An unofficial reader's index — not affiliated with The Diary of a CEO or Steven Bartlett.

About

A listener's catalogue

I'm an avid reader and a long-time listener of The Diary of a CEO. Guests keep naming books that shaped them — and the guests are often authors themselves — but there was no easy way to find them again after an episode ended. So I started cataloguing them. This site is that catalogue: currently 203 books from 589 episodes and 470 guests.

It's unofficial. Boardroom Bookshelf is an independent project. It isn't affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to The Diary of a CEO, Steven Bartlett, FlightStory or any guest. Show and guest names are used only to describe what was said on which episode.

How the books are found

  1. Episodes. Full episodes come from the show's public podcast feed and YouTube channel. Clips, "moments" and shorts are left out.
  2. Transcripts. Each conversation is read from YouTube's automatic captions, the podcast feed's own transcript, or a public transcript site. Transcripts are used to find books only; they're never republished here.
  3. Extraction. A language model lists every book referenced, with an exact quote. Any quote that can't be found word for word in the transcript is thrown away, and the timestamp is taken from the transcript, not the model.
  4. Checking. Every title has to match a real book by the same author in Open Library, Apple Books or Google Books before it appears. Films, articles, podcasts and vague references ("that book about habits") are dropped.
  5. Attribution. Captions don't label speakers, so "who said it" is inferred from the conversation. When a guest wrote the book, it's marked Guest's book.

The episode summaries, talking points and book blurbs are written for this site. Covers come from Open Library, Google Books, Apple Books and Wikipedia and are stored here, never loaded from Amazon. Mistakes happen — if you spot one, a contact address is coming soon.

A note on the show's rituals: most episodes end with a question written in a diary by the previous guest for the next one. Those questions aren't books, so they're not listed — unless the answer names one.

How the site is paid for

Book buttons are Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you. Visitors in the UK, Canada and Australia are sent to amazon.co.uk, amazon.ca and amazon.com.au; everyone else goes to amazon.com. Rankings are never paid for and ignore what earns more.