My life in books

In front of my desk there is a glass-front bookcase. I see it every time I look up from the screen. It is a working library: the books I have kept because I still open them, not the ones that would look good in a photo.

This small library is something I have built slowly, year by year, and one of the few things I am quietly proud of. I want to walk through what is on it, because it is probably a better way to know me than anything I could write about myself. So here goes.

The oldest books on it are Shakespeare. I started out in English Philology, which is where they came from, and for a while I assumed I would end up teaching. I was wrong about that. What I actually liked was making things, so while I was still studying I took on small jobs on the side: branding, logos, the odd visual identity for marketing agencies. The degree slowly turned into the thing I did around the design work, instead of the other way round.

Two books from those years are still on the shelf, both on literary theory. They taught me more about design than most design books have. They taught me the questions underneath the techniques: how a text or an idea comes to mean what it means, who decides that, and how we read it. I have been asking screens the same questions ever since. And life in general, really.

A handful of books genuinely changed how I look at people and at work, and most of them are by Robert Greene. The Laws of Human Nature and Mastery are the two I keep coming back to. There are a few psychology books next to them. I end up using them a lot, because what looks like a problem with the screen is often really a problem with how the person using it feels. In payments it is obvious: people abandon a checkout when entering their card feels uncomfortable, even when the form is perfect. Understanding that discomfort helps me more than any tweak to the interface.

Another favorite, and the one I have learned the most from, is Banks and Fintech on Platform Economies, by Paolo Sironi. It reads like dense theory and turned out to be the closest thing I have to a map of the work I actually do.

Then there is the working part of the shelf, the one I actually reach for mid-project. Laws of UX, by Jon Yablonski, when I need the proper name for a pattern I am already using on instinct. Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite, by Paul Arden, when I have talked myself into something too reasonable. The two Pocket Universal Principles, one of Art and one of Design. I love these two for how small they are: they fit in any bag, so I take them when I travel and keep the basics of the craft within reach. You also learn a lot about art, and about how one thing connects to another. Work Hard & Be Nice to People is barely a book, more of a printed phrase, but it is a rule I actually try to live by. And The Introverted Leader, by Jennifer Kahnweiler, helped me really understand that leading a team starts with being real and with seeing what the people around you actually need, and that you can do it as an introvert. Sometimes it even helps.

I also have a self-help corner. The One Thing, Essentialism, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. Different writers, more or less the same idea: focus on what actually matters, which is usually one thing and not a thousand. I go back to them whenever I catch myself solving a problem by adding to it instead of taking something away.

My little bible sits a little apart from the rest. The Creative Act, by Rick Rubin. I have read it more times than anything else on the shelf, and I will read it again. It is the closest thing I have to a mentor in design and creativity: a way of looking at the world, and of understanding my own worth and the worth of the people around me.

A reading list you put together to look smart is just for show, and people can tell. Mine would not impress anyone: a Shakespeare I bought as a student, a fintech book I did not expect to care about, and a self-help paperback I would not bring up at a dinner full of designers. The rest of these taught me specific things. This one changed how I look at the whole job. If I had to keep one book, it would be this one.