For all the progress updates in one place:
Progress Update: December 2024
Here are the books I read/listened to for my research during 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.