Well, this was definitely the most prolific year of book reading in my life – 61 books. Many of these were audio books, which a surprising amount of people challenge me about, as if it is not the same as reading. But as a heavy listener, I have learned to concentrate quite well while being read to through my iPhone headphones. I think it’s an acquired skill, because last year I retained a lot less and spaced out a lot when listening to audiobooks. Now I rarely do. I listen around 3 hours a day now because of my commute, dog-walking, and exercise regimens. I also turned back to reading print books again this year, more than ever, since going on a “low information diet” on all things other than books. No more newspapers or magazines this year and way fewer podcasts and blog posts were consumed. A couple of insights when reading over the list:
- There are not many design or UX books available on audiobook, which sucks. That category would be far more populated otherwise.
- My work in science UI this year, particularly chemistry, was an obsession. My reading list shows that.
- I didn’t list my abandoned books here, but they were all fiction. I only got through 4 works of fiction, 2 of which were extremely short. I just don’t have much patience for it these days. The one novel I did inhale was Jonathon Lethem’s Chronic City – which I loved.
- I rely on Audible.com’s sales quite a bit, so my list has some stinkers on it because of that fact. Just not everything I really want to read is affordable.
- My favorite book of the year was the Selfish Gene. It totally changed my understanding of the world and evolution, and is a masterpiece of science writing. My favorite last year was Stephen Pinker’s The Blank Slate, and it is clear to me that Dawkins and Pinker are a cut above everybody else in terms of lucid thinking and clear writing style.
- My least favorite book of the year was probably “One Second After” – a post-apocalyptic novel about an ElectroMagnetic Pulse attack on the US. I should have known I would hate it when I saw that the forward was written by Newt Gingrich. It’s full of paranoid spirit, gun toting bravado, and a deep sense of American exceptionalism. It makes it clear that exactly the kind of narrow minds that persecuted Oppenheimer during the “red scare” of the 1950s are still a force in American life.
- I also read endless and overlapping books on innovation and business, some of which were pretty lame. Avoid the Power of Pull, Changing the Game, Wired to Care, How Pleasure Works, The Pursuit of Perfect and Drive. They’re all trying to do the Gladwell thing, and none of them really needed to be written.
- The most mind-blowing books of my year were Biocentrism and the Ego Tunnel, which both make a convincing case that the universe and everything in it is generated by our own perception.
- My other favorites were Good to Great by Jim Collins, a book I’ve quoted almost as much as I did the 4-hour Work Week last year, and Talent is Overrated, which instilled the idea of deliberate practice in me.
Science & Technology
MUST READ: The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins
American Prometheus: The Triumph & Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird & Martin Shirwood
The Science of Formula One Design, by David Tremayne
Proofiness, The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception by Charles Siefe
Don’t be Such a Scientist, by Randy Olson
The Myth of Alzheimers, by Peter J. Whitehouse
MUST READ: Biocentrism, by Richard Lanza
101 Theory Drive, by Terri McDermott
Endless Forms Most Beautiful, by Sean B. Carroll
The Demon Under the Microscope, by Thomas Hager
Science Matters, by James Trefil, Robert M. Hazen
A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson
The Ego Tunnel, by Thomas Metzinger
The Brain that Changes Itself, by Norman Doidge
Particle Physics: a Very Short Introduction, by Frank Close
History, Philosophy & Social Science
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, by Freidrich Neitzsche
MUST READ: The Philosophy of Freidrich Neitzsche, by H.L. Mencken
Man’s Search for Meaning, by Victor Frankl
Walden, by Henry David Thoreau
Intellectuals, by Paul Johnson
The Moral Landscape, by Sam Harris
Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue, by John McWhorter
The Evolution of God, by Robert Wright
Design, Interaction Design, & Information Science
Box, Bottle, Bag: The World’s Best Packaging Design, by Andrew Gibbs
Information, by Luciano Floridi
Prototyping, by Todd Ziki Warfel
Undercover UX, by Cennydd Boyles & James Boxx
Cognitive Surplus, by Clay Shirky
Business & Innovation
MUST READ: Good to Great, by Jim Collins
Bloomberg by Bloomberg, by Michael Bloomberg
MUST READ: The Death of Capital, by Michael E. Lewitt
Too Big to Fail, by Andrew Ross Sorkin
Brand it Yourself, by Lynn Altmann
Rework, by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson
The Numerati, by Stephen Baker
Where Good Ideas Come From, by Steven Johnson
The Power of Pull, by John Hagel, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison
MUST READ: Talent is Overrated, by Geoff Colvin
Changing the Game, by David Edery & Ethan Mollick
Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us, by Daniel Pink
Fiction
The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde
Chronic City, by Jonathon Lethem
One Second After, by William R. Forstchen
The Diamond Age, by Neil Stephenson (re-read)
Psychology
The Pursuit of Perfect, by Tal Ben-Shahar
50 Self Help Classics, by Tom Butler-Bowden
The Happiness Hypothesis, by Jonathan Haidt
Breakfast with Socrates, by Robert Rowland Smith
Mindfulness, by Ellen J. Langer
How Pleasure Works, by Paul Bloom
Miscellaneous Nonfiction
The Know it All, by A.J. Jacobs
MUST READ: In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan
The Ominvore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan
Second Nature, by Michael Pollan
Anti-cancer, by David Servan-Shreiber
The Rolling Stones: Exile on Main Street (33 & 1/3) by Bill Janovitch
MUST READ: Adventures on the Wine Route, by Kermit Lynch
Open: An Autobiography by Andre Aggassi
#1 by Rian on December 31st, 2010
Hi Todd – thanks for the list, it’s always good to see what other people are reading. What did you think of Undercover UX? I enjoyed it but felt it was more an introduction/reference. I agree that it’s so hard to find solid UI/UX books. I do recommend LukeW’s “Web Form Design” if you ever have to do that as part of your work.
I look forward to more posts from you next year – you always make me think.
#2 by jon on January 5th, 2011
Hey-
Quite a list- after reading your Bloomberg Terminal post (good to see you get Vosne Romanee in there) I can’t help but think you should get some Richard Ford on your headphones- might bring you back to fiction (if you ever look back).