emergesource

Reading

People ask me for book recommendations more than almost anything else. This is the honest version of that answer: not a list of books I own or intend to read, but the ones I liked enough to actually finish. Consider it a seal of approval based on attention, which is the only currency I have less of every year.

Most of these come from the Toronto Public Library, which conveniently had a couple of years of borrowing history to seed the log with. The mix skews toward engineering, business, and psychology, with enough novels and oddities in it to prove I am not only reading for work.

If you want the shorter version: the books that changed how I actually run engineering teams are Radical Candor, The Checklist Manifesto, and Thinking in Bets. The one I recommend most often to founders is The Right It — most software fails because somebody built the wrong thing carefully.

Read in 2025

Read in 2024

Read in 2023