Mike's Book Shelf

A collection of notes and highlights from books I've read over the years.

Pre-Suasion

Robert Cialdini
A candid and indispensable primer on all things advertising from one of the greats.
Some fantastic nuggets of wisdom from one of the pioneers of modern advertising.

Magic Words

Jonah Berger
Plenty of useful pointers to help us speak more confidently and persuasively. Like a lot of business books, most of the good stuff is in the first couple of chapters.

Ultralearning

Scott Young
Thoroughly researched strategies and tactics to ramp up skill acquisition.
Timeless advic on reading great books, building true friendships, and why we should avoid attention seeking.

Anything You Want

Derek Sivers
A memoir about Sivers' experience building and selling CD Baby for $22m. Plenty of against-the-grain startup advice.
A nice counterbalance to the "stay positive" self-help nonsense that's all too common in our culture.
This book is all about pushing you to raise your standards and question limiting beliefs.

Laws of UX

Jon Yablonski
This book helps you unleash the power of psychology to design engaging and delightful user experiences.
Overall this is a pretty solid book about entrepreneurship. I especially liked the ideas around building money systems and leveraging your time to create passive income.

Refactoring UI

Steve Schoger, Adam Wathan
A practical guide to UX design for non-designers. Zero fluff and full of actionable tips to instantly elevate your design skills and craft pixel-perfect experiences.

Working Backwards

Colin Bryar & Bill Carr
A solid breakdown of Amazon's core operating principles. Very high signal.

Obviously Awesome

April Dunford
A no-BS guide to positioning technology products.

Made to Stick

Chip Heath, Dan Heath
A great read for anyone who wants to become a more persuasive communicator.
A collection of valuable insights gleaned from Naval's tweets, blog posts, and podcasts. Love his principles of wealth creation.

Poor Charlie's Almanac by Charlie Munger

by Charles T. Munger, Peter D. Kaufman, Ed Wexler, Warren E. Buffett
This 1940s classic is the ultimate guide to becoming a more demanding reader.

Atomic Habits

James Clear
If you're looking for a book to help you develop better habits, look no further. Very well written, with no filler content.

Noise

Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, Cass R. Sunstein
This book is not exactly a page turner. After all, how exciting can a book about a statistical concept be? But reading it did give me a better understanding of decision making errors, and how to reduce them.

Nudge

Richard H. Thaler, Cass R. Sunstein
You know how the preset restaurant tip set to 20%? That's because higher defaults reliably lead to higher average tips. This book will teach you more than you ever wanted to know about using such "nudges" to influence human behavior (hopefully for the better).
© 2023 Mike Fiorillo
AboutBook Notes