Books I Want to Read in 2018

Reading List 2018This 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.