I picked up a really thought provoking and useful book from our local ‘thrift shop’ for R5- (about 30 cents USA). The Book was written in 1965 and is titled: “How to Double your Power to Learn!” by Eugene M Schwartz; Executive Research Institute 1965 N.Y.
I doubt it is in print any more but what I like about it is the notes that its previous owner wrote in the margins of the book.
Here are 4 books that I’ve read and studied over the last few years. . .
Difficult Conversations, by Stone, Patton and Heen
Beyond Reason by Fisher and Shapiro
Negotiating the Nonnegotiable, by Shapiro
Never Split the Difference by Voss
They are insightful, and just reading them is interesting, but not enough. I needed to study them, and practice, and I even taught. I don’t claim that I’m particularly good at difficult conversations, but I am better. I was able to get one conversation that had gone off the rails, back to being productive.
Campbell Biology
It’s a biology textbook. I’d say it covers most of undergraduate biology in 1.5K pages of relatively easily digestible material - going 30 pages/day is doable, esp. with mnemonics. Understanding this book will put you miles ahead of most undergraduate biologists.
Otherwise, I’m suprised by how many great suggestions there are in this thread that collide with my opinions. Guess it’s a sign many of these books should be read.
Arthur Worsley who used to maintain the site TheArtOfLiving has created many curated book lists. We get some curated lists for reference to create our own using his lists, even if they are opinionated.
All 452 Book Recommendations from “Tools of Titans”, by Tim Ferriss
Best Biographies: 70 Best Biography Books and Memoirs of All Time
Best Books of All Time: 101 Books to Read Before You Die (2019)
Best Books on Learning: 70 Great Books on How to Learn Faster (2019)
Best Books on Memory: 35 Books For Massive Memory Improvement (2019)
Best Books on Mindset: 35 Books to Unleash the Power of your Thoughts (2019)
Best Books on Money: 35 Books on Investing and Personal Finance (2019)
Best Books on Productivity: 70 Books to Start Accomplishing More Each Day (2019)
My earlier post became invalid due to dead links hence posting again with links to the same content from Wayback Machine Internet Archive.
Hi, y’all!
A lot of interesting recommendations in this post.
I’d like to add perhaps the most influential book for my life in the last years, which hasn’t been mentioned. Is Nonviolent Communication, by Marshall Rosenberg, although I believe it’s fair to say that the courses on YouTube are even more important if you want not an intellectual understanding, but also a means to change the way you live.
I’d describe the approach as a way to make some Buddhist and existentialist positions practically applicable, for perspective and interaction with others. Specifically the idea that it is possible to relate to others from a place of compassion, love and interest, without the need of a moralizing language (although in the book there is no use of this idea, I believe it develops a form of ethical “moral nihilism”, for lack of a better term). The basic idea is to abstain from making moral judgements, and also be very wary of confounding our interpretations and analysis for reality. Instead, you try to stick to non judging observations, honest expressions of feelings stimulated by those observations, taking responsibility for those feelings (relating them to your needs, without any demands) and expressing concrete requests. Of course there is a lot more to it, but that is a start.
Personally, I have significantly reduced my experiences of anger or self-righteousness (while also developing my ability to get my needs meet), developed a lot of empathy, understanding and equanimity, and experienced a huge improvement in virtually all my relationships.
Anyway, just thought this would be a fitting place to share this “personal discovery”.
Thank you for this recommendation. Which Youtube video(s) would you recommend?
Hi, Michael! I’m happy to share.
There are two workshops recorded in Youtube, 3 and 8 hours, I believe. They are gold:
There is also a lot of content on the site:
Hope that helps!
Thank you Dante.
This was a brilliant book. I really enjoyed it.
I already wrote something in this thread, but it appeared again in the feed.
Many of the books mentioned here are non-fiction, for obvious reasons, because they transmit ideas ‘directly’. I have read many of the books shared here and some are very good.
I think we easily forget the relevance and the influence of fiction: tales, novels, even poetry. Their influence might be more subtle, and we might not be aware of it, but it can be deep, and only many years later we can be aware of the influence they had on us.
Often, we have received a very technical education (elegantly called scientific,) and mistrust anything that is not measurable and verifiable, and dismiss anything beyond that as “belief.” Nevertheless, the same worldview that each one of us has cannot itself be verified. Among the books mentioned in this thread someone wrote Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning.” Precisely this “meaning” is something that cannot be tested by the scientific method. I think fiction can arrive to places non-fiction cannot arrive.
In this area, I would like to mention, beside the titles I already shared, the books by the Canadian author Michael O’Brien. They are not books by everyone, and for many can be too explicitly religious. They will not earn any Nobel Prize but some are quite deep.
I also think fiction books are excellent for boosting creativity. Unrelated question, are you Canadian Liam?
No, but I’d love to visit
Off of the top of my head (memory wise) and what lead into it probably the good ole Think and Grow Rich. First, this one is not directly related to memory but sort of helped remove the negative “self help adage” from the nonfiction scene for me. This lead into Moonwalking with Einstein, which lead into several others, the most pronounced being Ultralearning.
Monk who sold his Ferrari
The Art and Craft of Problem Solving. It has some really good problem solving techniques, even though it’s focus is maths, you can apply the knowledge to many fields. There are many free pdfs online, as the book is really expensive.
wow thank you very much for that list! I’ve read a bunch of those but haven’t even heard of most of them, so looking forward to tackling that list!
Romance of three kingdoms
by Luo Guanzhong
Lord of Mysteries
hugely recommend it
but it’s only available on webnovel app
so the #1 book that changed my life as an adult is Jordan Peterson’s “Maps of Meaning” . I listened to the audiobook 3 times in a row, then took a break to listen to other audiobooks, but have gone back to Maps off Meaning so many times that I lost count/stopped counting. Definitely more than 10 times, but probably less than 20. Recently, based on this very thread, no less, I finished “Ultralearning” by Scott Young and that book is insanely good. “Zen Mind, Beginners Mind” by Shunryu Suzuki is definitely one of my favorites, you can basically open it up to any random page and find deep wisdom, I’m sure I’ve read that book at least 20+ times. It’s not a long book, i have thought many times that maybe I should memorize it. Obviously “Moonwalking with Einstein”, that was actually the book that introduced me to “The Art of Memory” in the first place. I also recently finished Lynne Kelly’s “Memory Craft” which was also insanely good, and worth reading (or listening on Audible) more than once.