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Barbarian DaysBook

by William Finnegan

Who uses, recommends or left Barbarian Days, in their own words: each a verbatim quote with a link to where it was said.

1 person

Tara Seshan
Product lead for ChatGPT Work at OpenAI; previously an early product manager at Stripe and head of product at Watershed.
recommended

One book I really recommend to people is Barbarian Days by William Finnegan. I don't know if you've read it. It's about a life of a man who is a New Yorker reporter, but how he fell in love with surfing as his passion. The thing I took away from the book is that uh one can be deeply passionate and dedicated and have something be your life purpose without you being good at it. And it is about the art of like falling in love with surfing and his striving for excellence and perfection whilst knowing that he will like never reach it. It is such a compelling and transformative story for for how I think one should continue to to live our lives. I I I really really love that book.

Lenny's Podcast, "AI’s third era: the rise of persistent AI coworkers", lightning round, asked for the books they recommend most; the guest's own spoken answer (YouTube captions).

2026-08-30·youtube.com ↗

Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.

The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.

A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.

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The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.

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