Books

Currently Reading

• Getting Things Done by David Allen

  First read it in high school. Re-reading it with my partner and trying to implement some systems together.

• How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

  Also read this in high school. The title of the book makes it sound Machiavellian, but it’s more about how to be considerate of other people. It should be titled “How to think of others’ feelings and stop being a selfish dick” but then people wouldn’t read it.

Finished Reading

• The Mom Test
• Getting to Yes

  Classic book on negotation. Really reframes it to have both sides get what they want, rather than one “winning” and the other “losing”. Definitely one I need to buy for myself and reread.

• The Magic of Thinking Big

  Really good book for reframing your own biased thoughts.

To Read

• Permutation City by Greg Egan

  Recommended by Jeff.

Maybe

• The Pop-Up Book by Paul Jackson

  Here’s its page at SFPL.

• More Kurt Vonnegut books in general. Recommended by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show.
• Spencerian Key to Practical Penmanship

  Teaches the American style of cursive that was used before the typewriter. Here’s a copy of it on the Internet Archive.

• The Palmer Method of Business Writing

  Used after Spencerian script. Presumably faster and simpler. See a copy on the Internet Archive.

• Creditworthy: A History of Consumer Surveillance and Financial Identity in America

Where to Buy Books

I’m assuming you want to avoid Amazon.com.

February 2026: I think my favorite online/in-person place is Half Price Books https://www.hpb.com/. They offer a lot of used books and they tend to be cheaper. I’m sad they’re Berkeley location on Shattuck closed, I should check out their place in Concord.

Better World Books (https://www.betterworldbooks.com/) is pretty good. I want to say that it has some relationship with the Internet Archive, which is probably how I first found out about it. I’ve bought a few used books through them. I feel like maybe some of their website features were annoying though; like the page won’t load at all if you don’t use JavaScript.

• Moe’s Books (2476 Telegraph, map, https://www.moesbooks.com/) in Berkeley
• Half Price Books (map, https://www.hpb.com/) also in Berkeley (2026-02-09: They’re closing or already closed! :-( )
• Pegasus Books (https://pegasusbookstore.com/) in Berkeley at 2349 Shattuck and 1855 Solano
• Bart’s Books (map, https://bartsbooksojai.com/) in Ojai
• Powell’s City of Books (map, https://www.powells.com/) in Portland
• BookBuyers was cool while it existed in Downtown Mountain View. They moved to Gilroy but an online search on 2026-02-09 suggests they closed.

More online or in person places (but larger brands, less local), or places I haven’t really used yet.

• https://bookfinder.com is like a meta-search engine for finding books. Seems to load quickly and lists multiple places like biblio.com, alibris, AbeBooks.
• AbeBooks (https://www.abebooks.com/) is another place I’ve heard of, but not used. 2026-02-09: Their website seems to load quickly and feels lighter weight. However, they are a subsidiary of Amazon.
• https://bookshop.org/ apparently supports local bookstores, haven’t used it much.
• Books, Inc. (https://www.booksinc.com/) has a lot of locations. 2026-02-09: Their website has an annoying pop-up asking for your email address. I guess they got bought by Barnes and Noble?
• Barnes and Noble (https://www.barnesandnoble.com/)
• Alibris.com is from Emeryville. Look out for their email checkbox saying “Sign up for our newsletter and get over $300 in coupons each year”, it’s automatically checked.

Misc

You can send books cheaply through the mail via media mail (see mail).