Recently I asked a question on Twitter: What books have you read that nobody in your circle has read? What books haven't you read that everyone in your circle has read?
Some books we read because they came with glowing recommendations from a trusted friend. Others we refuse to read even though everyone's raving about it. I was curious about what books we pick up for ourselves, that didn't come recommended, and that weren't passed along to friends. These books are specific to our obscure interests, or the sides of us our friends don't share.
I've gone through replies to the thread and compiled a list of all the obscure books people read alone, and the popular books they won't read.
The first list contains some underrated gems - I've found fascinating new recommendations. The second contains some overrated bestsellers. Sapiens comes up 13 times as a book people refuse to read despite peer pressure. And if you didn't read Harry Potter or To Kill A Mockingbird as a kid, you're probably never going to read it.
People's circles are very different. What is popular in one circle is obscure in another. I hope this list is helpful if you're looking for new reads.
History and Origins of Consciousness - Erich Neumann
Neocybernetics and Narrative
Circe - Madeline Miller
America - Jean Baudrillard
Always Coming Home - Le Guin
The Retreat to Commitment
Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty
Business adventures
Chaosmosis - Guattari
Don’t sleep there are snakes
Queer poets, Audre Lorde
Jane Jacobs
Regenesis
Name of the Wind - Patrick Rothfuss
Biblia Sacra 1609
The LeafCutter Ants: Civilization by Instinct
Gravity's Rainbow
Never Split the Difference
Jack Reacher
Derrida, Lacan, Walter Benjamim
The 48 Laws of Power
The Scientist as Rebel by Freeman Dyson
Adaptive Markets, the Physics of Wall Street
Godel, Escher, Bach
The Bear Went Over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan
The Lies of Locke Lamora Business Adventures
Don't Sleep, There are Snakes
Sisters of the Revolution
Anarchy - William Dalrymple
Figuring - Maria Popova
The Beginning of Infinity, Howard Hughes Bio, Intelligent Investor
How to Run A Government - Michael Barber
Dare to Dream A life of M.S. Oberoi - Bachi J, Karakaria
Scale - Geoffrey West
Metaphors We Live By - George Lakoff and Mark Johnson
The Green Priest - Ryan Law
Why We Sleep - Matthew Walker
Bahnwärter Thiel. Anything by Thomas Mann.
5Am club, Founder's Dilemma
The Innovator's Dilemma
Denial of Death by Ernest Becker
A Million Little Pieces
Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
Barbaric Surfer
Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises by Timothy Geithner
The man without qualities - Robert Musil
The ZX Spectrum ULA
Dickens or Dreiser
Neuromancer
LEO on the cheap - why the way NASA builds rockets is too expensive and how to make it much cheaper. Molecular gastronomy
Who Rules The World - Chomsky
The Creation - E.O. Wilson
Conquistador - Buddy Levy How to get lucky - Gunther Hagakure by Yamamoto Tsunemoto
Antifragile
Tom Spanbauer’s “In the City of Shy Hunters”
Yankee Hobo in the Orient, John Patric
Death of Ivan Ilych by Tolstoy
The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
The Deep Hot Biosphere: The Myth of Fossil Fuels by Tommy Gold
Transmetropolitan series.
History of Future Cities
"Reasons and Persons" by Derek Parfit
Glimpses of World History by Jawaharlal Nehru
Progress and Poverty - Henry George
Adult Children of Alcoholics
Powerhouse: The Untold Story of Hollywood's Creative Artists Agency. Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator
Liquid Modernity, Zygmunt Bauman
The Horse, The Wheel, and Language by David Anthony. Against the Grain by James C Scott.
The Futurological Congress (Stanislav Lem), The Female Brain (Louanne Brizandine), Basic Economics (Thomas Sowell)
Angela & demon
Man the Unknown by Alexis Carrel
War of art by Steven Pressfield Uncommon Grounds/Pendergast. How to create a mind/Kurzweil. Remote/Fried-Hanson THE RIDE OF A LIFETIME Lessons learned from 15 years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company by Robert Iger
Danger Close
Last year, The Hidden Life of Trees, and Prisoners of Geography.
Why we buy
Ends. By joe Macleod
obscure Ursula K. Leguin books.
Void Star by Zachary Mason and Figuring by Maria Popova.
good strategy bad strategy by Rumelt
The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy
Atomic Habits
The Order of Time
Atomic Habits
The Clefts - Doris lessing & The Shipping News by Annie Proulx
The Obesity Code or No Gangsters in Paradise
Deep work by Cal Newport
Diary of a nobody by George Grossmith
Making of atomic bomb, trillion dollar coach
Action Inquiry
Artemis - Andy Weir
Autobiography of a Yogi
Art of War
Becoming Bulletproof
Meditations
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine
business secrets of the pharaohs
Creative Quest by Questlove
Finite and Infinite Games
The Billionaire Raj
How to get Lucky - Gunther
The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail
Neal Stephenson
Harry Potter
The Sovereign Individual
Principles by Ray Dalio
Sapiens
The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck
Sapiens
Sapiens
The Tipping Point
To Kill a Mockingbird
High Output Management
Act like a Leader, Think like a Leader
Harry Potter
12 Rules of Life
Sapiens
Zero to One - Peter Thiel
Educated
Chetan Bhagat
Harry Potter. White Teeth. The one about the tiger on a raft The subtle art of not giving a fuck
The Hunger Games
Pride and Prejudice
Harry Potter
Self-help books
The art of electronics third edition
Sapiens, Homo Deus
Atlas Shrugged.
Gladwell
Sapiens
James Patterson or John Grisham
Harry Potter and Chetan Bhagat.
Sapiens
Nassim Taleb stuff
every self-help/SV-esque book
To Kill A Mockingbird
Sapiens, Seeing Like the State
Harari Stuff
the end of alchemy by Mervyn King
The Founders Dilemmas/Wassermann. The Managers Path/Fournier
THINKING, FAST AND SLOW by Daniel Kahneman
Dune
Jim Collins stuff
Poor Dad, Rich Dad
Atlas Shrugged
The Richest Man In Babylon
Sapiens
Paulo Coelho or Taleb
The Art of the Start, Something Bitcoin related
Principles
Sapiens
It - Steven King
Seeing like a State
Sapiens
The Catcher in the Rye
Sapiens
Gladwell
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