Some Books I Like
Books From 2025
Near the end of the year I got tired of making excuses not to read and started picking up a few more titles. Here were some of my favorites.
Jimmy Wales, The Seven Rules of Trust. After seeing the founder of Wikipedia be lambasted for that one book tour interview exit, I thought there might be something to this book. A beautiful look into the trials that Wikipedia has faced and how it remains the largest informational source in all of history.
Suzanne O'Sullivan, The Age of Diagnosis. I picked up this book having read about the uptick of medical diagnoses in the past twenty years and wanted to hear an expert's opinion who had lived through it. An excellent read that distills the issues of over- and underdiagnosis with great poise and precision.
Vauhini Vara, Searches - Selfhood in the Digital Age. The locus of the large corporation's attention has completely shifted over the past few generations... to the point that it is easy to forget a time before that shift took place. Vauhini details her turbulent coming-of-age that kept her grounded in reality, all while detailing how a handful of major influencers have sought to recreate a simulacrum of our lived experiences and push into the final, final frontier of our own wills and intentions.
Philippe Aghion et al, The Power of Creative Destruction. For us to continue on living without lasting intergenerational damage, we have to return to some of the principles we remembered when the Industrial Revolution was still in its incubation. Nobel Economics Prize-winner Aghion lines out this optimistic future beautifully. Both Vara's more expository text (above) and this more research-based text changed the way I saw the economic trends of the world. Both gave me hope.
Books On My Journey through the World of Mathematics
My personal philosophy is that math books should address the student at their level while also providing some "optimal frustration" - challenging them to create some solutions on their own while providing them with a solid foundation through elementary exercise. The books below catalog my personal journey in a semi-chronological order (with some moments being more frustrating than others!).
Steven Lay, Analysis With An Introduction to Proof, by my recently-passed professor. A very patient introduction to mathematics, which now guides my own teaching style.
Walter Rudin, Principles of Mathematical Analysis, the book that showed me that math, written efficiently, is incredibly beautiful. This book taught me to dig for the answer rather than to expect the answer to be given to me.
David Lay, Linear Algebra with Applications. A text that concretized my firm belief that an introductory linear algebra course should not begin with the definition of a vector space.
John Fraleigh and Neal Brand, A First Course in Abstract Algebra, and Joe Gallian, Contemporary Abstract Algebra, which made this subject feel like the most obvious way to categorize the mathematical world.
Gerald Folland, Real Analysis, and Walter Rudin, Real and Complex Analysis, books whose covers are now falling off when taken out of their place in the center of my library.
John Conway, A Course in Functional Analysis, the first book I read from cover to cover and worked nearly every example in an attempt to truly understand if I enjoyed what I did. (I do!)
Books On My Journey to Flourishing
Rick Riordan, Percy Jackson and the Olympian series, books that helped me sincerely enjoy reading for the first time
Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology and The Protestant Era, books that helped me understand my family's faith as my own. (2025 Update: while the theology tome is daunting, the introduction condenses the work quite well.)
Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book, which is not an ethics text, but is the book that formed my ethics the most
Plato, Republic, and Aristotle, Politics, books that helped me understand the world around me
Orsan Scott Card, Ender's Game, one of many stories that showed me the inextricable connection between fiction and reality