What I keep coming back to. Books and papers mixed by theme. Ratings where I’ve finished and rated; an arrow marks what’s next on the shelf.
Updated May 2026.
AI & ML
| Year | Title | Author | Note | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning | Christopher M. Bishop | The canonical PRML. On the reread pile. | Book |
| 2020 | Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach | Stuart Russell, Peter Norvig | next | Book |
| 2016 | Deep Learning | Ian Goodfellow, Yoshua Bengio, Aaron Courville | next | Book |
| 2017 | Deep Learning with Python | François Chollet | Book | |
| 2019 | Rebooting AI | Gary Marcus, Ernest Davis | Why deep learning isn’t enough. | Book |
| 2019 | The Hundred-Page Machine Learning Book | Andriy Burkov | Book | |
| 2017 | Attention Is All You Need | Vaswani et al. | arxiv:1706.03762 - the Transformer. | Paper |
| 2022 | Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in LLMs | Wei et al. | arxiv:2201.11903 | Paper |
| 2022 | ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Models | Yao et al. | arxiv:2210.03629 | Paper |
| 2023 | Tree of Thoughts: Deliberate Problem Solving with LLMs | Yao et al. | arxiv:2305.10601 | Paper |
| 2023 | LLaMA: Open and Efficient Foundation Language Models | Touvron et al. | arxiv:2302.13971 | Paper |
| 2024 | Mapping the Neuro-Symbolic AI Landscape by Architectures | Hudson et al. | arxiv:2410.22077 - the most-referenced paper in my notes. | Paper |
| 2025 | DAPO: An Open-Source LLM Reinforcement Learning System at Scale | ByteDance / Tsinghua | arxiv:2503.14476 | Paper |
| 2026 | V-JEPA 2.1: Unlocking Dense Features in Video Self-Supervised Learning | Meta FAIR | arxiv:2603.14482 - JEPA milestone, video. | Paper |
| 2026 | Causal-JEPA: Learning World Models through Object-Level Latent Interventions | arxiv:2602.11389 | Paper | |
| 2026 | Agentic AI and the Next Intelligence Explosion | arxiv:2603.20639 - institutional-design principles for AI agents. | Paper | |
| 2026 | Efficient Reasoning with Balanced Thinking | arxiv:2603.12372 | Paper |
Stats & causality
| Year | Title | Author | Note | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect | Judea Pearl, Dana Mackenzie | Book | |
| 2001 | The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science | David Salsburg | Book | |
| 2016 | Probability for the Enthusiastic Beginner | David J. Morin | Book | |
| 1979 | Principles of Statistics | M.G. Bulmer | Dover classic. | Book |
| 1977 | Probability Theory: A Concise Course | Y.A. Rozanov | Book |
Life and Philosophy
Classic philosophy, wisdom, and big-ideas nonfiction.
| Year | Title | Author | Rating | Note | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1957 | Atlas Shrugged | Ayn Rand | ★★★★★ | Book | |
| 1943 | The Fountainhead | Ayn Rand | ★★★★★ | Book | |
| 2005 | Three Plays | Ayn Rand | ★★★★★ | Book | |
| 2007 | More Than You Know: Finding Financial Wisdom in Unconventional Places | Michael J. Mauboussin | ★★★★★ | Book | |
| 1903 | The Principles of Mathematics | Bertrand Russell | ★★★★ | Book | |
| 1919 | Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy | Bertrand Russell | ★★★★ | Book | |
| 1926 | The Story of Philosophy | Will Durant | ★★★★ | Book | |
| 1912 | The Problems of Philosophy | Bertrand Russell | next | Book | |
| 2005 | Poor Charlie’s Almanack | Charles T. Munger | next | Book | |
| 1791 | The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin | Benjamin Franklin | next | Book | |
| 1991 | Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand | Leonard Peikoff | next | Book | |
| 2000 | The Art of Fiction | Ayn Rand | next | Book | |
| 2001 | The Art of Nonfiction | Ayn Rand | next | Book | |
| 1999 | Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy | Simon Blackburn | next | Book | |
| 2011 | Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind | Yuval Noah Harari | next | Book | |
| 2016 | Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow | Yuval Noah Harari | next | Book | |
| 2018 | 21 Lessons for the 21st Century | Yuval Noah Harari | next | Book | |
| 2011 | Thinking, Fast and Slow | Daniel Kahneman | next | Book | |
| 2018 | Enlightenment Now | Steven Pinker | next | Book | |
| 2011 | The Better Angels of Our Nature | Steven Pinker | next | Book | |
| 2005 | Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed | Jared Diamond | next | Book | |
| 1992 | Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman | James Gleick | next | Book |
Sci-fi
| Year | Title | Author | Rating | Note | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1985 | Contact | Carl Sagan | ★★★★★ | Book | |
| 1950 | I, Robot | Isaac Asimov | ★★★★★ | Book | |
| 1985 | Ender’s Game | Orson Scott Card | ★★★★★ | Book | |
| 2011 | The Martian | Andy Weir | ★★★★★ | Book | |
| 1979 | The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy | Douglas Adams | ★★★★★ | Book | |
| 1990 | Jurassic Park | Michael Crichton | ★★★★★ | First of a long Crichton run - Andromeda Strain, Sphere, Prey, Timeline, Congo, State of Fear, Airframe, Next, Lost World. | Book |
| 1898 | The Invisible Man | H.G. Wells | Book | ||
| 1965 | Dune | Frank Herbert | next | Book | |
| 1968 | Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? | Philip K. Dick | next | Book | |
| 2010 | Freedom (Daemon, #2) | Daniel Suarez | next | Book |
Thrillers
| Year | Title | Author | Rating | Note | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1997 | Killing Floor (Jack Reacher #1) | Lee Child | ★★★★★ | Reacher series - several rated 5. | Book |
| 2017 | Origin (Robert Langdon, #5) | Dan Brown | ★★★★★ | Book | |
| 1988 | The Silence of the Lambs | Thomas Harris | ★★★★★ | Book | |
| 2005 | The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium, #1) | Stieg Larsson | ★★★★★ | Full Millennium trilogy - all 5. | Book |
| 2012 | Gone Girl | Gillian Flynn | ★★★★★ | Book | |
| 2009 | Caught | Harlan Coben | ★★★★★ | Coben catalog - Live Wire, Tell No One, The Stranger, Six Years. | Book |
| 2000 | Angels & Demons (Robert Langdon, #1) | Dan Brown | ★★★★★ | Book | |
| 1984 | The Hunt for Red October (Jack Ryan, #3) | Tom Clancy | ★★★★ | Book | |
| 1986 | The Bourne Supremacy (Jason Bourne, #2) | Robert Ludlum | ★★★★ | Book |
Mystery
| Year | Title | Author | Rating | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1934 | Murder on the Orient Express (Hercule Poirot, #10) | Agatha Christie | ★★★★★ | Book |
| 1937 | Death on the Nile (Hercule Poirot, #18) | Agatha Christie | ★★★★★ | Book |
| 1926 | The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (Hercule Poirot, #4) | Agatha Christie | ★★★★★ | Book |
| 1939 | And Then There Were None | Agatha Christie | ★★★★★ | Book |
| 1930 | Murder at the Vicarage (Miss Marple, #1) | Agatha Christie | ★★★★★ | Book |
| 1927 | The Complete Sherlock Holmes | Arthur Conan Doyle | ★★★★★ | Book |
| 1902 | The Hound of the Baskervilles | Arthur Conan Doyle | ★★★★★ | Book |
| 2007 | In the Woods (Dublin Murder Squad, #1) | Tana French | ★★★★★ | Book |
| 2005 | Still Life (Chief Inspector Gamache, #1) | Louise Penny | Book |
Mythology & classics
| Year | Title | Author | Rating | Note | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | The Immortals of Meluha (Shiva Trilogy, #1) | Amish Tripathi | ★★★★★ | Book | |
| 2013 | The Oath of the Vayuputras (Shiva Trilogy, #3) | Amish Tripathi | ★★★ | Book | |
| 2013 | The Mahābhārata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa | Vyasa, tr. Kisari Mohan Ganguli | next | Book | |
| 2009 | The Bhagavad Gita According to Gandhi | Mahatma Gandhi | next | Book |