2019 Reading List

Table of Contents

                   

2019 reading list colin keeley.jpg

         

26 books this year. Roughly in order of how much I enjoyed them.

The Case for Space: How the Revolution in Spaceflight Opens Up a Future of Limitless Possibility - A fantastic primer on the space industry and one of my most highlighted books of all time. The sci-fi space travel that people have grown accustomed to only seeing in movies is quickly becoming reality. This will be an enormous change in our society.

eBoys: The First Inside Account of Venture Capitalists at Work - The best book I’ve read on VC. It is the inside story of Benchmark’s first fund (returned 92x and $350M to each partner). The author sat in on Benchmark partner meetings and debates on businesses like eBay, Webvan, and Toysrus. 

Recursion - A worthy follow up to Dark Matter. I spent most of my Saturday burning through it.

Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber - Very good. Not at all one-sided like I expected. For all the issues, Uber wouldn’t be where it is today without Travis.

The Mastermind: Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal. - An amazing story that isn't very well written. Most criminals parlay their shady businesses into more legitimate ones, but Paul takes the opposite approach with a hard turn into the criminal underworld. Feels like a collection of notes in need of an editor.

Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future - Re-read. Great book. 

Nexus - Re-read. Great book. 

Flowers for Algernon  

Permutation City by Greg Egan - Re-read. Great book.

Leviathan Wakes (The Expanse, #1) - Decent near-future space opera.  

Caliban's War (The Expanse, #2) - Not quite as eventful as book 1, but still a fun read.

Abaddon’s Gate (The Expanse, #3)

Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World - I've been on a bit of a fraud kick. The scale of this one is wild.

Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World - It is so easy to fall into shallow meaningless work nowadays. This book really made me want to double down on content production (blog posts/podcasting) and stop the endless consumption on social media.

We Are Legion (Bobiverse, #1) - An easy sci fi read with a nerdy engineers mindset. Reads very much like a book 1 of a series.

For We Are Many (Bobiverse, #2)

All These Worlds (Bobiverse, #3)

The Price of Time - Cool premise that never really goes anywhere.

Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies - Great book on scaling network effect businesses. Explains the inefficient spending that you often see.

All Systems Red - Straightforward quick story. I wouldn't have finished if it was longer.

Think like a Freak: The Authors of Freakonomics Offer to Retrain Your Brain - Re-read

Perihelion Summer

Winter World (The Long Winter #1) - Fun concept without much depth.

The Solar War (The Long Winter #2) - An easy read without much depth.

The Lost Colony (The Long Winter #3)  

Becoming a Venture Capitalist - High level overview of working in VC

Fall; Or, Dodge in Hell - The first third is good near-term sci-fi. The last two thirds are garbage fantasy. One of the weirdest shifts I've ever come across in a book.