Books that helped you!

[BBGUN]

I believe that knowing yourself is one of the biggest hopes you can have in life. Knowing how you work and react to different situations, understanding the underlining reasons why you like this, or that, not omitting the true from yourself and being completely honest is one of the most difficult tasks you can encounter. You have to dig deeply and be cruelly honest about your motives. It requires a lot of patience. Knowing your strongest and weakest points are is just the tip of a big iceberg, and just that can help you immensely.

For sure, that experience is where you can learn most about yourself. I think books also are a great help. I'm talking about fiction books, not about self-help books, all intellectual.

I will list here a couples of books that helped me learn more about myself.

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
Narcissus and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse
Iron John: A Book About Men
and of course: Book of Pook


I want to know what books helped you grow!!

 

[f283000]

Great thread! I read a lot of books (currently working on 10 and I got 15+ more reserved in the library system and i'll be picking up another 5 tomorrow). It's no secret that successful men read books while a lot of men spend their free time watching porn instead! You can improve your body at the gym and you can improve your mind and yourself through reading books

Search your local libraries for the following

the book of understanding by Osho: This book changed my life. It started destroying so many false beliefs and concepts that I had in me.

I recommend anything by Osho. Reading his books is literally improving yourself in real time as you read. He will free your mind. I am a better man thanks to his books.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho: World famous book. It will truly inspire you to chase your dreams and start living life the way it is meant to be lived. Go get it now!

How to Talk to Anyone: 92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships by Leil Lowndes: Very easy to read book that will teach you simple yet powerful communication techniques.

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu: Famous ancient book on spirituality with so many pearls of wisdom you will lose count.

The Six Healing Sounds: Taoist Techniques for Balancing Chi by Mantak Chia: Take control over your own health with ancient healing techniques to prevent and cure illnesses. This short little book will open up your mind to the ways of alternative healing.

Mantak Chia also has a lot of other interesting books including some more well known titles like "cultivating male sexual energy" and "the multi orgasmic man" which are right up sosuave's alley

 

[BBGUN]

bump bump

 

[DoubleBarrel]

Not fiction, but the last chapter in Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, called "The Six Ghosts of Fear" is a great resource for self-understanding, and developing a better understanding of what motivates people's behavior in general.

How to Outwit the Six Ghosts of Fear

 

[LiveFreeX]

The Alchemist.

The Secret <-- something about what they say seems to work. Whatever you think about appears infront of you.

I'll give a completely weird example. I was on SS all day arguing about feminism. I go out and meet a white guy(very unusual in china) and he takes me to a hipster feminist bar where he likes to hangout, can you guess what happened next.

 

[Rave18]

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

 

[BMX]

Under the Bar
Raising the Bar.
Both by Dave Tate (EFS)

 

[n00bPimp]

The Secret
The Power of now by Eckhart Tolle
New Earth by Eckhart Tolle

The last too wont change your life but will make you discover something about your life

 

[dasein]

In no particular order:

Thoreau - Walden
Nietzsche - The Antichrist, Geneaology of Morals
Kierkegaard - Fear and Trembling, The Sickness Unto Death
Heidegger - The Question Concerning Technology, Being and Time
Chuang Tzu - Collected Works
Lao Tzu - Tao Te Ching
Bernstein - Against the Gods
The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Bardo Thotrol)
Heuristics works of Gigerenzer, Kahneman and Tversky
Gene Wolfe - Book of the New Sun
A.A. Attanasio - Last Legends of Earth, Radix
Robert Heinlein - The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Stranger in a Strange Land
Landes - The Wealth and Poverty of Nations
Epstein - Takings
Neil Stephenson - Cryptonomicon
Mackay - Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
Kuhn - The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Homer - The Iliad
Skousen - Economics on Trial
Cleary - Classics of Strategy and Counsel, all volumes, Three in particular
Wallace Stevens - Harmonium, Collected Poetry
The Federalist - Madison, Jay, Hamilton
Smith - The Money Game
Lewis - Liars Poker
Lewis - Babbit, Arrowsmith
Locke, Montesquie, Smith - Economic and Political Philosophy

 

[Wolfgang D]

Some good choices there, dasein. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is an interesting book. (A sci-fi book about a revolt on the moon. They decide to set up an experiment, a libertarian state. The flag has TANSTAAFL written on it, There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.)

The Genealogy of Morals is considered the best of Nietzsche's books, and he thought so too. The reason Thus Spake Zarathustra is more famous is that it is written like fiction, about a philosopher wandering the land. Nietzsche was a bit peeved that it became the more famous book, plus that it was written pretty early on so it wasn't as well-organized as some of his other work. But for those who want to read it, here is an abridged version of Thus Spake Zarathustra, about fifteen percent of the original:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/49974206/Thus-Spake-Zarathustra-Abridged


Another book that really makes you think about the realities of life - that this world wasn't made to accommodate you, and that that's not wrong, and that you have to accept it and toughen up - is Jack London's Call of the Wild, which can be read here:

http://www.online-literature.com/london/callwild/1/

 

[dasein]

Thanks for the reminder to reread Call of the Wild, classic. Also, one of the Attanasio books, "Last Legends of Earth" is good for that same purpose. It's little known, but for folks who like scifi, it's an incredible achievement that changed the way I look at the human condition, our relative unimportance as individuals and as a species. Can't recommend it enough.

 

[Wolfgang D]

Thanks for the reminder to reread Call of the Wild, classic. Also, one of the Attanasio books, "Last Legends of Earth" is good for that same purpose. It's little known, but for folks who like scifi, it's an incredible achievement that changed the way I look at the human condition, our relative unimportance as individuals and as a species. Can't recommend it enough.

I have never heard of that novel, but I will definitely see if I can find it at the library, thanks.

Yes, Call of the Wild. And White Fang, the following novel, about the wolf pup that is captured by Indians. Same message in both of them. Jack London writes so many thoughtworthy things; like when the Indians capture White Fang and his mother, and their dogs attack the pup. The humans hurry to beat the dogs with sticks to make them pull back, and that is the first time the pup has seen law, the concept that a stronger animal is prevented from eating a weaker animal. In school as kids, I remember, we were always taught to feel ashamed for being human, and nature was idealized as a "circle of life" and ideal state. But this scene in London's book shows differently. There are many scenes like that in his novels, that make you think.

I also like Jack London's novel The Sea Wolf:
http://www.online-literature.com/london/sea_wolf/
This is pretty much Nietzsche in fiction-form. Has been filmed many times. Captain Wolf Larsen, born into poverty but very strong and intelligent, observes his crew's paultry lives and struggles, and debates life with his involuntary passenger Gentleman Humphrey van Weyden, saved from the waves. The only fault, I would say, is that London makes morality a choice only between Humphrey's Christianity and Captain Larsen's nihilism. Though I suppose he didn't set out to make it a catalogue of all moral choices. Pretty good reading. You never see characters like these in today's novels or movies. Today someone like Larsen would be portrayed as evil, and Humphrey as good, with little nuance. And if you would read the book in class you would be required to morally condemn Wolf Larsen, instead of showing respect for him, despite his nihilism (and because of his sharp observations), as one man will instinctively respect another man who builds a life by his own strength alone.