2023 Reading Journal

2023 was a heavier, more introspective reading year — one that circled around meaning, power, and how people (and systems) actually behave.

It started deep in the human psyche with Notes from the Underground, The Diary of a Young Girl, Animal Farm, and Man’s Search for Meaning. Different voices, different eras, but all circling the same themes: suffering, dignity, oppression, resistance, and what people hold on to when everything else is stripped away.

Alongside that, I went digging into how we live and decide in the modern world: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Atomic Habits, The Little Book of Psychology, The Black Swan, Good Strategy Bad Strategy, and The Almanack of Naval Ravikant all pushed in the same direction — be deliberate about what you care about, how you spend your attention, and how you respond to uncertainty.

On the more ideological and imaginative side, The Communist Manifesto, The Symposium, Fahrenheit 451, and The Fellowship of the Ring added politics, philosophy, censorship, and epic fantasy to the mix. Some of these I admired more for their place in history than for pure enjoyment, but they were still worth the time.

Below is the full list of what I read in 2023, along with a simple rating for how much each book stayed with me.

The Subtle Art Of Not Giving a F*ck

– Mark Manson –

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Diary Of A Young Girl

– Anne Frank –

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Notes From Underground

– Fyodor Dostoevsky –

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Little Book Of Psychology

– Emily Ralls –

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Man’s Search For Meaning

– Victor E. Franke –

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Atomic Habits

– James Clear –

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Good Strategy Bad Strategy

– Richard Rumelt –

⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Almanack Of Naval Ravikant

– Eric Jorgenson –

⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Black Swan

– Nassim Nicholas Taleb –

⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Symposium

– Plato –

⭐⭐