For all the progress updates in one place:
From December 1st, 2023 until the End of February, 2024
Here are the books I read/listened to for my research between December 1st, 2023 (when I started documenting my research) and the end of February 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
On The Meaning of Life
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
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)
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.