Some people keep their bookshelves neat. I don’t. Mine is part reference desk, part scrapyard, part accidental time capsule of what I was obsessed with at the moment.
This is not a recommendation list. It is a breadcrumb trail. These are the books that have been on my desk, in my backpack, or open on my second monitor. Some I am reading now, some I keep coming back to, and a few are still waiting for me to be brave enough to start them.
If you pick any of them, you might not get what I got from them. That is fine. This is less about “must reads” and more about the texts shaping my current mental architecture. Notes and highlights, when they exist, live at notes.
I keep them loosely grouped so I can find my way back through the chaos.
Feedback Systems by Karl J. Åström & Richard M. Murray
A control theory classic that reminds me every complex system has a temperament you can learn to work with.
Multiagent Systems: Algorithmic, Game-Theoretic, and Logical Foundations by Yoav Shoham & Kevin Leyton-Brown
For when you want to understand coordination without illusions about perfect harmony.
Designing Data-Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann
The scaffolding I lean on whenever I think about orchestrating agents across unreliable systems.
The Handbook of Artificial Intelligence: Memory by Ruo Sun
A quiet obsession. How agents remember, forget, and connect context to action.
Machine Learning Systems by Jeff Smith / Chip Huyen
Practical patterns for turning models into living systems that survive contact with the real world.
This page will keep changing. Some sections will show, some will grow, others will shrink, and I will probably shuffle books around when I change my mind about them. Reading is not static, and neither is this list.