Books I Don't Have Time to Read

When you’re buying books, you’re optimistically thinking you’re buying the time to read them.
     —Arthur Schopenhauer

I subscribe to several publications that review or recommend books including The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Guardian, and Science. I listen to podcasts that recommend and review books, including New York Times Book Review, The Critic and Her Publics, Marooned! on Mars with Matt and Hilary, Our Opinions Are Correct, Sean Carroll’s Mindscape, Hugo, Girl!, and The Cello Sherpa. And I subscribe to publishers’ newsletters announcing new books.

From these sources, I find one or two books a week that I would like to read. I track these in a note-taking app on my computer and phone. The list has grown long, and it’s time to clear it out.

So here’s my list of books I want to read but don’t have time to read. I plan to update this list frequently, and I reserve the right to read one of these books anyway.

• 21st Century Monetary Policy: The Federal Reserve from the Great Inflation to COVID-19, by Ben S. Bernanke
• Adventures in Volcanoland: What Volcanoes Tell Us About the World and Ourselves, by Tamsin Mather
• After 1177 B.C.: The Survival of Civilizations, by Eric H. Cline
• Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe, by Carl Zimmer
• Allegiance to Winds and Waters: Bicycling the Political Divides of the United States, by Anne Winkler-Morey
• Apocalypse: How Catastrophe Transformed Our World and Can Forge New Futures, by Lizzie Wade
• Apple in China: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company, by Patrick McGee
• Apple: The First Fifty Years, by David Pogue
• Bad Monkey, by Carl Hiaasen
• Breakfast with Seneca: A Stoic Guide to the Art of Living, by David R. Fideler
• By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean: The Birth of Eurasia, by Barry Cunliffe
• Byron: A Life in Ten Letters, by Andrew Stauffer
• Byron’s Travels: Poems, Letters, and Journals, selected and introduced by Fiona Stafford
• Cave of My Ancestors: Vishwakarma and the Artisans of Ellora, by Kirin Narayan
• Changeling: The Autobiography of Mike Oldfield, by Mike Oldfield
• Crick: A Mind in Motion, by Matthew Cobb
• Deep Life: The Hunt for the Hidden Biology of Earth, Mars, and Beyond, by Tullis C. Onstott
• Deep Time in the Mono Lake Basin: Nature and History over the Past 10,000 Years, by Robert B. Marks
• Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World, by Nick Bostrom
• Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, by Cory Doctorow
• Everest, Inc.: The Renegades and Rogues Who Build an Industry at the Top of the World, by Will Cockrell
• Ice Candy Man, by Bapsi Sidhwa
• Le Grand Meaulnes, by Alan-Fournier
• A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America, by Stacy Schiff
• Jumpnauts, by Hao Jingfang
• Land Between the Rivers: A 5,000 Year History of Iraq, by Bartle Bull
• Lectures on Astrophysics, by Steven Weinberg
• A Life in Physics, by Steven Weinberg
• Mapping the Heavens: The Radical Scientific Ideas that Reveal the Cosmos, by Priyamvada Natarajan
• Martyr!, by Kaveh Akbar
• Mathematica: A Secret World of Intuition and Curiosity, by David Bessis
• A Molecule Away from Madness: Tales of the Hijacked Brain, by Sara Manning Peskin
• Most Delicious Poison: The Story of Nature’s Toxins — from Spices to Vices, by Noah Whiteman
• Nights of Plague, by Orhan Pamuk
• Observations by Gaslight: Stories from the World of Sherlock Holmes, by Lyndsay Faye
• Pillars of Creation: How the James Webb Telescope Unlocked the Secrets of the Cosmos, by Richard Panek
• Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia K. Butler, by Susana M. Morris
• Recursion, by Blake Crouch
• Running Smart: How Science Can Improve Your Endurance and Performance, by Mariska van Sprundel
• A Student’s Guide to Lagrangians and Hamiltonians, by Patrick Hamill
• Ten Moments That Shaped Tokyo, by Eiko Maruko Siniawer