My colleague Miten Sampat recently wrote about his college experiences in visiting bookstores and discovering new books and his concerns over the demise of bookstores. He also touts Findings as a service to help with discovery of new ideas.

That got me thinking that I haven’t shared my book list yet. I often share it with university students and suggest looking at book lists as a way to get to know people. In fact, one of my favorite interview lines of query is to discuss the books a candidate has read recently.

Here’s my list of 20 or so books that I’ve found invaluable over the last few years. I’ve added a few comments about each one to explain why the book is important to me and why it might be to you as well.