"Nobel Prize"

1967 · Gabriel Garcia Marquez · 417 pages · Magical Realism

This is the novel that defined magical realism for most of the world, and more than fifty years after publication it still holds that ground. The writing is dense, the family tree is a puzzle, and the repeating names will trip you up more than once. None of that stops it from being one of the most ambitious and rewarding novels ever written. It asks more of its readers than most books dare to, and it pays back that investment many times over. Not everyone will finish it, but almost everyone who does will understand why it mattered.

2011 · Daniel Kahneman · 499 pages · Non-Fiction

Daniel Kahneman's life's work, distilled into a single volume about how humans actually think rather than how they believe they think. The System 1/System 2 framework is one of those ideas that permanently changes how you understand your own mind. The research is fascinating, the examples are illuminating, and the implications touch everything from personal finance to public policy. The book is also long, dense in its middle sections, and repetitive enough that many readers report finishing it over months rather than days. It rewards persistence. If you read one book about how your brain works, this should probably be it.