I kept a running ranking as I read each of the 51 books from the 2017 Books of Titans reading list. Here is my final list. This is the list in order of most to least-enjoyable to me. It doesn’t necessarily reflect the overall quality of the book or its importance. Rather, these are the books that moved me, challenged me, or created great joy in me as I read them.
| # | Title | Author |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Man’s Search for Meaning | Viktor Frankl |
| 2 | Once an Eagle | Anton Myrer |
| 3 | The Right Stuff | Tom Wolfe |
| 4 | Heraclitean Fire | Erwin Chargaff |
| 5 | Start with Why | Simon Sinek |
| 6 | The Fourth Turning | William Strauss |
| 7 | Generations | William Strauss |
| 8 | About Face | Colonel David H. Hackworth |
| 9 | The Autobiography of Malcom X | Malcom X |
| 10 | Debt | David Graeber |
| 11 | The Things they Carried | Tim O’Brien |
| 12 | Open | Andre Agassi |
| 13 | The War of Art | Steven Pressfield |
| 14 | The Art of Learning | Josh Waitzkin |
| 15 | The Effective Executive | Peter Drucker |
| 16 | Ogilvy on Advertising | David Ogilvy |
| 17 | Gates of Fire | Steven Pressfield |
| 18 | Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World | Jack Weatherford |
| 19 | The Old Man and the Sea | Ernest Hemingway |
| 20 | One Hundred Years of Solitude | Gabriel Garcia Marquez |
| 21 | How Proust Can Change Your Life | Alain de Botton |
| 22 | Deep Survival | Laurence Gonzales |
| 23 | The Artist’s Way: Morning Pages Journal | Julia Cameron |
| 24 | Walden | Henry David Thoreau |
| 25 | West with the Night | Beryl Markham |
| 26 | Bird by Bird | Anne Lamott |
| 27 | Natural Born Heroes | Christopher McDougall |
| 28 | The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing | Al Ries, Jack Trout |
| 29 | The Inevitable | Kevin Kelly |
| 30 | The Graveyard Book | Neil Gaiman |
| 31 | The Power of Persuasion | Robert Levine |
| 32 | Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) | Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson |
| 33 | The Republic | Plato |
| 34 | Dune | Frank Herbert |
| 35 | Show Your Work | Austin Kleon |
| 36 | Iacocca: An Autobiography | Lee Iacocca, William Novak |
| 37 | Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! | Richard Feynman |
| 38 | Touching the Rock | John Hull |
| 39 | On the Shortness of Life | Seneca |
| 40 | Outliers | Malcom Gladwell |
| 41 | Age of Propaganda | Anthony Pratkanis, Elliot Aronson |
| 42 | Maxims and Reflections | Goethe |
| 43 | Leaves of Grass | Walt Whitman |
| 44 | Hooked | Nir Eyal |
| 45 | Think Twice | Michael Mauboussin |
| 46 | Who | Geoff Smart, Randy Street |
| 47 | Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life | Steve Martin |
| 48 | Stone Soup | Marcia Brown |
| 49 | Buck Up, Suck Up…Foul Up | James Carville / Paul Begala |
| 50 | Vagabonding | Rolf Potts |
| 51 | Blood Meridian | Cormac McCarthy |
2 Comments. Leave new
Cormac McCarthy at the bottom?!? I’d love to hear your thoughts. McCarthy has been a deeply transformative author for me. Glad I found your page! – Krista
Yeah, I ended up rereading Blood Meridian in 2020 and it went from one of my most hated to most beloved books. I describe the journey here if you are interested – https://www.booksoftitans.com/podcast/blood-meridian-or-the-evening-redness-in-the-west/