Book of Books

This is my attempt to record every book I have read from cover to cover. As Nilanjana Roy suggested, I take it as a display of true bravery because I’m listing with complete honesty everything that once appealed to me – my truest love, my instinctive urges, as well as more thoughtful and curated appetites. As this list only starts in 2017, the record of my earlier reading life is bound to be incomplete. Nevertheless, this continuously lengthening list will approach my book of books read over a lifetime. It will be the most authentic way of revealing myself – as Jorge Luis Borges said, the world is a book in which all of us are being written. I welcome you to contribute to it.

Fiction

  1. The Odyssey, Homer, 8th century BC.
  2. Oedipus the King, Sophocles, 429 BC.
  3. Romance of the Three Kingdoms (三國演義), Luo Guanzhong, 14th century.
  4. The Merchant of Venice, William Shakespeare, 1596-97.
  5. King Lear, William Shakespeare, 1605-06.
  6. Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio (聊齋誌異), Pu Songling, 1740.
  7. The Scholars (儒林外史), Wu Jingzi, 1750.
  8. Dream of the Red Chamber (紅樓夢), Cao Xueqin, 1791.
  9. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, 1818.
  10. A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens, 1859.
  11. Notes from the Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1864.
  12. Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1866.
  13. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy, 1869.
  14. Around the World in Eighty Days, Jules Verne, 1873.
  15. The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1880.
  16. The Travels of Lao Can (老殘遊記), Liu E, 1907.
  17. Sanshirō (三四郎), Natsume Sōseki, 1909.
  18. The Machine Stops, E. M. Forster, 1909.
  19. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka, 1915.
  20. Rashōmon (羅生門), Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, 1915.
  21. A Call to Arms (吶喊), Lu Xun, 1923.
  22. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925.
  23. The Trial, Franz Kafka, 1925.
  24. Wandering (彷徨), Lu Xun, 1925.
  25. The Castle, Franz Kafka, 1926.
  26. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley, 1931.
  27. The Border Town (邊城), Shen Congwen, 1934.
  28. The Stranger, Albert Camus, 1942.
  29. Animal Farm, George Orwell, 1945.
  30. The Plague, Albert Camus, 1947.
  31. Fortress Besieged (圍城), Qian Zhongshu, 1947.
  32. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell, 1949.
  33. Thousand Cranes (千羽鶴), Yasunari Kawabata, 1952.
  34. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury, 1953.
  35. The Master of Go (名人), Yasunari Kawabata, 1954.
  36. The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (金閣寺), Yukio Mishima, 1956.
  37. The Book and the Sword (書劍恩仇錄), Louis Cha, 1956.
  38. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand, 1957.
  39. The Return of the Condor Heroes (神鵰俠侶), Louis Cha, 1961.
  40. Labyrinths, Jorge Luis Borges, 1962.
  41. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick, 1962.
  42. The Smiling, Proud Wanderer (笑傲江湖), Louis Cha, 1969.
  43. The Deer and the Cauldron (鹿鼎記), Louis Cha, 1972.
  44. Sophie’s World, Jostein Gaarder, 1991.
  45. The Complete Stories, Franz Kafka, 1995.
  46. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon, 2003.
  47. Elegy and Academe (風雅頌), Yan Lianke, 2008.
  48. The Fat Years (盛世), Chan Koonchung, 2009.

Non-Fiction

  1. The Art of War (孫子兵法), Sun Tzu, 5th century BC.
  2. The Republic, Plato, 380 BC.
  3. Phaedo, Plato, 360 BC.
  4. The Art of Rhetoric, Aristotle, 4th century BC.
  5. Guiguzi (鬼谷子), Guiguzi, 4th century BC.
  6. The Book of Lord Shang (商君書), Shang Yang, 3rd century BC.
  7. Han Feizi (韓非子), Han Fei, 3rd century BC.
  8. The Diamond Sūtra (金剛經), 5th century.
  9. The Prince, Niccolò Machiavelli, 1532.
  10. The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, Étienne de la Boétie, 1553.
  11. Common Sense, Thomas Paine, 1776.
  12. The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 1848.
  13. The Law, Frédéric Bastiat, 1850.
  14. On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin, 1859.
  15. Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche, 1886.
  16. Twilight of the Idols, Friedrich Nietzsche, 1889.
  17. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche, 1891.
  18. On the Origins of Money, Carl Menger, 1892.
  19. The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, Gustave Le Bon, 1895.
  20. The Theory of the Leisure Class, Thorstein Veblen, 1899.
  21. Remarks on Song Lyrics and the Human Condition (人間詞話), Wang Guowei, 1908.
  22. The Theory of Money and Credit, Ludwig von Mises, 1912.
  23. Civilization and Its Discontent, Sigmund Freud, 1930.
  24. Monetary Nationalism and International Stability, Friedrich Hayek, 1937.
  25. Out of Africa, Karen Blixen, 1937.
  26. Red Star Over China, Edgar Snow, 1937.
  27. On Protracted War (論持久戰), Mao Zedong, 1938.
  28. The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus, 1942.
  29. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, Joseph Schumpeter, 1942.
  30. The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, Ruth Benedict, 1946.
  31. Tides from the West (西潮), Chiang Monlin, 1947.
  32. The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, Eric Hoffer, 1951.
  33. The Hedgehog and the Fox, Isaiah Berlin, 1953.
  34. Japanese Destroyer Captain (帝國海軍の最後 – 矢矧艦長の実戦記録), Tameichi Hara, 1955.
  35. The Poverty of Historicism, Karl Popper, 1957.
  36. Two Concepts of Liberty, Isaiah Berlin, 1958.
  37. The Fleet That Had to Die, Richard Hough, 1958.
  38. The Rise of the Meritocracy, Michael Young, 1961.
  39. What is History?, E. H. Carr, 1961.
  40. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas S. Kuhn, 1962.
  41. The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789 – 1848, Eric Hobsbawm, 1962.
  42. What Has Government Done to Our Money?, Murray Rothbard, 1963.
  43. Anatomy of the State, Murray Rothbard, 1974.
  44. The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins, 1976.
  45. Denationalization of Money: The Argument Refined, Friedrich Hayek, 1976.
  46. Orientalism, Edward W. Said, 1978.
  47. Russian Thinkers, Isaiah Berlin, 1978.
  48. 1587, a Year of No Significance (萬曆十五年), Ray Huang, 1981.
  49. The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Paul Kennedy, 1987.
  50. Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond, 1997.
  51. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Jean-Dominique Bauby, 1997.
  52. The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age, James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg, 1997.
  53. The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy, William Strauss and Neil Howe, 1997.
  54. The Geography of Money, Benjamin Cohen, 1998.
  55. Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages, Carlota Perez, 2003.
  56. On Bullshit, Harry Frankfurt, 2005.
  57. War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe, Victoria Tin-bor Hui, 2005.
  58. The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 2007.
  59. The Ethics of Money Production, Jörg Guido Hülsmann, 2008.
  60. Prisoner of the State (改革歷程), Zhao Zhiyang, 2009.
  61. The Return of History and the End of Dreams, Robert D. Kaplan, 2009.
  62. Start with Why, Simon Sinek, 2009.
  63. Culture, John Brockman, 2011.
  64. Theories of International Politics and Zombies, Daniel W. Drezner, 2011.
  65. The Revenge of Geography, Robert D. Kaplan, 2012.
  66. The Signal and the Noise, Nate Silver, 2012.
  67. Big Data, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Kenneth Cukier, 2013.
  68. From the Ruins of Empire, Pankaj Mishra, 2013.
  69. How Asia Works, Joe Studwell, 2013.
  70. China’s War with Japan, 1937-1945: The Struggle for Survival, Rana Mitter, 2013.
  71. Japan 1941, Eri Hotta, 2013.
  72. Regulating Code, Ian Brown and Christopher T. Marsden, 2013.
  73. The New Digital Age, Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, 2013.
  74. Who Owns the Future?, Jaron Lanier, 2013.
  75. Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, 2013.
  76. Antifragile, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 2014.
  77. Asia’s Cauldron, Rober D. Kaplan, 2014.
  78. The Half-Life of Facts, Samuel Arbesman, 2014.
  79. Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy, Melanie Swan, 2015.
  80. Out of Imperialism (走出帝制), Qin Hui, 2015.
  81. Why Information Grows, César Hidalgo, 2015.
  82. Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, Yuval Noah Harari, 2016.
  83. Connectography, Parag Khanna, 2016.
  84. Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, Douglas Rushkoff, 2016.
  85. Who Rules the World?, Noam Chomsky, 2016.
  86. Age of Anger, Pankaj Mishra, 2017.
  87. Skin in the Game, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 2018.
  88. The Bitcoin Standard, Saifedean Ammous, 2018.
  89. Blockchain and the Law, Primavera De Filippi and Aaron Wright, 2018.
  90. Blockchain Economics: Implications of Distributed Ledgers, edited by Melanie Swan et al., 2019.
  91. Thank God for Bitcoin, Bitcoin and Bible Group, 2020.
  92. Layered Money, Nik Bhatia, 2021.
  93. The Blocksize War, Jonathan Bier, 2021.
  94. Financial Cold War: A View of Sino-US Relations from the Financial Markets, James Fok, 2021.
  95. Can BRICS De-dollarize the Global Financial System?, Zongyuan Zoe Liu and Mihaela Papa, 2022.