In the pursuit of seeking answers and learning more about the universe, startups, entrepreneurship, and success I have spent lots of time during my youth reading books.

Books have a special place in my heart and sentiment, they’re a great way to login into my imagination and encapsulate knowledge. Why make certain mistakes that have already been made before? Why not do things the smart way? Especially in the business world, which is a continuous set of experiments, books are a great way to learn from other’s experiences and biographies.I do owe a lot of whatever accomplishments I’ll have in my career to books, but at this moment I felt that if I had this list back when I was young I would have saved a lot of time not reading books that were either copies or refactoring of the main bible books.

These books inspired me, shaped my personality and entrepreneurship drive, taught me to think differently, and gave me an idea of how success happens in the real world.

I read these books mostly during my high school and undergrad time, and as I grew I reduced my time reading, and am pouring my energy into building things instead.

Order of books doesn’t matter.

  1. Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future By Blake Masters, Peter Thiel
  2. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future By Ashlee Vance
  3. Think and Grow Rich By Napoleon Hill
  4. Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company By Andrew S. Grove 
  5. Who Moved my Cheese By Spencer Johnson
  6. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People By Stephen Convey
  7. How to Win Friends and Influence People By Dale Carnegie
  8. Lean Startup By Eric Ries
  9. The Intelligent Investor By Benjamin Graham
  10. Rich Dad Poor Dad By Robert Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter
  11. The Psychology of Money By Morgan Housel
  12. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t By Jim Collins
  13. The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google By Scott Galloway
  14. Steve Jobs By Walter Isaacson
  15. The Art of War By Sun Tzu
  16. The Facebook Effect By David Kirkpatrick
  17. The Innovators Dilemma By Clayton Christensen
  18. The 100$ Startup By Chris Guillebeau
  19. Secrets of Silicon Valley By Deborah Perry Piscione
  20. Atomic Habits By James Clear
  21. The Little Book Of Common Sense Investing By John C. Bogle 
  22. Outliers, The Story of Success By Malcolm Gladwell
  23. The Road Less Travelled By M. Scott Peck
  24. Talk like TED By Carmine Gallo
  25. Measure What Matters By John E. Doer
  26. The Toyota Way 14 Management Principles from the World’s Greatest Manufacturer By Jeffrey Liker
  27. The One Minute Manager By Ken Blanchard, Spencer Johson
  28. Range, Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World By David Epstein
  29. The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari By Robin Sharma
  30. Extreme Ownership: How US Navy Seals Lead and Win By Jocko Willink, Leif Babin
  31. Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus By John Gray
  32. The Five Love Languages By Gary Chapman
  33. The 5am Club By Robin Sharma
  34. The Leader with No Title By Robin Sharma
  35. Awaken the Giant Within By Tony Robbins
  36. Thinking, Fast and Slow By Daniel Kahneman
  37. The Power of Habits By Charles Duhigg
  38. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck By Mark Manson
  39. Start with Why, How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action By Simon Sinek 
  40. The 48 Laws of Power By Robert Greene
  41. The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time By Jeff Sutherland
  42. Unfu*k Yourself: Get out of Your Head and into Your Life By Gary John Bishop
  43. The Infinite Game By Simon Sinek
  44. Leaders Eat Last, Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t By Simon Sinek
  45. Start with Why By Simon Sinek
  46. What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions By Randall Munroe
  47. The Selfish Gene By Richard Dawkins 
  48. Is God a Mathematician? By Mario Livio 
  49. AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order By Kai-Fu Lee
  50. How Emotions Are Made, the Secret Life of the Brain By Lisa Feldman Barret
  51. Rebooting AI, Building AI We Can Trust  By Gary F. Marcus, Ernest Davis 
  52. Benjamin Franklin, An American Life By Benjamin Franklin
  53. Einstein, His Life, and Universe By Walter Isaacson 
  54. Our Final Invention Artificial Intelligence By James Barrat
  55. The Hitchhikers Guide to Galaxy By Douglas Adams

Also, I’ve spent a lot of time reading and even studying the following two blogs:

I’m thinking of one day adding the stack of technical books that I enjoyed from physics to computer science, but I will leave that for another day. Hoping to keep adding to this list with time.

NB: for a more thorough collection of books on startups, sci-fi, history, and books that sit on the intersection of must-read and entertaining check out my Goodreads account.