Erin List

These are some of the books I’ve read throughout my life and found insightful, one way or another. Perhaps you, dear reader, find something meaningful in them that matters to you, that will help you on your journey through the complexity of life in the 21st century.

Before you buy a new book though, ask yourself if you really need it, and if so, if you can buy it second-hand or at a discount. Perhaps you can also borrow it from someone you know, or somewhere, like a library. Easier on your wallet and the environment, and you might just make some real human friends on the way. 🙂

Speaking of which, if you and I are friends, you can also ask if you can borrow it from me. Books (mostly) exist to be read, otherwise they just gather too much dust on (my) bookshelves.

Disclaimer: Save for when noted otherwise, I’ve bought every one of these books myself, with money I earned through work.

It does not make much difference what a person studies. All knowledge is related, and the man who studies anything, if he keeps at it, will become learned.

— Hypatia

🎮 Play, Games & Game Development

• Ask Iwata, edited by Hobonichi
• 🐊 A Theory of Fun for Game Design (2004), by Raph Koster
• ♟ The Art of Game Design (2020, 3rd edition), by Jesse Schell
• ♟ Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture (1938), by Johan Huizinga
• 🏃‍♂️ Man, Play, and Games (1958, eng. 1961), by Roger Caillois
• 🧠 The Gamer’s Brain: How Neuroscience and UX Can Impact Video Game Design (2017), by Celia Hodent
• 🐢 Streitpunkt Games (2024), by Harald Koberg (I actually bought this one directly from Harald)
• 🎮 Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World (2011), by Jane McGonigal
• 🍆 Spelunky (2016), by Derek Yu
• A Game Design Vocabulary: Exploring the Foundational Principles behind Good Game Design (2014), by Anna Anthropy and Naomi Clark
• Rise of the Videogame Zinesters (2012), by Anna Anthropy
• 🎲 Board Games in 100 Moves: 8000 Years of Play (2019), by Ian Livingstone and James Wallis
• 💻 Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made (2017), by Jason Schreier
• 📦 Press Reset: Ruin and Recovery in the Video Game Industry (2021), by Jason Schreier
• 🪓 Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment (2024), by Jason Schreier

📺 Design & Media

All men are designers. All that we do, almost all the time, is design, for design is basic to all human activity. The planning and patterning of any act towards a foreseeable end constitutes the design process. Any attempt to seperate design, to make it a thing-by-itself, works counter to the fact that design is the primary underlying matrix of life.

— Victor J. Papanek, Design for the Real World

• ☯ Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change (Third Edition, 2019, orig. 1971), by Victor J. Papanek (I’ve read it in 2024 for the first time [pictured above])
• Design is Storytelling (2017), by Ellen Lupton
• ♿ The Politics of Design: A (Not So) Global Design Manual (2016), by Ruben Pater
• 👀 The Medium is the Massage (1967), by Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore
• 🍯 The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition (2013, orig. 1988), by Donald A. Norman
• 💰 CAPS LOCK: How Capitalism Took Hold of Graphic Design, and how to escape from it (2021), by Ruben Pater
• 💚 The Green Imperative: Natural Design for the Real World (Revised and updated edition 2021, orig. 1995), by Victor J. Papanek
• 🤖 Emotional Design (2003), by Donald A. Norman
• 🌸 Design Justice (2020), by Sasha Costanza-Chock
• Weltentwerfen: Eine Politische Designtheorie (2016), by Friedrich von Borries
• 🚀 Creativity, Inc: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration (2014), by Edwin E. Catmull and Amy Wallace
• The Beauty of Everyday Things (2019), by Yanagi Sōetsu
• User Friendly (2019), by Cliff Kuang with Robert Fabricant
• 🎭 Design as Art (1966), by Bruno Munari
• 🌍 Design for a Better World (2023), by Donald A. Norman
• 🖥 The Net Delusion (2011), by Evgeny Morozov
• 🧬 The Creative Gene, by Hideo Kojima
• Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products (2013), by Nir Eyal
• 💚 Nachhaltiges Grafik Design, by Pia Weißenfeld
• 🌆 A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (1977), by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa and Murray Silverstein
• Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software, (this one I got as a gift when I was a teenager, from a then friend of my brother)
• Universal Principles of Design (Updated and Expanded Third Edition, 2023), by William Lidwell, Kritina Holden, Jill Butler
• Great Designs: The World’s Best Design Explored and Explained (2013), by DK Publishing
• The Design Book (2024), published by Dorling Kindersley

In design man becomes what he is. Animals have language and perception as well, but they do not design.

Otl Aicher

PS: I’m currently reading “analog und digital” (1991), by Otl Aicher

🎨 ART

• 🎨 How to Think when you Draw (2018-), series by Lorenzo Etherington
• 🎨 Art Matters (2018), by Neil Gaiman and Chris Riddell
• 🐎 Ways of Seeing (1972), by John Berger

Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.

— Edgar Degas

🚺 Feminism, GENDER & LGBTQ+ ✊

• 🌈 The LGBTQ+ History Book (2023), published by Dorling Kindersley
• 🚺 Das Feminismus Buch (2020), published by Dorling Kindersley
• 🚺 Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men (2019), by Caroline Criado Perez
• We Should All be Feminists (2014), by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Die Letzten Tage des Patriarchats (2018), by Margarete Stokowski
• Untenrum Frei (2016), by Margarete Stokowski
• 💜 The Ethical Slut (2017, 3rd Edition), by Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy
• Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007), by Julia Serano (I had borrowed this one from a friend once)
• Polysecure (2020), by Jessica Fern
• Want: Sexual Fantasies by Anonymous (September 5, 2024), collected by Gillian Anderson
• all about love (1999), by bell hooks

For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.

— Virginia Woolf

🔬 Science, Biology, Chemistry

Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.

— Marie Curie

🏰 History & Anthropology

Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current

— Marcus Aurelius

• 💣 The World War II Book (2022), published by Dorling Kindersley
• 🔥 The Dawn of Everything (2021), by David Graeber and David Wengrow
• 🌿 Humankind: A Hopeful History (2019), by Rutger Bregman
• 🗽 The History Book (2016), published by Dorling Kindersley
• 📯 Fake History: 101 things that never happened (2023), by Jo Hedwig Teeuwisse, aka. The Fake History Hunter
• 🐫 The Silk Roads: A New History of the World (2015), by Peter Frankopan
• 🚅 The New Silk Roads (2018), by Peter Frankopan
• 🦅 SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome (2015), by Mary Beard
• 📚 The Library: A Fragile History (2021), by Andrew Pettegree and Arthur de Weduwen
• 🚢 The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World – and Globalization Began (2020), by Valerie Hansen
• 🗿 The Darkening Age (2017), by Catherine Nixey
• 🖐 Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011), by Yuval Noah Harari
• 🕊 Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI (2024), by Yuval Noah Harari
• 🔫 Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997), by Jared Diamond
• 🗿 Collapse (2004), by Jared Diamond
• 🏹 Historische Waffen und Rüstungen: Ritter und Landsknechte vom 8. bis 16. Jahrhundert (2018), by Liliane and Fred Funcken
• 🎭 Hitlers queere Künstlerin (2025), by Nina Schedlmayer
• Geschichte des Designs (2022), by Melanie Kurz and Thilo Schwer
• Österreichische Geschichte (2019), by Karl Vocelka
• Die Zerstörung der Demokratie: Österreich, März 1933 bis Februar 1934 (2023), hrsh. von Bernhard Hachleitner, Alfred Pfoser, Katharina Prager und Werner Michael Schwarz

Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

— George Santayana, 1905, The Life of Reason

🐲 Mythology & Folklore

• Mythos (2017), by Stephen Fry
• Heroes (2019), by Stephen Fry
• 🐎 Troy (2020), by Stephen Fry
• 🔨 Norse Mythology (2017), by Neil Gaiman
• 🔱 Norse Gods (2019), by Johan Egerkrans
• 🪓 Vaesen (2017), by Johan Egerkrans
• 🐺 The Undead (2019), by Johan Egerkrans
• 🐲 Drachen (2022), by Johan Egerkrans
• 🌙 Beneath the Moon: Fairy Tales, Myths, and Divine Stories from Around the World (2020), by Yoshi Yoshitani
• 🌍 Myth Atlas (2018), by Thiago de Moraes
• The Atlas of Monsters (2017), by Stuart Hill & Sandra Lawrence
• The Atlas of Heroes (2018), by Sandra Lawrence & Stuart Hill
• Die Nibelungen, illustrated by Burkhard Neie
• 🏃‍♀️ Women Who Run with the Wolves (1989), by Clarissa Pinkola Estés
• 🐉 Breverton’s Phantasmagoria: A Compendium of Monsters, Myths and Legends (2011), by Terry Breverton
• Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes (2017, orig. 1942), by Edith Hamilton; Illustrations by Jim Tierney
• Trolle: Ihre Geschichte von der nordischen Mythologie bis zum Internet (2018), by Rudolf Simek
• The Mythology Book (2018), published by Dorling Kindersley

Arachne was not of noble family but her talent had made her famous.

— Metamorphoses

🦕 Dinosaurs & Paleontology

• 🦕 Dinosaurier und andere Wesen der Urzeit (2020), by Johan Egerkrans
• 🐱‍🐉 Herrscher der Urzeit: Die Geschichte der Tyrannosaurier und Ceratopsier (2021), by Johan Egerkrans
• Dinosaurier und andere Tiere der Vorzeit (1988), by Barry Cox, Dougal Dixon, Brian Gardiner, and R. J. G. Savage

💭 Philosophy

• 💭 The Philosophy Book (2011), published by Dorling Kindersley
• 🌍 Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility (1986), by James P. Carse
• 🐙 Other Minds (2016), by Peter Godfrey-Smith
• 🌐 Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1969), by R. Buckminster Fuller
• The True Believer (1951), by Eric Hoffer
• 🌵 Du musst nicht von allen gemocht werden: Vom Mut, sich nicht zu verbiegen (2018), written by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga, translated by Renate Graßtat
• 💚 Du bist genug: Vom Mut, glücklich zu sein (2019), written by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga, translated by Renate Graßtat
• 💭 Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius
• ☯ Tao Te Ching, by Laozi
• ⚔ The Art of War, by Sun Tzu

Wonder is very much the affection of a philosopher; for there is no other beginning of philosophy than this.

— Plato

🧠 Psychology

• 🧠 The Psychology Book (2011), published by Dorling Kindersley
• 💤 Why We Sleep (2017), by Matthew Walker
• Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1990), by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
• 📝 Thinking Fast and Slow (2011), by Daniel Kahneman
• The Pattern Seekers: How Autism Drives Human Invention (2020), by Simon Baron-Cohen
• 💡 Think Again (2021), by Adam Grant
• 🗨 Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking (2012), by Susan Cain
• unmasked (2023), by Ellie Middleton

Psychology has a long past, but only a short history

— Hermann Ebbinghaus

🤼 Sociology

• 🍔 The McDonaldization of Society (1993), by George Ritzer (I’ve actually found this one in one of the open street libraries in Graz. Score!)
• 🤼‍♂️ The Sociology Book (2015), published by Dorling Kindersley

🗣 Politics & Economics 📈

• Radikalisierter Konservatismus (2021), by Natascha Strobl
• Why Nations Fail (2012), by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson
• 🎤 Es geht auch anders (2023), by Elke Kahr and Silvia Jelincic
• Die Schattenrepublik (2025), by Peter Hochegger
• The Politics Book (2013), published by Dorling Kindersley

🌍 GEOGRAPHY

• 🌍 Prisoners of Geography (2015), by Tim Marshall

📝 Memoirs & Biographies

• Man’s Search for Meaning (1946), by Viktor Frankl
• 📝 Educated (2018), by Tara Westover
• Born a Crime (2016), by Trevor Noah
• 🌍 A Life on Our Planet (2020), by David Attenborough
• Uncomfortable Labels (2019), by Laura Kate Dale
• Untypical (2023), by Pete Wharmby
• 📝 On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (2000), by Stephen King

💬 Comics & Graphic Novels

This list also includes digital and webcomics, that haven’t necessarily ever been released in a physical bound “book” format.

• Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art (1993), by Scott McCloud
• Making Comics (2006), by Scott McCloud
• Reinventing Comics (2000), by Scott McCloud
• 🐭 Maus (1991), by Art Spiegelman
• 🩸 Watchmen (1986-1987), by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
• 🖤 Sunstone, series by Stjepan Šejić
• https://xkcd.com/
• https://sarahcandersen.com/
• https://phdcomics.com/

I’ve also read lots of Asterix, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck comics, comics from Warcraft and League of Legends, as well as a couple Manga (Digimon, Pokémon, The Legend of Zelda), but can’t quite remember right now which ones exactly.

📚 LITERATURE

Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another’s skin, another’s voice, another’s soul.

— Joyce Carol Oates

• 🐲 The Hobbit (1937), by J.R.R. Tolkien (I’ve read a German edition, gifted to me by my mother, when I was very young)
• The Lord of the Rings (1937-1949), by J.R.R Tolkien (here too, I’ve read German editions, gifted to me by my older brother, when I was a teenager)
• The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), by Margaret Atwood
• 1984 (1949), by George Orwell
• 🐷 Animal Farm (1945), by George Orwell
• Brave New World (1932), by Aldous Huxley
• ⛵ The Wizard of Earthsea (1985), by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Im Westen nichts Neues (1928), by Erich Maria Remarque
• 🚀 The Invincible (1964), by Stanislav Lem
• 🌆 Invisible Cities (1972), by Italo Calvino
• Cat’s Cradle (1963), by Kurt Vonnegut
• 🐦 This Is How You Lose the Time War (2019), by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
• Heart of Darkness (1899), by Joseph Conrad
• Flatland (1884), by Edwin A. Abbott
• 🐉 Eragon (The Inheritance Cycle, 2002-2011), by Christopher Paolini (gifted to me by my mother, when I was a teenager)

Big Brother is watching you

He who controls the past controls the future.
He who controls the present controls the past.

📚 Others

• What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions (2014), by Randall Munroe
• Novacene (2019), by James Lovelock and Bryan Appleyard
• 🌍 The Climate Book (2022), by Greta Thunberg et al.
• 📈 Factfulness (2018), by Hans, Ola & Anna Rosling Rönnlund
• 🧨 The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (2002), by Malcolm Gladwell
• Sum, by David Eagleman
• Einstein’s Dreams, by Alan Lightman
• The Anthropocene Reviewed (2021), by John Green
• How to Think like Leonardo da Vinci (1998), by Michael J. Gelb (gifted to me by my friend and colleague, Johanna Pirker)
• Big Ideas Simply Explained, series published by Dorling Kindersley