Unfortunately, I don’t. My wife now reads fiction. I don’t have the time to read fiction. My wife reads the fiction and summarizes it to me, but I wish at one point I’ll have time again to read fiction. It is a luxury I cannot afford right now.

And this is where, a couple of years before I had become CEO, I had read this book by Carol Dweck out of Stanford [University] called “Mindset,” which was more in relation to my kids. And the simple concept in that book, which I loved a lot, was it's better to be a learn-it-all even if the know-it-all has more innate capability, because the learn-it-all ultimately will do better. And I said, well, that applies to CEOs. That applies to companies made up of people. And I said: What if we introduce that as the meme to have the cultural dialogue at Microsoft?

All right, I'm going to give you two, because they're kind of categories to it. I'd say the first one underneath this health and human performance realm, Diagnosis and Treatment of Movement Impairment Syndromes. It's a Shirley Sahrmann book that I think is landmark. I mean it's decades old, super impactful. Kind of reads like stereo instructions, so you're going to go through a page at a time. But Sahrmann is still a practicing physical therapist at Wash U in St. Louis.

I named one of them already. Fooled by Randomness . Almost everyone in my office is forced to read that. I’ve definitely given that away. Boy, that’s a tricky one because just like I said, I can’t remember books very well. But certainly probably No. 1 on a business side of things. On the other side, I tend to give away what I would call vintage art books. So, it’s not a book people can buy, I’m sorry to say, but occasionally I’ll be at a used book store and I’ll find some of these great old art books. I buy a few of them and then when I want to thank someone for something, I send them that.

As a writer who took cheering up his listeners seriously.

Probably a piece of music. I think it was probably an album by Brian Eno called Another Green World, which is one of his early ‘70s, it’s ambient music, but not the kind of really weird ambient music. There’s an adage that says the music you discover when you are 18, I think it’s 18 is the magic year, is the music that stays with you for the rest of your life. ... Well, I discovered that when I was 18. And I sing the songs of that album in my head all of the time. And I worship Brian Eno.

I was a reporter for many years at the Washington Post. Although I loved every minute, I don’t think I was a very good reporter.

Kiss And Say Goodbye by the Manhattans.

I didn’t want to be anything because I don’t look ahead. Even as a kid I thought it was pointless.