Will Mannon

“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.”

-Franz Kafka

Below are the books that shape my thinking…so far. I like everything included here.

• Bold = especially enjoyed

• (*) = especially well-written

The Internet + Humans

• *The Sovereign Individual by James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg

• *World Without Mind by Franklin Foer

• Rapt by Winfred Gallagher (notes)

• Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman

• Human as Media by Andrey Miroshnichenko

• The Shallows by Nicholas Carr (notes)

• Magic and Loss by Virginia Heffernan (notes)

• Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport (quick hitters) (full notes)

• *Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino

• The Glass Cage by Nicholas Carr (notes)

• Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew Crawford (notes)

• The World Beyond Your Head by Matthew Crawford

• The Signals are Talking by Amy Webb

Novels

• *Niels Lynhe by Jens Peter Jacobsen

• *The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

• *The Razor’s Edge by William Somerset Maugham (Tweetstorm)

• *On The Road by Jack Kerouac (notes)

• *My Antonia by Willa Cather

• *The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe

• *All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (notes)

• *The Moon and Sixpence by William Somerset Maugham

• *The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

• Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

• *Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

• *Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

• O Pioneers! by Willa Cather

• The Road by Cormac McCarthy

• Stoner by John Williams

• The Moviegoer by Walker Percy

• Ask the Dust by John Fante

• Big Sur by Jack Kerouac

• The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac

• The Stranger by Albert Camus

• The Plague by Albert Camus

• Siddartha by Herman Hesse

• The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy

• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

• Hippie by Paulo Coelho

Biographies/Memoirs

• *Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan

• *Four Seasons in Rome by Anthony Doerr (notes)

• *The Return by Hisham Matar (notes)

• *A Life of My Own by Claire Tomalin (Tweetstorm)

• The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig

• Emerson: The Mind on Fire by Robert D. Richardson

• Saved by Beauty by Roger Housden

• Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt

• Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey

• Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins

• Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman by Richard Feynman

• Not Fade Away by Peter Barton and Laurence Shames

• The Everything Store by Brad Stone

• The Third Door by Alex Banayan

• Pour Your Heart Into It by Howard Schultz

• His Excellency (George Washington) by Joseph J. Ellis

• When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

• A Good Life by Ben Bradlee

Philosophy

• *Beyond Good and Evil by Nietzsche

• *Notes from the End of Everything by Robert Pantano

• *The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus

• *Anam Cara by John O’Donohue (quick hitters)

• All Things Shining by Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorance Kelly

• At the Existentialist Cafe by Sarah Bakewell

• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

• Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Walking by Henry David Thoreau

• The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts

• Existentialism is a Humanism by Jean Paul Satre

• On the Shortness of Life by Seneca (Tweetstorm)

• The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer

• As One Is by Jiddu Krishnamurti

• American Philosophy by John Kaag (notes)

• Hiking with Nietzsche by John Kaag (notes)

• Travels with Epicurus by Daniel Klein

• Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It by Daniel Klein

• Meditations by Jiddu Krishnamurti

• A Little History of Philosophy by Nigel Warburton

Mind-Benders

• Finite and Infinite Games by James P. Carse

• God’s Debris by Scott Adams

• The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli (quick-hitters)

• The Island of Knowledge by Marcelo Gleiser

• The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

• But What If We’re Wrong? by Chuck Klosterman

Figuring Out Life

• *Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson (notes) (Tweetstorm)

• *Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke

• The Almanack of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgenson

• How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams

• Anything You Want by Derek Sivers

• The Defining Decade by Meg Jay

• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

• Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton

• How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton

• Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson

• The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz

History

• *The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt

• Heirs of the Founders by H.W. Brands

• 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric Cline

• The Wright Brothers by David McCullough

• 1776 by David McCullough

• Apollo 8 by Jeffrey Kluger

• The River of Doubt by Candace Millard (notes)

• Harry Truman’s Excellent Adventure by Matthew Algeo

• 1831 by Louis P. Masur

Science Fiction

• Exhalation by Ted Chiang

• The Martian by Andy Weir

Personal Development

• Flow by Mikhail Csikszentmihalyi (Note - this is the best non-fiction book I’ve read, so far)

• Willpower Doesn’t Work by Ben Hardy (quick hitters) (full notes)

• The Inner Game of Tennis by W. Timothy Gallwey

• The Practicing Mind by Thomas Sterner

• Everything is F*cked: A Book About Hope by Mark Manson

• The Pocket Guide to Action by Kyle Eschenroeder

• Atomic Habits by James Clear

• 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson

• Mastery by George Leonard

• Stillness is the Key by Ryan Holiday

• The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday

• How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life by Russ Roberts

• So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport

• Deep Work by Cal Newport

• Grit by Angela Duckworth

• Fully Engaged by Thomas Sterner

• The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson

• The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin

• Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff by Richard Carlson

• The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

• Make Your Bed by William McRaven

• The One Thing by Gary Keller

Psychology

• The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt

• You Can Read Anyone by David J. Lieberman

• Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker

• Stumbling On Happiness by Dan Gilbert

• Capture by David A. Kessler

• The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt

Contemporary Society

• *What if This Were Enough? by Heather Havrilesky

• Coming Apart by Charles Murray

• Them by Ben Sasse

• The Vanishing American Adult by Ben Sasse

2016 Election

• Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance

• What Happened by Hillary R. Clinton

• Shattered by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes

• Unbelievable by Katie Tur

• Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff

• This Town by Mark Leibovich

Poetry

• *10 Poems to Change Your Life by Roger Housden

• Risking Everything collection

Writing

• The War of Art by Steven Pressfield (notes) (Tweetstorm)

• Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t by Steven Pressfield

Effective Altruism

• Doing Good Better by William MacAskill

Other Books Which Were Good

• Conspiracy by Ryan Holiday

• Leveraged Learning by Danny Iny

• Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom

• Daily Rituals by Mason Currey

• Purple Cow by Seth Godin

• The Phoenix Project by Kim, Behr, and Spafford

• Food Rules by Michael Pollan

• Next Man Up by John Feinstein

• The War I Always Wanted by Brandon Friedman

• The Big Short by Michael Lewis