The Books I Have Read Since July of 2025

Whenever I can, I try to stop and re­flect. Of­ten it’s about my work and the things I can do to con­tinue be­ing more pro­duc­tive. But of­ten, I re­flect about the re­cent books I have read and the things I (and you) can learn from them. That’s what this post will hope­fully turn out to be.

So, with­out fur­ther ado, here are some of the books I have read re­cently.

The Stoic Challenge by William B. Irvine

At the end of each episode of his pod­cast, Ezra Klein asks his guests the same ques­tion: what three books would you rec­om­mend we read? Terminating one par­tic­u­lar episode, au­thor Jonathan Haidt sug­gests The Stoic Challenge.

I was al­ready aware of William B. Irvine as a pro­lific stoic writer. In fact, I had tried to read an­other of his books on the sub­ject of Stoic phi­los­o­phy. I had not fin­ished it be­cause, well, I found it some­what dry.

The Stoic Challenge, on the other hand, was a de­light. It feels like Irvine took all the suc­cess­ful parts of the pre­vi­ous book and con­densed them down into some­thing my Gen-Z brain could un­der­stand.

The book’s more im­por­tant take­away is sim­ple. In life, you and I both en­counter daily strug­gles that im­pede our progress to­ward our goals.

Our flight is run­ning late, so we get to our ho­tel later than we in­tend. We for­get to pack a lunch, so we must get through our work­day hun­gry. Our babysit­ter wants a raise, which means we won’t be able to go out as of­ten.

The Stoic Challenge en­cour­ages us to frame these set­backs as a test. A test put upon us by some hid­den force. To pass the test, we need to act in a ra­tio­nal way, and take steps to avoid ex­ac­er­bat­ing the re­sult­ing neg­a­tive emo­tions.

I highly sug­gest any­one read this book. I felt en­gaged the en­tire time read­ing it, and its lessons ap­ply to any walk of life.

Slow Productivity by Cal Newport

Cal Newport is known for many of the most ground­break­ing pro­duc­tiv­ity books of the last decade. Per­son­ally, Deep Work and How to Be a Straight-A Student have been par­tic­u­larly im­pact­ful. They’ve en­cour­aged me to cut out the un­nec­es­sar­ily com­plex parts of my work­ing life, and work to find ways of do­ing the same for oth­ers.

His lat­est work con­tin­ues from the same ideas he put forth in those books.

How to be a Straight-A Student was fo­cused on the idea that the quan­tity of high-qual­ity, pub­lished work made the dif­fer­ence be­tween mediocre and stel­lar aca­d­e­mic ca­reers. Fol­low­ing on, Deep Work made the case that the best way to achieve high out­put was by cre­at­ing cir­cum­stances that al­lowed for ex­tended pe­ri­ods of in­tense fo­cus.

Slow Productivity takes both of those ideas a step fur­ther. He sug­gests that the key to high-qual­ity out­put, in ad­di­tion to deep fo­cus, re­quires time. He be­lieve that truly amaz­ing prod­ucts re­quire the brain to be re­laxed, com­fort­able, and un­hur­ried. It is only then, that it can work out­side of the box.

I’m not en­tirely sure I agree, but the book made for a stim­u­lat­ing read nonethe­less.

The Humans by Matt Haig

The Humans is a beau­ti­ful book that cel­e­brates all the idio­syn­cratic things that make hu­mans spe­cial. Don’t worry, I won’t spoil it for you I’ve read a de­cent num­ber of Haig’s books in the past, and I’ve en­joyed each one. This was no dif­fer­ent.

I’ll spare you the de­tails.

The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing

I am an en­gi­neer. I went to an en­gi­neer­ing school. Since I spend most of my time around peo­ple who work in fields re­lated to en­gi­neer­ing, I do not spend much time around peo­ple who know a lot about mar­ket­ing. I wanted to fix that. Which is why I read The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.

This is a book in­tended for peo­ple who want to un­der­stand the ax­ioms of how brands are per­ceived by the pub­lic.

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

Sapiens is a com­pre­hen­sive his­tory of our species, homo sapi­ens, be­gin­ning with the first hu­mans to walk the planet all the way up to the hu­mans of to­day. Harari takes a unique look at what makes our species spe­cial, and the things that make our fu­ture un­cer­tain.

At times, the writ­ing can be a bit dry and repet­i­tive, but on the whole it is a well-writ­ten book. I would cer­tainly rec­om­mend it for any­one who seeks an en­tirely new per­spec­tive on the short his­tory of hu­man life.

Your Utopia by Bora Chung

I went into Your Utopia ex­pect­ing a col­lec­tion of short sto­ries sim­i­lar to those by Ted Chiang. That is not what I re­ceived.

Instead, Chung pro­vides a some­what eclec­tic col­lec­tion of sto­ries that feel not un­like a fever dream. Rather than gen­uine, hard sci­ence fic­tion, Chung tells the tales of sen­tient cars, el­e­va­tors that care for the el­derly, and im­mor­tal sec­re­taries.

I don’t re­gret read­ing it, but I also don’t rec­om­mend it to fans of Chiang.