Books, p.1
I loved reading since I was little, and fiction always was - and remains - my first choice. I have an equally hard time understanding people who say they never read fiction (dismissing it as a waste of time), as well as those who don’t read at all. I am convinced that I learned just as much (if not more) about people, relationships, character, and everything else that makes a life from fiction as I did from reading non-fiction, popular science, philosophy, and psychology literature.
Nevertheless, I decided to start the list of Books That Changed My Life with works of non-fiction, mostly because I find that the beneficial wisdom of these books is more straightforward, and easier to convey. Also, I find that the fiction I read and considered transformational at certain points in my life often lost some (or most) of its ability to awe me as the years past (think of how much of Catcher in the Rye, or the Little Prince, resonated with you if you first read them as a kid, versus as an adult). I think that as we age, and accumulate both life and literary experience, our fiction also needs to keep up to be considered awe-inspiring. That being said, I do plan on making a fiction list at some point, as a conversation starter, if nothing else.
Finally, I’ve put the list together in a chronological order, as I discovered them for the first time. I think that the way in which they correspond to the stages in my life when I first discovered them is really neat. My plan is to continue updating this list, as my interests - and life - moves on.
Happy reading!
Meditations: Thoughts To Myself by Marcus Aurelius: I don’t remember how I found this book (casually reading philosophy was not my thing in adolescence), but I remember the warm early-fall day, sitting in the park, on a lunch break from my first internship job, and feeling like I discovered something really, really special. This book simply crushed all of my preconceptions about long-dead philosophers, the anticipated tedium, and inability to “get it”. Its language was (for the most part) simple and free of pathos, and its message eye-opening, mind-altering, and thought-provoking, independent of context. I believe that it was the first book I read that made me think that all that’s required for a radical change is a shift in perspective.
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami: In my late twenties, I got this short book as birthday present, and read it over one weekend. I was already familiar with Murakami’s genius, weird, magical fiction at the time, and was surprised to find little of that in this memoir. Still, the lack of weird, dreamy plots and characters did not take away from the brilliance of this non-fiction work. I found myself to be totally inspired by Murakami's life story, the one in which he is something more than a renowned writer - a passionate marathoner. Until then, I had an aversion to running, and had long decided that I just wasn't "built for it". After a weekend of reading Murakami, I felt a strange compulsion to try and go for a 5-minute run down the street. Fast forward to present: over the years, I completed four full- and dozens of half marathons, and I can hardly remember the time when I did not go for a run at least 3 times a week. Looking back, I can pinpoint the exact moment when I first thought that maybe running had something to offer that would be worth the hassle; it was the moment when I finished “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running”, and allowed inspiration to propel me forward, to the end of my street.
Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker: A book about the history of violence, with an unexpectedly optimistic message woven through its 800-or so pages. Pinker’s book is one of those that I just could not stop talking about, during and after I finished it. Beyond the main thesis and arguments, it is also filled with unbelievable historical snippets (such as the one about how organizations for animal protection predated those for child protection). It certainly changed the way I think about violence in society, but I think of that as a secondary benefit. The real reason why I included this book on the list was that it taught me to look beyond what I think I know, what seems to be intuitively true, and what looks like the easiest answer.
A Guide to the Good Life by William B. Irvine: I first glimpsed at this book in the unlikely setting of my then-boss’s office. The title sounded like self-help literature, which would have been completely out of character for him, and that made me Google the book to figure out what it was really about. As it turned out, it was a sort of self-help, but of the ancient philosophy type, bringing the wisdom of stoic sages - as well as great history lessons - into the modern context. Having been utterly amazed by Marcus Aurelius’ writings years earlier, I knew that the Stoic thinking would resonate. This time, however, thanks to the wonderful writing by W. B. Irvine, I saw how it could be applied in my own life. The Stoic philosophy was suddenly brought back into life to me, as practical, workable tools. The millennia-old exercises and thought experiments, I found out, were still just as transformational. (Note: William Irvine recently joined Sam Harris’s Waking Up app, with a series of Stoic meditations and exercises, which I highly recommend).
My Struggle, Book 1, 2, and 3 by Ove Knausgaard: Radical Honesty as a concept has been applied to everything from personal relationships to business, both genuinely revered and satirized. Knausgaard brought the concept to literature in the multi-tome autobiography My Struggle. To say that he “bears it all” is putting it mildly. In these books, the author reveals everything, from the tedious minutia of his daily life as a stay-at-home dad and writer with an alcohol problem, his random, often embarrassingly lusty thoughts about women he sees at his kids’ daycare, to his traumatic personal history. The genius of the book is that is intertwines the mundane with the tragic, the long periods of nothing with moments of intense emotion, and pages of irrelevant mind chatter with a paragraph of profound depth and truth. In that way, it is the most precise transcript of life that I ever read.
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk: If there was any one book that inspired me to take my interest in psychology and psychiatry from the realm of “interest” into the realm of “profession”, it was this one. Anyone with any interest in mental health has probably heard about this groundbreaking, seminal work, which revealed so much about the science of trauma, mind-body connection, new paradigms and interventions. It is also beautifully written, grounded in science, without being devoid of heart.
