I Bought the Books So No Going Back Now

My New Year's resolution for 2026 is to read 24 books!

Two books a month. No vibes. No aspirational nonsense. The stack is already here and it is not impressed by excuses.

I built this list based on what will make me a more interesting person, some biographies of musicians I admire, and a few re reads of infamously banned books. The mix is intentional. Curiosity, culture, power, creativity, and a little trouble. Reading like this keeps the mind sharp and slightly unruly, which feels like the right energy.

Below is the list in no particular order, because that is how I plan to read it.

Slaughterhouse Five

This book landed like a quiet bomb when it came out. Its anti war stance, dark humor, and fragmented sense of time challenged how war stories were traditionally told. It was banned and burned in schools because it refused patriotism as performance. What it really did was give language to trauma and moral exhaustion. It inspires honesty, even when the truth sounds strange.

Creativity Inc.

This book reshaped how creative companies think about leadership. Its impact shows up in how teams talk about feedback, failure, and trust. Instead of glorifying genius, it focuses on systems that protect ideas from fear and ego. It inspires the kind of leadership that gets out of the way and lets creativity breathe.

The Chocolate War

Frequently challenged and removed from school reading lists, this book unsettles because it exposes how power works inside institutions. There are no heroic rescues here, just systems grinding people down. Its societal impact is its refusal to lie to young readers. It inspires awareness and skepticism toward authority that demands silence.

Meditations

Written as private notes, not a book meant for publication, this work has shaped leaders and thinkers for centuries. Its impact is long term and personal. It teaches discipline, perspective, and emotional restraint without drama. It inspires calm strength in a loud world.

Crank

This book is often challenged because it deals openly with addiction, pain, and self destruction. That honesty is exactly why it matters. Written in verse, it hits fast and hard. Its impact is giving voice to experiences that are usually sanitized or ignored. It inspires empathy and directness.

The Chaos Machine

This book helped shift public conversation around social media from convenience to consequence. It made clear that platforms shape behavior and belief, not just communication. Its impact is awareness. Once you see how attention is engineered, you stop blaming yourself for distraction and start thinking structurally. It inspires intentionality.

Ulysses

Once banned for obscenity, this book became a legal and cultural turning point for artistic freedom. It changed what literature was allowed to do. Its impact is not just literary, it is constitutional. It inspires persistence. Difficulty can be a feature, not a flaw.

Made to Stick

This book influenced how ideas are taught, marketed, and remembered. It explains why some messages survive and others vanish. Its impact is clarity across education, business, and media. It inspires better communication by respecting how people actually think.

David Bowie Rock n Roll with Me

Bowie’s cultural impact was reinvention as a lifestyle. This book reinforces that idea. It shows how curiosity, discipline, and fearlessness fueled constant transformation. It inspires permission to change without apology.

Eats Shoots and Leaves

This book reignited cultural arguments about punctuation, which is really an argument about meaning. Its impact is renewed attention to clarity in language. It inspires respect for details because details shape understanding.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales

This book changed how people think about the brain by telling clinical stories as human stories. Its impact is empathy in science. It inspires humility and curiosity about identity, memory, and perception.

Lord of the Flies

Challenged for violence and bleakness, this novel refuses the comforting idea that civility is automatic. Its impact is cultural honesty. It forces readers to confront how thin social order can be. It inspires vigilance rather than optimism theater.

What If Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions

This book made science playful without making it dumb. Its impact is pulling new readers into scientific thinking through curiosity and humor. It inspires asking better questions and following them all the way through.

The Second Sex

This book reshaped feminist thought and challenged gender roles that were treated as natural rather than constructed. It faced bans and moral outrage because it questioned power at a structural level. Its impact is foundational. It inspires intellectual courage and long range thinking.

Sonic Life A Memoir

This is a document of underground music culture and DIY ethics. Its impact is preservation of scenes that rarely get official history. It inspires independence and the value of building your own lane instead of waiting for permission.

Thinking Fast and Slow

This book changed how decision making is taught by exposing how biased and inconsistent human thinking really is. Its impact reaches business, economics, and psychology. It inspires slower thinking and better judgment.

Sapiens

This book reframed human history around shared myths, power structures, and biology. Its impact is global conversation and debate. It inspires zooming out and questioning the stories we inherit.

The Art of Thinking Clearly

This book made cognitive bias practical for everyday life. Its impact is usability. It inspires discipline in how we process information and make decisions.

How to Take Over the World

This book uses humor as a delivery system for science and history. Its impact is proving that learning sticks better when it is fun. It inspires playful curiosity without sacrificing intelligence.

Brief Answers to the Big Questions

This book brought cosmic scale questions into everyday conversation. Its impact is perspective. It inspires awe, humility, and responsibility at the same time.

The Complete Maus

This book helped legitimize graphic novels as serious literature and continues to face removal from schools because of its honesty. Its impact is historical truth told without soft edges. It inspires memory and moral clarity.

A Clockwork Orange

This book was challenged for its violence and moral ambiguity. Its impact is forcing readers to wrestle with free will and control. It inspires discomfort that leads to deeper thinking.

Why this list matters

Two books a month is not about productivity points. It is about reclaiming attention, sharpening language, and staying harder to manipulate. Reading like this stretches perspective and deepens empathy. It makes conversations better and thinking clearer.

It is the same feeling as discovering a band you did not know you would love. You hit play out of curiosity. Then suddenly it is in heavy rotation.

I bought all these books so no going back now.