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READING / THE BOOKSHELF
02 — Reading · The Shelf, Expanded

The Bookshelf

Always something going, and forever open to a recommendation. The ones I'd press into your hands — and what's open on the desk right now.

The ones I'd press into your hands ★ 8
01
Klara and the Sun
Kazuo Ishiguro

One of my favorite books of all time. Ishiguro writes from the perspective of an artificial friend observing the humans around her, and by the end, you've thought more deeply about love, sacrifice, and what it means to be a person than you expected.

02
The Creative Act
Rick Rubin

A Bible to creative living that I return to again and again. Less about making art and more about how to exist in the world as someone who pays attention.

03
Man's Search for Meaning
Viktor Frankl

Viktor Frankl's account of surviving the Holocaust and the philosophy of meaning he built from it. The argument is simple: those who have a why can bear almost any how.

04
When Breath Becomes Air
Paul Kalanithi

You will laugh, you will cry. A neurosurgeon diagnosed with terminal cancer writes about what makes a life worth living, from both sides of the operating table. Left a lasting impression ten years later.

05
The Inner Game of Tennis
W. Timothy Gallwey

Trust your body. Quiet the mind. Trust the instinct that has thousands of years of history. That's the summary, and it applies to all of it, tennis included.

06
Open
Andre Agassi

An incredibly vulnerable and honest account of a top tennis player. Agassi hated tennis for most of his career, and somehow that makes it one of the most compelling sports memoirs ever written.

07
Brave New World
Aldous Huxley

Huxley's comfortable dystopia. I reread it more than anything else here.

08
The Wedding People
Alison Espach

One of my favorite books of 2025. This one found me in a Parisian bookshop and spoke to me.

On the nightstand — now
Exhalation
Ted Chiang
SCI-FI
Trust
Hernan Diaz
FICTION
My Year of Rest and Relaxation
Ottessa Moshfegh
FICTION

Read something I'd love? I'm always taking recommendations.

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