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The shelf

Reading

Books I have actually finished and would recommend to my younger self—not a backlog padded with things I intend to read.

Stars are how much a book changed things for me, not how good it is. A single star is not a bad book.

Security & AI 3

  • The Code Book

    Simon Singh

    A rare mix of storytelling and understanding; it builds intuition for how cryptography evolved.

  • The Art of Invisibility

    Kevin Mitnick

    Practical privacy thinking without turning everything into fear.

  • If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies

    Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares

    Extreme, but useful for forcing the consequences of AI risk into focus.

Chemistry 3

  • Organic Chemistry as a Second Language

    David R. Klein

    The clearest on-ramp I have found for understanding organic chemistry instead of memorising it.

  • Introduction to Neuropsychopharmacology

    Leslie Iversen

    An excellent foundation for understanding how drugs affect the brain.

  • The Organic Chem Lab Survival Manual

    James W. Zubrick

    A practical reference that stays useful after the first read.

True stories 2

  • Ghost in the Wires

    Kevin Mitnick

    Pure hacker mindset, and a reminder that hacking is often psychology before it is code.

  • American Kingpin

    Nick Bilton

    The operational reality of Silk Road: anonymity, scale, and the small mistakes that compound.

Online 4