books that shaped me

by Haider Toha · 1 June 2025

i read too much. these are the ones i keep coming back to or recommending to others.

the alchemy of happiness by al-ghazali - the book that made islamic philosophy click for me. practical spirituality, written a thousand years ago, still devastatingly relevant.
meditations by marcus aurelius - a roman emperor's private journal. stoicism before it became a twitter aesthetic. "you have power over your mind, not outside events."
man's search for meaning by viktor frankl - wrote this after surviving auschwitz. the idea that meaning can be found in any circumstance, even suffering, has stayed with me.
the brothers karamazov by dostoevsky - technically a novel, but it's really philosophy wearing a story. the grand inquisitor chapter alone is worth the 800 pages.

sapiens by yuval noah harari - the 70,000-year view of humanity. some of it is speculative, but it permanently changed how i think about institutions, money and shared fictions.
the looming tower by lawrence wright - the road to 9/11. essential for understanding the last 25 years.
surely you're joking, mr. feynman - a physicist who picked locks, played bongos in brazil and worked on the atomic bomb. curiosity as a way of life.
when breath becomes air by paul kalanithi - a neurosurgeon facing his own mortality. made me think about what i'd want to have built if time ran out.

thinking, fast and slow by daniel kahneman - system 1 and system 2. i use this framework constantly. we're more irrational than we think.
the design of everyday things by don norman - why doors are confusing and how to think about interfaces. changed how i see the built world.
a philosophy of software design by john ousterhout - short, opinionated, correct. complexity is the enemy. every engineer should read this.
high output management by andy grove - how to think about leverage, meetings and building teams. practical wisdom from intel's ceo.

consider the lobster by david foster wallace - the footnotes, the attention, the way he sees everything. exhausting and brilliant.
the fire next time by james baldwin - letter to his nephew about race in america. prose as weapon. "not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced."
a room of one's own by virginia woolf - about what it takes to create. space, time, money, permission.

the great transformation by karen armstrong - comparing the axial age across civilisations. dense but rewarding.
the anthropic papers (collected) - trying to understand alignment from the source.

i keep a longer list in notion but these are the ones i'd actually give someone.