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Reading list

Here are a few books I read, enjoyed, and recommend.

Non-fiction

  • A Liberated Mind by Steven C. Hayes (Best book I read in 2022. Had the biggest impact on my day-to-day life in the last few years. Fears are telling me what I value. I am not my thoughts. Some thought patterns, doubts, anxieties are just part of who I am and my journey - I can struggle or accept that they are with me on the ride. Life is not a problem to be solved. Thinking is not always the right tool for the job.)
  • The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch (Best book I read in 2023. Too many valuable insights to condense them here. Made me a lot more optimistic about progress.)
  • Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley (Lays out a story about the role specialization of production played in human history.)
  • Bright Green Lies by Derrick Jensen and others (Many attempts to preserve the earth and life in all its wonderful forms actually harm a lot of ecological communities. I read this before I read Rational Optimist and The Beginning of Infinity. Now I am more optimistic about our ability to solve problems as they arise, but I nevertheless would recommend this book for pointing out flaws in current approaches to sustaining life on earth.)
  • Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig (My central takeaway from this book was the concept of gumption/Sorgfalt and its role in achieving flow.)
  • Lila by Robert Pirsig (The book introduces Dynamic Quality as a pointer towards that which can not be described with words. I liked the observation that higher forms of static quality allow greater degrees of freedom. I also found value in the idea of hatches, which reminds me of thinking about failure modes.)
  • Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman (I took away that some of my fears have a deep connection to fundamental limitations of every human-like life span, limitedness in perspective, and limited power to change things. This realization helped me to accept more of my fears. Acceptance is a very powerful state of mind for opening up to more of what is actually happening from moment to moment.)
  • Never Split the Difference by Chriss Voss (see Rock climbing and the beginner’s mind)
  • Thinking, fast and slow by Daniel Kahneman (Some concepts that I can remember >10 years after reading first about them: two systems, cognitive ease, anchoring, priming, availability heuristic)
  • Tribal Leadership by Dave Logan and others (A useful model for observations made in work and life situations.)
  • The Coaching Habit by Michael B. Stanier (Helped me to realize just how powerful carefully phrased questions can be.)
  • Five Families by Selwyn Raab (Fascinating read about the history of New York's most influential Mafia organizations. See Mafia Strategies)
  • Team Topologies by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais (Describes mental models and strategies around org design informed by Conway's Law.)
  • The Phoenix Project (A fun and memorable introduction to DevOps.)
  • The Mind Illuminated by Yates, Immergut, and Graves (A guide that lays out a path for meditation. My key takeaway were a simple meditation routine, I describe in this post and the roles of awareness and attention in conscious experience. I read 30% or so and found it very valuable. I stopped reading because I was not interested in reading about meditation stages I felt I was still far away from.)
  • Good Strategy Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt (Every strategy has a kernel consisting of a diagnosis, policies and coherent actions. If those elements are not clear for something that is called "strategy", it's bad strategy. Rumelt gives many examples for bad strategy. Good strategy always takes into account how things really are. In that regard it connected to me to "Never Split the Difference" and the concept of quality introduced in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance".)
  • A Voyage For Mad Men

Fiction

  • The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff (A calming, flowing read about Tao.)
  • Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson (A semi-historical novel covering WWII and early-internet endeavors that touch mathematics, business, and friendship.)
  • Jonathan Franzen (The narrating "flow" is addictive to me. The characters often feels uncertainty around their own motives for action or in-action which added lots of depth for me.)
  • Dune by Frank Herbert (I started reading Dune shortly after I picked up meditation. The book has many description that remind me of mindfulnes practice. Overall a great story arc.)
  • Theft of Fire by Eriksen (Just a fun read.)

German books

  • fiction Ein Ganzes Lebel von Robert Seethaler
  • fiction Max Frisch