number of books read and the BEST of them?

[happyhappy]

if you guys and gals  keep track of the books you read, can you all share the number? this of course includes all genres.

what are the best books of  them? recommendations?

 

 

[itachi uchiha]

mastery by george leonard
mastery by robert greene
tiny habits by bj fogg
one thing by gary keller and jay papasan

[DocWatts]

By my own estimation, I read anywhere from 15 to 25 fairly dense books in a given year. 

My interests tend to lie with philosophy, metaphysics, science, spirituality, and sociology.

Would highly recommend any of these works if you share these interests:

• Sex, Ecology, Spirituality - Ken Wilber
• The Listening Society, and Nordic Ideology - Hanzi Frienacht
• The Embodied Mind - Evan Thompson, Fransisco Varella, Eleanor Rosch
• Philosophy in the Flesh, and Metaphors We Live By - George Lakoff
• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions - Thomas Kuhn
• A Theory of Justice - John Rawls
• The Accessible Hegel - Michael Allen Fox
• The Ancestor's Tale, and The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins
• Buddhism Without Beliefs - Stephen Bachelor
• The View from Nowhere - Thomas Nagel
• Making of the Atomic Bomb - Richard Rhodes
• The Precipice - Noam Chomsky

Edited January 19, 2022 by DocWatts

[Yarco]

Looking at my book shelf, probably less than 30 books since I graduated from high school, not including college/university textbooks.

Don't underestimate the value and knowledge you can get from websites or videos. My Youtube app on my phone says I've watched over 20 hours of video in the past 7 days, I'd say about 50% of that is educational / self-help material and I don't know if it takes into account that I watch most things at 2x - 3x speed.

I don't think most books are worth reading and it's usually a struggle to finish them. Most books say in 50,000 words what could be conveyed in 2,000.

I think if you started reading book summaries instead of full books, you'd get 80% of the benefit in 20% of the amount of time. I think there are paid websites similar to Audible where you can get professionally-written summaries with all the good points extracted.

Don't develop a fetish or "I am so smart" ego for reading lots of books. I'm a university-educated dude and the pretentiousness that I feel when I walk into a book store makes even me uncomfortable and unwelcome, it makes me sick.

If I have to pick a book to recommend that probably nobody else will recommend... Mind Hacking Happiness Volume I and II by Sean Webb.

Edited January 19, 2022 by Yarco

[undeather]

Books that had the biggest influence on me & why:

Viktor Frankl - Man's serach for meaning 
- Incredible story about finding meaning in difficult situations, just an awesome read in general

The art of loving - Erich Fromm
- Beautiful short book about learning to love

Nassim Taleb - Antifragility
- Understanding complex systems & antifragility, which are fundamental concepts in any integral worldview

Your Unique self - Marc Gafni
- Understanding the role of individuality in a nondual world

More than allegory - Bernardo Kastrup
- Chapter 3 is the most insane and interesting trip report I have ever read

Bernardo Kastrup - All his books!
- Best rational arguments for idealism(nonduality)/against physicalism available right now

The war of art - Steven Pressfield
- Overcoming resistance 

Passion of the western mind - Richard Tarnas
- Intellectual-cultural development of the modern world view - super important to understand why we think what we think

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig
- One of my alltime favorite books

Siddharta - Herman Hesse
- Beautiful little story about finding his own path to enlightenment

Gödel, Escher, Bach - Douglas R. Hofstadter
- Difficult to get through masterpiece about reality as a strange loop. 

Meditations on Moloch: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TxcRbCYHaeL59aY7E/meditations-on-moloch
- Must read blog post about the functionalities of society

Bhagavad Gita
- I dont think I need to explain this one

Tao Te Ching - Lao tze (Laotsi)
- Ancient book, full of wisdom! Difficult to understand without explanations

The master and his emissary - Ian McGilchrist
- Masterpiece about how left/right brain dynamics shape our worldview

Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century - Edward Kelly
- The best, no bullshit summary of psy/parapsychology/mind-research I have read so far. Its a huge book and super expensive. I got the PDF - if you want it, just PM me.

The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
- Grat book for money/happyness mindset

Osho - Courage
- little book about courage and fear, really enjoyed it! 

Kapil Gupta - Direct Truth: Uncompromising, non-prescriptive Truths to the enduring questions of life
- Interesting book about all sorts of stuff, really apprechiate his perspective

Ending medical reversal - Dr Vinay Prasad 
- If you are working in the medical field, this one is a must read in my opinion.

Ken Wilber - A brief history of everyhting
- Integral worldview must read

Ken Wilber - Kosmic conciousness (audiobook)
- Incredibly deep and enjoyable interview with Ken Wilber. Available on audible! 

Why most published reserach is wrong - John Ionnidis: https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124
- Ground breaking paper about certain biases in the academic literature

After - Dr. Bruce Geryson
- Awesome, no bullshit summary of NDE reserach

Daniel Kaneman - Thinking fast and slow
- Super important framework for improvement in sensemaking

Helgoland - Carlo Rovelli
- Enjoyable beginner level book to quantum mechanics and the propably most substantiated interpretation we have of it: Quantum loop gravity! Its the one theory that fits like a glove with spiritual insights and is therefore an awesome framework  to understand QM in a non-BS way. 

Models - Mark Manson
- IMO the most important book you can read to get good with women

Autobiography of a Yogi - Paramahansa Yogananda
- Classic one!  - bit weird and magical, but I really enjoyed it! 

Breath - James Nestor 
- Really cool and important book about the importance of proper breathing

The Art of learning - Josh Waitzkin
- Amazing book about someone who goes into into the nature of learning and backs it up with real results! 

Just to name a few  

[happyhappy]

@Yarco 

yess, reading is becoming less popular with internet and all plus the tools we have and time we don't have.

u r indeed correct when u say that there are more interesting higher quality materials online these dayz than old smelly books, but still imho, what i see is that most of these information that we find in summarized versions and videos do not exactly give the value and the experience we get in  an organized manner. most of yt vids  are vids shorter than 10 mins that tries to condense entire philosophies. of course, excluding Leo

but hey, as u said, there is still a lot of good stuff and i see ur line of thinking.  thank u so much for ur response!

will deffo look in to the materials u mentioned !

have a great day!

 

[happyhappy]

@undeather whoa amigo! a BIG THANK YOU! 

u should have spent a lot of time compiling this list. thank u! added all your recommendations to my bucket list right away!

also  loved those commentaries  after the books

[Nightwise]

Read a couple dozen of books. The first book that comes to mind when thinking about the best books would probably be "The way of the superior man" by David Deida. I love how that book goes so much against the cultural norms of gender equality in a very wise and clever way (with 'gender equality' I mean the notion that men and women are supposed to be the same. I'm not saying that men and women should have different rights or are not equally valuable)

[happyhappy]

@itachi uchiha @DocWatts @Nightwise thank ya'll for ur recommendations!

I'm excited for an amazing dive into books! 

much love! ❤?