Five Books Every Human Should Read
I’m sorry. You were looking for a listicle, but instead you are going to have a brief existential crisis. There have been more books published this month then you will ever have the chance to read in your lifetime. This is why this is an extremely curated list that will never grow above 5. It only includes those books that I believe every human should read given their limited time on this earth.
- On Writing Well by William Zinsser
Writing well is one of the most important skills. I think it will become even more important as we enter the age of AI generated garbage. Even if you’re not a professional writer, the lessons in this book will help you throughout life.
- I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi
Ignore the cheesy title, this is the personal finance education that I wish I got when I was a teenager. This book changed my life.
- Principles by Ray Dalio
A field guide for how to build a life you are proud of.
- How to Live by Derek Sivers
I think if Derek Sivers started a cult, I’d join it. A book of contradicting philosophies, it inspires me, makes me angry, and provokes lingering thoughts every time I read it. Reading this book is how to live.
- [still searching]
Thank you for reading! Share your thoughts with me on bluesky, mastodon, or via email.
Check out some more stuff to read down below.
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Recent Favorite Blog Posts
This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.
- workflows for ai coding from /* 🤖🛠️ */
- Reinvent the Wheel from Matthias Endler
- CAPTCHAs are over (in ticketing) from pretix – behind the scenes
- You Can Choose Tools That Make You Happy from Fernando Borretti
- Using Git as S3 from Kris Tun
- Future Fonts from Blog – Brad Frost
- 21st Century C++ from Communications of the ACM
- Submarines DevCon 2025 Keynote Speech from JoshHaines.com
Articles from blogs I follow around the net
Artificial Unintelligence – We are so inured to using AI that we believe we need it
Before people around the world were connected by the internet the proliferation of new ideas and modern technologies was slow. This was bad for the originators who had no means of quickly gauging…
via V.H. Belvadi June 1, 2025How often do LLMs snitch? Recreating Theo's SnitchBench with LLM
A fun new benchmark just dropped! Inspired by the Claude 4 system card - which showed that Claude 4 might just rat you out to the authorities if you told it to "take initiative" in enforcing its morals values while exposing it to evidence of malfe…
via Simon Willison's Weblog: Entries May 31, 2025OpenAI featured chatbot is pushing extreme surgeries to “subhuman” men
OpenAI's featured chatbot recommends $200,000 in surgeries while promoting incel ideology
via Citation Needed May 31, 2025Generated by openring