 2024 | Fluke | Brian Klaas | 8 |
| Jan 2024 | Design is storytelling | Ellen Lupton | 5 |
| Jan 2024 | Sapiens | Yuval Noah Harari | 8.5 |
| Jan 2024 | The Scout Mindset | Julia Galef | 7 |
| Jan 2024 | How Big Things Get Done | Bent Flyvbjerg; Dan Gardner | 9 |
| Jan 2024 | One million followers | Brendan Kane | 6 |
| Jan 2024 | The First Rule of Mastery | Michael Gervais | 7 |
| Jan 2024 | Mindset | Carol Dweck | 6 |
| Jan 2024 | Think Faster, Talk Smarter | Matt Abrahams | 7.5 |
| Jan 2024 | Right kind of wrong | Amy Edmonson | 8.5 |
| Jan 2024 | Thinking in Bets | Annie Duke | 7 |
2023
This was a year of re-reading lots of books, alongside classic innovation books I hadn't previously read. I was trying to answer, "Why the fuck did Byrd fail? What did I miss? How would I avoid it in the future?"
| Date | Title | Author | Impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 2023 | The Geek Way | Andrew McAfee | 7.5 |
| Dec 2023 | Never Eat Alone | Keith Ferrazzi | 5 |
| Dec 2023 | The Coming Wave | Mustafa Suleyman; Michael Bhaskar | 8.5 |
| Nov 2023 | Technofeudalism | Yanis Varoufakis | 8.5 |
| Oct 2023 | Clear Thinking | Shane Parrish | 7.5 |
| Oct 2023 | End Times | Peter Turchin | 9 |
| Oct 2023 | Writing for busy readers | Todd Rogers; Jessica Lasky-Fink | 8.5 |
| Aug 2023 | Mistakes Were Made, But Not By Me | Carol Tavris; Elliot Aronson | 8 |
| May 2023 | The Jobs to Be Done Playbook | Jim Kalbach | 7 |
| Mar 2023 | Personal MBA | Josh Kaufman | 8 |
| Mar 2023 | The Halo Effect | Phil Rosenzweig | 10 |
| Feb 2023 | Demand-side sales 101 | Bob Moesta; Greg Engle | 7.5 |
| Feb 2023 | When Coffee & Kale Compete | Alan Klement | 7.5 |
| Feb 2023 | Traction | Gino Wickman | 6 |
| Feb 2023 | A More Beautiful Question | Warren Berger | 8 |
| Feb 2023 | The Culture Map | Erin Meyer | 9 |
| Feb 2023 | Business Model Shifts | Patrick Van Der Pijl; Justin Lokitz; Roland Wijnen | 7 |
| Jan 2023 | Thinking in Systems | Donella Meadows | 7 |
| Jan 2023 | Why We Sleep | Matthew Walker | 8.5 |
| Jan 2023 | Value Proposition Design | Alexander Osterwalder | 6 |
| Jan 2023 | 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do | Amy Morin | 8 |
| Jan 2023 | The Invincible Company | Alexander Osterwalder | — |
| Jan 2023 | Continuous Discovery | Teresa Torres | 6 |
| Jan 2023 | Rule The World | Paul Furlong | 6 |
| Jan 2023 | Business Model You | Tim Clark; Bruce Hazen | 8.5 |
| Jan 2023 | Competing Against Luck | Clayton Christensen | 8.5 |
2022
Most of my year was consumed in startup land with my reading focus very narrowly on, "How do I make Byrd work? Why isn’t Byrd working?"
| Date | Title | Author | Impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 2022 | How Will You Measure Your Life | Clayton Christensen | 7.5 |
| Dec 2022 | A Beginners Guide to the Stock Market | Matthew Kratter | 6.5 |
| Dec 2022 | Innovation Accounting | Dan Toma; Esther Gons | 8.5 |
| Dec 2022 | The Mom Test | Rob Fitzpatrick | 8.5 |
| Nov 2022 | The Innovator's Dilemma | Clayton Christensen | 10 |
| Nov 2022 | This Is Service Design Doing | Marc Stickdorn; Jakob Schneider; Adam Lawrence; Markus Hormess | 6.5 |
| Oct 2022 | The Corporate Startup | Dan Toma; Tendayi Viki | 8.5 |
| Oct 2022 | The Hedgehog and The Fox | Isaih Berlin | — |
| Sep 2022 | Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt | 8.5 |
| Sep 2022 | Borrowing brilliance | David Kord Murray | — |
| Aug 2022 | Upstream | Dan Heath | 7.5 |
| Jun 2022 | The Myths of Creativity | David Burkus | 8.5 |
| May 2022 | Build | Tony Fadell | 4.5 |
| May 2022 | Human frontiers, the future of big ideas... | Michael Bhaskar | 9.5 |
| Apr 2022 | The Black Swan | Nassim Nicholas Taleb | 9 |
| Apr 2022 | Messy Middle | Scott Belsky | 6.5 |
| Jan 2022 | Product-Led Growth | Wes Bush | 6 |
| Jan 2022 | Hooked | Nir Eyal | 5.5 |
| Jan 2022 | Business Model Generation | Alexander Osterwalder | 7 |
2021
I barely read! A three year-old, one year-old and a startup are not conducive to having spare time.
| Date | Title | Author | Impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 2021 | Secrets of Sand Hill Road | Scott Kupor | 6.5 |
| Dec 2021 | The Power of Moments | Chip Heath | 7 |
| Dec 2021 | The Lean Startup | Eric Ries | 8 |
| Oct 2021 | Catalyst | Jonah Berger | 7 |
| Sep 2021 | No Rules Rules | Erin Meyer; Reed Hastings | 9 |
| Sep 2021 | Rebel ideas | Matthew Syed | 8 |
| Jun 2021 | Never split the difference | Chris Voss | 6 |
| Mar 2021 | Hype Yourself | Lucy Werner | 7 |
| Mar 2021 | Building a storybrand | Donald Miller | 7 |
| Mar 2021 | The power of not thinking | Simon Roberts | 7.5 |
| Mar 2021 | Do Open | David Hieatt | 7 |
| Feb 2021 | Adapt | Tim Harford | — |
| Jan 2021 | Black Box Thinking | Matthew Syed | 9 |
| Jan 2021 | First you write a sentence | Joe Moran | 9 |
| Jan 2021 | The 1 Page marketing plan | Alan Dib | 6 |
2020
I read more than is here, I just did a bad job recording what I was reading. It was all around sports science and how to design better - more human - systems for how we exercise
| Date | Title | Author | Impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 2020 | Running the dream | Matt Fitzgerald | 9 |
| Sep 2020 | Lost art of running | Shane Benzie | 7 |
| Jan 2020 | The Comeback Quotient | Matt Fitzgerald | 9 |
2019
A mix of sports science and behavioural design books. Most of my attention in 2019 was taken up by podcasts on the long drives to-and-from Dyson
| Date | Title | Author | Impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 2019 | One plus one equals three | Dave Trott | 8 |
| Oct 2019 | Couples that work | Jennifer Patriglieri | 8 |
| Oct 2019 | Arte della vittoria | Phil Knight | 7 |
| Sep 2019 | Invisible Women | Caroline Criado Perez | 8 |
| Sep 2019 | Different, escaping the competitive herd | Youngme Moon | 8 |
| Aug 2019 | Talking to my daughter | Yanis Varoufakis | 8.5 |
| Aug 2019 | Misbehaving | Richard Thaler | 5 |
| Aug 2019 | The Sport's Gene | David Epstein | 9 |
| Jul 2019 | Alchemy | Rory Sutherland | 7.5 |
| Jul 2019 | Good to go | Christie Ashwanden | 7 |
| Jul 2019 | I bottoni di napoleone | Penny Le Couteur | 7 |
| Jun 2019 | Zag | Marty Neumeier | 6 |
| Jun 2019 | Running Flow | Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi | 7 |
| Jan 2019 | The Choice Factory | Richard Shotton | — |
Pre-2018
I kept a really poor record of what I read pre-2018. These are some of the books I’ve noted down along with dates of reading
| Date | Title | Author | Impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 2018 | The way of the runner | Adharanand Finn | 5.5 |
| Sep 2018 | The hard things about hard things | Ben Horowitz | 7 |
| Jul 2018 | New Rules of Marathon | Matt Fitzgerald | 6.5 |
| Jul 2018 | How bad do you want it | Matt Fitzgerald | 9 |
| Jul 2018 | Running with the Kenyans | Adharanand Finn | 6 |
| Jul 2018 | Let Your Mind Run | Deena Kastor | 7 |
| Jul 2018 | Checklist manifesto | Atul Gawande | 9.5 |
| May 2018 | Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow | Daniel Kahneman | 9 |
| May 2018 | The Undoing Project | Michael Lewis | 9 |
| Apr 2018 | The Best Interface is No Interface | Golden Krishna | 9 |
| Jan 2018 | Endure | Alex Hutchinson | 7 |
| Jul 2017 | Getting to Yes | Roger Fisher | 6.5 |
| May 2017 | The Design of Everyday Things | Don Norman | 10 |
| Aug 2013 | Purple Cow | Seth Godin | 6 |
| Aug 2013 | Tribes | Seth Godin | 3 |
| Aug 2013 | To Sell is Human | Daniel H Pink | 6 |
