Reading · 115 books
The shelf
Collection of things that I've read. Whether it's good, bad, heavy, light, deep, shallow, amazing, or mediocre, most of them shape the way I perceive the world and myself, more than any form of media out there. A ★ marks a favourite.
Touch a row · drag a year down its card · F favourites · N a favourite for me · S stamp the year
2026
Why We Die
Three years after Outlive told me how to live longer, a Nobel laureate explained why that is harder than it sounds. I read them in that order, which felt right.
2026
The Poppy War
2026
A Beginner's Guide to House Plants
Create Beautiful and Healthy Green Spaces in Your Home
2026
Babel
An Arcane History
2026
E-Myth Mastery
The Seven Essential Disciplines for Building a World Class Company
2026 reading
The 12-Week MBA
Learn the Skills You Need to Lead in Business Today
2026
Four Thousand Weeks
Time Management for Mortals
2026 reading
Dopamine Nation
Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence
2026 reading
Allen Carr's Easy Way to Enjoy Exercise
Get Fit Without Willpower
2026
Hunt, Gather, Parent
What Ancient Cultures Can Teach Us About the Lost Art of Raising Happy, Helpful Little Humans
2026 reading
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
“Though lovers be lost love shall not; / And death shall have no dominion.”
2026
2025
Greenlights
“The arrival is inevitable: Death. A unanimous end, a unified destination.A noun without regard. Our eulogy. Written. Lived. The approach is relative: Life**. A singular procession, our personal journey. A verb with regard. Our résumé. Write it. Live it.”
2025
Feel Good Productivity
“You're not a drop in the ocean; you're the entire ocean in a teacup—make it a fancy one!”
2025
$100M Leads
“Doing the thing that scared me most—giving away my secrets—led to the biggest breakthrough in my life.”
How to Get Strangers to Want to Buy Your Stuff
2025
The Three-Body Problem
“What do you think the enemy is afraid of?” “You! Scientists!The odd thing is that the less practical your research is, the more they're afraid of you—like abstract theories, the kind of thing Yang Dong worked on. They are more frightened of such work than you are of the universe winking at you. When a scientist dies, another will take his place. But if his thoughts are confused, then science is over.”
2025
Poor Charlie's Almanack
“In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn’t read all the time—none, zero.”
2025
Same as Ever
“If you understand the math behind compounding you realize the most important question is not ‘How can I earn the highest returns?’It’s ‘What are the best returns I can sustain for the longest period of time?’”
A Guide to What Never Changes
2025
Sales Management. Simplified
“Sales is about action, and analysis-paralysis is not a quality that tends to produce new business development success.”
The Straight Truth About Getting Exceptional Results from Your Sales Team
2025
Selling the Invisible
“In most professional services, you are not really selling expertise—because your expertise is assumed, and because your prospect cannot intelligently evaluate your expertise anyway. Instead, you are selling a relationship.”
A Field Guide to Modern Marketing
2025
The Psychology of Money
“Doing well with money has little to do with how smart you are and a lot to do with how you behave.”
Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness
2025
The Sales Acceleration Formula
“Without data, you’re just another person with an opinion.”
Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to Go from $0 to $100 Million
2025
New Plant Parent
Read in 2025. In 2026 I read another beginner's guide to house plants, so by my own records I am still a beginner.
2025
The Personal MBA
Read in 2025. In 2026 I read The 12-Week MBA as well. Two MBAs, and I have yet to find the campus.
2025
Secrets of Consulting
Fifty-eight highlights, the last one in February 2026. I give advice for a living, so this read less like a book and more like a performance review.
2025
2024
The Elements of Typographic Style
“Typeface is the clothes words wear. The better the tailoring, the sharper the message.”
2024
Atomic Habits
One percent better a day is thirty-seven times better in a year. The math is fine. The hard part is believing it when nothing shows yet.
2024
A Very Hungry Caterpillar
"But he was still hungry :)."
2024
Scaling Up
"You don’t have to be years ahead, just minutes ahead of the market, the competition, and those they lead.The key is frequent interaction with customers, competitors, and employees."
2024
Master of the Senate
“The greatest legislative victories are rarely loud. They are shaped in whispers, promises, and the quiet pressure of a hand on a shoulder.”
2024
Awareness
“The easiest way to be miserable is to want people to behave the way you expect them to.”
Conversations with the Masters
2024
Watership Down
“He was not the strongest, nor the fastest. But he was the bravest. And sometimes, that is enough.”
2024
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
“No one can compete with you on being you. Most of life is a search for who and what needs you the most.”
2024
2023
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius
“and he never showed amazement and surprise, and was never in a hurry, and never put off doing a thing, nor was perplexed nor dejected,”
2023
Outlive
The Science and Art of Longevity
2023
Who We're Reading When We're Reading Murakami
“Birnbaum and Luke both believed in the importance of—to borrow the phrase Jay Rubin uses in his book about Murakami—the “music of words.”But they didn't always see or hear things the same way. They listened to different music, read different authors, and had lived in different parts of the world.”
2023
Building a Second Brain
“Creativity isn't about having more ideas. It's about making sense of the ones you already have.”
2023
2022
Advanced Marathoning
“The real race begins when your legs start to hurt, not before.”
2022
Built to Last
“Great leadership isn't about charisma. It's about creating a system that empowers others to succeed.”
Successful Habits of Visionary Companies
2022
Charlie Munger
“We all have a tendency to think we are smarter than we are. We need to be aware of that and counteract it.”
The Complete Investor
2022
Decoding Greatness
“To become great, you must first become comfortable being bad at something. Only then can you improve.”
2022
Nagabumi I
Pengalaman membaca yang lain dari biasanya. Seno Gumira bekerja keras sekali supaya pembaca bisa melihat Jawa abad ke-7 sampai ke-9 dengan akurat: istilah Jawa kuno, kutipan prasasti, rujukan penelitian. Kadang saya lupa sedang membaca cerita silat. Rasanya seperti fiksi yang diam-diam mengerjakan skripsi arkeologi.
Jurus Tanpa Bentuk Seno Gumira Ajidarma
2022 reading
Nagabumi II
Buddha, Pedang, dan Penyamun Terbang
2022 reading
Sapiens
“How do you cause people to believe in an imagined order such as Christianity, democracy or capitalism? First, you never admit that the order is imagined.”
A Graphic History, Vol. 1 & 2
2022
Siddhartha
“Peace is not something that happens when you achieve your goals, but something that happens within you when you cease to seek.”
2022
The Lessons Of History
“Civilization begins when you stop killing each other over your differences and start killing each other over resources.”
2022
The Perfect Mile
“The race isn't about running. It's about believing you can run that fast.”
2022
The Yoga Of Eating
"We are what we eat, but more importantly, we are how we eat."
2022
Autobiography Of a Yogi
“Stillness is the altar of spirit.”
2022
Thinking Fast and Slow
“Your brain has two drivers: one is impulsive, the other is lazy. Guess who wins most of the time?”
2022
2021
21 Lessons for the 21st Century
“When we look to the future, we don’t just have to ask what we want to do. We also need to ask what we want to become.”
2021
Ask a Manager
“Feedback is a gift. But it’s not always a pleasant one.”
2021
Coaching Coversation
Menurut buku ini, 44% karyawan mengaku tidak pernah dapat feedback yang membangun.Jangan mau jadi manajer di angka itu. Kasih feedback terus, bantu tim tumbuh, lalu, ini bagian tersulitnya, minggir.
2021
Elevation
“The night was cold, chilling the sweat on his face, but the air was as sweet and crisp as the first bite of a fall apple.Above him was a half-moon and what seemed like a trillion stars. To match the trillion pebbles, just as mysterious, that we walk over everyday, he thought. Mystery above, mystery below. Weight, mass, reality: mystery all around.”
2021
High Output Management
"As a general rule, you have to accept that no matter where you work, you are not an employee—you are in a business with one employee: yourself.You are in competition with millions of similar businesses. There are millions of others all over the world, picking up the pace, capable of doing the same work that you can do and perhaps more eager to do it. Now, you may be tempted to look around your workplace and point to your fellow workers as rivals, but they are not. They are outnumbered—a thousand to one, one hundred thousand to one, a million to one—by people who work for organizations that compete with your firm. So if you want to work and continue to work, you must continually dedicate yourself to retaining your individual competitive advantage."
2021
In Other Words
Seperti ratusan ribu mahasiswa tahun 2000-an, saya pernah mencoba menulis seperti GM.Hasilnya tidak usah dibahas. Yang tersisa dari dia: semua hal di bawah matahari saling terhubung. Politik dan bahasa, filsafat dan teknologi, mitos dan puisi. Spesialis itu overrated, dan rabbit hole yang kelihatannya sia-sia justru yang paling menarik.
2021
Remote
Tidak ada commuting. Tidak perlu kantor bagus, jadi budgetnya bisa pindah ke hal lain untuk karyawan.Tidak harus merekrut dari Yogya saja. DHH dan Jason Fried sudah bekerja begini jauh sebelum pandemi memaksa kita semua mencobanya. Buku pegangan yang bagus untuk perusahaan yang mau loncat ke WFA penuh, dengan atau tanpa virus.
Office Not Required
2021
Sprint
Waktu masih jadi Product Manager, ini buku pegangan saya, terutama saat harus memutuskan fitur dengan cepat padahal informasinya tipis sekali.Mudah dipahami, mudah diikuti. Bertahun-tahun kemudian, saya membangun perusahaan yang kerjanya kurang lebih lima hari ini, dibuat jadi dua minggu.
How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days
2021
The Alchemist
“Semua hal yang terjadi sekali, tidak akan terjadi lagi. Tapi semua hal yang terjadi dua kali, pasti akan terjadi untuk ketiga kalinya.”
2021
The Ride Of a Lifetime
"The riskiest thing we can do is just maintain the status quo."
2021
What I'm Talking About When I Talk About Running
“Especially for someone in my line of work, solitude is, more or less, an inevitable circumstance.Sometimes, however, this sense of isolation, like acid spilling out of a bottle, can unconsciously eat away at a person’s heart and dissolve it. You could see it, too, as a kind of double-edged sword. It protects me, but at the same time steadily cuts away at me from the inside.”
2021
2020
Be Prepared
"Fresh out of the womb newborns look very different.As a matter of fact, your newborn may not bear any resemblance to you, your partner, or any known members of your species."
A Practical Handbook for New Dads
2020
Chief Joy Officer
Jujur saja, saya tidak ingat banyak dari buku ini. Ceritanya lewat begitu saja, dan praktiknya juga tidak terlalu kepakai.Sayang, karena Richard Sheridan dan Tom Peters bekerja di bidang yang persis sama dengan saya: perusahaan software. Mereka menulis tentang kantor saya, dan saya lupa.
2020
Educated
“When you grow up in a family where every action is questioned, it is easy to forget that there are things worth questioning.”
2020
Free To Focus
“You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.The Distraction Economy wants nothing more than to take our minds off what we need to do today. Why? We call it paying attention for a reason!”
2020
I Can't Make This Up
“You can't control the events that happen to you, but you can control your interpretation of them. So why not choose the story that serves your life the best?”
2020
Steve Jobs
“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
The Exclusive Biography
2020
The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey
Ditulis dan dibacakan dengan indah. Kekuatan audiobook ini ada di narratornya.Ceritanya sendiri, untuk ukuran novel detektif, cukup mudah ditebak. Tetap saya kasih bintang. Kadang suara orang lebih penting daripada plotnya.
2020
The Complete Poems of Walt Whitman
“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.”
2020
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Don't Panic. Saya membaca buku ini kira-kira 42 tahun setelah terbit, dan masih tertawa terpingkal-pingkal.Humor kering khas Inggris, alien, manusia bumi, dan tikus yang ternyata memegang kunci pertanyaan paling penting di kosmos. Tiga bintang, karena angka 42 sudah dipakai.
2020
The Lean Startup
“Build, measure, learn. The only way to win is to learn faster than anyone else”
2020
The Magic Of Thinking Big
“The size of your success is determined by the size of your belief.”
2020
The One Thing
“What’s the ONE Thing you can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”
2020
What You Do is Who You Are
“It’s not about being the smartest person in the room. It’s about being the one who consistently sets the standard through actions.”
2020
2019
Incognito
“Our brains are in the business of gathering information and steering behavior appropriately.It doesn't matter whether consciousness is involved in the decision-making process.”
The Secret Lives of the Brain
2019
Nine Lies About Work
Sembilan kebohongan di tempat kerja. Nomor lima: orang butuh feedback.Dua tahun kemudian, di catatan buku lain di rak ini, saya menulis bahwa manajer harus terus memberi feedback.
A Freethinking Leader's Guide to the Real World
2019
Refactoring UI
“Design isn't about making things look good, it's about making them work well.”
2019
Simple Numbers, Straight Talk, Big Profits!
Bought in 2019, still highlighting it in 2022. Small-business finance doesn't get more exciting the second time round, only more relevant.
2019
The 5 AM Club
I believed it enough to set three alarms, then spent the mornings I'd fought for watching football highlights. I didn't like the book. The alarms stayed.
2019
The Complete Guide to Contracting Your Home
“Family bathrooms used by children need plenty of storage to combat clutter.Install large medicine cabinets with zones for each child. Use vanities with several drawers. Provide ample storage for a variety of towels and toiletries near the shower.”
A Step-by-Step Method for Managing Home Construction
2019
The Culture Code
“When you ask people inside highly successful groups to describe their relationship with one another, they all tend to choose the same word: 'family.'”
2019
The Customer Founded Business
“The vast majority of fast-growing companies never take any venture capital.So where does the money come from to start and grow their companies? From a much more agreeable and hospitable source, their customers.”
2019
A Walk In The Woods
“Life takes you down many paths, but the best ones lead to the woods.”
2019
The Dichotomy Of Leadership
“Discipline equals freedom, but too much discipline can become rigidity and stifle creativity.”
2019
Can't Hurt Me
“The most important conversations you'll ever have are the ones you'll have with yourself.”
2019
The Dispatcher
Novel audio tentang masa depan di mana orang yang mati bukan karena sebab alami akan hidup lagi.Fantasi bertemu cerita detektif ala film noir, dan enak sekali didengarkan.
2019
The Effective Executive
“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”
2019
Digital Minimalism
“Human beings are not wired to be constantly wired.”
Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World
2019
The Hard Thing About Hard Things
“You don't learn the most from the good days. You learn from the bad days—the ones that really test your strength.”
Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
2019
Eat Their Lunch
“You don’t win deals by being the best at selling. You win by being the best at creating value.”
2019The Obesity Code
“Eating less and exercising more is not the solution—it's just a temporary fix to a deeper, metabolic issue.It's not about how much you eat; it's about when you eat and how often you eat.”
2019
Failure Is An Option
“Success is boring. Failure is where the good stories come from.”
2019
The Power Of Habit
“It's not motivation that drives change—it's momentum, created by small, consistent steps.We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
2019
The Power Of Now
“You don't have to 'do' anything to be. Simply being is enough.”
2019
Good To Great
“Good is the enemy of great.”
2019
The Simple Path To Wealth
“The path to wealth is simpler than we think. Spend less than you earn, invest the difference, and wait.”
2019
How To Read A Book
“Marking a book is not an act of mutilation but of love.”
2019
The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A F*ck
I marked it as a book I didn't like, then quoted it respectfully in one of my essays. Do I contradict myself? Whitman is elsewhere on this shelf.
2019
Wally Roux Quantum Mechanics
Novel coming-of-age. Wally Roux, jenius cilik yang tidak pernah cocok dengan sekitarnya, menemukan pelarian dengan menambal lubang di fisika kuantum.Semua anak butuh hobi.
2019
Why We Sleep
Matthew Walker explained that I am a night owl by DNA. I read this in 2019 and kept setting the alarm for five anyway.
2019
2018
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki
“Alienation and loneliness became a cable that stretched hundreds of miles long, pulled to the breaking point by a gigantic winch.And through that taut line, day and night, he received indecipherable messages. Like a gale blowing between trees, those messages varied in strength as they reached him in fragments, stinging his ears.”
2018
Principles
“Be an imperfectionist. Perfectionists spend too much time on little differences at the margins at the expense of the important things.”
2018
Sapiens
“The real difference between us and chimpanzees is the mysterious glue that enables millions of humans to cooperate effectively.”
2018
Solving Product Design Exercises
“Today top companies are looking for business-minded designers who are not just focused on visuals.”
2018
The Book Of M
“Sometimes, in order to remember who you are, you need to forget who they told you to be.”
2018
The Hate U Give
“Brave doesn’t mean you’re not scared. It means you go on even though you’re scared.”
2018
When
“Beginnings matter. A strong start can shape the trajectory of everything that follows.Midpoints can be a slump or a spark. It’s up to us to decide which one. Endings shape our memory of an experience. We remember the final moments more than the middle.
The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing
2018
2017
7 Habits of Highly Effective People
“The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.”
2017
What to Expect the First Year
Buku penyelamat untuk ayah amatir. Jadi orang tua baru berarti banyak hal tentang dedek bayi yang tidak saya pahami, dan buku ini menjelaskan hampir semuanya.Manfaat terbesarnya ternyata bukan untuk bayinya. Buku ini membuat saya jadi pihak yang lebih kalem untuk istri.
2017
2016
How to Be a Great Boss
“You can't ‘manage someone.’ Management is not what you do to someone; it's what you provide for someone.As Jim Collins states in his book Good to Great, ‘The moment you feel like you have to manage someone, you've made a hiring mistake.’”
2016
Norwegian Wood
“I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me.”
2016
Organizational Physics
“The right organizational structure isn't the one that looks good on paper, it's the one that supports the flow of energy within the business.”
2016
Problem Solving 101
Ditulis oleh Ken Watanabe, bukan Ken Watanabe yang itu. Isinya cara berpikir kritis untuk memecahkan masalah, dijelaskan begitu sederhana sampai anak SD pun bisa ikut.
Simple Book for Smart People
2016
The Checklist Manifesto
“The challenge is not to make a checklist, but to make a checklist that works.”
2016
The Design of Everyday Things
“Good design is actually a lot harder to notice than poor design, because good design fits our needs so well that the design is invisible.”
2016
The Zombie Survival Guide
Buku yang membuat saya jatuh cinta pada genre zombie.Konyol, cerdas, jenius, dan timeless. Sampai hari ini saya belum pernah perlu memakainya, yang mungkin justru tanda bukunya bekerja.
2016