Pardon my dust! I just migrated my website to the fantastic Eleventy and am recording the redesign process of adopting my design system for our AI & Design Systems course.

Here are the books I've read or am currently reading. Inspired by Dave Rupert's bookshelf.

Currently Reading (3 books) Based on a True Story

Norm Macdonald

Design Justice

Sasha Costanza-Chock

What Art Does

Brian Eno, Bette Adriaanse

2026 (7 books) Get Together

Bailey Richardson, Kevin Huynh, Kai Elmer Sotto

The World According to Mr. Rogers

Fred Rogers

The Good Neighbor

Maxwell King

Empire of AI

Karen Hao

Design For A Better World

Don Norman · Rated 5/5

Careless People

Sarah Wynn-Williams

The Art of Gathering

Priya Parker

2025 (14 books) Nexus

Yuval Noah Harari

Whole Earth

John Markoff

You Are Here

Thich Nhat Hanh

Your Brain on Art

Susan Magsamen, Ivy Ross

Dialogues of Plato

Plato

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin

The Bhagavad Gita

Eknath Easwaran (translator)

Tao Te Ching

Lao Tzu

Big Magic

Elizabeth Gilbert

Exuberance

Kay Redfield Jamison

Concerning the Spiritual in Art

Wassily Kandinsky

The Spirit of Music

Victor L. Wooten

The Music Lesson

Victor L. Wooten

Outraged

Kurt Gray

2024 (8 books) Turn Knowledge Into Wealth

Joeel A. Rivera, Natalie Rivera

How Infrastructure Works

Deb Chachra

The Artist's Way

Julia Cameron

The Coming Wave

Mustafa Suleyman

The Experience Machine

Andy Clark

The Anxious Generation

Jonathan Haidt

Change

Damon Centola

Yes to Life

Viktor E. Frankl

2023 (22 books) Creative Quest

Questlove

Sprint

Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky, Braden Kowitz

12 Notes

Quincy Jones

The Birth of Loud

Ian S. Port

The Perfectionists

Simon Winchester

Braiding Sweetgrass

Robin Wall Kimmerer

Ways of Being

James Bridle

10% Happier

Dan Harris · Rated 4.5/5

Atomic Habits

James Clear · Rated 4/5

Behave

Robert Sapolsky · Rated 4/5

Depression Fallout

Anne Sheffield · Rated 4.5/5

Designing Your Life

Bill Burnett, Dave Evans · Rated 4/5

Neil Young's Harvest

Sam Inglis · Rated 4/5

Pizza Ten Percent Happier

Dan Harris

The Big Leap

Gay Hendricks

The Book You WIsh Your Parents Had Read

Philippa Perry · Rated 4.5/5

The Creative Act

Rick Rubin · Rated 5/5

The Doors of Perception

Aldous Huxley · Rated 4/5

The Five Keys to Mindful Communication

Susan Gillis Chapman · Rated 4/5

What's Our Problem

Tim Urban · Rated 4.5/5

You're Not Listening

Kate Murphy · Rated 4.5/5

2022 (26 books) A Guide to the Good Life

William B Irvine · Rated 4/5

Atlas of the Heart

Brené Brown · Rated 5/5

Bird By Bird

Anne Lamott · Rated 4.5/5

Buddhism Without Beliefs

Stephen Batchelor · Rated 4/5

Chronicling Stankonia

Regina N. Bradley · Rated 2.5/5

Coders

Clive Thompson · Rated 4.5/5

Do Nothing

Celeste Headlee · Rated 5/5

Dolly Parton, Songteller

Dolly Parton · Rated 3/5

Escaping Toxic Guilt

Susan Carrell · Rated 5/5

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

Greg Mckeown · Rated 4.5/5

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

Oliver Burkeman · Rated 5/5

How To Be Perfect

Michael Schur · Rated 5/5

How You Can Survive When They're Depressed

Anne Sheffield · Rated 4.5/5

Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me)

Carol Tavris, Elliot Aronson · Rated 5/5

Notes on a Nervous Planet

Matt Haig · Rated 4/5

Salt: A World History

Mark Kurlansky · Rated 4/5

Stumbling on Happiness

Daniel Gilbert · Rated 4/5

Talking Heads Fear of Music

Jonathan Lethem · Rated 2.5/5

The Body Keeps The Score

Bessel A. van der Kolk · Rated 4.5/5

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

Tom Wolfe · Rated 3.5/5

The Lightmaker's Manifesto

Karen Walrond · Rated 5/5

The Psychology of Money

Morgan Housel · Rated 1/5

The Storyteller

Dave Grohl · Rated 4.5/5

This Isn't Happening: Radiohead's "Kid A" and the Beginning of the 21st Century

Steven Hyden · Rated 4/5

What the Happiest Retirees Know

Wes Moss · Rated 3/5

Why Buddhism Is True

Robert Wright · Rated 5/5

2021 (14 books) Bullshit Jobs: A Theory

David Graeber · Rated 4.5/5

Choose FI

Chris Mamula, Brad Barrett, Jonathan Mendonsa · Rated 3/5

Give People Money

Annie Lowrey · Rated 4/5

Humankind: A Hopeful History

Rutger Bregman, Erica Moore, Elizabeth Manton · Rated 4/5

Measure What Matters

John Doerr · Rated 3/5

Music, Language, and the Brain

Aniruddh D Patel · Rated 4/5

Quit Like A Millionaire

Kristy Shen · Rated 3.5/5

Reduce, Reuse, Reimagine

Beth Porter · Rated 3.5/5

The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work

John Gottman · Rated 5/5

The Simple Path to Wealth

JL Collins · Rated 3.5/5

The Story of Stuff

Annie Leonard · Rated 4/5

Think Again

Adam Grant · Rated 3.5/5

Twitter and Teargas

Zeynep Tufekci · Rated 5/5

Why We Sleep

Matthew Walker · Rated 4.5/5

2020 (14 books) Being Peace

Thich Nhat Hanh · Rated 5/5

Creativity, Inc.

Ed Catmull, Amy Wallace · Rated 5/5

Emotional Intelligence

Daniel Goleman · Rated 5/5

Factfulness

Hans Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund, Ola Rosling · Rated 5/5

How to Do Nothing

Jenny Odell · Rated 5/5

How To Write One Song

Jeff Tweedy · Rated 4.5/5

One Way Out

Alan Paul · Rated 2.5/5

Remain in Love

Chris Frantz · Rated 4/5

Silent Spring

Rachel Carson

Solve for Happy

Mo Gawdat · Rated 3.5/5

The Burnout Generation

Anne Helen Petersen · Rated 4/5

The Coddling of the American Mind

Jonathan Haidt, Greg Lukianoff · Rated 4/5

The Invention of Air

Steven Johnson · Rated 4/5

This Is Where You Belong

Melody Warnick · Rated 3.5/5

2019 (19 books) A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived

Adam Rutherford · Rated 3/5

Around the World in Six Glasses

Tom Standage · Rated 4/5

Born a Crime

Trevor Noah · Rated 5/5

Company of One

Paul Jarvis · Rated 3/5

Design Systems

Alla Kholmatova

Drive

Daniel H. Pink · Rated 3.5/5

Form Design Patterns

Adam Silver · Rated 4.5/5

Hillbilly Elegy

J.D. Vance · Rated 3.5/5

How Not to Hate Your Husband After Kids

Jancee Dunn · Rated 5/5

How to Be Miserable

Randy Paterson · Rated 2.5/5

How to Change Your Mind

Michael Pollan · Rated 4/5

Humble Inquiry

Edgar H. Schein · Rated 4/5

It Doesn't Have To Be Crazy At Work

Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson · Rated 4/5

Lies My Teacher Told Me

James W. Loewen · Rated 4/5

Playing with FIRE

Scott Rieckens · Rated 4/5

Progressive Web Apps

Jason Grigsby · Rated 5/5

Ruined By Design

Mike Monteiro · Rated 5/5

So You Want to Talk About Race

Ijeoma Oluo · Rated 4.5/5

Thinking, Fast and Slow

Daniel Kahneman · Rated 3.5/5

2018 (9 books) Deep Work

Cal Newport · Rated 4/5

Future Ethics

Cennydd Bowles · Rated 5/5

Learning React

Kirupa Chinnathambi · Rated 4.5/5

Prisoners of Geography

Tim Marshall · Rated 4.5/5

The Expanding Circle

Peter Singer · Rated 3.5/5

The Revenge of Analog

David Sax · Rated 4/5

The Righteous Mind

Jonathan Haidt · Rated 5/5

Unsubscribe

Jocelyn K. Glei · Rated 4/5

Your Money or Your Life

Vicki Robin · Rated 4.5/5

Did Not Finish (2 books) Beastie Boys

Michael Diamond, Adam Horowitz

Mycelium Running

Paul Stamets

Brad Frost Hey there! Brad Frost brad@bradfrost.com

I'm Brad Frost, an independent creator, web designer & developer, teacher, speaker, writer, musician, and artist based in Pittsburgh, PA.

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