The books I love have influenced either how I interact with the world or how I approach writing. In descending chronological order of their publication date, my favorite books are:
2022: Anna: The Biography
Amy Odell
This was an easy and fun read. It is a very factual, chronological overview of Anna Wintour’s ascent as the leader of the fashion industry, which might not appeal to those who are interested in the book only to dig up juicy gossip. I actually loved Odell’s journalistic approach to writing this biography because it helps showcase what a strategic, adaptable, and astute leader Wintour is.
A lot can be said of her widely-criticized elitism and controversial PR moves, but Wintour is undoubtedly an effective and supportive leader. The biggest takeaway I had from reading about her life and career is that Wintour’s meteoric ascent would not have happened had she not excelled at recognizing talented, capable people early on and building strategic alliances with them.
2021: Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail
Ray Dalio
This was a great read. I really appreciated Dalio’s mental framework of understanding and predicting how global powers rise and fall. I did find a bit of an “agenda” behind his arguments, and a lot of the book—like many other books in this genre—is quite repetitive. It still opened my eyes in many ways and made me realize how shortsighted I was in my view of global history.
2020: On Lighthouses
Jazmina Barrera
A moving collection of essays and vignettes. Like Barrera, I had always been drawn to the imagery of lighthouses but, unlike Barrera, I was never able to understand why. Reading her meditations on life and death helped me make sense of the allure behind these mystical, formidable guideposts.
2020: The World: A Brief Introduction
Richard Haass
A really wonderful, concise summary of how the world works and how we got to where we are today. Haass’ writing is accessible and not overly scholarly. It’s certainly geared toward international affairs-oriented folks, but a book like this should definitely be a mandatory read in all universities.
2020: Suppose a Sentence
Brian Dillon
On the surface, the book sounds like a nightmare: a byproduct of a guy overanalyzing 27 sentences. I expected to be bored, but I could not put the book down. Most of the sentences that Dillon finds fascinating infuriated me (like the ones by Gertrude Stein and Virginia Woolf). That was possibly the main reason I thought this was a great read, because Dillon, surprisingly, also thought many of these sentences are unfinished, tortuous, and confusing. But he appreciates their imperfections. He analyzes misplaced commas, improper use of hyphens, awkward adjectives and adverbs, and shows that those imperfections rarely reflect a poor command of language but instead offer unobstructed access into the minds of these authors. I learned from reading Dillon’s book that a powerful sentence need not be grammatically great, and that feeling angry, annoyed, or puzzled by a sentence is just as rewarding as admiring a perfectly-crafted one.
2018: Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
John Carreyrou
This was a captivating and thrilling read. Carreyrou’s journalistic approach toward writing the book added an investigative flair to the story, and I really appreciated how he structured the story: letting the reader experience the disbelief, shock, frustration, and catharsis just as he experienced them himself.
2018: Educated
Tara Westover
I read this entire book on a plane in one sitting. While far more extreme and traumatic than mine, Westover’s upbringing in some ways reminded me of my childhood in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Many of her memories documented in the book didn’t seem foreign to me at all. From extreme conspiracy theories and generational trauma to straight-out rejection of science, I recognized much of my hometown’s culture in Westover’s stories.
What I really loved about her writing was that she didn’t write the memoir from an angle of shame. She instead described each memory exactly how she experienced it at the time: being excited about Y2K, seeing medicine as something sinister, being mortified by her classmates’ “immodest” clothing. As a result, I matured with her throughout the book, felt her growing pain as she started deconstructing her trauma, and developed both contempt and empathy for her parents—just like she did.
2017: The Idiot
Elif Batuman
I got this book as a blind-buy while perusing a bookstore in San Francisco’s Mission District. I found the story to be so genuine, so funny, and so heartbreaking all at once. Batuman captured the exhausting first experience of falling in love with someone—without knowing it’s happening—so brilliantly, and I really appreciated that there was no majestic resolution to the main character’s love story. In a way, nothing happens, but that’s just how life does unfold for many of us.
2013: Several Short Sentences about Writing
Verlyn Klinkenborg
Also a book that I got as a blind-buy in a bookstore in downtown Manhattan. It ended up being one my absolute favorites, and I recommend it to everyone I know. It’s such brilliant commentary on what good writing looks like and why most of the stuff we write is actually bad. Klinkenborg’s examples are funny, his writing is incredibly easy to understand, and the takeaways permanently stuck with me.
As mentioned in the intro, I typically do not read books multiple times, but I always revisit this one.
2012: The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Michelle Andrews
An exceptionally well-written, eye-opening book. Chapters that focus more on legal research were occasionally too detailed for my taste, but Andrews effectively balanced them with a perceptive commentary on American society through a historical lens of the United States and its troubled history. I particularly enjoyed the clarity and simplicity of her writing, especially in how effectively she established the parallels between slavery, the Jim Crow era, and the era of mass incarceration. And, I loved the chapters in which Alexander connected the dots between these issues and their lingering presence in American pop culture.
2012: Where’d You Go, Bernadette
Maria Semple
A heartwarming and entertaining read. The character development is brilliant and Semple explores the mother-daughter relationship from a refreshing perspective. The epistolary format with Semple’s comedic undertones works so well; had the book been written in any other format, I don’t think the story would have worked at all. I also think Richard Linklater did major injustice to the book with his movie adaptation.
2011: Technology, Globalization, and Sustainable Development: Transforming the Industrial State
Nicholas A. Ashford & Ralph P. Hall
It feels unusual to put a school textbook as one of my favorites, but this book opened my eyes in so many ways. I took a graduate class at MIT that was taught by the authors and based entirely on this book, and it was the first time in my life I actually read a textbook from beginning to end. The frameworks and explanations in this book are logical, practical, and possibly event controversial to some. What I really liked was the author’s emphasis of social sustainable development and the intangible meaning of work as one of key pillars of sustainability.
2007: A Thousand Splendid Suns
Khaled Hosseini
This was one of the first heavy-themed books I read as a teenager that wasn’t part of my prescribed school curriculum, and as such, it had a really profound effect on me. I distinctly remember reaching the end of Hosseini’s story and crying in my childhood bedroom as I was reading it. I did enjoy his other novel, The Kite Runner, but I think A Thousand Splendid Suns was a much better piece of work.
2005: The Glass Castle
Jeannette Walls
I read this book in college—I knew nothing about its critical acclaim at that time, and simply picked it up from my mom’s nightstand because I wanted something to read. I was blown away (as well as shocked) by the story, and in some strange way drawn to it: partly because, after living in the US for a few years, I actually understood the context of Walls’ environment and partly because she relayed the experience of separating from her unorthodox upbringing in a way that felt universal and tangible.
2005: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
J. K. Rowling
The book that broke my heart. Reading the final pages and realizing that Dumbledore was dead was definitely one of those monumental childhood moments I will not forget. Despite the grim ending, I really enjoyed the book, its dark undertone, and I remember thinking that Rowling’s writing notably improved in this installment.
2005: Consider the Lobster and Other Essays
David Foster Wallace
A friend got me this book, and I had no idea what to expect. I never read David Foster Wallace before, knew nothing about him, and maybe that was the reason why I ended up enjoying this so much. There are things in here that I definitely did not like: not a fan of the endless footnotes, the superfluous facts, and the persistent disdain for America that clearly clouds some of his judgment. The essays freed from these shackles, on the other hand, really stand out and showcase some of the bravest, most incisive insight into modern culture. I absolutely loved “How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart,” “The View from Mrs. Thompson’s,” “Authority and American Usage,” “Certainly the End of Something or Other, One Would Sort of Have to Think,” and “Up, Simba.”
2003: Where I Was From
Joan Didion
Incredible. It will probably feel esoteric to those who haven’t lived in California, but to those who have, this book will feel both poignant and cathartic. The first half is markedly historical and occasionally too technical, but Didion weaves it all beautifully together, in the second half, into a perceptive vision of California and its long-standing contradictions.
2000: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
J. K. Rowling
This was an important book in my formative childhood years because it was the first time I felt I belonged to something greater than just my immediate environment. Potter fandom was becoming global, the themes in this book were becoming darker and more realistic, and I started feeling that Rowling’s imaginary world was becoming my sanctuary. The book at times felt all over the place, especially with the Triwizard Tournament, but I still consider it one of my favorites. Ironically, the movie equivalent was my least favorite of all Harry Potter films.
1987: Miami
Joan Didion
Didion’s masterful ability to illustrate social, political, and cultural complexities—as well as contradictions—of a place shines in Miami. This book showed me how powerful it is to read sentences that do not resolve tension but instead protract it. An example of such (favorite passage) reads, “A certain liquidity suffused everything about the place. Causeways and bridges and even Brickell Avenue did not stay put but rose and fell, allowing the masts of ships to glide among the marble and glass facades of the unleased office buildings. The buildings themselves seemed to swim free against the sky: there had grown up in Miami during the recent money years an architecture which appeared to have slipped its moorings, a not inappropriate style for a terrain with only a provisional claim on being land at all.”
1968: Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Joan Didion
An excellent collection of Didion’s essays. My favorites are “Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream,” “7000 Romaine, Los Angeles 38,” “On Going Home,” but far above the rest is the collection’s titular essay, “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” which I reread almost every year. That piece has been instrumental in understanding my own existence in San Francisco and was the basis of my own take on the city’s scene in 2023.
1966: Against Interpretation and Other Essays
Susan Sontag
I think many essays in this collection are valuable only to a small group of people—the highly-educated, liberal city dwellers who immerse themselves in the world of arts. I did not even bother with some of these really niche cultural essays, but I absolutely loved the less esoteric ones, like “Notes on ‘Camp,'” “Against Interpretation,” “On Style,” and “One Culture and the New Sensibility.” What I really appreciate about Sontag is that she is very opinionated and takes a firm stance on what is good and what is not, as well why it is good and why it is not. Though it might seem like a frivolous exercise in self-indulgence, reading Sontag’s writing is, above all, a way to sharpen one’s taste.
1960: To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee
Really happy that I got to read this book as an adult and not in school, which is often the case for those who grow up in the US. What I really loved about Lee’s writing is her uncanny ability to paint the world in the book so clearly and vividly. The characters and the story were so engaging, and yet she managed to convincingly depict the slowness of life in Alabama during the Great Depression.
1949: 1984
George Orwell
When I read this novel, years after reading the Animal Farm, I found it too apocalyptic and frightening—to the point of almost not liking it. Strangely, it was reading Orwell’s nonfiction essays, written before he wrote 1984, that made me fall in love with this book. Orwell’s incisive breakdown of England’s cultural landscape and his clairvoyant musings on the hypocrisies on all sides of the political spectrum made me appreciate the harrowing underpinnings of 1984.
1946: A Man’s Search for Meaning
Viktor Frankl
A tough but inspiring read. The second half of the book is really where the magic of Frankl’s memoir comes through. His views on the importance of love, having something to always strive for, and managing our own reactions to unpredictable circumstances made a strong impression on me.
1925: The Trial
Franz Kafka
This one took me a while to appreciate. I read it first in high school, and while the story stood out and remained memorable, I didn’t understand much of the meaning until I started to experience life independently as an adult. Kafka’s portrayal of absurdity that constantly surrounds us, as well of our own willingness to accept and not fight it, was definitely an eye-opener for me. So many times in my day-to-day life I will encounter people or find myself in situations that will remind me of the absurd moments in the book, and I always “tap into” my Kafka framework of seeing life for what it is: completely non-sensible.
1890: The Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde
It’s incredible that even more than a century later, the themes from this novel are still relevant. I always loved the concept of Faustian pact in literature, but Wilde made it far more palpable in the context of social standing, moral downfall, and quest for the unattainable, be it youth, beauty, or belonging. From our friendships and relationships to careers and aspirations, we all have a bit of Dorian in ourselves, and I find it always fascinating to see that we are all making his choices in one way or another.
The cover image has been designed by Clare Zhang. You can follow her digital art on Instagram or her website.