Kristina Subbotina

Bookshelf

100 books from my bookshelf

These are books that have shaped how I think, build, create, and live.

Some changed my life. Some came to me at exactly the right moment. And some are simply books I'm glad I read and would recommend.

A floor-to-ceiling tower of stacked books beside a window overlooking the Bay Bridge in San Francisco
At home, SF
A tall stack of business, startup and philosophy books on a stand against a slatted wood wall at the Lexsy office
At the Lexsy office

Life-changing

  • 01

    The Power of Now

    Eckhart Tolle

    I got a grant to study in the U.S. and moved here by myself in 2014 to study law. I didn't speak fluent English, and suddenly I had to study law in English. Either one would have been hard. Doing both at the same time was incredibly overwhelming.

    I was constantly anxious and had a hard time focusing because my thoughts were always somewhere in the future: Will I pass the bar? Will I get my visa sponsored? Will I get a job?

    At the same time, the Russian ruble was collapsing, and I was watching my savings lose value while I had no job or income. My nervous system was struggling so much that the bulimia I had experienced as a teenager came back.

    Then I read The Power of Now.

    I remember that after about two weeks, something started to change. Whenever a self-destructive thought appeared in my head, I started asking myself: “Who's talking?”

    That was the beginning of separating myself from the voice in my head that always had something to say. I realized that I could observe my thoughts without being my thoughts.

    It permanently changed me. Being present became a skill that I still have today and that grounds me.

    This book taught me how to go through the hard things in life without getting consumed by them — and how to be present enough to actually enjoy the good things.

    Truly my Bible.

  • 02

    The Bible

    What fascinates me about the Bible is its exploration of love, meaning, and human nature.

    I also think a lot about building something that outlives you — something bigger than you. Religion, music, and countries are some of the things humans have created that have survived generation after generation. I find it fascinating to think about how something becomes powerful enough to do that.

    At its core, I also see the Bible as an incredible exploration of what love is.

  • 03

    Reality Transurfing

    Vadim Zeland

    Manifest like a motherfucker.

    Reality Transurfing is about consciously shaping the reality you experience through your intentions, attention, beliefs, and by letting go of excessive attachment to outcomes.

    One lesson that really stayed with me is that no matter what happens — and especially when something bad happens — you can turn your reality 180 degrees by reacting in an unconventional way.

    Something shitty happens? “This is the best thing ever. This is the best thing that could be happening.”

    It might sound insane, but that's the point.

    Things that happen can be neutral. Your relationship to what happens affects your experience of it. So instead of automatically following reality in the direction it seems to be going, you can choose to turn it in the opposite direction.

  • 04

    The Creative Act: A Way of Being

    Rick Rubin

    I literally got a tattoo after reading this book — a circle with a dot in the middle — to remind myself that I am the creator, and that everything I create starts from within me.

    I think this book is helpful for anyone who wants to create something in this life. It's not really about making art; it's about the mindset and way of being of a creator.

    To me, it's timeless.

  • 05

    Think and Grow Rich

    Napoleon Hill

    This book was life-changing for my relationship with ambition, belief, money, and the idea that you have to be able to see and believe in something before it exists in the physical world.

  • 06

    The Almanack of Naval Ravikant

    Eric Jorgenson

    This book was life-changing for my relationship with money and wealth.

    I read it after I met Naval, and it made me take seriously the idea of productizing yourself.

    Whether you're a professional, an entrepreneur, or doing something completely different, you have some combination of talents, knowledge, experiences, interests, and personality that is uniquely yours.

    You win by being authentic — and then productizing whatever is uniquely you so that it can scale. That's how you create wealth.

    For me, it's probably the best book on how to create wealth from your authenticity.

  • 07

    The Surrender Experiment

    Michael A. Singer

    This book was recommended to me by Tara Viswanathan, who at the time had just sold her company.

    I wanted to start a venture-backed company, but I was scared that it was going to destroy my life — that I would have to push, push, push all the time.

    She told me: No, you don't have to. And she recommended this book.

    It showed me that you can build an aligned life while also being very successful — you can be grounded, spiritual, and material.

    It also gave me an incredible appreciation for law. Michael Singer goes through a criminal prosecution in the book, and seeing the legal system from the perspective of the person who needs its protections stayed with me.

    I've been a lawyer for a decade, but more recently I've started to feel the importance of law differently: at its best, law is part of what protects humanity.

  • 08

    Man's Search for Meaning

    Viktor E. Frankl

    Even when almost everything has been taken away from you, there is still freedom in how you relate to what is happening to you.

    For me, this is one of the most powerful books about meaning, suffering, and the extraordinary resilience of human beings.

  • 09

    Moonwalk

    Michael Jackson

    This book truly humanized Michael Jackson for me. I've never really been a fangirl, but I finally found someone who inspires me in this way.

    It also helped me see my next big dream after building and exiting my company: I want to become a performer — movies, content, singing, dancing.

    But the bigger realization was that I don't have to wait until then to become that person.

    Michael's creativity, perfectionism, and vision made me realize that my journey building a technology product isn't fundamentally different. I can bring that same creativity to what I'm building now. It empowered me to own my vision, even down to the UI/UX and how a user feels when experiencing the product — to trust my taste and intuition when I'm creating something that doesn't exist yet.

    There are many technically excellent singers and dancers, but there was only one Michael Jackson. When I listen to his interviews — and especially his music — I hear how deeply he embedded messages of love into what he created.

    Yes, I want to sing and dance. I envision recording my first song in the same studio where Michael recorded. But I don't have to become Michael Jackson to do what he did. I can do it in my own industry, with the skills and talents I already have.

    What I ultimately took from him is a kind of recipe for creating something extraordinary: Discover what is authentic to you — what feels natural to you. Study the greats. Become greater. And do it in the name of love.

    You can be the GOAT and a creator in whatever you do. The point is to discover your unique talents, develop them to the highest level you possibly can, and use them to give something to the world.

    That's how you create magic.

Excellent

  • 10

    Shoe Dog

    Phil Knight

    To me, Shoe Dog is almost an application of The Creative Act: A Way of Being.

    I cried reading it. Phil Knight captures what it actually feels like to create something that didn't exist before. The way he describes creating the shoes, coming up with their names, and watching something move from his imagination into the real world felt like magic to me.

    That's exactly how I feel when I create content, technology, and products.

    There's something magical about bringing something into existence that wasn't there before. I think that may genuinely be the best feeling in the world for me.

  • 11

    Dream Big

    Bob Goff

    I read Dream Big at a moment when I felt like I was shedding everything I had outgrown.

    I was going through a breakup, and at the same time, I was considering a huge professional leap: leaving a small law firm on Wall Street in New York to join one of the best law firms in Silicon Valley.

    This book helped me give myself permission to dream bigger and take the leap — both professionally and personally.

    It came to me at exactly the moment when I was leaving an old version of my life behind and stepping into a much bigger one.

  • 12

    Siddhartha

    Hermann Hesse

    Justin Kan recommended this book to me.

    It felt to me almost like the Bible told as a story.

    Instead of giving you rules or telling you what to believe, it follows one person's search for truth through spirituality, ambition, love, pleasure, suffering, and eventually surrender.

    What stayed with me is the idea that the deepest wisdom can't really be taught — you have to live it. You can spend your entire life searching outside yourself for answers, only to discover that what you were looking for was something you had to experience within yourself.

    It's a beautiful story about coming back to yourself — and ultimately, to love.

  • 13

    I Am That

    Nisargadatta Maharaj

    I came to this book through Naval.

    He first recommended Total Freedom by J. Krishnamurti, but I found it confusing and a little intimidating. When I told him that, he suggested I Am That instead — and this one resonated.

    I found it much simpler.

    The central idea I took from it is that I am not my thoughts, emotions, accomplishments, roles, or even the story I tell myself about who I am. Underneath all of that is simply the awareness that can observe it: “I am.”

    In that sense, it brought me back to something I first learned from The Power of Now: there is a difference between the voice in your head and the part of you that can hear that voice.

    Different language, different philosophy, but another path back to the same place.

  • 14

    You Are Here

    Thich Nhat Hanh

    This book feels like a loving hug. It brings me back to the present moment and back to myself.

  • 15

    Venture Deals

    Brad Feld & Jason Mendelson

    This was the first book that taught me how venture deals actually work.

    I read it when I was starting out at a law firm in New York and learning startup and venture law. It gave me the foundation for understanding how venture financings are structured, how the different terms fit together, and how a venture deal works as a whole.

    If you want to understand startups, venture capital, or startup law, I highly recommend it.

  • 16

    The Magus: Kundalini and the Golden Dawn / Serpent Rising: The Kundalini Compendium

    Neven Paar

    I had a Kundalini awakening in 2023 and was recommended these books because I wanted to understand what I was experiencing.

    There isn't that much accessible literature about Kundalini, so they were helpful for educating myself and giving me frameworks and language for the experience.

    They're complex and can be scary to read if you've just experienced an energy awakening.

  • 17

    The Untethered Soul

    Michael A. Singer

    For me, this is another version of the lesson I first found in The Power of Now, approached from a different angle.

    A lot of these spiritual books feel like different roads leading to the same place: you are not the voice constantly talking inside your head. You can observe it, let things pass through you, and return to presence.

    Sometimes you need to encounter the same truth through different stories and different language before it really becomes part of you.

  • 18

    The 4-Hour Workweek

    Tim Ferriss

    If you're renting your time and doing it primarily for money — which I think most of us do at some point in our lives — this is one of the best books on how to optimize that exchange.

    But I think there is a limit to this philosophy.

    Once you find something you're truly passionate about — something that feels devotional, like your life's work — the relationship between time and money changes. You're no longer trying to minimize the hours you spend doing it. You're trying to create something extraordinary.

    For that kind of work, I don't think the four-hour workweek is the goal.

    We go through different periods in our lives. If you're renting your time, optimize it. If you've found your life's work, devote yourself to it.

  • 19

    The Infinite Game

    Simon Sinek

    Play long-term games with long-term people.

    This book helped shape how I think about business and relationships. The goal isn't to win one transaction, one deal, or one moment. It's to build relationships with people you trust and want to keep creating with over decades.

    The best games don't have an endpoint. You choose the right people and keep playing.

100 books from my bookshelf

If one of these shaped you too, or there's something I should read next, I'd love to hear it.

Share your thoughts & book recommendations