The Work On My Next Book
Progress updates
Here are the updates for the book I’m working on. Since I’m still in the research phase, they are mostly about my reading and thoughts on this part of the process. The updates are organized from the latest month back to December 2023, when I started documenting my research. I’m also marking my favorite reads in case you are looking for book recommendations.
^ AMAZING Books: 1
* Books I liked a lot: 2
June 2025
Here are the books I read/listened to during June and my notes on the progress:
A Short Guide to a Happy Life
Everyday Ubuntu (Sections)
Intuition Pumps and other tools for thinking (Sections)
How to Get Rich
The Millionaire Fastlane (Sections)
Psycho-Cybernetics (reread, sections)
Rise Above
Fear, Hope and Carnage
Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain
Reasons to Stay Alive
Notes:
• June was a month of slow reading but fast living. It’s been a great adventure living in Florence and studying Italian.
Learning a new language takes several hours a day, which has cut into my reading and writing. But I keep reminding myself that engaging with the world and living an intentional life are what my book is about. In that sense, I could say I’ve been living my book more than working directly on it.
• This past month, I read some business books I had on my reading list for a long time. They aren’t part of my research for my next book, but I picked them up because I’m planning a major change in my business and wanted to get back into the business mindset before making those decisions. Despite the terrible title, “How to Get Rich” was a good book full of honest wisdom from a businessman who went through it all. As for “The Millionaire Fastlane,” I can’t understand how it’s so popular (maybe just good marketing?). It reads like a sales letter, and I found nothing new in it. This book is in serious need of a good editor. I ended up skimming a big part of it; it should have been half the size.
• The best read of the month was “Fear, Hope and Carnage.” It’s a series of interviews with the musician Nick Cave about his music and life. It’s the best account of an artist talking about their art that I’ve ever read.
When many artists talk about their art, you feel that it is important to them, but when Nick talks about his art, you feel it’s beyond important: it is essential. It’s part of his life in the same way breathing is. Art is not an activity he does—it’s part of his being. I’m not even a fan of his music, but fuck, I could listen to him talk about his process and the way he thinks about music all day. Amazing.
Here’s a sample:
“For me, vulnerability is essential to spiritual and creative growth, whereas being invulnerable means being shut down, rigid, small. My experience of creating music and writing songs is finding enormous strength through vulnerability. You’re being open to whatever happens, including failure and shame. […] I think to be truly vulnerable is to exist adjacent to collapse or obliteration. In that place we can feel extraordinarily alive and receptive to all sorts of things, creatively and spiritually. It can be perversely a point of advantage, not disadvantage as one might think. It is a nuanced place that feels both dangerous and teeming with potential. It is the place where the big shifts can happen. The more time you spend there, the less worried you become of how you will be perceived or judged, and that is ultimately where the freedom is.”―Nick Cave
May 2025
Here are the books I read/listened to during May and my notes on the progress:
Co-Intelligence
A Life Worth Living: Contributions to Positive Psychology
The Second Sex (Sections)
Positive Desintegration
*Goethe: Life as a Work of Art
A Small Treatise on The Great Virtues (Sections)
The Little book of philosophy (Sections)
The Meaning of Life (The Oxford University Press one)
The Story of Philosophy
Experience and Education (Dewey)
The Art of Showing Up
*Nietzsche In Italy
Reality+ (Sections)
Conquering Crisis (Sections)
100 Ways to Improve Your Writing
Writing About Your Life
Write a Must-Read
Essays:
On Not Being a Philosopher
Happiness is Everything, or Is It?
The Gold Pill
Some Key Differences Between a Happy Life and a Meaningful Life
De Profondis (Oscar Wilde)
The Soul of Man (Oscar Wilde)
Notes:
• May was a good reading month. I’ve been in a better mental space, so I worked consistently to redeem myself after a slow April. I’m also getting to the point where I can see the light at the end of the research tunnel (only about 80 more books to go). That’s giving me a second wind of motivation.
• This month, I faced another Titan: The Second Sex. Simone de Beauvoir continues to impress. She is sharp, clear, and well-structured. The Second Sex is a monumental work, and she wrote it while working on other projects, traveling, and keeping up with many more commitments. Respect, Simone…Respect.
• Since the actual writing of the next book is only about a year away, I started reading about writing again to sharpen my skills.
• My favorite reads for the month were “Goethe: Life as a Work of Art” and “Nietzsche in Italy.”
I knew I would have to go into Goethe’s life at some point since he’s been the example of ‘a life well lived’ for many philosophers. It was a great biography. What stuck with me the most is that even for such a talented and successful polymath, life was full of doubt, tragedy, frustration, and failure. Reading about his life reinforces the idea that problems and difficulties are not something that get in the way of life; they are life.
“Nietzsche in Italy” was special because I just came to live in Florence for some time. Most of Nietzsche’s biographies talk about his time in Sils Maria, but it was Italy he loved most—and he had some of his most important ideas during his extended stays here.
April 2025
Here are the books I read/listened to during April and my notes on the progress:
The Wisdom of Life and Consuls and Maxims (Schopenhauer)
Oraculo Manual Y Arte de Prudencia (Baltasar Gracian)
Living With Borrowed Dust (James Hollis)
The Inner Game of Tennis
Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway
Staring at the Sun
The Gift of Therapy
*How Emotions Are Made
What the Body Knows About Happiness
*The Other Side of Happiness
Notes:
• April was the slowest reading month since I went into heavy research mode a year and a half ago. Life got in the way, and my mind decided it was more interesting to torture itself than work on the project. So that was that.
• The best book this month was “How Emotions Are Made.” Took me a while to get through, but it was worth it. The author knows her subject well and did a good job writing about it—the book could have easily been dry and difficult, given its content.
Books like this are why I’m afraid of missing something important, and the reason my reading list gets out of control. The author’s research presents a significant shift in how to think about emotions—one I would have missed if I hadn’t picked up the book. The new information puts me in a tough spot: I now have to rework a lot of what I had taken as a base for some ideas. But better to find out now that I was wrong than later in the process.
• On a different note, reading Schopenhauer is always fun. He’s such a sharp thinker and engaging writer. Even if I disagree with a lot of what he says, I enjoy seeing him think.
• Most of the month, I had my mind locked into Discouragement Radio Station, playing non-stop greatest hits such as: “You can’t do this,” “The project is too big,” “You are never gonna finish—and if you do, it will take so long that life will have passed you by,” “Is that even worth it?” and “Isn’t it ironic that you are writing a book on how to live and it’s killing you?” But among the noise, I choose to listen to a sadistic demon that whispers, “Get up. Show up. Make progress.”
Okay, maybe that’s over-dramatic, but it’s not far from how I often felt about the work.
• On the positive side, I’ve been working behind the scenes all month creating this Substack, which will be my writing home—and now I finally get to share it with you. I’ve uploaded a few favorite past pieces, plus a full course on habits I originally created for an online academy (you’ll find them in the “Extra” section).
Only one new post is up for now, and I’m currently struggling with another—but I’ll eventually bring it into submission.
March 2025
The Art of Living an Absurd Existence
Zorba the Greek
Phenomenology: The basics
Mornings on Horseback
The River of Doubt
The Brain: The Story of You
On Mental Toughness
The Trouble With Being Born
The 5 Types of Wealth
A Joseph Campbell Companion
Happier Hour
Loneliness
Open When…
Be Your Future Self Now
How to Be Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable
Essays:
—Pidiendo un Goethe desde Dentro (“Goethe from the Inside” by Ortega y Gasset)
Notes:
• My favorite book of the month was “The River of Doubt.” It tells the incredible story of Teddy Roosevelt’s life-threatening exploration of an uncharted river in the Amazon Jungle. For those who have read and liked “Endurance” (the story of Shackleton’s surreal survival in the Antarctic), “The River of Doubt” would be a great next read.
• I read Ortega y Gasset’s essay on Goethe. It’s unfortunate that history has not given enough credit to Ortega y Gasset. He came up with the main points in Heidegger’s “Being and Time” years before Heidegger’s publication.
Heidegger denied copying Ortega y Gasset, but Heidegger was an all-around jerk, so that’s not surprising. Ortega y Gasset was either too much of a gentleman or too much of a coward to turn the matter into a public fight.
I think being Spanish played against Ortega y Gasset. Germans dominated the intellectual world during his time (and for a century before it). So, a Spanish philosopher coming out of nowhere was not taken as seriously. I believe that if Ortega y Gasset had been German, no one would know Heidegger’s name.
In any case, that’s my geek rant to give credit to a little-known philosopher who deserves it.
• I suffer from FOMSI (Fear of missing something important), so my “to-read” list tends to get out of control. But for the past few months, I’ve been closing the door and letting fewer books into the list. I’m reaching the stage where I feel I’ve done enough exploration and have enough material to start focusing on everything I have compiled.
I always think of research for any new subject or skill as a diamond-shaped <> process. First comes exploration and expansion, and then I go into integration and contraction. Now that I have a good idea of what’s out there and what has been written about my subject, I can focus on what’s most important.
February 2025
The Art of Living a Meaningless Existence
12 Rules for Life (Peterson)
Beyond Order (Peterson)
The Ultimate Colin Wilson
The Outsider (Colin Wilson’s one, sections only)
*Dancing with the Devil
Never Enough
Ideas (Husserl, sections only)
Heidegger (The Oxford University one)
Being and Time (Heidegger, sections only)
The Garden of Forking Paths (Borges, short story)
Notes
• My favorite read for the month was “Dancing With the Devil.” It’s a book on the value of ‘bad’ emotions. Not everything discussed in the book is good, but what’s good is REALLY good. The book would have been great if it had better structure and more polished writing, but the author is well in command of her subject and provides perspectives I haven’t read anywhere else.
• This month, I faced some titans I had been avoiding for some time: Heidegger’s “Being and Time” and Husserl’s “Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy.” You can tell from the title of the latter that it is not exactly an enjoyable narrative to pick up and relax with.
I only read sections of those two books. I had already read enough about both authors’ philosophies, but I wanted to delve into the primary sources to find some nuances and better understand their thinking. It was valuable to read their work, but it was the right move to consult secondary sources before delving into these notoriously difficult books—otherwise, they would have gone over my head, especially “Being and Time.”
• Current state of the process:
I’m frustrated by the slow progress I’ve been making since I started cutting down on my reading two months ago. I still have to read about 100 more books to complete the main part of my research, and at this pace, it will take me around a year to finish. So, I’ve been going back and forth between stepping on the gas again or accepting that it will take a while before I get all I need to shift gears and focus more on organizing and writing.
Adding to the distress is looking at the massive amounts of info I’ve already compiled and now have to sort through, reread, and categorize. Some days, the size of the project makes me feel like I can’t breathe. My file on scattered thoughts alone is about 150.000 words (that’s around 500 pages), and that’s before writing even a word of the actual book. I also have a file hundreds of pages long that is just quotes I’ve gathered over the past years.
In a couple of months, I’ll likely be looking at a few thousand pages of notes, book summaries, and my scattered writings, which I’ll need to categorize, select, and then shape into a coherent structure, seamlessly weaving philosophy, psychology, and personal experience with simple yet engaging writing. No pressure.
I often look at my writing and research files and think, “There is no way I can do this; it’s too much,” but then I remember that writing always feels that way: you’re frustrated, lost, overwhelmed, and discouraged all the way to the very end. So I’m trying to take it one day at a time, repeating the mantra “Show up. Make progress.” That’s my only job: “Show up. Make progress” every day until this book is finished...Or I am.
FML, but I chose this struggle, and despite the difficulty (or because of it), I love it.
Good times.
January 2025
A Therapeutic Journey
The School of Life
How to be Authentic (On Simone de Beauvoir)
How to Live an Extraordinary Life
Simone Weil: Late Philosophical Writings (Sections only)
Introducing: Existentialism
Reframe your Brain
What Does it All Mean?
A Life Worth Living (Albert Camus Biography)
Notes:
The best of the month was “How to Be Authentic” by Skye Cleary. It’s a book on Simone de Beauvoir’s philosophy, written by an excellent writer (and overall badass) who also has a great course on existentialism called “Existentialism and the Authentic Life.”
If you’re into existentialism in general, go for the course, but if you want to focus more on Simone de Beauvoir, read this book.
December 2024
Life Worth Living
Phenomenology of Spirit (Only read the first part)
The Art of Loving
^Nietzsche: Fighting Demons (Zweig)
Introducing: Kant
Introducing: Kierkegaard
Introducing: Sartre
The Art of the Interesting
^The Sweet Spot
How Pleasure Works
How to Be a Stoic
The Confidence Gap
The Gravity of Joy
How to Live a Good Life
The Art of Focus
I will not Die an Unlived life
The Writing Life
Determined
*Love’s Executioner
The Creative Act
Notes:
• The best read for the month was “Nietzsche: Fighting Demons.” The book is a beautiful homage to Nietzsche by Stefan Zweig, who is also the author of a biography of Montaigne, a great read, too. I loved this book.
Nietzsche is one of the philosophers whom people love to judge and criticize without having read any of his work. Forget all you’ve randomly heard about Nietzsche. Read him, or read about him from people who studied his philosophy. You’ll be inspired and energized beyond anything you’ve ever read. You’ll also realize how much people have misinterpreted and spread misinformation about him over the years.
He wrote like ‘dynamite,’ making statements that would shake us out of our ingrained ways. But his powerful style is also what led people to take him out of context and use snippets against him.
What you’ll find in Nietzsche is a gentle soul, deeply in love with life, and a believer in our individual capacity for greatness.
• Another great book this month was “The Sweet Spot.” The author mixes science and philosophy to explore the value of struggle in our lives. I liked it a lot.
• One more thing to mention: Hegel. I have read about Hegel’s philosophy, but I had never read his work until now. It was a disaster. I think of the phrase by Richard Feynman, “If you think you understand quantum mechanics, then you don’t.” The same must apply to Hegel.
Likely, I’m not smart enough (or sadistic enough) to follow Hegel’s thoughts, but many philosophers who were ungodly smart criticized Hegel for having no substance and only making things convoluted to appear profound. It’s an old trick: if your ideas are basic, use complex writing to make them appear smart. Or, in Nietzsche’s words, “They muddy the waters to make them seem deep.”
This might be a case of the emperor having no clothes. Saying you understand Hegel makes others think you are smart. Few will dare to say that the work is gibberish. But even Hegel’s ‘scholars’ and defenders admit to the unreadability of his texts, and his followers split into different groups because no one could agree on what the hell he meant.
Those who claim to understand Hegel are more likely just providing their own meaning and interpretation (hi, Marx) to words so vague that could be turned into anything we want to project on them (like seeing shapes in the clouds, or looking at a banana tapped to a canvas and interpreting it as a beautiful work of art). Fuck Hegel and fuck bananas, you both suck.
• That brings the heavy reading phase of my research to an end. For real this time. I think... We’ll see...
So here is the summary:
I read/listened to 251 books over the past thirteen months. The goal was to go through a minimum of 4 books per week, which I stuck to for most weeks, except during some travels (but I more than compensated in other weeks).
It’s the most I’ve read in a year (the highest was around 150) and not something I would like to do again; I just wanted to make a significant dent in the research for my next book.
The weekly goal was important because it gave me a rhythm, kept my momentum, and made my progress visible, which helped me stay motivated.
Books vary in length and difficulty, so if I had a particularly difficult or long book one week, I would add short or easy books to the mix. This kept me from getting exhausted. I also combined audiobooks and regular books, so if I got tired of reading, I could turn to audio.
I used to not like audiobooks, but I know @nicklovesbooks enjoys them, so I gave them a chance. They were very helpful in making progress (thanks, Nick).
My criticism of them was that we don’t get the same level of engagement because listening is passive, and many times, we are doing other things at the same time, which takes away our concentration. My workaround to the problem was to do almost nothing while I listened to audiobooks—Just raw-dog the entire thing. That improved concentration and engagement.
I still think listening to audiobooks doesn’t allow for the same level of engagement as regular reading, so I advise being selective about which books to listen to and which to read.
I still have about 100 books to read, so I’ll do some months of heavy reading here and there, but for the most part, I’ll be shifting gears to organizing all the information I’ve compiled from the research and all my notes. That should take me about a year.
Since I’ll be doing less reading, I won’t be posting research updates as frequently.
• Here are my top 5 books out of the last 13 months:
At the Existentialist Café
The Great Guide: David Hume
The Upside of Stress
Being You
Living an Examined Life
These are not easy books, and you probably won’t like them unless you are into the subjects. But if the topics resonate with you, these books are some of the best you’ll ever read.
As an extra, I don’t read much fiction, but I loved “The Midnight Library.” It was the right book at the right time for me. It’s a beautiful story about paths not taken and our relationship with our glorified, unlived lives.
Week of November 25th, 2024
How to Think Like Socrates
Introducing: Derrida
Never Play it Safe
Supercommunicators
Ethics (Spinoza)
Introducing: Postmodernism
Notes:
• November was a better month, but still a slow reading pace compared to earlier in the year, since I was traveling for most of the month.
• My favorite book of the month was “Living an Examined Life” by James Hollis. If you are facing a major change in your life or going through an existential or identity crisis, “Living an Examined Life” is a great book for you. James Hollis is now one of my favorite authors. I’ve read about five of his books in the last year.
Week of November 18th, 2024
Transcend
Happier
What Would Nietzsche Do?
*The Art of Thinking Clearly
The Art of the Good Life
Notes:
• My favorites from this batch: “What Would Nietzsche Do.” It’s about complex philosophical questions, such as “Is there a qualitative difference between high culture and popular entertainment?” This is explained through light examples, such as “Is Shakespeare better than The Simpsons?” This is a good entry point for those interested in philosophy but who are put off by the academic language and dry discussions of most philosophy books.
• Another good book from the list was “The Art of Thinking Clearly.” This is an enjoyable read on thinking biases. Short chapters, easy read, well-written. Highly Recommended.
Week of November 11th, 2024
The Evolving Self (M. Csikszentmihalyi)
The Further Reaches of Human Nature (A. Maslow)
Toward a Psychology of Being (A. Maslow)
Ni Alta, Ni Baja, Construye Autentica Autoestima
Notes:
It was another week focused on reading psychology. I’m working my way through Maslow’s thinking and contribution. I’ll finish with “Transcend” this week and then take on more philosophy again, which I haven’t read in some time.
Week of November 4th, 2024
^Living an Examined Life (James Hollis)
*Through the Dark Wood (James Hollis)
What Matters Most (James Hollis)
The Middle Passage (James Hollis)
Notes:
I took so much out of James Hollis’ book from last week that this week I decided to binge on his writing. All four books from this week are by him.
The same themes and ideas come up throughout the books, but are sometimes presented in different ways, which helps to internalize the message.
Hollis is one of the rare authors whose both content and style are amazing.
Of the six books I’ve read by him over the past year, “Living an Examined Life” and “A Life of Meaning” are the best. Highly recommended.
Week of October 28th, 2024
*Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life (James Hollis)
Lincoln’s Melancholy
The Confident Mind
Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder
Notes:
• The best of last week was “Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life” by James Hollis.
The book is a wealth of information on psychotherapy and the search for meaning in our lives. Hollis is one of those few people who combine beautiful writing with amazing insight and wisdom. I’ll be reading more of his books in the coming days.
• October was a slow month. I took about two weeks off, and traveling is cutting into a lot of my reading time.
November will be the 12th month of this research phase, and depending on the progress, I’ll balance reading with organizing the information I’ve gathered.
Week of October 21st, 2024
The Will to Meaning (Viktor Frankl)
Meaning in Life and Why it Matters
*Clear Thinking
Same as Ever
Notes:
• My favorite read this past week was “Clear Thinking” by Shane Parrish. The book covers thinking biases that get in the way of good decision making and how to set guardrails for ‘clear thinking.’
• “Same as Ever” by Morgan Housel was good, too. I love Morgan’s writing style: clear, engaging, and concise. He’s one of the authors I look up to most for how to present ideas. Morgan is also the Author of “The Psychology of Money,” one of my favorite books of all time.
Week of October 14th, 2024
^Being You
The Way of the Champion
The First Rule of Mastery
Finding Flow
*Meditations for Mortals
Notes:
• Settled back into a good rhythm after an almost two-week break from reading
I’m glad that all of last week’s books were good reads; it made it easier to get back into heavy reading after the break.
• “Being You” is the best book on consciousness and ‘the self’ I’ve ever read. The book is clear and well-written; it also has the right mix of science and philosophy. The subject is complex, making it a challenging read that took some time to get through. Don’t be discouraged by the difficulty, this is an amazing book.
• “Meditations for Mortals” is by the same author of “Four Thousand Weeks” and “The Antidote” (both excellent). I loved this book. “Meditations for Mortals” is a no-fluff, almost pure insight book on how to improve our lives by accepting its limitations and flowing with the imperfect as well as the uncertain. Highly recommended.
Week of October 7th, 2024
(Took a break from reading)
Notes:
• I mostly took a break from reading in the last two weeks since I had some travelling planned, but I still wanted to make small progress to reach an important milestone:
As of today, I’ve read/listened to 200 books since I began my research last December. I still have a month and a half to go to complete a year of heavy reading, and then I’ll shift gears to spend more time organizing what I’ve compiled and begin writing.
• Here’s what I read in these past two weeks:
-Stop Overthinking
-Conscious
“Conscious” was a great read on the nature of consciousness and how it relates to free will, phenomenology, and our idea of ‘self.’ Highly recommended for those interested in these subjects.
I’ll return to my regular reading volume (about 4 books per week) starting this week.
Week of September 30th, 2024
Stop Overthinking
Conscious
Notes:
“The Noonday Demon” was the best read for the month. The first chapters alone make the book worthwhile. It’s a heavy read and not for everyone. The author’s account of going through deep and extended depressions is heartbreaking. I’ve never read anything like it.
Week of September 23rd, 2024
Ride the Tiger (Julius Evola)
Steppenwolf (Hermann Hesse)
The As If Principle
Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Carl Jung)
Essays:
—On Self Respect by Joan Didion
—Nietzsche for Today by Julius Evola
Notes:
Nothing remarkable from this past week’s reading except for some passages from Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse—damn he could write! Here’s a taste:
“A wild longing for strong emotions and sensations seethes in me, a rage against this toneless, flat, normal, and sterile life. I would rather feel burned by diabolic pain than to live a life of complacent mediocrity...For it is through the intensity of pain that one awakens to the fullness of life, transcending mere existence and rising to the realm of the soul’s deeper knowledge.”
Week of September 16th, 2024
*The Noonday Demon
Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?
The Consolations of Philosophy (Alain de Botton)
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone
Notes:
• Almost all books from this past week were good. “The Noonday Demon” had some of the most moving accounts of going through depression I’ve ever read. It’s an emotionally heavy read, but worth it.
• “Maybe You Should Talk to Someone” has a concept I’ve never seen before: the book follows the author, a therapist, as she helps her patients while simultaneously working on her own issues with her therapist. It was an insightful journey into psychotherapy from the perspective of someone who has been both a practitioner and a patient.
• “The Consolations of Philosophy” has a section on Montaigne and one on Nietzsche that were a joy to read. Alain de Botton is a great writer who keeps you engaged throughout.
Week of September 9th, 2024
Embracing Uncertainty
The Big Questions of Life (Om Swami)
What Are You Doing With Your Life (J. Krishnamurti)
Fear (Thich Nhat Hanh)
Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect
Dance First. Think Later.
Notes:
• Nothing great this past week, but here are a few notes. I read “Social” because the philosophies I like most focus on the individual and are often criticized for not having a more social dimension. My thinking is also centered on the individual, but I wanted to take a closer look at the influence of social life on our psychology. It was worth the read for the research.
• On a different note, although I am not a fan of Krishnamurti and read him only to get an overview of his thinking, I enjoyed his criticism of reincarnation as another form of immortality delusion and of mainstream meditation as a distraction from real introspection and mindfulness. It was surprising to read those positions, given that he has many Buddhist undertones.
• Another book worth mentioning is “The Consolation of Philosophy” by Boethius. It was not an easy style to get through, but the book’s value lies in the context in which it was written.
Boethius had a reputation as the most accomplished man of his time (~500 AD). He was a statesman, musician, poet, and philosopher. He also had status, power, wealth, good friends, and a loving family. Within a year, his life took a drastic turn, and he found himself in a cell awaiting his execution, stripped of titles, wealth, and separated from friends and family. It was not his fault, it was simply the twists and turns of fate.
It is in this context that Boethius turns to philosophy for consolation. His writings are an emotionally charged introspection on how to interpret events in our lives. It’s worth the read if only to feel that you are giving company to this poor soul thrashed around by the whims of fortune, going from being on top of the world to facing an untimely and unjust violent death.
We are all Boethius, at the mercy of forces we can’t control and with no guarantee of how long our good times will last...or how drastically they will turn. His story is our story, and just for that reason, we should read his thoughts.
Week of September 2nd, 2024
Philosophy in 40 Ideas
Why Buddhism is True
The Meaning of Life
Heartbreak
The Consolation of Philosophy (Boethius)
A More Exciting Life
Lyrical and Critical Essays (Camus, only read selected essays)
Notes:
There wasn’t a book this week that I would highly recommend, but I got a lot of good bits and pieces from all of them. I especially liked reading “A More Exciting Life” by Alain de Botton. Alain is a great writer and deep thinker who can take complex subjects and make them accessible.
Week of August 25th, 2024
Thinking in Systems
That Sucked. Now What?
Chatter
Introducing: Hegel
Notes:
• August was a slow month. I took it easy during the weeks I spent traveling and then adjusting back to Montreal. Although it looks like a good number of books, several were short and easy.
I know I read the least amount this past month. Not a problem, just an observation. I wouldn’t want to have done it differently; the trip was a blast, and it deserved all the time it took away from my research.
I gained a lot of valuable lessons and information from many of August’s books, but I wouldn’t recommend any one book in particular. So far, “At the Existentialist Café,” “The Great Guide,” and “The Upside of Stress” remain the best I’ve read out of around 180 books since last December.
• The best book this week was “Thinking in Systems.” We don’t naturally look at the world and life as systems. Training ourselves to do so opens up a new mental model for making decisions and thinking about the environment, the economy, politics, and even our sense of self.
The book is challenging to get through, but the lessons you learn from it are worth the effort. Thinking in systems is a whole new way to understand the world.
I included a book on this subject in my research because I suspected that complex subjects, such as happiness, identity, and “the self,” would be better approached through a systems model than traditional linear, reductionist, or formulaic thinking. It paid off.
For the TWO Weeks of August 12th to August 25th, 2024
The Book of Disquiet (Pessoa, only read sections)
Fear and Trembling (Kierkegaard)
The Little Book of Hygge
The Metamorphosis (Kafka, re-read)
Introducing Wittgenstein
Resilience (The Cambridge University Press one)
Learned Optimism
Free Will (Sam Harris)
Notes:
Traveling cut into my reading. I still took time to read at airports, while flying, during downtime at parks, or in the evenings, and turned to audiobooks while walking and exploring. It seems like the usual volume, but many of those books were short and easy.
Week of August 5th, 2024
Philosophy: Who Needs It (Ayn Rand)
You, Happier
Hardwiring Happiness
The Art of Happiness
The Happiness Trap
Positivity
Notes:
• “Hardwiring Happiness,” although not an excellent book, presented a compelling model of three happiness pillars: Safety, Development, and Connection. I liked the concept better than Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, though they overlap in many respects.
• More importantly, I want to talk about Epicurus. I don’t agree with his entire view on ‘how to live,’ but wow! It makes a difference to read about his philosophy directly from him and from a knowledgeable commentator.
Epicurus was damn smart, and once you understand his point of departure (the nature of things), along with a clarification of what he meant by “pleasure,” you can see how his philosophy comes together with real value.
Whether you agree with it or not is one thing, but it’s a well-thought-out perspective on life that doesn’t deserve the mistaken and oversimplified version popularly associated with it.
It’s unfortunate that rival schools of the time turned Epicurus into a caricature. The Stoics are largely to blame for that. And though I like the Stoics, it’s sad to read Seneca, for example, being petty about rivalries with Epicurean teachings while at the same time appropriating great ideas from them.
Epicureanism, a philosophy based on the natural world, independent of the influence and whims of gods, encourages its followers to seek a life of ‘non-pain’ (both physical and mental) and to make the most of this earthly life without fear of death. The philosophy deserves a fair judgment based on its actual teachings, rather than on the version that has been sadly handed down to us by its rivals.
Week of July 29th, 2024
Life Lessons
How to Love
The Expectation Effect
Rules for a Knight
Self-Compassion
Notes:
• I settled into a good pace during July, with enough reading to make good progress but not so much that it would take over my life. Looking forward, August should be a slow month with a two-week trip coming up. I’ll still try to hit my target of 4 books per week, but it'll likely be shorter, easier books during my time away.
• The best of the month were “The Power of Regret” and “Resilience.” Highly recommended
• “How to Love” by Gordon Livingston was the best read this week. The title doesn’t do justice to the book. It’s more of a guide to toxic personality types, explaining how to identify them and why you should avoid them.
The premise is that friendships and romantic relationships have a significant influence on our lives; they are also the source of the greatest pleasures and miseries we can experience, so we must be cautious about who we bring into our inner circle.
I’ve liked everything I’ve read by Gordon Livingston. I don’t know why his books aren’t more popular. Maybe it’s because he’s direct and honest about life’s challenges and hardships, which for some people can be depressing.
Few want to read about the harsh truths learned from decades of working as a psychiatrist and therapist, having fought in a war, and losing two kids (one to suicide) within the same year. Livingston is an example of going through the bad, the ugly, and the unbearable in life and still having a message of hope and zest for living.
“This, I’ve come to believe, is the human condition: uncertain, confusing, often absurd, and full of anxiety in the face of an indifferent universe that can and frequently does crush our best hopes and dearest loves. Still, we push on into a future we can neither imagine nor control, with nothing to guide us but some words we share with each other and a faith that we are not alone”—Gordon Livingston
Week of July 22nd, 2024
The Good Life
Introducing: Lacan
Quit
Lost Connections
Notes:
My favorite one was “Quit.” Annie Duke is awesome. She also wrote “Thinking in Bets,” which I loved, too. In Quit, Annie takes us on a walk along the fine line between perseverance and stubbornness.
We often hear the advice, “never give up,” but sometimes quitting (a goal, a project, a job, or a relationship) is the best thing we can do, as it frees up energy and time for better things. The hard part is knowing when to stick to a path and when to change direction.
Annie does a great job explaining the psychological biases that lead us to stick with bad decisions, as well as the risks and opportunity costs of not changing course when evidence suggests we should.
Week of July 15th, 2024
*On Becoming a Person (Carl Rogers)
Scars and Stripes (Tim Kennedy)
Embrace the Suck
A River to Live By (Morita Therapy)
Notes:
• The best book this week was “On Becoming a Person” by Carl Rogers. It is mostly written for professionals in the field of psychotherapy, but certain sections make it a must-read for anyone interested in self-development.
Rogers marked a break in psychotherapy with his client-focused approach and emphasis on the relationship between therapist and client. It was fascinating to delve into his thought process as he developed therapeutic strategies that combined scientific and empirical findings.
Aside from being smart, knowledgeable, and experienced (qualities that don’t necessarily come together), Rogers was also kind and caring. Of all the psychologists, psychiatrists, and psychotherapists I’ve read about over the years, Carl Rogers and Oliver Sacks stand out as the most devoted to their profession, as well as to their clients/patients.
Week of July 8th, 2024
Unbeatable Mind
*Resilience
Man’s Search for Himself
Albert Ellis’ Refuse to Make Yourself Miserable
Alfred Adler: Understanding Life
Notes:
• My favorite read for the week was “Resilience” by Eric Greitens. I’ve read several books by Navy SEALs on toughness, endurance, and resilience, so I expected similar content. This book was different, Eric did an amazing job weaving philosophy and hard-earned experience.
The book and the author are a great example of a life of reflection AND action, the blend I’m aiming for in my own life and the same goal I have for the book I’m writing. If you’ve read enough philosophy, you will be familiar with many of the big ideas in the book, but it’s nice to have some of the best concepts from Stoicism to Nietzsche in one practical narrative.
For those put off by philosophy because of the academic or hyper-intellectual connotation, “Resilience” will show you what applied philosophy looks like and how it can improve your life. The book does an excellent job discussing philosophy in its original intent: to help us lead better lives.
• Book progress:
This month marks two milestones. The bibliography for the new book is now past 200 books, double that of my previous book (the target/limit for this new one is about 400, otherwise I’ll never get the book done). It is also the most books I’ve ever read/listened to within a year (over 140 books since December), and I still have five more months of reading for a full year.
I realized a few months ago that I needed to go all in if I wanted the research part to take less than five years without compromising on thoroughness. But I still struggle every week to find harmony between reading volume, processing the information I gather, running my company, keeping up with other responsibilities, and having a social life (especially now that it’s summer in Montreal).
Reading volume is important for my next book because there is so much around the subject of ‘how to live’ and it’s something with no absolute answers but rather a wide range of perspectives, of which I should explore as many as possible for either inspiration, understanding, to find supporting arguments, or to disagree with and build counter-arguments. I need breadth to then turn to depth.
I’m also crossing lines between philosophy, science, and individual life stories so I can find threads running through what is thought to be a life well lived (found in philosophy), what we know improves life quality (found in science research and psychotherapy), and what feels to us as a meaningful and worthy life (found in empirical accounts and subjective experiences).
Once I bring it all together, it will be one of the most unreadable messes ever assembled or something worth your time. What I think will make the difference is being able to maintain control of the material throughout the writing and finding the right harmony between depth and accessibility, as well as theory and practice.
In any case, my job is to give my best, writing the best I have to say in the best way I can say it. My mantra going into it is ‘Focus on the process. Quality in the process will lead to quality in the result.’
Week of July 1st, 2024
Alone on the Wall (Expanded Edition)
Confidence (from School of Life)
Do Hard Things
The Unexpected Gift of Trauma
*The Power of Regret
Notes:
I got good information from all the books I read this week, but if I had to choose one to recommend, it would be “The Power of Regret.” The book covers the different types of regret and the underlying psychology that feeds them. It also provides a framework to make the best out of our current regrets and minimize future ones.
The potential growth behind regret adds to the mounting evidence of the psychological benefits that can come from shifting time frames, such as looking into our past or thinking about our future.
Some spiritual traditions (and popular self-help ‘gurus’) peddle the advice that “we should think only of the present,” followed by the toxic and untrue “having your mind in the past fills you with regret and having it in the future brings you anxiety.” It’s one of those one-liners that sound wise but don’t hold up to scrutiny.
First of all, there is great joy in reminiscing on our favorite memories from the past, especially reliving them with friends. There is also joy in dreaming of our future and anticipating the good we think will come (even if it doesn't materialize), whether it’s a planned trip or a long-term goal. Beyond that, reflecting on what we have lived (the past) and what we want to live (the future) gives us direction and guides our choices.
And for all that those people claim about the “present moment” as the be-all and end- all of happiness, sometimes the present can be so unbearable that switching time frames is all that can help us endure it (Think Viktor Frankl in the concentration camp holding on to his life by thinking of recreating his manuscript and seeing his loved ones again one day, or think of any half-decent form of therapy where a view towards a possible better future and the question of “what’s next?” takes center stage in recovery).
But more related to our discussion, their advice starts from the presumption that regret and anxiety are all bad and to be avoided. Our relationship with our past and future, along with the emotions they bring out, is more nuanced than a clear-cut ‘good or bad.’ Many things that feel ‘bad’ are good (or can be turned into good) for us in the long term.
Regret highlights our values and points us to act better in the future. Anxiety shows us what we care about and signals us to prepare. Those emotions are not inherently bad; they serve a purpose, and we can benefit from them. It’s how we relate to those emotions that can be good or bad, not the emotions themselves. And since they are unavoidable, our task is to develop a better relationship with them, not trying to avoid them like anything with mint chocolate in it (now that is inherently and undeniably bad).
Week of June 24th, 2024
The Infidel and the Professor
Hegel (The Oxford University Press one)
Foucault (The Oxford University Press one)
*How to Think Like a Roman Emperor
I also read the remaining three short essays by Hume on different life perspectives:
-The Epicurean
-The Stoic
-The Platonist
(I read “The Sceptic” a few weeks back)
Notes:
• It was a slow month compared to May (I read almost twice as much last month, though I knew that was unsustainable). I’ll try to step up the pace again in July since I still have about 200 books to read for the bulk of the research and I haven’t even gotten to the long, dense, and complex books I’m saving for the final stretch, i.e. Phenomenology of Spirit (Hegel), Being and Time (Heidegger), and some other titans.
• The best of the month was “The Upside of Stress.” It’s an excellent science book on the positive benefits of stress, challenge, and struggle. I’ll use much of the research presented in this book as the scientific support for some of Nietzsche’s ideas and Stoic practices that I’ll write about in my next book.
• The Infidel and the Professor was a recommendation from a friend. It’s about the friendship and philosophy of David Hume and Adam Smith.
With friendships taking on a more important role in my life over the past few years, I find these stories of great friends inspiring and heartwarming, sometimes rising above the great romantic stories of history.
Hume and Smith, Montaigne and Étienne de La Boétie, Erasmus and Thomas More, and, of course, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simon de Beauvoir (though romantic in the beginning, it was more of a loving friendship for most of their lives).
Without these role models of what great friendships look like, and the joys and depths they can bring to our lives, we could mistakenly call ‘friends’ those who are merely outing partners (‘drinking buddies’ and ‘convenience friends’) or acquaintances. That is not friendship.
The level of support, encouragement, complicity, and companionship of true friends rivals— and in many aspects surpasses —the glorified yet impossible vision we are often sold of romantic love.
“Life without friends is a wasteland. Friendship multiplies good and shares evils. It is a unique remedy for bad luck and sweet relief to the soul”—Baltasar Gracian
“No good thing is pleasant to possess, without friends to share it”—Seneca
“Without friendship, a human being is lost. A friend is someone who reminds you to feel alive. Having even just one good friend means that the world takes on a new meaning. One good friend can be your entire world”—Eddie Jaku
Here’s to all inspiring friendships and to great friends, and of course, to the noblest of them all, whom I do not deserve but lady fortune has been kind enough to grant me: @imdanielgp Cheers!
Week of June 17th, 2024
The Art of Resilience
Existentialism is a Humanism
Endure (The Alex Hutchinson one)
Cómo Hacer Que te Pasen Cosas Buenas
Notes:
• Another week of dragging my feet to my minimum weekly reading target (4 books/week). This is what working on tedious, long-term projects looks like. There are dips and times when your mind rebels against doing the same work day in and day out, seven days a week, without short-term gratification or visible progress toward the end result.
You chip away slowly from a massive block of marble that will take years to shape into your vision. So, inevitably, there are days, weeks, and sometimes months when the chipping away loses all meaning and you only do it out of trust in yourself that it will amount to something.
However, whenever you go through those dips, your productivity suffers. No matter. It’s part of the process. The job is to keep chipping away every day, even if slowly and uninspired.
• I rarely read in Spanish despite it being my first language. I’ve spent so much of my life reading in English that it feels strange to pick up a book in Spanish.
For those who speak Spanish, “Cómo hacer que te pasen cosas buenas” is a great book that compiles some of the best concepts from psychology and neurobiology to enhance mental health and lead more fulfilling lives.
Week of June 10th, 2024
Endure (The Cameron Hanes one)
A Little Happier
^ The Upside of Stress
The Paradox of Choice
Notes:
It was an eventful week that took up a lot of my time and, most importantly, diverted my focus away from reading. I still hit my minimum weekly target.
Of those four books, “The Upside of Stress” was my favorite. It provided the scientific validation for the main idea I’m exploring in my next book: the value of struggle for living a fulfilling and meaningful life.
From the Stoics to Nietzsche, many philosophers have emphasized the importance of changing our relationship with challenges and hardship. “The Upside of Stress” provides a solid scientific foundation for these ideas.
Tbook discusses the research and findings on the benefits of stress and why we should change our perspective on it, rather than trying to eliminate it. It’s one of the best science books I’ve read in a long time. Highly recommended.
Week of June 3rd, 2024
When Things Fall Apart
Afraid
*Fearvana
Don’t Forget to Live
Not Fade Away
Notes:
• Both “Afraid” and “Fearvana” were excellent books on the nature, neuroscience, and psychology of fear.
“Afraid” has a more scientific tone, while “Fearvana” reads like a motivational/personal development book (though it’s well-researched, too).
If I had to recommend one of the two, it would be “Fearvana.” I took away many great ideas from it.
I almost passed on the book because of the things we are not supposed to judge a book by (but still influence us): Name, cover, blurbs.
The name and cover make it seem like a spiritual (or spirituality-based) book, which it is not. And the main blurb is from the Dalai Lama. So everything pointed to another book based on Buddhist teachings, and after reading so much based on Buddhism recently (including this week’s “When Things Fall Apart”), I can’t stomach another “There was once a young monk who (insert stupid thing he said or did), and then the master said to him...” story.
• On that last note, be wary of stories that start with some variation of “An old wise man once said...” or that involve a dynamic between a wise person/master and a naive student. In all likelihood, there was never “a wise man;” it’s the author borrowing authority from an imaginary figure to give importance to what he/she is saying.
It’s a cheap psychological trick to prime us into accepting an idea because it comes from a respectable source, so we are not only more likely to take it seriously but also less likely to challenge it (who are we to disagree with the wise? they must be right even if it feels off).
What’s more suspicious is that the “wise man” or master is rarely a specific man; he has no name, no background, no past, no future, not even a physical location. He’s just an archetype.
To step it up a notch, when was the last time you read a story from old traditions that began with, “A wise woman once said...”? I don’t think I ever did, why? The marginalization of women throughout history from intellectual and influential spiritual circles is obviously a cause (so we have fewer writings from them or about them), but the fact that the ‘wise people’ authors have written about are universally male (which is impossible even accounting for the marginalization of women), is evidence of not just obvious sexism, but also of the likelihood that those stories never happened and are only a ploy to bypass our critical thinking.
These authors, aside from being cowards and cheats who can’t stand by their writing but have to borrow credibility from imaginary authority figures to give their ideas undeserved influence, also compound their crimes with sexism by exclusively putting their words in the mouths of those who they believed would command the most respect of their time: OLD, WISE, MEN.
Down for a re-read of “The Alchemist,” anyone? ;)
Week of May 27th, 2024
The Comfort Book
Dopamine Nation
Burnout
Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life
Essay:
The Sceptic by David Hume
Notes:
• If I have the stamina to maintain this pace, I might complete the bulk of the research in about a year. Then I’ll switch gears to focus more on organizing everything I’ve been compiling and spend more time writing.
But, as the wise philosopher Mike Tyson once said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” We’ll see what happens in the coming months.
• The best of the bunch was “The Great Guide: What David Hume Can Teach Us About Being Human and Living Well.” Wonderful book about the life and philosophy of David Hume. It’s the second-best book I’ve read in the past six months (my best remains “At the Existentialist Café”).
• So the obvious question, given the volume of reading, is, “How can you retain anything from all those books?”
I don’t. At this point, my reading is for exploration, understanding, making connections with what I already know, and to stimulate my own thinking and writing.
I want to know what’s out there (what has been written before) and open my awareness to different perspectives, philosophers, and ideas.
At the same time, I want to understand these ideas in relation to others I’ve encountered and develop my own. This guides me into what to research further and provides more context for everything I learn.
For those familiar with my previous book, these represent the explore and understand phases of the learning model. Memorizing comes later.
Basically, my first encounter with a book is to mine for gold; the processing of the gold I find comes after.
While I read, I take notes, bookmark, underline, and write my own ideas on the subject. Then, I revisit those notes and underlinings to study the material and combine it with information from other sources to create master documents, which ultimately become the skeletons for chapters (I’ll explain this process in more detail in future posts).
• Hume continues to impress. He was passionate about philosophy but never allowed it to consume him. He was as engaged with the world and people as he was with the world of ideas, switching effortlessly between them.
Another aspect of Hume that I love is that he was tough and critical of ideas, yet gentle with people. It’s as if he took philosophical discussion as a professional sport meant to be played seriously but never losing sight that it was still just a sport and that once a match was over, there were no grudges to be held and no enemies in sight, just competitors to be respected as fellow humans that simply held different views.
For him, there was a time and a place for debate, but outside of that, we were meant to be “merry” and friendly, enjoying what life and people had to offer.
Much respect for Hume.
Week of May 20th, 2024
The Human Predicament
Candide (Voltaire)
Becoming Bulletproof
Sick Souls, Healthy Minds (William James Philosophy)
The World I Live in and Optimism (Helen Keller)
Be Not Afraid of Life: In the Words of William James
Notes:
• I had never read anything about or by William James, so both books, “Sick Souls, Healthy Minds” and “Be Not Afraid of Life,” were a great introduction.
I only took a few ideas from those books, but the ones I took were great, like this one: “It is, indeed, a remarkable fact that sufferings and hardships do not, as a rule, abate the love of life; they seem, on the contrary, usually to give it a keener zest. The sovereign source of melancholy is repletion. Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us; our hour of triumph is what brings the void.”—William James
• In addition to the books on William James, I enjoyed “Becoming Bulletproof” by Evy Poumpouras. She’s an all-around badass and wrote an excellent book on the skills she learned while serving as a US Secret Service agent. The book covers too much ground, so it occasionally loses focus, but it’s still worth reading.
Week of May 13th, 2024
What is Existentialism? (Beauvoir)
Hagakure
The First Philosophers
A Year with Rilke
The Comfort Crisis
Tiny Beautiful Things
Notes:
• There was a lot of good stuff this week.
Reading Simone de Beauvoir was invigorating. She was smart, sharp, knowledgeable, and a great writer. “What is existentialism?” covers some of the main points of the philosophy and the unique contribution that de Beauvoir made to it.
• Rilke was right up my dark alley. I’m not much into poetry, but I got some gems out of “A Year with Rilke.”
• Tiny beautiful things. The book is a collection of no-BS advice from Cheryl Strayed, A.K.A. “Dear Sugar,” on relationships, hardship, loss, and much more. Damn, she’s good. I’ve had this book for a long time, I’m glad I finally read it. It deserves the hype.
Week of May 6th, 2024
The Gift
On the Nature of Things (Lucretius)
*A Guide to The Good Life
Philosophy of Existence (Karl Jaspers)
Don’t Believe Everything You Think
The Upward Spiral
Heidegger: A Graphic Guide
Notes:
My favorite book this week was “A Guide to the Good Life.” It’s an accessible book on Stoic philosophy.
Since I’ve already read many books on stoicism over the years, I didn’t get many new insights or stories, but it was still worth the read. The author does a great job organizing Stoic ideas and turning them into practical “exercises.”
If you want to learn about stoicism but don’t know where to start, “A Guide to the Good Life” is an excellent introduction.
Week of April 29th, 2024
^The Great Guide: David Hume
On Confidence
A Simpler Life
Self-Knowlege
Getting to Neutral
Varieties of Melancholy
On Self-hatred
On Failure
Anxiety
My Own Life (Hume)
Become Who You Are
Notes:
• Several of these books were short, so it’s not as much volume as it seems.
My favourite this week was “The Great Guide.” I loved David Hume’s biography. Hume was a colorful character with the right blend of a man of reflection and a man of action, which I aspire to in my own life.
• This current pace is unsustainable, but I’ll keep it up for as long as I have the energy. My goal is to read four books per week, which I think is more sustainable. I have to be careful not to burn out since this is a marathon (about two years at that pace), but I’m so into the project that I can’t hold back and end up sprinting for weeks at a time.
It reminds me of the quote from Darwin I put in my previous book: “It is a cursed evil to any man to become as absorbed in any subject as I am in mine.”
Week of April 22nd, 2024
The Denial of Death
Life is Hard
Humanly Possible
How Proust can Change your Life
Notes on Research from Mid-February to End of April 2024
• Best book of the bunch by far: “At the Existentialist Café” by Sarah Bakewell. I wish every author took writing as seriously and artfully as Bakewell. She’s so good it makes me hate everything I’ve ever written...and that’s a good thing. It shows me how much I have to level up. Sometimes I think I’m doing good work, and then I come across authors like Bakewell and I realize I’ve been swimming in the kiddie pool.
The book is insanely well-researched and an absolute joy to read. She’s passionate about her subject, always in command of the material, and grips the reader from beginning to end. I could fill pages with praise for her.
For writers, authors like Bakewell are the ones worth reading, they show us that a greater standard is possible and that we should aim at it because the result is worth it.
For bookworms, books like “At the Existentialist Café” are the reason we read so much. We crave to find the next amazing book that shakes us. They become events in our lives.
Respect, Bakewell...respect.
• Other great books:
“A life of meaning.” First contact with James Hollis. It was excellent, I’ll be reading more of his books.
“The Little Big Things.” Fascinating story about the author’s journey from losing mobility from the neck down after an accident to creating a meaningful life. The psychological account of the first days in terror and despair after the accident is like nothing I’ve read before. I don’t know how he was able to put that into words. Some of the most moving writing I’ve ever come across.
“The Road Less Travelled.” I avoided this book for a long time because l thought it was going to be a collection of platitudes. I was wrong. It was a great read.
“The Conquest of Happiness.” I almost passed on this book because I thought, “I don’t think happiness is Russell’s subject. What can he add to the discussion?” A lot! It turned out.
“The Art of Worldly Wisdom.” For Robert Greene’s 48 Laws of Power fans, you’ll find his kindred soul in Baltasar Gracian. Good read.
“Four Thousand Weeks.” A much-needed change in perspective about how we spend our lives. Highly recommended.
“The Courage to be Disliked.” Not a fan of the format, but it was a great introduction to Alfred Adler’s psychology.
• On the Not-so-good side:
“The Denial of Death.” I’ve seen a lot of people recommending this book... don’t think they read it, or maybe they just read a summary of it, because other than the main premise, which is worth considering, the book is full of outdated psychological theories, some of them homophobic and sexist. The book is a drag to read, I had to soldier on to get to the end. I kept thinking, “The good stuff might be coming up.” It never came. The writing is abstract, and much of the material is presented as a certainty, which has not aged well. I still got some ideas out of it, so not all was bad, but it fell short of what it’s been hyped up to be.
“Happiness” by Matthieu Ricard. I don’t remember shaking my head in disagreement so much while reading a book. It’s not a bad book, and that’s what makes it hard to criticize. The author did a great job. The book is well-researched, the arguments are well-structured and organized, and the writing is good. Ricard is smart and well-read. My problem with it was the uses and abuses of logic to point everything to Buddhism, especially after stating early in the book that the discussion was not going to be about Buddhism (it turned out to be all about Buddhism). A book like this is what results from a very intelligent person trying to bend the world to fit a religious or spiritual set of beliefs. But the thing is that we all do the same; we all gather arguments to support our worldview and rationalize our beliefs, so I can’t fault him for that (he actually does it well). Ultimately, my issue with the book was that it read as, “This is not faith; this is logical and science-backed.” For those of you into Buddhism or those tiptoeing into it but feel uncomfortable with the idea of “spirituality” or “faith,” Ricard can be your champion. So, if I have already lost you to Buddhism, at least read the good writers. Ricard is one of them.
Week of April 15th, 2024
*Four Thousand Weeks
The Antidote
Self-Reliance and Other Essays Emerson
Wanting
*The Courage to be Disliked
How Will You Measure Your Life?
Struggle (mostly skimmed)
Week of April 8th, 2024
The Nicomachean Ethics
*The Art of Worldly Wisdom
The Power in You
*The Road Less Traveled
*The Conquest of Happiness
Book of Job
The Teachings of Zoroaster
^At the Existentialist Café
Week of April 1st, 2024
The Book
The Prophet
How to Die Happy
The Bed of Procrustes
Bittersweet
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Rochefaucauld Maxims
*Furiously Happy
*Darkness Visible
Week of March 25th, 2024
No Longer Human
*Course: Philosophy as a Guide to Living
*Course: Existentialism and the Authentic Life
Nagomi
Ganbatte
Daring Greatly
Week of March 18th, 2024
Think Like a Monk
An Introduction to Buddhism
Pindar Odes
Happiness
Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess
Week of March 11th, 2024
Ariel
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
Tao Te Ching
Phosphorescence
Bhagavad Gita
Week of March 4th, 2024
*The Little Big Things
101 Essays That Will Change the Way You Think
Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
In the Dust of This Planet
Feb 18th until March 3rd, 2024
*No Excuses: Existentialism Course
*A Life of Meaning
*Dear Fellow Time-Bender
The Mountain is You
A Very Easy Death
The Untethered Soul
Japanese Death Poems
How to Die (Seneca)
From December 1st, 2023 until Feb 17th, 2024
The Great Ideas of Philosophy Course
*The Meaning of Life Course
The Last Lecture
Tuesdays with Morrie
^The Gulag Archipelago
*The Happiest Man on Earth
Siddhartha
Narcissus and Goldmund
The Death of Ivan Ilyich
Notes From the Underground
^The Midnight Library
The Diary of a CEO
Inferior
Courage Under Fire
Pensamientos de un Viejo
Letters From a Stoic
On Living and Dying Well
Meditations
Fragments
Enchiridion
Of Peace of Mind
Gratitude
That One Should Disdain Hardships
How to Live (Sivers)
*You Learn by Living
The Myth of Sisyphus
Letters to a Young Poet
The Man in the Arena
Notes:
• I read The Gulag Archipelago, and it devastated me. For some reason, I thought I should read “The Happiest Man on Earth” after it to stay somewhat on theme. That compounded the problem.
Not paying attention to my deteriorating emotional state, I followed with “The Last Lecture” and “Tuesdays with Morrie.” Some would see these last two as motivational, but reading about the professor dying of cancer (the last lecture) and the other one of ALS (Tuesdays with Morrie), after accounts of concentration camps (Gulag Archipelago and The Happiest Man on Earth), didn’t help. I fell into an abyss, and it took me a few weeks to recover.
Gulag Archipelago should be required reading for everyone. The stories of what we are capable of doing to each other based on political or religious indoctrination and how regimes have taken arrest, torture, and oppression almost down to a science are terrifying. Read it if only to pay tribute to the poor souls who fell into the hands of Stalin’s rule, so at least their stories are heard. But be ready to be depressed for a while.
• On a lighter note, “The Midnight Library” was a beautiful fiction read about our unlived lives and the paths not taken that often haunt us. I couldn’t put it down. Great writing with a powerful life-affirming message that lingers well after finishing the book.
• “Narcissus and Goldmund” was my dad’s favorite book, and he often asked me to read it when I was in my mid-teens. I had always had it on my to-read list, but I didn’t get to it until now, and I’m glad it happened that way. I would have missed the interplay between the Apollonian and Dionysian elements that is so prevalent in Nietzsche’s philosophy. I got some awesome gems from this book.
• Another one from Hesse, “Siddhartha.” This was a re-read. I read it for the first time in my teens after my dad recommended it (it was another of his top books). I wanted to revisit it because I’ve been studying Eastern philosophies. Hesse was a master of the craft. It’s rare to read something so well written. He manages to transmit the essence of Buddhist philosophy through pure storytelling. Hats off to Hesse; the last chapter of the book is mindblowing writing.
It was a very different read this time around because back in my teens, when I first read it, I was getting into Buddhism, but over the years, I’ve moved further and further away from it. This last reading was mostly an ‘academic’ read for me.
• Tied to the last point, I really enjoyed the course “The Meaning of Life: Perspectives from the World’s Great Intellectual Traditions.” What stood out to me here were some interesting perspectives on personal responsibility from Hinduism found in the Bhagavad Gita. I also moved further away from Buddhism the deeper I studied it. On the other hand, I moved closer to my all-time favorite, Nietzsche, and the Existentialists.
Interestingly, my mom had always been a huge fan of Nietzsche, long before I ever paid attention to him. She was the OG Nietzsche reader of the family.
At the Existentialist Café
The Great Guide: David Hume
Living an Examined Life
Nietzsche: Fighting Demons
The Gulag Archipelago
The Upside of Stress
The Sweet Spot
Being You
The Midnight Library
You Learn by Living
The Happiest Man on Earth
A Life of Meaning
Dear Fellow Time-Bender
The Little Big Things
Furiously Happy
Darkness Visible
The Art of Worldly Wisdom
The Road Less Traveled
The Conquest of Happiness
The Courage to be Disliked
Four Thousand Weeks
A Guide to The Good Life
Fearvana
Resilience
The Power of Regret
On Becoming a Person
The Noonday Demon
Meditations for Mortals
Clear Thinking
How to Think Like a Roman Emperor
Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life
Through the Dark Wood
The Art of Thinking Clearly
Love’s Executioner
Dancing With the Devil
The Meaning of Life (Course)
No Excuses: Existentialism (Course)
Philosophy as a Guide to Living (Course)
Existentialism and the Authentic Life (Course)
How Emotions Are Made
The Other Side of Happiness
Goethe: Life as a Work of Art
Nietzsche In Italy