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These were Bill Gates’s five favorite books of the year

It’s like Oprah’s book list, but for nerds.

Bill Gates, with his five favorite books of 2016
Bill Gates, with his five favorite books of 2016
GatesNotes.com

If you want a super-nerdy version of Oprah’s book list, here you go.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is once again announcing — and even reviewing! — his five favorite books from among the many he read this year. They range from a history of genomics to the autobiography of Nike co-founder Phil Knight.

“They’re all very well written, and they all dropped me down a rabbit hole of unexpected insights and pleasures,” Gates said in a blog post on Monday.

Here are the five, with links to Gates’s reviews.

  1. “String Theory,” by David Foster Wallace
  2. “Shoe Dog,” by Phil Knight
  3. “The Myth of the Strong Leader,” by Archie Brown
  4. “The Gene: An Intimate History,” by Siddhartha Mukherjee
  5. “The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future,” by Gretchen Bakke

Gates, the slacker, hasn’t yet gotten around to a full review of “The Grid.” But he did note in a blog post that the book, which looks at our aging electrical infrastructure, is a representative of one of his favorite genres: Books that are about mundane stuff, but that are nonetheless fascinating.


Watch: Bill and Melinda Gates on philanthropy, AI and more

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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