Reading List.

Reading that maps to how we try to live, not just what's good — organized by the same five fingers as everything else here.

Steward

Make Your Bed

Admiral William H. McRaven (2017)

From Bookshop.org

If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.

“Should be read by every leader in America”
— Wall Street Journal

William McRaven, the four-star admiral who ran the raid that got bin Laden, starts his first lesson with a bed — because the task nobody's watching is the one that reveals whether you actually follow through or just talk about it. Skip the small ones, and you won't find out which one you are until a big one is already on the line.

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Meditations

Marcus Aurelius (2nd century AD)

From Bookshop.org

Timeless insights into what it takes to lead a meaningful life—still profoundly relevant nearly two thousand years later.

“Here, for our age, is [Marcus's] great work presented in its entirety, strongly introduced and freshly, elegantly translated.”
— Robert Fagles

Marcus Aurelius ran the most powerful empire on earth and still couldn't get through a morning without a fight against his own temper, distraction, and grievance — so he wrote himself notes, never meant for anyone else, just to talk himself back into the person he intended to be. If total power didn't buy him out of needing the reminder, whatever's making you skip yours won't hold up either.

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Live

East of Eden

John Steinbeck (1952)

From Bookshop.org

In his journal, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck called East of Eden "the first book," and indeed it has the primordial power and simplicity of myth.

“A fantasia and myth . . . A strange and original work of art.”
— The New York Times Book Review

One Hebrew word carries the whole book: timshel, "thou mayest." Not a promise you'll turn out fine, not a life sentence that you'll repeat your father's failures — a plain, unsentimental offer that the choice is yours either way, every time. Steinbeck spends three generations showing what happens to the people who take that offer and the people who flinch from it, and refuses to let either one off the hook. Neither does the book, once you've read it.

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Man's Search for Meaning

Viktor Frankl (1946)

From Bookshop.org

"He who has a why to live can bear almost any how" is the central theme in Man's Search For Meaning.

“An enduring work of survival literature.”
— The New York Times

Viktor Frankl lost his family, his life's work, and every shred of control over what happened to him in the camps — and found that the one thing left was the choice of how to face it. This is not a book about staying positive. It's the firsthand account that proves meaning survives even when nearly everything else doesn't, which makes whatever's stopping you a little harder to hide behind.

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Connect

Born Standing Up

Steve Martin (2007)

From Bookshop.org

Steve Martin's riveting, mega-bestselling, beloved, and highly acclaimed memoir of a life, a vocation, and an era—named one of the ten best nonfiction titles of the year by Time and Entertainment Weekly.

“Absolutely magnificent. One of the best books about comedy and being a comedian ever written.”
— Jerry Seinfeld, GQ

Steve Martin spent ten years performing to rooms that were basically empty, refining bits that wouldn't land for years — and then, at the exact height of his fame, walked away from stand-up for good because he'd run out of things to say and wasn't willing to fake having more. Two decisions most people never make: keep showing up when nobody's watching, and stop the moment you're no longer honest about why you're there.

Get it at Bookshop.org →

Explore

Into Thin Air

Jon Krakauer (1997)

From Bookshop.org

The epic account of the storm on the summit of Mt. Everest that claimed five lives and left countless more—including Krakauer's—in guilt-ridden disarray.

“A harrowing tale of the perils of high-altitude climbing, a story of bad luck and worse judgment and of heartbreaking heroism.”
— People

Eight climbers died in a single storm on Everest in 1996, and Jon Krakauer was on the mountain when it happened — he lost friends up there, and wrote this account so nobody could read it and mistake ambition for the whole story. It's a book about how close people got to the summit, how much they'd already spent to get there, and how those two facts talked good climbers into decisions that killed them. The mountain isn't the danger here. The sunk cost is.

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Grow

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