Personal selection from more than 1,200 books

What I read

by Robert Vlach

Here you’ll find the top tenth of more than 1,200 books I’ve read over the last 20 years. Most of them were good, so I narrowed this selection down to the ones that enriched me or entertained me the most. (There’s also a Czech version of this list.)

My name is Robert Vlach, I’m a freelancing entrepreneur, and books play an important role in my life. I also wrote one book, The Freelance Way, published worldwide by HarperCollins. If you have a question or a book recommendation, feel free to reach out.

What I have read and enjoyed recently

My shortlist for the book of the year

  • Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City (K. J. Parker)
  • Dungeon Crawler Carl (Matt Dinniman)
  • Mordew (Alex Pheby)

Last update: March 26, 2026

Best books

Non-fiction

  • All the Kremlin's Men (Mikhail Zygar)
  • Conversations with an Executioner (Kazimierz Moczarski)
  • Factfulness (Hans Rosling)
  • Fermat's Last Theorem (Simon Singh)
  • Genius Foods (Max Lugavere)
  • Imperium (Ryszard Kapuściński)
  • Red Notice (Bill Browder)
  • Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Richard Feynman)
  • The Black Swan (Nassim Nicholas Taleb)
  • The God Delusion (Richard Dawkins)
  • The Poverty of Historicism (Karl Popper)
  • The Road to Serfdom (Friedrich Hayek)
  • The Second World War (Winston Churchill, the 4-volume edition)
  • The War of Art (Steven Pressfield)
  • Trick or Treatment (Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst)

Best books

Fiction

  • Carpathian Games (Miloslav Nevrlý)
  • Contact (Carl Sagan)
  • Gates of Fire (Steven Pressfield)
  • Millenium (Stieg Larsson, the original trilogy)
  • Ready Player One (Ernest Cline)
  • Shantaram (Gregory David Roberts)
  • The Devil in the White City (Erik Larson)
  • The Last Samurai (Helen DeWitt)
  • The Lord of the Rings (J. R. R. Tolkien)
  • The MANIAC (Benjamín Labatut)
  • The Shadow of the Wind (Carlos Ruiz Zafón)
  • the Strike detective novels (Robert Galbraith, the whole series)
  • The Three-Body Problem + The Dark Forest + Death's End (Liu Cixin)
  • When We Cease to Understand the World (Benjamín Labatut)

Best books

Investing and personal finance for beginners

While researching my new book on financial self-management, I read dozens of books focused on personal finance and investing. These are the ones I found best for beginners. Some have appeared in English in a series of updated editions with newer data, and in such cases, I always recommend the most recent English edition.

  • A Random Walk Down Wall Street (Burton G. Malkiel)
  • Affluence for All (Tomáš Baťa)
  • Berkshire Hathaway Letters to Shareholders: 1965-2024 (Warren Buffett)
  • Debt: The First 5,000 Years (David Graeber)
  • Hidden Investment Treasures (Daniel Gladis)
  • How to Get Rich (Felix Dennis)
  • Investments (Zvi Bodie, Alex Kane, Alan J. Marcus)
  • Personal Finance for Dummies (Eric Tyson)
  • Poor Charlie’s Almanack (Charlie Munger)
  • Stocks for the Long Run (Jeremy J. Siegel)
  • The 5 Mistakes Every Investor Makes and How to Avoid Them (Peter Mallouk)
  • The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: 10th Anniversary Edition (John Bogle)
  • The Millionaire Next Door (Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko)
  • The Total Money Makeover (Dave Ramsey)
  • The Way to Wealth (Benjamin Franklin)
  • Tightwads and Spendthrifts (Scott Rick)
  • Trillions (Robin Wigglesworth)
  • 100 Baggers (Christopher W. Mayer)

Broader recommendations

Other great books I enjoyed

Note: Inclusion does not imply agreement. On the contrary, there are some authors I passionately disagree with—and that makes them all the more enjoyable to read.

  • A Year in Provence (Peter Mayle)
  • Acquired Tastes (Peter Mayle)
  • Adults in the Room (Yanis Varoufakis)
  • Alchemy (Rory Sutherland)
  • All Life is Problem Solving (Karl Popper)
  • Antifragile (Nassim Nicholas Taleb)
  • Apocalypse Never (Michael Shellenberger)
  • Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
  • Ayn Rand and the World She Made (Anne C. Heller)
  • Ball Lightning (Cixin Liu)
  • Blueprint (Robert Plomin)
  • Caffeine (Michael Pollan)
  • Co-Intelligence (Ethan Mollick)
  • Cool It (Bjorn Lomborg)
  • Drayton and Mackenzie (Alexander Starritt)
  • Einstein's Greatest Mistake (David Bodanis)
  • Elon Musk (Walter Isaacson)
  • Extraterrestrial (Avi Loeb)
  • False Alarm (Bjorn Lomborg)
  • Flash Boys (Michael Lewis)
  • Fooled by Randomness (Nassim Nicholas Taleb)
  • Freezing Order (Bill Browder)
  • Future Crimes (Marc Goodman)
  • Getting to Yes (Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton)
  • Give and Take (Adam Grant)
  • Go Set a Watchman (Harper Lee)
  • Govt Cheese (Steven Pressfield)
  • Harry Potter (J. K. Rowling, series)
  • How Innovation Works (Matt Ridley)
  • How to Change Your Mind (Michael Pollan)
  • How to Take Smart Notes (Sönke Ahrens)
  • Churchill (J. Rufus Fears, audioseries)
  • In the Garden of Beasts (Erik Larson)
  • Influence (Robert B. Cialdini)
  • Intellectuals and Society (Thomas Sowell)
  • La Perdida (Jessica Abel)
  • Neverwhere (Neil Gaiman)
  • Night (Elie Wiesel)
  • Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t (Steven Pressfield)
  • Nonsense on Stilts (Massimo Pigliucci)
  • On Tyranny: Expanded Audiobook Edition (Timothy Snyder)
  • Open (Andre Agassi)
  • Paul McCartney: The Biography (Philip Norman)
  • Project Hail Mary (Andy Weir)
  • Rework (Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson)
  • So Good They Can't Ignore You (Cal Newport)
  • Spark (John J. Ratey)
  • Stuff Matters (Mark Miodownik)
  • Superintelligence (Nick Bostrom)
  • The Art of Being Kind (Stefan Einhorn)
  • The Art of Negotiating the Best Deal (Seth Freeman, audioseries)
  • The Authentic Swing (Steven Pressfield)
  • The Bed of Procrustes (Nassim Nicholas Taleb)
  • The Beginning of Infinity (David Deutsch)
  • The Bestseller Code (Jodie Archer and Matthew Jockers)
  • The Big Short (Michael Lewis)
  • The Cartoon History of the Universe (Larry Gonick, trilogy)
  • The Case Against Sugar (Gary Taubes)
  • The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
  • The Garden (Pavel Čech)
  • The Hobbit (J. R. R. Tolkien)
  • The House (Paco Roca)
  • The Checklist Manifesto (Atul Gawande)
  • The Invention of Hugo Cabret (Brian Selznick)
  • The Last Lecture (Randy Pausch)
  • The Last Leonardo (Ben Lewis)
  • The Madness of Crowds (Douglas Murray)
  • The Martian (Andy Weir)
  • The Ocean at the End of the Lane (Neil Gaiman)
  • The Old Way (Elizabeth Marshall Thomas)
  • The Rational Optimist (Matt Ridley)
  • The Richest Man Who Ever Lived (Greg Steinmetz)
  • The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (William L. Shirer)
  • The Sandman (Neil Gaiman)
  • The Selfish Gene (Richard Dawkins)
  • The Singularity Is Nearer (Ray Kurzweil)
  • The Splendid and the Vile (Erik Larson)
  • The Thud (Mikael Ross)
  • The Undoing Project (Michael Lewis)
  • The War on the West (Douglas Murray)
  • The Warrior Ethos (Steven Pressfield)
  • The Way to School (Rosemary McCarney)
  • The World Crisis 1911-1918 (Winston Churchill)
  • Thirty Years in the Golden North (Jan Welzl)
  • This Book Could Save Your Life (Graham Lawton)
  • To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
  • Total Recall (Arnold Schwarzenegger)
  • Turning Pro (Steven Pressfield)
  • Uncertainty (David Lindley)
  • Viral (Alina Chan and Matt Ridley)
  • Where'd You Go, Bernadette (Maria Semple)
  • Your Deceptive Mind (Steven Novella, audioseries)

Other links

Take a look at my other projects

  • Na volné noze — one of the largest and most active national freelance communities, currently supporting over 250,000 independent professionals in doing business
  • Freelancing.eu — a European project supporting freelancers
  • Retreat.cz — a deep work retreat for digital nomads in the Czech Beskydy mountains