Bookshelf - by David Wen

The things I read

Since 2010, I've been tracking the books that I have read. I love the feeling of a good read. From when I was a kid biking to the library, to my daily routine of flipping through Wikipedia articles, I've always enjoyed learning something new. Harry S. Truman once said, "Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers." If world leaders have the time to read, I should too. I'm always open to book suggestions and I love to discuss the book with the recommender after! Let me know!

By the way, I'm slowly writing reviews for all the books I've read since 2010... please be patient :)

Quotes and motivations

"People often say that motivation doesn't last. Neither does bathing - that's why we recommend it daily." - Zig Ziglar. As per his advice, I often review these quotes to help keep me motivated, entertained, and inspired. I mostly enjoy short quotes that include some sort of clever twist or logic, as opposed to long quotes that simply tell you stuff. Would love to hear some of your favourite quotes!

Meet me in Venice

Reviewed by David Wen

It's a great feeling to have your book signed by the author - especially one you've gotten to know as a friend. I treasure my signed copy of "Going...

Reviewed by David Wen

Mark Twain is the source of amazing quotes such as "Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter." Admittedly, I have...

Guns, Germs, and Steel

Reviewed by David Wen

As I read this, I kept thinking, "why was this not required reading in school?" Diamond gives a comprehensive answer to the question: why are...

Reviewed by David Wen

There's something appealing about a well-trained bird at your beck and call. Harry Potter had one, Toranaga in Shogan had many, and Jafar from...

Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Reviewed by David Wen

I remember going into my Econ 101 class thinking that economics was synonymous with finance. I quickly discovered that instead, it was synonymous...

Predictably Irrational

Reviewed by David Wen

This book came highly recommended by a few people, most notably Kevin Ma and others in the startup world. There are a few learnings that I think...

Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue, Book 1

Reviewed by David Wen

The title made me skeptical right away, so when I first heard of this book years ago I was reluctant to read it. However, after my friend Bryan...

The Rosie Effect

Reviewed by David Wen

The sequel to "The Rosie Project" was, like all sequels in the world, not as good as the first one. In fact, if you know of a sequel that is better...

Brave New World

Reviewed by David Wen

Written in 1931, this book has been compared to George Orwell's "1984", since it depicts a future state dominated by a global government intent on...

Reviewed by David Wen

In North America, you hear vaguely now and then that we treat our elderly and dying poorly. For myself, I never thought much further about it since...

Reviewed by David Wen

"Woah David, I thought you were a dude." I had similar sentiments when I found myself reading this book after being persuaded by my girlfriend....

The Power of One

Reviewed by David Wen

My favourite book, period. Aside from comic books, it's the only book I remember ever reading three times and still enjoy it each time. I have a...

Reviewed by David Wen

It took a few people mentioning this book to me, plus a video of Adam Grant doing some magic tricks, for me to read this book. I didn't want to...

The Rosie Project

Reviewed by David Wen

This book had me laughing every other page. I couldn't believe how good it was. I even started wishing that the book was longer because I was...

Getting Things Done

Reviewed by David Wen

When my friend Johannes lent me this book, I was skeptical. I get things done already - I don't need some old man telling me to make checklists and...

The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism

Reviewed by David Wen

I love reading biographies, which is why I wanted to read this. That said, the book is less about one person than it is about an era, and the...

Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street

Reviewed by David Wen

When Bill Gates and Warren Buffett both say that a book is the best business book they've ever read, you think to yourself, "Maybe I should read...

Misfit: Changemaker with an Edge

Reviewed by David Wen

It's not everyday the author of a book gives you his book to read! The last time it happened to me was when Ron Joyce, the Co-Founder of Tim...

Open: An Autobiography

Reviewed by David Wen

About 17 years ago, I had an Andre Agassi T-shirt, but all I knew was that he was a good tennis player. I did not know how badass and iconic he...

Reviewed by David Wen

Before reaching out to Justin Kan to see if he would be interested in being a Time Auction reward donor (which he was!), I did some research on him...

The Halo Effect

Reviewed by David Wen

My first time in a reading club came about when my friend Ahmad, a fellow Next Founder, invited me to join his. My image of reading clubs consisted...

Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China

Reviewed by David Wen

There's a branding exercise I've heard of where researchers ask people to list all the words that come to mind when you see a word or an image. For...

Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War

Reviewed by David Wen

I love fighter jets. Forget the fact that I sometimes get lighted-headed just from standing up, and would probably faint in a second on a fighter...

Marriage can be a real killer. One of the most critically acclaimed suspense writers of our time, New York Times bestseller Gillian Flynn, takes...

The Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling biography of America’s founding father and second president that was the basis for the acclaimed HBO...

A Farewell to Arms

Written when Ernest Hemingway was thirty years old and lauded as the best American novel to emerge from World War I, A Farewell to Arms is the...

How Will You Measure Your Life?

In 2010 world-renowned innovation expert Clayton M. Christensen gave a powerful speech to the Harvard Business School's graduating class. Drawing...

Before I Go To Sleep

Christine wakes up every morning with an unfamiliar man. She looks in the mirror and sees an unfamiliar, middle-aged face. And every morning, the...

The $100 Startup

Still in his early thirties, Chris is on the verge of completing a tour of every country on earth – he’s already visited more than 175 nations –...

Interventions: A Life in War and Peace

Written with eloquence and unprecedented candor, Interventions is the story of Kofi Annan’s remarkable time at the center of the world stage. After...

The End of Poverty

Jeffrey D. Sachs has been cited by The New York Times Magazine as “probably the most important economist in the world” and by Time as “the world’s...

Reviewed by David Wen

Power, love, corruption, sex, magic, wealth, hope, betrayal... somehow this book packs it all in, and it is still a tightly knit and congruous...

For the Love of Physics

Reviewed by David Wen

Aristotle once said, "The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching." It appears Walter Lewin knows his stuff quite well. A...

Behind the Beautiful Forevers

Reviewed by David Wen

I once met a guy who volunteered for three months in a slum, and when I asked him how it was he said, "It was the worst." Perhaps that really does...

The Better Angels of Our Nature

Reviewed by David Wen

If Bill Gates says it's one of the most important books he's ever read, I think it's at least worth my time to read it. In fact, he even says that...

Reviewed by David Wen

Guns, fights, and stuff blowing up. Just what I needed after reading The Beginning of Infinity. I went to the New York Times bestsellers list and...

The Beginning of Infinity

Reviewed by David Wen

Image a hotel room with infinite rooms. And it's full. And you want a room. Well, guess what - you'll get one. Because it's infinite. And if an...

Reviewed by David Wen

Travel. Eat wild stuff. Get paid. Good deal? Anthony Bourdain thought so, and off he went to Portugal, France, Vietnam, Russia, Morocco, Japan,...

Kitchen Confidential

Reviewed by David Wen

What's a badass job. Firefighter? Rocket scientist? International Man of Mystery? Perhaps all... and one more - chef. At least Anthony Bourdain is....

Reviewed by David Wen

I've always felt I'd make a good waiter. Now I know I'm wrong. I, apparently, know nothing about what the "front of the house" is like, despite...

Reviewed by David Wen

Yes please. I mean, who wouldn't want it? Before you get excited, let me spoil everything for you. This book is not about how to attain...

The Best American Essays 2012

Reviewed by David Wen

Most kids dreaded essays in high school, but perhaps they just weren't inspired by good ones. I can't image a kid falling asleep while reading...

Reviewed by David Wen

My high school volleyball coach was tough, but even she didn't put garbage cans on the court so that when we wanted to puke we could puke in them...

Reviewed by David Wen

When my classmates at Dev Bootcamp heard I was into startups, they recommended I read this book, co-written by one of the founders of Ruby on Rails...

The God Delusion

Reviewed by David Wen

Often I express my opinions about religion and I don't back it up with much. And I've always felt uneasy about it. At the same time, I hate reading...

Reviewed by David Wen

When I saw this book in Chapters, with the picture of the innocent little girl on the cover, I knew what it would be about. I knew I would be...

Reviewed by David Wen

This book and the Benjamin Franklin book were the two books I read prior to moving to San Francisco to attend Dev Bootcamp. I figured I would...

Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

Reviewed by David Wen

I first heard of Benjamin Franklin in a tape recording I had as a child. These tapes had specific themes - some for famous people, some for the...

Henri Charrière, called "Papillon," for the butterfly tattoo on his chest, was convicted in Paris in 1931 of a murder he did not commit. Sentenced...

Unlike most programming books which aim to teach you a particular language or operating system, this series focuses on the core fundamentals that...

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors

Cosmos, the widely acclaimed book and television series by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan, was about where we are in the vastness of space and time....

One Hundred Years of Solitude

One of the 20th century's enduring works, One Hundred Years of Solitude is a widely beloved and acclaimed novel known throughout the world, and the...

Prisoner of Tehran

In 1982, 16-year-old Marina Nemat was arrested on false charges by Iranian Revolutionary Guards and tortured in Tehran's notorious Evin prison. At...

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

One of the most important and influential books written in the past half-century, Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a...

President Bill Clinton’s My Life is the strikingly candid portrait of a global leader who decided early in life to devote his intellectual and...

Ideas and Opinions

A new edition of the most definitive collection of Albert Einstein's popular writings, gathered under the supervision of Einstein himself. The...

The Book of Negroes

Abducted as an 11-year-old child from her village in West Africa and forced to walk for months to the sea in a coffle―a string of slaves― Aminata...

The Secret Life of Pronouns

In The Secret Life of Pronouns, social psychologist and language expert James W. Pennebaker uses his groundbreaking research in computational...

The Age of Reason

The Age of Reason represents the results of years of study and reflection by Thomas Paine on the place of religion in society. Paine wrote: "Of all...

Reviewed by David Wen

What does the most successful investor billionaire do every Monday night? Play bridge online. On a computer that Bill Gates helped him set up, no...

Reviewed by David Wen

Imagine spending 47 days on a raft in the Pacific Ocean, and the first sign of human life you see starts shooting at you from a plane. Then to top...

A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver’s enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She...

Think and Grow Rich

Think and Grow Rich has been called the "Granddaddy of All Motivational Literature." It was the first book to boldly ask, "What makes a winner?"...

Heaven is for Real

A young boy emerges from life-saving surgery with remarkable stories of his visit to heaven. Heaven Is for Real is the true story of the four-year...

The Grand Design

When and how did the universe begin? Why are we here? What is the nature of reality? Is the apparent “grand design” of our universe evidence of a...

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes is a fictional consulting detective in London ~1880-1914 created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Holmes,...

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor black tobacco farmer whose cells—taken without her knowledge in 1951—...

Moonwalking with Einstein

An instant bestseller that is poised to become a classic, Moonwalking with Einstein recounts Joshua Foer's yearlong quest to improve his memory...

Much has been written about the Cuban Missile Crisis a year later, but the Berlin Crisis of 1961 was more decisive in shaping the Cold War-and more...

Origins of the Chinese Revolution

The original French edition of this book, published in 1967, was widely acclaimed as the best introduction to Chinese Communism ever published. A...

Shake Hands with the Devil

On the 10th anniversary of when UN peacekeepers landed in Rwanda, Random House Canada proudly publishes the unforgettable 1st-hand account of the...

This exceptional graphic novel recounts the spiritual odyssey of philosopher Bertrand Russell. In his agonized search for absolute truth, Russell...

It’s 1988 and Dexter Mayhew and Emma Morley have only just met. But after only one day together, they cannot stop thinking about one another. Over...

The Shock Doctrine

In her groundbreaking reporting over the past few years, Naomi Klein introduced the term "disaster capitalism." Whether covering Baghdad after the...

Checklist Manifesto

In latest bestseller, Atul Gawande shows what the simple idea of the checklist reveals about the complexity of our lives and how we can deal with...

That was the simple yet groundbreaking question William T. Vollmann asked in cities and villages around the globe. The result of Vollmann's...

Three Cups of Tea

The astonishing, uplifting story of a real-life Indiana Jones and his humanitarian campaign to use education to combat terrorism in the Taliban’s...

The Wal-Mart Effect

Wal-Mart isn’t just the world’s biggest company, it is probably the world’s most written-about. But no book until this one has managed to penetrate...

In the Skin of a Lion

In the Skin of a Lion is a love story and an irresistible mystery set in the turbulent, muscular new world of Toronto in the 20s and 30s. Michael...

A curious story involving not only the Snow Goose, the Canada-bred wanderer of the airways, but also a couple and their travels. In print in this...

Dreams from My Father

In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable...

The Shadow of the Wind

Barcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer’s son who mourns the loss of...

頑皮故事集

侯文詠第一部也是最受歡迎的童年散文集。相不相信，每個人的血液裡都潛藏著「頑皮」屬性的細胞？時不時要閃出來搗蛋，或者無傷大雅地惡作劇一番。《頑皮故事集》是透過頑童眼光所呈現出來溫馨、活潑、風趣、動人的世界，篇篇令人捧腹大笑、拍案叫絕。不僅可以找回童年的回憶，...

Boundaries in Dating

Between singleness and marriage lies the journey of dating. Want to make your road as smooth as possible? Set and maintain healthy...

Is a quest for the secret of success in baseball. In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael...

The Wealthy Barber

In this new and updated edition of one of the biggest-selling financial-planning books ever, David Chilton simplifies the complex puzzles of...

Michael Lewis was fresh out of Princeton and the London School of Economics when he landed a job at Salomon Brothers, one of Wall Street’s premier...

城南舊事為作者林海音以自身經歷為原型的自傳體小說，以小孩的角度去觀看人間的悲歡離合，直到父親病逝，也就是最後一章〈爸爸的花兒落了〉，她要開始負起照顧弟妹的責任，因此她的童年隨之結束，故事也同時在這淡淡的哀傷下落幕。此外，《城南舊事》中有三大篇都是描述女性故事的，分別是〈惠安館〉、〈蘭姨娘〉和〈...

How to Connect in Business in 90 Seconds or Less

Nicholas Boothman, author of "How to Make People Like You in 90 Seconds or Less," brings his innovative system of forging instant connections into...

Uncle Tom's Cabin

The narrative drive of Stowe's classic novel is often overlooked in the heat of the controversies surrounding its anti-slavery sentiments. In fact,...

In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race's next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as...

On September 3, 2008 Alaska Governor Sarah Palin gave a speech at the Republican National Convention that electrified the nation and instantly made...

Nobel Laureate Pearl S. Buck’s epic Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and Oprah Book Club selection about a vanished China and one family’s shifting...

Animal Farm, by George Orwell - author of 1984, one of Britain's most popular novels - is a brilliant political satire and a powerful and affecting...

The Case for Faith

In his #1 bestseller The Case for Christ, legally trained investigative reporter Lee Strobel examined the claims of Christ, reaching the hard-won...

And Then There Were None

"Ten . . ." Ten strangers are lured to an isolated island mansion off the Devon coast by a mysterious "U.N. Owen." "Nine . . ." At dinner a...

The Millionaire Next Door

The bestselling The Millionaire Next Door identifies seven common traits that show up again and again among those who have accumulated wealth. Most...

Reflection and reason are overrated, according to renowned psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer. Much better qualified to help us make decisions is the...

There is a story that is usually told about extremely successful people, a story that focuses on intelligence and ambition. Gladwell argues that...

War Without End

The struggles of the Israelis and Palestinians - with their terrible histories of disaster and redemption - command the obsessive attention of the...

Here is the world's most famous master plan for seizing and holding power. Astonishing in its candor The Prince even today remains a disturbingly...

射鵰英雄傳

《射鵰英雄傳》是一部武俠小說，金庸「射鵰三部曲」之第一部，又名《大漠英雄傳》。書名《射雕英雄傳》也因為暗合毛澤東的詞句（詩詞中有“一代天驕，成吉思汗，只識彎弓射大雕”之句），而被迫在台灣戒嚴時期改成了《大漠英雄傳》。《射雕英雄傳》被金庸小說的讀者稱為“俠文化的歌頌”。它的發表確立了金庸“...

The Automatic Millionaire Homeowner

How does an ordinary person with an ordinary income reach their seven-figure dreams? First they must own their own home – and do it David Bach’s...

One morning in Don Mills, Phil and his brother Jay agree to let their friend Norman Kitchen tag along on an adventure down into a ravine — and what...

Intellectual mystery story that integrates ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, politics, economics, and sex. Set in a near-future U.S.A. whose...

Every Patient Tells a Story

A riveting exploration of the most difficult and important part of what doctors do, by Yale School of Medicine physician Dr. Lisa Sanders, author...

Lonely Planet Middle East

Lonely Planet Middle East is your passport to all the most relevant and up-to-date advice on what to see, what to skip, and what hidden discoveries...

Lonely Planet East Africa

Lonely Planet East Africa is your passport to all the most relevant and up-to-date advice on what to see, what to skip, and what hidden discoveries...

Lonely Planet Nicaragua

Reviewed by David Wen

I have used Lonely Planet ever since the first time I travelled back in 2003. My uncle - a travel guru - recommended it to me and I've been a loyal...