Several group houses I’ve lived in have had massive libraries. These have included contributions from past and current house members. While this results in a pretty impressive display, I often find myself at a loss when someone brings up the inevitable “Which books do you recommend?“. Alas, I often find myself struggling to put together an immediate response. With that in mind, I’ve assembled a list of books that I’ve read. It’s worth noting that just because a book appears on my list, does not necessarily mean I endorse its content. Where possible, I’ve tried to include a few sentences on my thoughts on the books. Hopefully I will someday have enough time to write mini-reviews for a more-than-negligible fraction of these books.
Since the books I’ve read lack any overarching order to them, so does this list (I apologize in advance). To make up for that, I am designating the various books with symbols to indicate my review:
These are the paradigm-shifting books that have had major influences on shaping me as a person.
🧭Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl - This proved incredibly valuable during a particularly dark time in my life. The titles in this section are in no particular order, except for this one, which definitely deserves the #1 spot.
🧭Blindsight by Peter Watts - The story is mostly secondary to the author’s musings on the nature of consciousness, transhumanism, the Fermi paradox, and the role of sentience from the perspective of natural selection. Still, as a first contact story written by a former marine biologist, this is probably one of the best sci-fi horror stories since Ridley Scott’s Alien. You can read many of the author’s short stories on his website (and if you read this, I highly recommend checking out this fan traler for Blindsight that was made with input from the author).
🧭Zero to One by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters - I’ve had much more lived experience with startups since I read this, and I increasinly disagree with a few points in the book, but this definitely opened my eyes at a crucial stage in my life.
🧭Market Wizards: Interviews with Top Traders by Jack D. Schwager - This helped me realize that most successful traders have two things in common: 1) They started trading an asset early before regulation kicked in or information was more publicly known, and 2) they have the same rules for avoiding losing money before all else.
🧭So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport - Informed a lot of the study habits that got me through school AND helped me make a rapid and successul career change to a new and cognitively-demanding field.
While not in the “life-changing” tier, these are still great books. “5-star” reviews may be more common than you would expect if book quality really does follow a Normal distribution, but that’s because I intentionally seek out books that I think I’d like.
Tier 4 📚: “Average (i.e., 4-Stars on Netflix or Amazon)”
Exactly what it says, in the title: Average (or what you would assign a 4-star review on Amazon or Netflix). There may be fewer books in this and the next sections based on what you would expect from a Normal Distribution, but that’s because I intentionally seek out books that I think I would like. This and the next sections are failures of those efforts.
If anything I list these here because I’d like to spare you from reading them. In contrast with the last section, these were actively painful to read. In come cases I may have read them because they were next in line after a previous book that was much more enjoyable. In other cases I read them because they had an extremely vocal fanbase and I wanted to understand what all the fuss was about. In still a few other cases I consumed the work more or less against my will (such as with the cross-country road trip where a Dan Brown audiobook was played just because it would keep my friend awake while he drove).
For obvious reasons, I’m not including Amazon links for these books. That way, if you actually end up paying money for any of these dumpster fires, that’s entirely your own damn fault. I am completely blameless if you’re actually masochistic enough to spend part of your finite life subjecting yourself to these works.
💩Dune: House Atreides by Brian Herbert (I had high hopes for the son of the original Dune author, Frank Herbert. That was a huge mistake.)
💩Dune: The Butlerian Jihad by Brian Herbert (Brian…please…just stop)
💩Armada by Ernest Cline (“Ready Player One” wasn’t perfect, but this took all the worst aspects of that book (and JUST the worst aspects), and turned them into some kind of Frankenstein’s monster of a novel.)
💩The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (Among the other problems with this book, if you’re trying to make an individualist manifesto, making your main character an architect just seems like an incredibly dumb choice.)
💩Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (It almost seems like this is sacrificing any possible steelman arguments for objectivism simply for the sake of being more polarizing and attention-getting. Even if you agree with objectivism, there are so many ways of presenting it better than it was here, so what was even the point of this book? I’m starting to think that for most adult fans of Ayn Rand, their literary sensibilities haven’t changed much since the 5th grade.)
💩The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief by Francis S. Collins (I had low expectations from just the title. Turns out, not low enough.)
💩The Secret by Rhonda Byrne (Classmate in high school had this on tape during a long drive. That classmate was later roped up into a pyramid scheme, to the surprise of absolutely nobody.)
💩Fifty Shades of Grey by E. L. James (I don’t think the Glibert Gottfried reading takes away from the tone at all. This is some “Inquisitor”-level (see #3) ANTI-aphrodisiac here)
💩Dianetics by L Ron Hubbard (Well, at least reading this removed any motivation to have anything to do with the Scientiology cult. That’s at least one bullet dodged.)
💩Battlefield Earth by L Ron Hubbard (I don’t know why I thought the book was going to be better than the movie)
💩Xenocide by Orson Scott Card (The 2nd book wasn’t exactly a masterpiece, but did Orson have a stroke or something between the 2nd and 3rd?)
💩Rama II by Gentry Lee & Arthur C. Clarke (There was such a dramatic drop in quality between the 1st and 2nd books that I was worried)
💩The Garden of Rama by Gentry Lee & Arthur C. Clarke (God…dammit…God fucking dammit, Arthur.)
💩The Number of the Beast by Robert Heinlein (I powered through this book hoping that there was going to be some kind of worthwhile ending. There are so many ways my limited time in this life could have been better spent.)
💩Fire with Fire by Charles Gannon (Were the 2014 Nebula Awards judges bribed?)
💩Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler (Knowing the summary of this book vs. actually reading it is like the difference between seeing a picture of a landfill and being there to experience the rancid smell because HOLY SHIT! 🤮 Not only is the author trying to present sociopathic self-serving opportunism as a political ethos, but now I think some of those Nazi book burnings were so he could hide the fact that he plaigarized some of the more coherent parts. Most of the rest is a rambling mess. I found myself saying out loud mid-reading, “Will you just shut the fuck up already, Hitler?“. I didn’t think it was possible, but I somehow have even more contempt for neo-nazis than before.)
💩Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth’s Last Days by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins (I tried to be open-minded and look at some “christian” fiction. It turns out this was one of the worst possibe starting points. This is the kind of Kirk-Cameron-death-to-all-not-part-of-my-subdenomination christianity that turns people into atheists.)
💩Timeline by Michael Chrichton (I used to think Deepak Chopra was bad with the whole “Quantum = Magic” schtick. It turns out he could have done so much worse.)
💩Forever Free by Joe Haldeman (Why do such amazing science fiction books keep getting such aggressively horrible sequels?)
💩Anthem by Ayn Rand (I thought revisitng Ayn Rand decades later, I’d finally be able to undertand what all the fuss is about. Nope.)
💩The Lair of the White Worm by Bram Stoker (What the hell happened to Bran Stoker between this and “Dracula”?)
💩The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (I feel like the fast pace is designed to keep you attention long enoug to stop you from scratching your head at what you just read.)
💩The Eye of Argon by Jim Theis (Actually read this at a party (one where a LOT of alcohol was involved). This “The Room” of books. Even H.P. Lovecraft would look at this book and say “This author’s just going too overboard with the flowery descriptions”)
💩Angels and Demons by Dan Brown (This is all our fault. We really shouldn’t have encouraged Dan Brown with the popularity of The Da Vinci Code.)
Tier i 🤔: “Haven’t read yet; want to”
Not giving this tier a place among the previous ones, because I literally have no idea how good these works are. I want to know, though.
If you have any recommendations, don’t hesitate to contact me at [contact at matthewmcateer dot me] and I will be very happy to add them to the queue! Alternatily, you can follow me on Twitter and reach out to me there.