Favorite book

Favorite Books:

Non-fiction: Behave by Sapolsky, Thinking, Fast & Slow, Kahneman

Fiction: Infinite Jest, Wallace; Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky

Finance Books: The Partnership, Charles Ellis; The Adaptive Markets Hypothesis, Andrew Lo

I try to completely avoid business related books for leisure. You work all day. Read something unrelated. It makes you sound more interesting.

• Man-Eaters of Kumaon by Jim Corbett. Corbett was a colonel in the British army and widely regarded as the greatest hunter of all time. This book is his recounting of tracking and killing infamous man eating tigers / and leopards in early 20th century India

• The US Army in Iraq by the US Army War college. Basically gives the narrative of how swiftly the US took down the Baathists and how the insurgency that eventually begot ISIS unfolded

• Napoleón: a Life by Andrew Roberts. Probably the best English biography of Napoleon. Very rich and detailed, especially concerning Napoleon's greatest victories(Austerlitz, Marengo, Ulm), and his worst defeats( Russia, Spain, Waterloo)

• Ghost Wars by Steve Coll. Easily the best book written on Afghanistan, from the Soviet invasion on Christmas 1979 to the day before Sept.11

• Rise and Kill First by Ronen Bergman. Awesome book about the underreported history of Israel's targeted assassination program

I'm a big follower of history/foreign affairs, but all of those listed are page turners

Best: Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde

Also good: The red and the black by Stendhal

The lady of the camellias by Alexandre Dumas

Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse

There are tons of other classics that are pure gold but these ones that are the most meaningful/interesting in my opinion.

Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter, Europe Central by William T. Vollmann, Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby. Hard Rain Falling is such a great read. Probably in the top 10 for me. Recently started the fist volume in Vollmann's Seven Dreams series and it's awesome so far. For other "fun" reading Joe Abercrombie's First Law trilogy was great. Read the whole thing in like two weeks. 

Extremely fond memories of the Inheritance Cycle from when I was a kid. Eragon was a banger.

Below are some of my favorite audiobooks I've listened to that I think anyone would enjoy:

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Wolf of Wall Street

World War Z

Unbroken

The Queen's Gambit

The White Tiger

The Road

Another great book is Spearhead. There is actual footage of the main tank battle on YouTube - it's insane to read the story and then be able to watch an actual WWII tank battle happen with your own eyes. I've spent countless hours reading up and watching the short film about those events.

I'm a big WWII guy, so I read pretty much any books relating to the time period that I can get my hands on.

Barbarian Days - A surfing life

I have a big interest in a genre called hard SiFi (premise is none of the contents can violate known scientific findings; pretty typical to find papers / a citation section at the back).

Best book I've read is Blindsight - Peter Watts but a more gentle introduction would be any of Andy Weir's stuff (Artemis, The Martian, Hail Mary). Another great popular series is The Three Body Problem - Cixin Liu 

We have this post almost more frequently than the endless prestige rankings now, but at least people recommend good stuff.

My plug is Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. Beyond writing about the history and some misconceptions, the author does a fantastic job of highlighting Temujin's management style which has some takeaways.

2 great audiobooks I listened to in the pandemic:

• American Kingpin, about the Ross Ulbricht and the Silk Road website
• The Children of Hurin, set in the Silmarillion (before LOTR and the upcoming Amazon show) and narrated by Christopher Lee (the guy that played Saruman)

Three books I absolutely loved every page of: 

1. Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World - Michael Lewis (Finance). One of his lesser talked about books, but easily his most interesting in my opinion. Great overview of the impact of globalization on various economies around the world, and Lewis uses the 2007 financial crisis as an extreme event to demonstrate global economic interdependencies, from Ireland, to Greece, to Iceland. 

2. The Secret History - Donna Tart (Fiction / Best Book Ever). Spoiler alert: this is a weird one and may not be for the majority of users. Had to recommend it as it is my favorite book of all time. Focuses on a lost California kid as he navigates a niche, elite liberal arts college in New England. The main concepts range from purpose to religion to dealing with extreme and unexpected circumstances. There is truly no good summary for this book. This book references a lot of Greek and Latin phrasing and is not a quick read, so many users expecting immediate satisfaction will likely be disappointed. 

3. Fearless: The Undaunted Courage and Ultimate Sacrifice of Navy SEAL Team SIX Operator Adam Brown (Non-Fiction). This book is the epitome of inspiring, and is incredibly eye-opening for anyone unfamiliar with the fairly secretive Navy Seal experience. Side note, if I could do it all over again I would try out to be a SEAL, so I have read a lot on the subject. However, this book deals with far more than just what it takes to become a SEAL, but how to overcome the most horrific and difficult problems life can throw at you. 

Lastly, I would consider all three of these to be 10/10 books, but they are all tailored to my areas of interest. Including brief descriptions so as to save folks time. 

Edit: Also hot take, most finance books aren't very interesting. Most of us work in finance, are friends with people in finance, use our free time to talk about our time in finance, and are on a finance forum currently reading this... 

Honorable Mention (Finance): However, if you want to read a FANTASTIC finance-oriented true story, read Red Notice. This is an extremely interesting book about one of the first American investors in Russia. Russia is what makes this book a true page turner, but there is a significant finance theme throughout. 

One final thought - Upvote OP's thread if you're reading this so we can continue to get a lot of traffic on this topic. It would be great to have an eclectic range of new book recommendations from WSO users across the globe. 

Like movies, there are so many great, but I would try to point out few:

Generally - biographies of interesting people

Malcolm Gladwell: Outliers - this has been mentioned few times

William H. McRaven -  Make Your Bed, Sea stories and others - retired US admiral and Navy Seal

Peter D. Kaufman - Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger - did not see this get mentioned often, but absolute recommendation, wealth of wisdom on life primarily, then business, investing etc.

Fiction Recs

• Master and Margarita  - Bulgakov
• Fathers and Sons - Turgenev
• Crime and Punishment - Dostoevsky
• Submission - Houellebecq
• Tai-Pan - James Clavell

If you want to be a more well-rounded person, with a better worldview and a decolonized mind, I'd recommend these.

Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen

Any of Federick Douglass's autobiographies

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee by Dee Brown 

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

All About Love by Bell Hooks

Over the past few weeks I've been reading The Silk Roads - A New History of the World, by Peter Frankopan. The book is pretty popular and highly rated that's how I came across it.

The view on world history (if taught in a USA public school as I was) can be a little skewed in certain aspects, so this new way of looking at the world has been really interesting to me. Not necessarily saying that I learned things that were straight up incorrect, but more-so things that my middle/ high school decided not to cover or teach. Certain things sound like they can be straight out of some drama TV show too, history can get pretty wild.

Hoping I can use some of the things I learned in higher level conversations with people that I meet, and even if I end up not talking about it with people it has well been worth the knowledge. 

The Prize.

Just read all of Charles Bukowski's novels. Entertaining stuff

Liar's Poker

Any Micheal Lewis book tbh. May sound basic, but the way he writes just draws you in. 

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander was eye opening to say the least.

random thoughts below

"Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius

"Siddhartha" by Herman Hesse

"The Three Body Problem" (trilogy) by Cixin Liu

"Lord of the Rings" (trilogy) by J.R.R. Tolkien

"Asset Management" by Andrew Ang

"Don't Count on It" - Jack Bogle

Depends on what you're looking for - I already see a lot of non-fiction listed so I'll go the escapism route. If you want to completely detach yourself from work and all things reality, I'd recommend the sci-if/epic fantasy route.

Here a few recommendations:

1. Brandon Sanderson - I'd recommend everything he's published but might favorite is the Stormlight Archive Series; there are 10 books planned for the series (broken down into 2 sets of 5) with four currently published (Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, Oathbringer, Rhythm of War). Involves magic, conflict, dystopian societies…
2. Will Wight - Cradle Series; 10 books currently available (Unsouled, Soulsmith, Blackflame, Skysworn, Ghostwater, Underlord, Uncrowned, Wintersteel, Bloodline, Reaper) with another in the works (Dreadgod). These are far quicker reads than Sanderson's. Involves path style magic (meaning individuals select paths to train on and slow advance to higher levels of authority), tournaments between clans to determine champions and wars against dread gods, all set within a larger universe going through an even greater conflict.
3. Brent Weeks - Lightbringer Series; 5 book series (The Black Prism, The Blinding Knife, The Broken Eye, The Blood Mirror, The Burning White); color based magic, society is led by the Prism, there's an interesting mystery flair throughout the series that doesn't get revealed until the end.

I know this has been mentioned before in this post, but listing it again to emphasize how good it is: Mastery by Robert Greene had a huge impact on me and will give anyone food-for-thought. I haven't met anyone that regrets investing time in this book.