books

Here are the books I’ve read and my opinions on them. Ratings are subjective and based on personal impact.

Tier List

Books are ranked by preference within each tier. The list is dynamic and will be updated as my perspective evolves. Rankings are subject to change.

S-Tier (5/5)

A-Tier (4/5)

B-Tier (3/5)

C-Tier (2/5)

D-Tier (1/5)

None for now

Currently Reading

Crime and Punishment by _Fyodor Dostoevsky

  • Started: 2025 December 11

Chronology

Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins

David “leave me alone” Goggins. This man is indeed something. I really liked his book. It was so easy to read, and it’s so inspiring. It’s kinda weird how David calls motivation bullshit, while at the same time the whole book felt like a huge motivational speech with a grain of wisdom on top, backed by an awesome life story. Still, the book seems immensely valuable. A lot of his reasoning felt oddly familiar, and resonated with me deeply. That’s the kind of life I want to live, and even though my brain says I’m nothing like him, clearly David’s brain was telling literally the same thing, but he just refused to believe it. The biggest limits are always in our minds.

  • Rating: 5/5
  • Started: 2025 November 06
  • Finished: 2025 December 10

The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga

This one is really interesting. The main idea behind the book is to explain teleology principles. It is written in the format of a Socratic dialogue between two characters, “Youth” and “Philosopher”, which makes it amazingly easy to read. Generally, it sounds pretty reasonable. I love how empowering this perspective of goal-oriented behavior is, and the amount of agency and control these beliefs provide.

  • Rating: 5/5
  • Finished: 2025 October 29

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

Good idea in a discouraging package. The author talks about resilience and how it’s important to cultivate it for any kind of creative work. Feels like a bunch of motivational quotes spiced with a decent amount of esoteric crap. It’s pretty easy to read, though.

  • Rating: 2/5
  • Finished: 2025 September 28

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey

Good, but nothing special. It was hard to remember any unique takes from this book. I would also want it to be much more concise, omitting all the useless stuff.

  • Rating: 3/5
  • Finished: 2025 May 27

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor was a neurologist, psychiatrist, and philosopher. During World War II, he survived in Nazi concentration camps, which already gives some fascinating vibes to the book. The biggest question discussed in the book is what makes life meaningful and why for some people the answer is obvious while others struggle so hard to get this feeling.

  • Rating: 5/5
  • Finished: 2025 April 14

Factfulness by Hans Rosling with Anna Rosling Rönnlund & Ola Rosling

The world actually gets better! There are way too many people out there screaming that we are all doomed, but actually, statistics show the opposite—global well-being keeps growing. I love how easy this book is to read, but it oversimplifies things where I think it’s not necessary.

  • Rating: 4/5
  • Finished: 2025 March 21

Range by David Epstein

General knowledge of a wide amount of seemingly unrelated topics is more valuable than a narrow, deep understanding of one. I love it. It also perfectly matches the idea of creative work being the process of building relationships between unrelated things. Reading this felt especially good just because I was intuitively feeling this but had never properly articulated it.

  • Rating: 5/5
  • Finished: 2025 March 15

Apocalypse Never by Michael Shellenberger

No, we are not going to die due to climate change. The problem is overblown, and there are people who clearly benefit from it being this way. On top of that, the whole movement even harms long-term ecology, as it demonizes more efficient and low-waste energy types such as nuclear energy.

  • Rating: 5/5
  • Finished: 2025 March 8

Science Fictions by Stuart Ritchie

A lot of science papers are, well, fiction. There is a huge, ongoing crisis of test reproducibility in a huge number of science publications. What is even worse is that a decent amount of people intentionally curate their data to manipulate our opinions and extract a benefit from it. A good thing to keep in mind whenever some new and shiny discovery or invention appears in the news.

  • Rating: 4/5
  • Finished: 2025 February 25

The WEIRDest People in the World by Joseph Henrich

Most public psychological knowledge appears to not be universal. Because of the rapid development of the Western world, that’s where psychology as a science first matured. But because of that, a lot of facts that were considered true about humans turn out to actually be the result of Western culture and usually don’t apply outside of it. In addition, Joseph Henrich explains how this culture is the reason Western society got so far, so fast.

  • Rating: 4/5
  • Finished: 2025 February 19

Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? by Julie Smith

A collection of useful advice for self-help in various life situations. It’s okay, but it was boring to read because the things taught in it actually felt pretty obvious to me. Yep, I guess someone has already told me this before.

  • Rating: 3/5
  • Finished: 2024 December 29

The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss

Time is more valuable than money, and more money doesn’t mean a better life. It makes much more sense to work less but do it more efficiently. I wish it was a bit more concise and practical, but other than that, it’s a solid book.

  • Rating: 3/5
  • Finished: 2024 December 24

Start with Why by Simon Sinek

People are attracted not to WHAT a thing is, but rather to WHY it is. Making a quality product won’t necessarily make it successful. Actually, it’s the feelings that a product evokes that have the greatest impact on its success. The main thing is to inspire; everything else comes after.

  • Rating: 3/5
  • Finished: 2024 November 26

Why Privacy Matters by Neil Richards

Privacy is not dead, and you should protect it. Information is the new oil of the current era. It’s the most precious, profitable, and valuable resource that companies can have. Who knows everything controls everything. Although public awareness is getting better, I still feel like not enough people are aware of how important this topic is.

  • Rating: 5/5
  • Finished: 2024 October 25

Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert

We don’t know what will make us happy. We can try to predict, but we are terrible at making predictions. Prediction is a product of our ability to imagine things, and the truth is, our imagination is full of shortcomings. Daniel Gilbert does a great job of explaining what these shortcomings are and how we can use the awareness of them to act smarter. It was pretty interesting to read.

  • Rating: 4/5
  • Finished: 2024 July 24

Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke

This one was weird. In retrospect, it’s hard to say that it was very useful. Anna focuses more on the stories of patients instead of providing more reliable evidence for her ideas. It felt like there were some good ideas, like keeping a pleasure-pain balance, but even with that, the book felt pretty weak.

  • Rating: 2/5
  • Finished: 2024 June 12

Deep Work by Cal Newport

In the current world where basically anything can distract us, deep, focused work is more valuable than ever. That’s the main idea behind the book, and I can’t agree more. The book gave me vibes similar to those of Atomic Habits, but with a slightly different flavor. I would say the most important thing this book teaches is how to be intentional with the time we have.

  • Rating: 4/5
  • Finished: 2024 June 5

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

I like how this book is not about manipulation and getting what you want from people, but rather about simply being an empathetic and pleasant person. It also contains a lot of harmless, small tricks such as smiling more and calling people by their names, which simply improves the quality of the communication. I think it’s important for such things to happen naturally, so I was not consciously forcing these rules on myself in every conversation, but rather just understood how important these little things are, and after some time, intuitively started acting in a more respectful and appreciative way.

  • Rating: 3/5
  • Finished: 2024 May 26

100 Go Mistakes by Teiva Harsanyi

There are a lot of pitfalls and small quirks about the Go programming language that I learned from this book. It also provides some useful tips and patterns. Concurrency, though, was tough to absorb.

  • Rating: 4/5
  • Finished: 2024 May 11

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

The first fiction book I’ve read. It was somewhat difficult for me to read, but in the end, I didn’t regret putting time into it. The main idea of Big Brother is actually as relevant today as it could ever be. Seeing clear relations between the described dystopia and the world we are living in gave me some real goosebumps. The ending is pretty disturbing and surprisingly profound.

  • Rating: 5/5
  • Finished: 2024 May 6

Daring Greatly by Brené Brown

This book definitely has profound ideas I agree with, such as the importance of vulnerability in day-to-day life. But at the same time, for me, it was somewhat boring to read. Because of that, I can hardly remember the arguments the author provided. Maybe it’s just me; definitely not a bad book.

  • Rating: 3/5
  • Finished: 2024 April 11

Supercommunicators by Charles Duhigg

Interesting to read, but the knowledge felt kinda impractical. Like, it advises you to ask people deep questions in order to achieve connected conversations, but at the same time, it doesn’t work if you are asking about things you are not genuinely interested in. It has a good point, but it felt like it lacked important details.

  • Rating: 3/5
  • Finished: 2024 March 30

The Expectation Effect by David Robson

Be careful with the things you believe in. Using various historical situations, the book illustrates that your beliefs have a profound impact on the way you behave and your body functions. It’s actually quite surprising the scale of influence that just a thought can have.

  • Rating: 4/5
  • Finished: 2024 March 22

Models by Mark Manson

Once again, Mark goes against the grain and expresses an idea that is unusual for this kind of book. The book is about dating and relationships, but instead of giving tips and tricks, it goes deep into what makes people likable and states that if you want to date a decent person, well, first of all, you have to be a decent person. It puts a big stress on authenticity and the importance of starting from the root—your identity.

  • Rating: 4/5
  • Finished: 2024 March 10

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson

Great book which gives a based view on life and happiness. It definitely changed the way I perceive everything that happens to me. The author is not afraid to be direct and say things that might usually be considered impolite. Huge W.

  • Rating: 4/5
  • Finished: 2024 March 7

Atomic Habits by James Clear

It’s a hyped book, probably for a good reason. It was the very first book I’ve deliberately read and likely the reason I kept reading after that. Its main idea is that small, consistent changes compound into big, long-term outcomes. On top of that, it provides well-thought-out execution steps and tricks. I find it really sound and, perhaps even more important, practical. Sometimes data in the book may seem way too stripped and simplified. The book is written in a semi-entertaining style, which made me read it from start to the end without a problem.

  • Rating: 5/5
  • Finished: 2024 March 2
  • 2025 Dec 13 - last update
  • 2025 Oct 30 - page created
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