Reading List

Reading List: The following is an ever-evolving list of books I’m hoping to read (or in many cases re-read) in 2023. Classics, sci-fi, nonfiction, or anything people highly recommend. Some are short stories, some are long books. I try to alternate very short books with long ones.

Motivation for Selection: I noticed that in the past few years, I started reading a lot more nonfiction, and that it’s been a while since I revisited many of the books that had a big impact on my life (by Dostoevsky, Camus, Hesse, etc.) Also, an obvious giant gap in my reading has been science fiction, and so I added a bunch of sci-fi books that a lot of my good friends have been recommending. I hope to keep evolving this list based on suggestions and discussions. Here are direct links to posts about this on social media: Reddit, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook. I think Reddit and Twitter is probably the best place to make suggestions and do discussions.

Motivation for Sharing: I usually make a goal reading list for myself privately, but in this case  I chose to do it publicly so that folks who are interested might join me on some of the books. That’s why I tried to set a schedule for it, with a target day to finish by, so people can sync up their involvement. Some stories/books take 1-2 hours, and some take 40+ hours to read (not counting the time to pause, think & write down notes). If you join in, please take as long as you need to enjoy the book. The idea of many people reading the same book at the same time is exciting, like we’re taking the journey through that world together. 

Here’s the list as it currently stands, with goal dates of when to finish the book/story by: 

Finished Reading (as of Sun, Jan 29)

  • Video – 1984 by George Orwell
  • Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
  • Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
  • The Stranger by Camus

Reading Soon

Listed is a loose goal to finish the book by:

  • Sun, Feb 5 – Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
  • Sun, Feb 12 – On the Road by Jack Kerouac
  • Sun, Feb 19 – Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli

Shorter-Term Suggestions I’m Considering

  • The Art of War by Sun Tzu
  • Old Man and The Sea by Hemingway
  • 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C Clarke
  • Animal Farm by George Orwell
  • Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankel
  • Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
  • Metamorphosis, Hunger Artist by Franz Kafka
  • The Plague by Camus
  • Player of Games by Ian Banks
  • Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
  • The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-ExupĂ©ry
  • Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky
  • Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
  • Dune by Frank Herbert
  • Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Longer-Term Suggestions I’m Considering

  • Foundation by Isaac Asimov
  • The Dead by James Joyce
  • The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
  • Ward No. 6 by Anton Chekhov
  • Anthem by Ayn Rand
  • The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi
  • The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz
  • Nightfall, Last Question by Isaac Asimov
  • The Little Trilogy by Anton Chekhov
  • The Nose, The Overcoat by Gogol
  • Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
  • Notes from Underground by Dostoevsky
  • The Giver by Lois Lowry
  • The Prince by Machiavelli
  • Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee
  • Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
  • The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
  • The Road by Cormac McCarthy
  • Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
  • A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor
  • Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche
  • On Writing by Stephen King
  • Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
  • Childhood’s End by Arthur C Clarke
  • Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K Dick
  • Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
  • I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
  • The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
  • Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
  • Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
  • Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman by Richard Feynman
  • Dead Souls by Gogol
  • 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson
  • Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
  • The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
  • Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
  • Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
  • Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter
  • The Idiot by Dostoevsky