Philip Kiely

Currently Reading · Started: October 2026

Sebastian Mallaby

Read: April 30, 2026 · Rating: 8/10

I'd already read The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman, Demis Hassabis's co-founder at DeepMind. It left me a bit cold. Written for policy-makers, not builders. So I came into The Infinity Machine with modest expectations.

Alex Hormozi

Read: April 2, 2026 · Rating: 7/10

Most advertising books complicated the things too much. But Hormozi reduced all that noise to a few good chapters, with a book barely exceeding 150 pages. The clarity and brevity alone justifies the recommendation.

Claire Hughes Johnson

Read: January 30, 2026 · Rating: 7/10

Companies are like organic entities, made up of people. For a company to turn into a great one, people working in the company have to turn great too.

Isaac Asimov

Read: January 22, 2026 · Rating: 9/10

Isaac Asimov said this was his favorite of his own writing, which made me curious to read it.

Richard Hamming

Read: December 18, 2025 · Rating: 9/10

The book had high reviews on Amazon. It was the bestseller in Stripe Press's collection. I read the preview, but I thought it was some science book that would probably bore me after a few pages. But it didn't. And it wasn't even about science (well, for the most part).

Eric Jorgenson

Read: August 25, 2025 · Rating: 8/10

I went into the book expecting another iteration of self-help or life advice books, but ended up really liking it. The author organizes all of Naval's online advice into a nice structure around achieving happiness and financial freedom in life.

Jorge Luis Borges

Read: August 14, 2025 · Rating: 7/10

Labyrinths is an interesting book. Borges builds elaborate architectures of knowledge that don't go anywhere. His story about the infinite library is novel, but it is a beautiful thought experiment lacking any actionable wisdom. He shows how knowledge systems become traps, but doesn't tell you how to build better ones.

Brian Christian

Read: June 18, 2025 · Rating: 7/10

We want to tame artificial intelligence. We want to make it serve ourselves. But sometimes, Language Models fail us. They throw us responses that we don't want.

Ben Howortz

Read: May 28, 2025 · Rating: 7/10

I saw the CEO reading this, so I picked it up. (talk about mimetic desire.) I am not friends with self-help books, so I was at first hesitant what the book would uncover for me. But it was actually different.

Mark Fisher

Read: May 4, 2025 · Rating: 8/10

Capitalism Realism, Fisher defines, is a widespread belief that capitalism is the only practical political and economic system and that it is borderline impossible to imagine any alternative to it.

Verlyn Klinkenborg

Read: April 3, 2025 · Rating: 10/10

This is the most insightful book on writing I've read. The author's philosophy is simple: the sentence is the fundamental unit of writing. If you focus on making each sentence great, your writing will be great.

Nassim Taleb

Read: February 23, 2025 · Rating: 8/10

I read Taleb's The Black Swan this summer. Right after realizing that I wasn't going to college (again). Right after realizing that most of what we're taught to predict is unpredictable anyway. (Click the title to read more).

Thomas Kuhn

Read: February 2, 2025 · Rating: 8/10

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Kuhn has one central claim: scientific progress doesn't assemble smoothly but advances through periodic ruptures. Kuhn calls them paradigm shifts.

Jeff Hawkins & Sandra Blakeslee

Read: January 19, 2025 · Rating: 8/10

Jeff Hawkins is a polymath for me. He was so frustrated that AI research wasn't grounded in how brains actually work, he spent decades studying neuroscience while building his tech companies. The culmination of his learning journey came when he wrote this book with Sandra Blakeslee, defining what intelligence is so that we can better mimic it (if ever).

Niccolò Machiavelli

Read: October 20, 2024 · Rating: 7/10

The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli is a manual for rules who want to exercise power and authority aggressively. And it doesn't waste time on insights into virtue and justice.

Ambrose Bierce

Read: October 5, 2024 · Rating: 8/10

This piece by Bierce shows his storytelling genius. The plot is chaotic; it feels disjointed at first, with paragraphs scattered throughout for the reader to make sense of the meaning themselves. But Bierce had the full command. He was playing with the depth of his language and controlling the perspective and structure in every corner possible.

William Strunk Jr.

Read: October 2, 2024 · Rating: 10/10

There are a very few people whom I call my mentors. And this book is the one.

Austin Kleon

Read: September 26, 2024 · Rating: 7/10

The book is about creativity. And how to find creativity in our age of GPT's and Claudes. The author Kleon organizes the insights around 10 lessons on creativity. And he is pushing one idea forward: any creativity comes from past exposure and nothing is original. And (if ever) if something is original then it is our thinking that is the original thing about the entire process--the input going through our minds and becoming and output.

Michel Foucault

Read: September 25, 2024 · Rating: 7/10

The Archaeology of Knowledge is Foucault's 1969 work that showcases his novel approach to understanding how knowledge systems evolve over time. And yes, the book contains nothing about uncovering some physical artifacts. Click the title for more of my notes.

Martin Heidegger

Read: August 13, 2024 · Rating: 7/10

Reading Sein und Zeit, I keep circling back to Geworfenheit (this image of being thrown). But thrown by what? Heidegger won't say, and maybe that's the point. We wake up already mid-fall, grasping for something to hold. I think about how Dasein is always "mine" yet never fully mine (I didn't choose this anxiety, this body that'll fail, these dead philosophers I'm now answering to). There's something almost cruel in how he makes care (Sorge) the structure of our being. We can't not care. Even numbness is a mode of it. And that gap between thrownness and projection: we're forever translating a past we didn't author into a future we can't guarantee. It's exhausting. Maybe that's authenticity (staying with that exhaustion instead of fleeing into the comfort of "one does this, one does that," das Man's endless anesthetic).

Karl Marx

Read: July 20, 2024 · Rating: 7/10

Das Kapital has the densest prose among the books I've read. A lot of complex philosophical and economic concepts are being mixed. Somewhere in the middle, I felt like giving up. But pushed through. And yes, I read the book to understand why my Grandpa is an avid supporter of the past soviet system.

William Zinsser

Read: July 5, 2024 · Rating: 9/10

One of the three writing gems, alongside Several Short Sentences About Writing and The Elements of Style.

Albert Camus

Read: June 19, 2024 · Rating: 8/10

The Plague compliments The Myth of Sisyphus. And the overall idea remains the same: you ask meaning from life and it responds with absurdity. It doesn't answer your question, but throws catastrophes your way. Press the title to read more notes.

Nassim Taleb

Read: May 29, 2024 · Rating: 8/10

In a world full of randomness and disorder, building things that benefit from volatility is the only way to ensure robustness. Taleb calls these things that gain from disorder antifragile.

Nassim Taleb

Read: May 18, 2024 · Rating: 9/10

The book is poorly organized. Feels like Uncle Taleb wrote it in more like a stream-of-consciousness mode and packed it to get published. Taleb is blunt, obstuse, and very often right. The Economist even described reading it as as "being trapped in a cab with a cantankerous and over-opinionated driver."

Friedrich Nietzsche

Read: April 22, 2024 · Rating: 7/10

Nietzsche claims that the modern morality is not universal truth. He says morality is a historical invention born out of ressentiment, the pyschological revenge of the weak against the strong. By that, he claims we can't say something is "good" or "evil."

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Read: March 28, 2024 · Rating: 7/10

Probably the longest book I've read. 716 pages. I am not a big fan of large books, nor do I consider myself an avid reader of Russian Literature. I picked up only after my friend's suggestion.

Albert Camus

Read: March 27, 2024 · Rating: 7/10

The Myth of Sisyphus is a short interpretational essay on a famous Greek myth: the story of Sisyphus.

Albert Camus

Read: March 18, 2024 · Rating: 7/10

I initially thought The Stranger was nihilistic. But it is absurdist. The book narrates the adventures of Mersault, a man who has a rather radial yet authentic approach to living.

Chuck Palahniuk

Read: February 28, 2024 · Rating: 7/10

Fight Club hits different when everyone keeps telling it's life-changing. The beginning drags. All that insomnia stuff and support groups—I kept waiting for it to get good. Then Tyler shows up, and it is hard to put down the book.

Viktor Frankl

Read: February 2, 2024 · Rating: 9/10

A human can endure almost any suffering if he finds meaning in it. That's Viktor's main claim. And no, he is not advocating for suffering or throwing the idea that one should use suffering to find meaning. Absolutely not. Yes, he does suffer, but it is his way of proving that even in the harshest situations (which surely come from intense suffering) that strip away meaning, joy, happiness, and literally any emotion from one's life, one can keep a light of hope (meaning) alive and keep shining. Click the title to read more.

Marcus Aurelius

Read: January 5, 2024 · Rating: 7/10

My entrance to Stoicism. The book overlapped with the period of my life when I needed to disciplined. And I can confidentally say the book served its purpose.

Isaac Asimov

Read: December 28, 2023 · Rating: 7/10

Asimov fulfilled Machiavelli's description of a futurist: "Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times." The Foundation Trilogy is not prophecy. Asimov consulted the rise and the fall of the Roman Empire to create his sci-fi world.

Nassim Taleb

Read: October 29, 2023 · Rating: 8/10

The title suggests the central claim. Uncle Taleb thinks that we sometimes underestimate the role of luck and randomless in life, mistaking random outcomes for skill or determinism. In the book, Taleb gives concrete ideas as to how this is the case.

Ibn Khaldun

Read: August 31, 2023 · Rating: 7/10

With The Muqaddimah, Ibn Khaldun attempts to create a science of how civilizations work. It is written as an introduction to his world history, but it became far more influential than the history itself. You can read more by clicking the title.

Robin Sharma

Read: August 29, 2023 · Rating: 2/10

This book disappointed me. It is similar to most other self-help books: takes one basic idea and chews over it hundred times.

Peter Thiel

Read: July 30, 2023 · Rating: 9/10

The bible of starting a massive technology company. Anyone interested in startups needs to read this.

Plato

Read: June 2, 2023 · Rating: 7/10

The Republic is not a speculative philosophy containing some ideology. It was a blueprint of what Plato thought should be implemented. Plato's ideal state is authoritarian: a strict class system determined by "natural" ability, censorship of art and poetry, selective breeding, and philosopher-kings wielding absolute power. Plato genuinely thought deception was acceptable if it maintained social order.

Fareed Zakaria

Read: May 3, 2023 · Rating: 7/10

Zakaria blends a personal memoir, the history of higher education, and advocacy for a balanced approach in education in his book.

Robert B. Cialdini

Read: November 28, 2022 · Rating: 7/10

The book became very popular in Tashkent bookstores at some point. And I saw many business gurus carrying it around. The curiosity got the better of me, and I picked it up. Initially thought it was another generic business literature with "common sense" insights. But no. The book threw me a couple of marketing tips that I am applying with Agora.

Seneca

Read: November 5, 2022 · Rating: 8/10

Seneca has one message here which is quite simple: life is short, but we make it much shorter by spending time on things that are unimportant.

Malcolm Gladwell

Read: October 3, 2022 · Rating: 7/10

Outliers analyzes how success works. Gladwell offers a number of interesting ideas that he thinks define the successful. And surely, the rules are not universal, but some of his rules became so popular that hustle-culture groups made them their mottos: "No rest until 10 thousand hours."

Jordan Peterson

Read: September 13, 2022 · Rating: 5/10

I found the historical references quite amusing, especially the starting part where Peterson talks about the story of Moses and his ten commandments.

Cal Newport

Read: August 4, 2022 · Rating: 6/10

It is a productivity book. So going into it, I expected to be met with generic studying advice. But Deep Work actually gave practical advice on how to do the deep work.

Mark Manson

Read: April 4, 2022 · Rating: 3/10

"The problem with many writers is they write too much." I saw this line somewhere and I can't get it ouf of my mind whenever I think of self-help books. And this book by Mark Manson is another example of a book when that line is fitting.

Ashley Vance

Read: December 12, 2021 · Rating: 7/10

It is a long book, like any other biography, frankly. But it was amazing to read about one of the newer polymaths of our age, understand his vision, and know his background story in a bit more detail.

Eric Arthur Blaire

Read: July 26, 2021 · Rating: 8/10

"Big brother is watching!" 1984 by George Orwell is not a dystopian fiction, at least for me. It feels like a manual. The Party's control is not due to its cruelty but to its precision. Controlling the language controls thoughts. Controlling the past controls the present and the future. And Newspeak's core mission? Making dissent linguistically impossible.

Eric Arthur Blair

Read: June 28, 2021 · Rating: 7/10

Orwell's Animal Farm is a political allegory. It is about the Russian Revolution and its aftermath.

James Clear

Read: May 25, 2021 · Rating: 6/10

The definitive book on building habits. I hesitated to read it because I thought it would be like most self-help books with a few simple concepts that are generally intuitive.