Tyler Cowen is an avid reader. He is always reading lots of books and has great tips on how to read fast. Incredibly, Cowen also finds time to check lots of sites, newspapers and magazines. And Twitter.
“I am both interested and compulsive,” he says. “The best way to read quickly is to read lots. And lots. And to have started a long time ago. Then maybe you know what is coming in the current book. Reading quickly is often, in a margin-relevant way, close to not reading much at all.” Cowen also advises to “cut bait on the losers” – you do not have to finish every book you start – and “do less of other activities” – which sounds kind of ironic coming from him.
Here are his favourite books and authors. They are listed in no particular order.
Canon of classics
Henrik Ibsen
“Plays”
Leo Tolstoy
“Some of the short fiction”
Other recommendations
Sir Thomas Browne
“Works”
John Milton
“Especially Lycidas and Samson Agonistes”
David Hume
“Works”
August Strindberg
“Plays”
Franz Kafka
“Assorted works”
Virginia Woolf
“Assorted works”
Raymond Chandler
“Works”
Contemporary fiction
Naguib Mahfouz
“Assorted works”
Science fiction
Fantasy
Poetry
Tyler Cowen (born January 21, 1962) is an American economist and an economics professor at George Mason University. With colleague Alex Tabarrok, Cowen is coauthor of the popular economics blog Marginal Revolution and cofounder of the online educational platform Marginal Revolution University.
A dedicated writer and communicator of economic ideas who has written extensively on the economics of culture, Cowen is the author of several books and is widely published in academic journals and the popular media. Foreign Policy named Cowen as one of 2011’s “Top 100 Global Thinkers,” and an Economist survey counted him as one of the most influential economists of the last decade. (Mercatus Center, Wikipedia.)
Source: Tyler Cowen’s Web Page
Last checked on: 2 December 2017
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