Declan Wilson

Writer and Maker

My Yearly Reading List

I’ve compiled a list of books I’ve read since 2018 and am sharing it with you here. If you have any recommendations, please send them to declan [at] declanwilson [dot] co. (Jump to current year)

2018

  1. Ego is the Enemy – Ryan Holiday
  2. Sapiens – Yuval Noah Harari
  3. When Breath Becomes Air – Paul Kalanithi
  4. Vlog Like a Boss – Amy Schmittauer
  5. Creativity, Inc – Ed Catmull
  6. The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye – David Lagercrantz
  7. The Girl in the Spider’s Web – David Lagercrantz
  8. Organize Tomorrow Today – Dr. Jason Selk and Tom Bartow
  9. Perennial Seller – Ryan Holiday
  10. The 4 Hour Work Week – Tim Ferriss
  11. Spectacles – Sue Perkins
  12. Make it Stick – P. Brown, H. Roediger, M. McDaniel
  13. The Phantom Tollbooth – Norton Juster
  14. Purple Cow – Seth Godin
  15. Le Petit Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
  16. L’Art de la Simplicite – Dominique Loreau
  17. This is Marketing – Seth Godin

2019

  1. The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy
  2. Deliverance – James Dickey
  3. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
  4. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
  5. Company of One – Paul Jarvis
  6. The Right Story – Bernadette Jiwa
  7. 1984 – George Orwell
  8. Classic Scrapes – James Acaster
  9. Bird Box – Josh Malerman
  10. The Devil in the White City – Erik Larson
  11. Rich Dad Poor Dad – Robert Kiyosaki
  12. Factfulness – Hans Rosling
  13. Geography of Bliss – Eric Weiner
  14. The Pioneers – David McCullough
  15. Everything is F*cked – Mark Manson
  16. John Adams – David McCullough
  17. A Brief History of Time – Stephen Hawking
  18. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck – Mark Manson
  19. Alexander Hamilton – Ron Chernow
  20. Rats – Robert Sullivan

2020

  1. Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell
  2. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
  3. Freakonomics – S. Levitt and S. Dubner
  4. The Tipping Point – Malcolm Gladwell
  5. Make Money on Medium – Nicole Akers
  6. Homo Deus – Yuval Noah Harari
  7. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
  8. Slaughterhouse-Five – Kurt Vonnegut
  9. Why: What Makes Us Curious – Mario Livio
  10. Writing to Persuade – Trish Hall
  11. Nudge – Thaler and Sunstein
  12. Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
  13. The Wright Brothers – David McCullough
  14. The Grand Design – Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow
  15. What If? – Randall Munroe
  16. Children of Men – P.D. James
  17. Talking to Strangers – Malcolm Gladwell
  18. Dishonesty is the Second-Best Policy – David Mitchell
  19. The Ocean at the End of the Lane – Neil Gaiman
  20. Total Money Makeover – Dave Ramsey
  21. The Power of Habit – Charles Duhigg
  22. Range – David Epstein
  23. Bird by Bird – Anne Lamott
  24. Originals – Adam Grant
  25. Macbeth – William Shakespeare
  26. The Body – Bill Bryson
  27. Man’s Search for Meaning – Viktor Frankl
  28. The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides
  29. At Home – Bill Bryson
  30. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass – Frederick Douglass

2021

  1. Blink – Malcolm Gladwell
  2. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
  3. Neither Here Nor There – Bill Bryson
  4. Station Eleven – Emily St. John Mandel
  5. How to Take Smart Notes – Sönke Ahrens
  6. Deep Work – Cal Newport
  7. Moby Dick – Herman Melville
  8. Mother Night – Kurt Vonnegut
  9. The Club – Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg
  10. Benjamin Franklin an American Life – Walter Isaacson
  11. Enlightenment Now – Steven Pinker
  12. Notes from a Small Island – Bill Bryson
  13. How to Avoid a Climate Disaster – Bill Gates

2022

  1. Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut
  2. I’m A Stranger Here Myself – Bill Bryson
  3. 1912 – James Chace
  4. The Testaments – Margaret Atwood
  5. Pity the Reader – Kurt Vonnegut & Suzanne McConnell
  6. God Bless You, Mister Rosewater – Kurt Vonnegut
  7. Slapstick– Kurt Vonnegut
  8. Klara and the Sun – Kazuo Ishiguro
  9. The Glass Hotel – Emily St. John Mandel
  10. It Can’t Happen Here – Sinclair Lewis
  11. Jailbird – Kurt Vonnegut
  12. The Martian Chronicles – Ray Bradbury
  13. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep – Philip K. Dick
  14. Parable of the Sower – Octavia E. Butler
  15. Eastern Standard Tribe – Cory Doctorow

2023

  1. The Giver – Lois Lowry
  2. Oryx and Crake – Margaret Atwood
  3. Parable of the Talents – Octavia E. Butler
  4. 1Q84 – Haruki Murakami
  5. Last Night in Montreal – Emily St. John Mandel
  6. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
  7. Wool – Hugh Howey
  8. Sea of Tranquility– Emily St. John Mandel

2024

  1. Neverwhere – Neil Gaiman
  2. The Dog Stars – Peter Heller
  3. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
  4. 1984 – George Orwell
  5. Severance – Ling Ma
  6. God is Not Great – Christopher Hitchens
  7. Animal Farm – George Orwell
  8. Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury

2025

  1. Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut
  2. A Short History of Nearly Everything – Bill Bryson
  3. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich – William L. Shirer
  4. The Greater Journey – David McCullough
  5. Freakonomics – Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
  6. Abundance – Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
  7. Endurance – Alfred Lansing
  8. A Walk in the Woods – Bill Bryson
  9. Made in America – Bill Bryson
  10. Perks of Being a Wallflower – Stephen Chbosky
  11. The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
  12. Moral Ambition – Rutger Bregman
  13. Nexus – Yuval Noah Harari
  14. Station Eleven – Emily St. John Mandel
  15. Success is a Numbers Game – Kyle Austin Young
  16. Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut
  17. Everything is Tuberculosis – John Green

2026

  1. The Immortal Irishman – Timothy Egan
  2. The Indifferent Stars Above – Daniel James Brown
  3. Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
  4. Parable of the Sower – Octavia E. Butler
  5. Kindred – Octavia E. Butler
  6. Pachinko – Min Jin Lee
  7. In a Lonely Place – Dorthy B. Hughes
  8. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running – Haruki Murakami
  9. City of Thieves – David Benioff
  10. Shadow Divers – Robert Kurson
  11. Circe – Madeline Miller
  12. Yellowface – R.F. Kuang
  13. The Outsiders – S.E. Hinton
  14. The Giver – Lois Lowry
  15. 1929 – Andrew Ross Sorkin
  16. Looking for Alaska – John Green
  17. Too Big to Fail – Andrew Ross Sorkin
  18. Norwegian Wood – Haruki Murakami
  19. The River of Doubt – Candice Millard
  20. The Splendid and the Vile – Erik Larson
  21. Project Hail Mary – Andy Weir
  22. London – Edward Rutherfurd
  23. The Lightest Object in the Universe – Kimi Eisele
  24. Wired for Story – Lisa Cron
  25. One Summer – Bill Bryson
  26. Exit Party – Emily St. John Mandel
  27. Jurassic Park – Micheal Crichton