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EnsorcelledBook

by Eliot Peper, 2025

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

2 people

Co-founder of Foundry Group and Techstars; has blogged at Feld Thoughts since 2004 and co-written nine non-fiction books on startups and venture capital.
loved

Ensorcelled by Eliot Peper is genius. It’s a unique format that can be read in one setting. The writing is beautiful.

A weekend of reading books written by friends; he states each friendship in the post. He says in the post that Peper has become a dear friend.

2025-09-03·feld.com ↗

Novelist and author of twelve books including Foundry, Bandwidth and Cumulus; writes a monthly book-recommendation newsletter.
recommendedtheir own

Ensorcelled is the best book I wrote in 2025, and if you enjoy this newsletter, you'll love it.

His annual round-up collecting the books he recommended month by month during 2025.

2025-12-28·eliotpeper.substack.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.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.

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.

What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The shading is gone after about:

Stripes mean the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no shading.