Books

I picked up the habit of reading back in 2022. I ordered a Kindle back in January 2022, to push me to read more, and it worked quite well. If it works, it works! :D

This page catalogs the books I’m currently reading, as well as those I have read or dropped in the past, along with my brief opinion on each.

Recommendations

If I had to recommend only 5 books from the below list, I'd recommend these:

Steve Jobs (by Walter Isaacson)
The Almanack Of Naval Ravikant (by Eric Jorgenson)
Elon Musk (by Walter Isaacson)
That Will Never Work (by Mark Randolph)
No Rules Rules (by Reed Hastings & Erin Meyer)

Currently Reading

Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces (by Remzi H. Arpaci-Dusseau, Andrea C. Arpaci-Dusseau)
Reading it as part of a book club, absolutely loving it so far!
Crafting Interpreters (by Robert Nystrom)
Started reading it to get more familiarity with parsing, semantics, ASTs, etc - along with corresponding low-level implementation. Great read so far.
Mind Master (by Viswanathan Anand)
As a chess fan, I wanted to read this book by Vishy Sir himself. Have read a couple of chapters so far, it's been an okay read. Probably won't read it to the end, but time will tell.

Books Read (or Dropped)

2024

Elon Musk (by Walter Isaacson)
Having loved Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs, it was a no-brainer to pick this up. No surprise that it was an absolutely amazing read!
Java Concurrency in Practice (by Brian Goetz)
Picked up this book to get more familiarity with concurrency concepts and patterns in Java. Started off as a great read, but soon turned into more-theoretical-than-practical book which isn't my most preferred thing. Decent book overall though.
PostgreSQL 14 Internals (by Egor Rogov)
Read this as part of a book club. It takes you through a lot of concepts and corresponding practical examples. Great read!

2023

Database Internals (by Alex Petrov)
Read this as part of a book club by Phil. Excellent book, absolutely amazing intro to the world of databases!
Effective Java (by Joshua Bloch)
Picked this up to improve my Java skills. Started off as a good read, but quite quickly turned way too theoretical for my liking. Okayish read overall.
Designing Data-Intensive Applications (by Martin Kleppmann)
Ah the classic. Absolutely amazing read. Highly recommended to anyone who's had atleast a couple of years of industry experience!
Stocks to Riches (by Parag Parikh)
Good book for anyone starting off in the investing world. In hindsight, it probably just reinforced most of what I already knew and aligned with, but I'd say it's a good read nonetheless!
Becoming Steve Jobs (by Brent Schlender & Rick Tetzeli)
Picked up this book because the Steve Jobs fanboy in me wanted to. Wasn't as good as I hoped it to be, but good read nonetheless. However, if you want to read one book about Steve Jobs, I would without a doubt recommend Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson instead of this one.
No Rules Rules (by Reed Hastings & Erin Meyer)
This book by Reed Hastings (the CEO of Netflix) was an absolutely amazing read. It talks about the kind of culture they made at Netflix, and the ways they did so. One of my favorite examples was the unlimited leave policy, and how it should actually be implemented in practice. Great read, highly recommend!

PS: I would suggest reading this after "That Will Never Work". While this could be read independent of that, I felt having read "That Will Never Work" prior to this made it more enjoyable for me personally.
That Will Never Work (by Mark Randolph)
This book by Mark Randolph, the founder of Netflix, was a great journey of how Netflix went from a concept to a company. Great read, highly recommend!
Working Backwards (by Colin Bryar & Bill Carr) (Dropped)
This book talks about Amazon culture. I got bored within the first 20 pages, with it talking about the 14 leadership principles and whatnot. Not surprisingly, I stopped reading it.
The Hard Thing About Hard Things (by Ben Horowitz)
This book by Ben Horowitz, cofounder of a16z, was an amazing read. It talks about the hard things about running businesses. It seemed like a practical book to me, hence enjoyed reading it!
Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products (by Nir Eyal) (Dropped)
I started reading it as the premise seemed interesting. But I quickly got bored and stopped reading it. It might've also been because I had a few other more appealing books to read at that time, so maybe I should give it another shot sometime.

2022

Pichai: The Future of Google (by Jagmohan Bhanver)
It was an okayish read. Wouldn't really recommend it, I guess.
$100M Offers (by Alex Hormozi)
I found the premise interesting: how to think when we're trying to create a price-value proposition for customers of our product. It was a good read!
Netflix: What Happens When You Press Play? (by Todd Hoff)
I probably picked this up only because it was available for free, and was a short read. This felt like a system-design walkthrough of Netflix. I finished it, but don't think it's worth reading. Won't recommend.
The Almanack Of Naval Ravikant (by Eric Jorgenson)
This is one of my favorite books. No nonsense, to the point. If I had to summarise what I liked about it, I'd say it gave me a new perspective of a bunch of things. For example, I never really "understood" meditation, until Naval described it in the way he looks at it. This is THE book that I have gifted to folks on their birthdays, it's that good. If there's one book from this list that I had to pick for general audience to read, I'd say go for this one. Highly recommended!
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (by Mark Manson) (Dropped)
Well, I guess I'm not the right audience for this book. I picked up this book as the premise seemed interesting, read a few chapters just for the humor element to it, but had no motivation to continue reading it. You can probably read a couple of chapters to see if this is something you'd enjoy reading.
Atomic Habits (by James Clear) (Dropped)
You know how they say that some books should be a blog? Well, I wouldn’t read this book even if it were a blog. I picked it up as it is supposed to be one of the classics. I tried to read it, I really did. I read 1/3rd of it before eventually giving up on it. This book might have a million fans but unfortunately as you can probably tell, I'm not one.
ReWork (by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson)
This was a great read about your approach to work. I especially love the format it's written in: one-pager chapters that are concise and to the point.
The Psychology of Money (by Morgan Housel)
It was a good read about how you should be thinking about money and investments. Pretty sure I must've picked it up just because it was a standard classic book in the domain, but it turned out to be a good enough read.
Zero to One (by Peter Thiel)
I know this book has a lot of fans, but unfortunately I found it way too theoretical for my liking. I did finish it, but mostly just for the sake of finishing it. You could maybe try a couple of chapters to decide, but I personally didn't like it.

2021

Steve Jobs (by Walter Isaacson)

This is without a doubt my favorite book.

As a Steve Jobs fanboy, as someone who has been following tech space since childhood, as someone who's been watching tech events for as long as I can remember, as someone who watches the original iPhone launch event probably atleast once a year - this book is just absolutely amazing. Walter Isaacson did justice to showing both the good and the bad parts of Steve Jobs in the book.

The book almost has a poetic touch to it, especially with the last paragraph of the book - of which I won't speak no further.

For anyone who's interested in the technology space, I can't recommend this book enough! Go read it!