1,000 books later: Here are my favorites

What started as a way to improve my English listening skills has turned into an addictive hobby. 8 years later, I crossed 1,000 books.

Let me share the most memorable books and what I learned along the way.

Fiction

LitRPG

LitRPG is a genre that combines RPG (role-playing game) elements with a fantasy story in a book form. Listening to these books feels like watching a YouTube video game playthrough. Unlike a typical YouTube video, though, an audiobook has much higher production value, including professional editing and narration.

The best part is that LitRPG is usually set in a hyper-advanced virtual reality world or a gamified alternate universe. Unlike any video game, a LitRPG world can contain sentient NPCs, infinite skill trees, and nation-scale politics.

The RPG elements are the most enjoyable part. The best LitRPG books give a sense of continuous progression. Some focus on character upskilling and crafting. Others focus on world-building and politics - from a small tribe to an empire.

Lazy authors jump straight from city-level politics to "save the universe" stuff, as in a cheap superhero movie - an extreme case of scope creep. Then the publisher says, "Write one more book," and the author is forced to do a soft reset - a serious immersion killer.

Where as, the best stories stretch across thousands of pages of paced progression and world-building.

My favorites:

• CivCEO by Andrew Karevik - an awesome use of economics and politics. I binged the entire series in 2 days.
• Drone Ensign by Kyle Johnson - a journey from the slave class to an admiral in a post-scarcity sci-fi society. It features a hyper-competent, rational protagonist - my favorite kind of character.
• Portal to Nova Roma by J.R. Mathews - an alternate-history Roman Empire with a hyper-competent, rational protagonist. Slow-burn empire-building.
• Life Reset by Shemer Kuznits - highly focused city-building with a competent protagonist playing as a goblin, of all things.
• He Who Fights with Monsters by Shirtaloon - great humor, great pacing, many pages.

Honorable mentions:

• Sporemageddon by RavensDagger - a super-smart business kid - I find talented children more interesting than superheroes.
• Stray Cat Strut by RavensDagger - cyberpunk LitRPG with likable characters, though not the best pacing.
• We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis E. Taylor - post-scarcity and the singularity done well.
• Towers of Heaven by Cameron Milan - a character that already knows all the game mechanics, but must accomplish an extremely difficult task. I love competent protagonists.
• Fostering Faust by Randi Darren - a refreshing tale of an "immoral" hero.
• Super Sales on Super Heroes by William D. Arand - from a lone hustler to a multiverse-spanning empire. A cold, competent protagonist and likable characters, but too much scope inflation followed by too many soft resets.

Science fiction

• Honor Harrington by David Weber - a 40-book series written over 23 years. It is one of the longest space-opera series, with extensive sci-fi politics - I binged it over several months.
• Daemon by Daniel Suarez - replacing the old world order with the power of code.
• The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal - an alternate history in which the space race accelerated rather than stopped.
• Old Man's War by John Scalzi - classic military sci-fi and politics at the interstellar scale.
• Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor - a long series full of British humor that made me laugh out loud.
• The Martian by Andy Weir - masterful hard sci-fi.
• Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card - a story of hyper-talented children engaging in world-scale politics and war.

Classic science fiction

• Foundation by Isaac Asimov - building a rational and optimistic future society.
• Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein - a unique perspective on humanity from a semi-alien.
• The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein - a revolution on the Moon against the old Earth masters. I look forward to comparing notes on how this will play out in the real world. Heinlein writes engaging stories.
• Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson - a cyberpunk classic. I found it more interesting than Neuromancer. Neal Stephenson comes up with many unique stories.
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley - an ambiguous dystopia.
• Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson - an amazing terraforming and solar-system-scale politics story over 187 years.
• Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler - a gripping rebirth story after a societal collapse.

Classics

• Les Misérables by Victor Hugo - one of the few books that made me cry. The musical is great too.
• From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne - an accessible and still-fun sci-fi adventure. Jules Verne wrote many stories that are impressive for their era.

Non-fiction

The 1000th book

My 1,000th book was the nearly 1,000-page JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917–1956 by Fredrik Logevall. To my surprise, you can fill a thick book with JFK's biography before even reaching his presidency.

Politics

My favorite kind of book in this genre covers both sides of an argument fairly and then advocates for a better middle ground.

• Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future by Dan Wang - despite the title, the book has valuable things to say about both the US (a lawyer-led society) and China (an engineer-led society), advocating for a better middle ground.
• The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty by Daron Acemoglu - studies the balance between state and society, with many historical and recent examples.
• What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies by Tim Urban - an honest analysis of the left and right in modern US politics (as well as up and down).
• How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States by Daniel Immerwahr - an engaging history of US territorial expansion and colonies, extending into the modern day.
• The Perfect Police State: An Undercover Odyssey into China's Terrifying Surveillance Dystopia of the Future by Geoffrey Cain - the surveillance technostate described in the book is far more efficient and omnipresent than even Orwell could have imagined.
• Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand - not strictly non-fiction, but very influential. Its black-and-white approach is unrealistic, but I appreciate how the book teaches you to think rationally rather than with your gut, demand fair compensation for your contributions, and not expect rewards unless you create value.

Anthropology

• Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman - an optimistic account of human history - first time you read one of these, it changes you worldview.
• Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling - another optimistic account of human history - they work well together.
• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari - the author offers a unique perspective on human affairs.
• Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostrom - an instant classic, still relevant.
• Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Max Tegmark - an accessible book on AI's impact on humanity.

Macroeconomics

• Why Economies Rise or Fall by Peter Rodriguez - the most important book on economics I've ever read. It introduces practical concepts and applies them to the modern world rather than focusing on dry theory. Left/right politics, incentives, and globalization.
• Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt - a fun pop-economics book that makes you look differently at the world.

Finance

• The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America's Wealthy by Thomas J. Stanley - the frugal behaviors of the truly wealthy.
• The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason - a common-sense personal finance book.

Biographies

• Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader by Brent Schlender - one of the first audiobooks I ever listened to. It was inspirational and foundational.
• Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance - the book I reread most often. Ashlee Vance is an excellent writer. Elon Musk is a civilization accelerator.
• When the Heavens Went on Sale: The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach by Ashlee Vance - very inspiring - a story about building the road to a sci-fi future.
• Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight - a motivational and honest account of the struggles of building a business.
• Tim Cook: The Genius Who Took Apple to the Next Level by Leander Kahney - changed my view of Apple after Steve Jobs.

Biohacking and self-improvement

• The Body: A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson - a well-rounded book about the human body.
• Be Obsessed or Be Average by Grant Cardone - this is a bit of a pulp non-fiction book, but I found it very motivating.
• Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition by T. Colin Campbell - advocates for eating cleaner and choosing less-processed food, though the book has some of that grumpy-old-man energy.
• Immune: A Journey Into the Mysterious System That Keeps You Alive by Philipp Dettmer - a little too advanced in places, but overall a good overview of one of the human body's most complex systems.
• Lifespan: Why We Age―and Why We Don't Have To by David A. Sinclair - an introduction to longevity research.
• The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes - the start of my zero-added-sugar diet.

Q&A

How much do you remember?

The books I liked most are the ones I remember best.

With fiction books, I remember the high-level plot and the best moments. Just reading a book's description is enough to bring back more than you might expect.

With non-fiction, the exact details are lost even before you finish the book. But the best books give you mental models and practical concepts that stay with you even after you forget where they came from. These are the books that change your behavior not fully consciously - the ones you quote while speaking to a friend without realizing it.

Where do you get the audiobooks?

Spotify gives 16 hours of listening per month - enough for two days.

Then, 8 library cards in Libby cover 40% of my listening.

The rest comes from Audible. You can get 9-credit packs, which reduce the cost per book to ~$8.

How do you keep track of the books you read?

Goodreads works well enough. Check out my profile. Do you have a profile too? Let's connect 🙂.

The books I liked the most have a special shelf.

Check out also the Goodreads Stats browser extension - more reading stats, and easy library backup.