The Transformative Power of Reading - A NLP Engineer's Perspective
As an NLP engineer with a deep interest in human languages and cognition, I understand the power of words. So it should come as no surprise that I also have a passion for reading. When we dive into reading, we’re not simply flipping through pages and processing characters; we’re embarking on an intellectual journey that can change the very fabric of our minds.
Why Reading Is Fundamental
Reading is undeniably a vital habit for several reasons:
- Knowledge Acquisition: Every book offers a treasure trove of information, insights, and perspectives.
- Cognitive Development: Reading enhances vocabulary, improves memory, and stimulates critical thinking.
- Empathy Expansion: Stories allow us to experience the world through the lives of others, nurturing our ability to empathize.
- Stress Reduction: It’s scientifically proven that reading can lower stress levels, providing a much-needed escape.
- Focus and Concentration: In a world of digital distractions, reading helps to improve our ability to focus on a single task.
- Inspiration and Motivation: Many a time, a book has been the spark that has ignited a revolution of thought and action.
The Reading List: The books to come
These are the books, I want to read next inspired by Stanford Business:
- Chip Heath: Making Numbers Count
- Paul Oyer: An Economist goes to the Game
- Pfeffer: 7 Rules of Power
- Charles O’Reilly: The Corporate Explorer
- Neil Malhotra: Leading With Values
- Immelt: Hot Seat
- Siegel: THe Brains and Brawn Company
- Gruenfield: Acting with Power
- Bradford: Connect
- Sorensen: Making Great Strategy
- Aaker: Humor, Seriously
Three Books is Stanford’s signature common reading program for undergraduate first-year and new transfer students:
- Animal, Directed by Cyril Dion
- An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, by Ed Yong
- Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life, by Lulu Miller
Fiction books by Stanford U:
- Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid, G.P. Putnam’s Sons (2019)
- The Violin Conspiracy: A Novel by Brendan Slocumb, Anchor (2022)
- Sea Change by Gina Chung, Vintage (2023)
- You Don’t Have a Shot by Racquel Marie, Feiwel & Friends (2023)
- The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honorée Fannone Jeffers, Harper Perennial (2021)
- In the Distance by Hernan Diaz, Coffee House Press (2017)
- Trust by Hernan Diaz, Riverhead Books (2022)
- Selfless: The Social Creation of “You” by Brian Lowery, professor at the Graduate School of Business, Harper (2023)
- Black Food: Stories, Art & Recipes Across the African Diaspora, edited and curated by Bryant Terry, 4 Color Books (2021).
- The Deeper the Roots by Michael Tubbs, ’12, MA ’12, Flatiron Books (2021)
- A Nail the Evening Hangs On by Monica Sok, former Stegner fellow, Copper Canyon Press (2020)
- If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery, former Stegner fellow, MCD (2022)
- Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty, Tin House (2022)
- The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories by Jamil Jan Kochai, Viking (2022)
- His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice by Toluse Olorunnipa, ’08, MA ’09, and Robert Samuels, Viking (2022), winners of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction.
- The Immortal King Rao by Vauhini Vara, ’04, W.W. Nortan & Company (2023), runner up for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
What I’ve read: A Doorway to an Expansive World
Over the past few years, my appetite for reading has been eclectic, spanning genres from business and leisure to self-improvement. I’ve compiled a list of these books, grading them based on whether I’d recommend them to others, with a simple scale: (1) no, (2) yes, (3) absolutely. This is not an exhaustive list of books, but a distilled essence of my personal recommendations of each book.
To explore the full reading list and perhaps to find your next book-based adventure, check out the markdown table below:
| Title | Author | Category | Would I recommend? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hacks for Tiktok | Kyle Brach | Business | 1 |
| Day Hiking Snoqualmie | Dan Nelson | Leisure | 3 |
| Culture Code | Daniel Coyle | Business | 1 |
| The Art of Team Communication | Don Rossmoore | Business | 1 |
| Men are from Mars, Women from Venus | John Gray | Betterment | 3 |
| The Earned Life | Marshall Goldsmith | Betterment | 3 |
| Take Command | Joe Hart | Betterment | 1 |
| Designing Your Life | Bill Burnett | Betterment | 2 |
| Think Again | Adam Grant | Betterment | 3 |
| Brilliant Green | Stefano Mancuso | Leisure | 2 |
| Born to Run | Chris McDougall | Leisure | 1 |
| Das Schlagenmaul | J. Fauser | Leisure | 1 |
| 101 wichtigsten Fragen Amerikas | C. Mauch | Leisure | 2 |
| The 5 AM Club | Robin Sharma | Betterment | 2 |
| Never Get a Real Job | Scott Gerber | Betterment | 1 |
| Moonwalking with Einstein | Jousha Foer | Betterment | 3 |
| How to be a Gentleman | Thomas Nelson | Betterment | 3 |
| Cracking the Coding Interview | G. McDowell | Engineering | 2 |
| Product Analytics | Joanne Rodrigues-Craig | Business | 3 |
| Mastering Spacy | Dugyu Altinok | Engineering | 2 |
| Path to Longevity | Luigi Fontana | Betterment | 2 |
| Principles of Product Management | Peter Yang | Business | 1 |
| Fluent Python | Luciano Ramalho | Engineering | 2 |
| Good to Great | Jim Collins | Business | 2 |
| What got you here won’t get you there | Marshall Goldsmith | Business | 3 |
| Managing Oneself | Peter Drucker | Business | 2 |
| Book of Beautiful Questions | Warren Berger | Betterment | 2 |
| Venture Deals | Brad Feld | Business | 1 |
| Never Split the Difference | Chris Voss | Betterment | 3 |
| The Lean Startup | Eric Ries | Business | 1 |
| The Effective Executive | Peter Drucker | Business | 3 |
| Screw It Lets Do it | Richard Branson | Business | 1 |
| The Zero Marginal Cost Society | Rifkin | Business | 2 |
| Steal Like an Artist | Austin Kleon | Business | 2 |
| The Personal MBA | Josh Kaufman | Business | 3 |
| Win Bigley | Scott Adams | Betterment | 3 |
| Oefter, Laenger, Besser | Chia | Betterment | 2 |
| Mental Math | Benjamin Arthur | Betterment | 3 |
| Wheat Belly | William Davis | Betterment | 3 |
| Bildung | Dietrich Schwarz | Betterment | 3 |
| Traffic Secrets | Russel Brunson | Business | 1 |
| The Way of the Superior Man | David Deida | Betterment | 3 |
| The Picture of Dorian Gray | Oscar Wilde | Leisure | 3 |
| Monetizing Machine Learning | Amunategui | Engineering | 2 |
| What Should I Do With the Rest of My Life | Brucel Frankel | Betterment | 2 |
| Investment Banking | Joshua Pearl | Business | 2 |
| A Philosophy of Software Design | John Ousterhout | Engineering | 3 |
| Be More Pirate | Sam Allende | Business | 2 |
| The Gifts of Imperfection | Brene Brown | Betterment | 2 |
| How to Stop Worrying and Start Living | Dale Carnegie | Betterment | 2 |
| How to Win Friends and Influence People | Dale Carnegie | Betterment | 2 |
| Thinking Fast and Slow | Daniel Kahneman | Betterment | 3 |
| Flow: Psychology of Optimal Experience | Csikszentmihalyi | Betterment | 2 |
| Atomic Habits | James Clear | Betterment | 3 |
| Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck | Mark Manson | Betterment | 1 |
| Think and Grow Rich | Napoleon Hill | Betterment | 2 |
| The Game | Neil Strauss | Betterment | 2 |
| The Prince | Nicolo Machiavelli | Betterment | 2 |
| The 80/20 Principle | Robert Koch | Betterment | 1 |
| The 48 Laws of Power | Robert Greene | Betterment | 2 |
| Rich Dad & Poor Dad | Robert Kiyosaki | Betterment | 2 |
| On the Shortness of LIfe | Seneca | Betterment | 3 |
| To Start with Why | Simon Sinek | Betterment | 2 |
| The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People | Stephen Covey | Betterment | 2 |
| The Art of War | Sun Tzu | Betterment | 2 |
| The 4 Hour Work Week | Tim Ferris | Betterment | 2 |
| Travel While Work | Mish Slade | Betterment | 1 |
| Man’s Search for Meaning | Viktor Frankl | Betterment | 2 |
| Stoicism | Mark Aurelius | Betterment | 3 |
| The Power of Now | Eckhard Tolle | Betterment | 2 |
| Antifragile | Nassib Taleb | Betterment | 2 |
| The Four Agreements | Dan Ruiz | Betterment | 3 |
| Learned Optimism | Martin Seligman | Betterment | 3 |
| The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem | Nathaniel Brandon | Betterment | 3 |
| Outliers | Malcolm Gladwell | Betterment | 2 |
| The Slight Edge | Jeff Olson | Betterment | 3 |
| The One Thing | Gary Keller | Betterment | 2 |
| Mastery | Robert Greene | Betterment | 2 |
| The Magic of Thinking Big | David Schwartz | Betterment | 3 |
| Secrets of the Millionaire Mind | Harv Eker | Betterment | 2 |
| The Millionaire Fastlane | MJ DeMarco | Betterment | 2 |
| The Science of Persuasion | Cialdini | Betterment | 2 |
| Contagious | John Berger | Betterment | 2 |
| Predictably Irrational | Dan Ariely | Betterment | 3 |
| The Paradox of Choice | Barry Schwartz | Betterment | 2 |
| Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook | Gary Vaynerchuk | Betterment | 2 |
| The Selfish Gene | Richard Dawkins | Betterment | 2 |
| The Powers to Lead | John Nye | Business | 2 |
| Drive | Daniel Pink | Business | 3 |
| Managing People | Barry Silverstein | Business | 3 |
| Python Object-Oriented Programming | Steven Lott | Engineering | 3 |
Closing Thoughts
Delving into books is a journey much like trekking through new landscapes, learning a new language, or understanding a complex algorithm - every step broadens our view, sharpens our skills, and deepens our human experience. So let’s continue to read and explore.