Books I Want to Read in 2018

This post is about all of the books I want to read in 2018.

(If you’re just here for the list, it’s at the bottom of the post.)

Why I want to read in 2018

I used to be a reader. Some would call me a voracious reader. It was my gift. My mother claims when I was a toddler she could leave me with a stack of books all day and never needed to check up on me. It’s probably not far from the truth.

By the time I was 10 I had read every book in the house. I was so desperate to read, I started reading our 27-volume encyclopedia set. I lost interest somewhere around ‘spumoni’.

In 9th grade I took a reading test to check my speed and comprehension. According to my dad’s memory, I read 750 words per minute with 95% comprehension.

Unfortunately, after high school my reading dropped off considerably. Once I had my own transportation, there were just too many other things to do. There was money to make, people to meet, places to visit. Books had lost their interest as I discovered the wide world outside my imagination.

Of course, I still read some books. I read some business books, how-to and psychology books. Once or twice a year I would pick up a fiction book, and sometimes I’d even finish one. Mostly, I read articles, blog posts, Facebook statuses, tweets. Some great, some good, mostly worthless.

Towards the end of last year I realized how little I actually read, and how much I miss reading. When it came time to set goals for 2018, I knew what I needed to do.

How I came up with this list

This reading list came from four major sources.

First, I was inspired to start reading again by Jon Acuff’s incessant Instagram posts about the books he was reading (learn how Jon read 100 books in 2017). Many of these books were drawn from his reviews.

Second, last year I read The Obstacle Is The Way by Ryan Holiday. The book was fantastic, definitely the best book I’ve read in several years. After reading that book I found Ryan’s reading list and added a bunch more books to my must-read stack.

Third, Jason Zook from JasonDoesStuff has a running list of books he’s read, an idea which I ripped off for my reading list. Many of his recommendations made it onto this list.

And fourth, I asked my Facebook friends for recommendations and they came through in a big way! If I put all 100+ names here, the post would be longer than the reading list!

A few caveats

Okay, we’re almost to the list. Before we jump into it, there are a few things I want to point out.

This list is not comprehensive. I may read books that are not listed, and I might not read books that are on the list. I don’t have a reading order or a strict regimen around this.

This list is not a recommendation. There are some great books on here which I’ll rave about after I’ve read them. There are some others which are the antithesis of everything I believe about humanity (I’m looking at you, Mein Kampf). Let the reader beware.

This list is not for children. Along the same lines as the last point, some of these books may be inappropriate for young impressionable minds. Don’t print this off and hand it to your kids as a summer reading assignment.

This list is not complete. It’s only January, which leaves 11 more months for recommendations and discoveries. I’m super excited to find more great books to read, and I’ll try to add them here as I find them.

---

The reading list

Sorted alphabetically.

1. 10X Rule by Grant Cardone
2. 11/22/63 by Stephen King
3. 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
4. A Burglar’s Guide to the City by Geoff Manaugh
5. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace
6. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
7. Actionable Gamification by Yu-Kai Chou
8. Amusing Ourselves To Death by Neil Postman
9. And He Dwelt Among Us by A. W. Tozer
10. Anything You Want by Derek Sivers
11. Badass: Making Users Awesome by Kathy Sierra
12. Bill Peet: An Autobiography by Bill Peet
13. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
14. Bold by Peter Diamandis
15. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
16. Conditional Design by Anthony di Mari
17. Confessions by St. Augustine
18. Confessions of a Master Jewel Thief by Bill Mason
19. Creativity, Inc by Ed Catmull
20. Deep Work by Cal Newport[NEW]
21. Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
22. Dieter Rams: As Little Design As Possible by Sophie Lovell, Klaus Kemp
23. Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual by Jocko Willink
24. Draw to Win by Dan Roam
25. Ego Is The Enemy by Ryan Holiday
26. Every Day I Fight by Stuart Scott
27. Everything I Know by Paul Jarvis
28. Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink, Leif Babin
29. Finish by Jon Acuff
30. Food Rules by Michael Pollen
31. Footprints on the Moon by Seth Godin
32. Ghost In The Wires by Kevin Mitnick
33. Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance
34. Hit Makers by Derek Thompson [NEW]
35. Hooked by Nir Eyal, Ryan Hoover
36. How to by Michael Bierut
37. How To Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan
38. Hyrule Historia by Akira Himekawa
39. Ish by Peter H. Reynolds
40. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
41. Luther by Eric Metaxas
42. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
43. Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
44. My Life and Work by Henry Ford [NEW]
45. Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss
46. Pre-suasion by Robert Cialdini
47. Priceless by William Poundstone [NEW]
48. Poke The Box by Seth Godin
49. Quantum Christianity by Aaron Davis
50. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
51. Redwall by Brian Jacques
52. Richest Man In Babylon by George Samuel Clason
53. Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky
54. Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky
55. Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson
56. Show Your Work by Austin Kleon
57. Spurious Correlations by Tyler Vigen
58. Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon
59. The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Mordecai Richler
60. The Big Red Fez by Seth Godin
61. The Book With No Pictures by B. J. Novak
62. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
63. The Courage To Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga
64. The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds
65. The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene
66. The Flinch by Julien Smith
67. The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis
68. The Happiness Hypothesis by Jordan Haidt
69. The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
70. The Influentials by Edward Keller, Jonathan Berry
71. The Information by James Gleick
72. The Jesus I Never Knew by Philip Yancey
73. The Land: Founding by Aleron Kong
74. The Laws Of Simplicity by John Maeda
75. The Life And Times of a Remarkable Misfit by A. J. Leon
76. The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton
77. The Measure Of My Days by Florida Scott Maxwell
78. The Name Of The Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
79. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
80. The Pillars Of the Earth by Ken Follet
81. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
82. The Power of Positive Deviance by Richard Pascale, Jerry Sternin
83. The Purple Cow by Seth Godin
84. The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley
85. The Science Of Getting Rich by Wallace Wattles
86. The Score by Richard Stark[NEW]
87. The Score Takes Care Of Itself by Bill Walsh
88. The Time It Never Rained by Elmer Kelton
89. The Toaster Project by Thomas Thwaites
90. The Trumpet Of The Swan by E. B. White
91. The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield
92. The Way Of Kings by Brandon Sanderson
93. The Year Of Less by Cait Flanders
94. Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
95. This Is Water by David Foster Wallace
96. Tribe Of Mentors by Tim Ferriss
97. Trust Me, I’m Lying by Ryan Holiday
98. Unbroken by Lauren Hillenbrand
99. What if? by Randall Munroe
100. What Matters Now by Seth Godin
101. What To Do When It’s Your Turn by Seth Godin
102. You Are Not A Gadget: A Manifesto by Jaron Lanier

Whew! That’s a long list!

If you’d like to know how far I’ve gotten and get my opinions on the books I’ve read in 2018, check out my reading list.