“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies . . . The man who never reads lives only one.”
Here’s a few amazing books you should add to your reading list…

1. Psychology/Self-Help
•Flow
•Riveted
•Proverbs
•Influence
•The Prophet
•The War of Art
•The Way to Love
•Seeking Wisdom
•The Folly of Fools
•Managing Oneself
•As a Man Thinketh
•The Decision Book
•Outwitting the Devil
•Man’s Search for Meaning
•The Laws of Human Nature
•The Conquest of Happiness
•Evolutionary Psychology (David Buss)
•Letters from a self made merchant to his son

2. Biography/Power
•Titan
•Grant
•On War
•Shoe Dog
•Total Recall
•Born to Run
•The Art of War
•The Power Broker
•Montaigne’s Essays
•The Fish that Ate the Whale
•Empire of the Summer Moon
•The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
•Genghis Khan: Making of the Modern World
•The Tiger: A true story of Vengeance and Survival
•48 Laws of Power (@DentesLeo “Vizier” is more straightforward and easy to read)

3. Classic Literature
•Hamlet
•Dracula
•Odyssey
•The Road
•Fight Club
•Don Quixote
•Frankenstein
•The Stranger
•The Invisible Man
•Brave New World
•Pilgrims Progress
•Clockwork Orange
•The Time Machine
•Crime and Punishment
•No Country for Old Men
•The Brothers Karamazov
•The Old Man and the Sea
•The Master and Margarita
•The Count of Monte Cristo
•Strange case of Dr. Jekyll and My. Hyde

4. Business/History
•Hagakure
•The 50th Law
•What it Takes
•Fallen Leaves
•How to Get Rich
•Skin in the Game
•The Narrow Road
•Lessons of History
•Antifragile (@nntaleb)
•How to be a Billionaire
•On The Shortness of Life
•The Richest Man in Babylon
•The Greatest Ideas of all Time
•The Wealth and Poverty of Nations
•Will Durant 12 Lessons of History (12 Volumes)

5 Problems with Reading:
1. You gain wisdom you didn’t earn (Carl Jung).
2. Reading without action is procrastination.
Reading gives you an advantage over others.
Without taking action, you’re wasting the potential you build from reading.
3. Finishing a book you’re not enjoying because you think you have to read the whole book.
Sunk-cost fallacy: Sticking with a task because you’ve invested time.
Sometimes it’s best to cut your losses and not finish the book.
4. Reading a book once
Good books should be like friends you visit often.
5. Reading too many books is a waste of time.
Better to read 1 great book 10 times instead of 10 average books.

Do you forget everything you read?
Here’s why that’s okay:
“I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.”

For people who think you should ONLY read business books (and not literature):
Some of the deepest human insights are portrayed in fictional characters.
Deeper than psychology textbooks…
Authors would talk about strange ideas (at the time of writing) in the forms of various characters to avoid controversy and persecution….
… In order to get those ideas into the public.
There’s a reason these books have been around over 50 years.
There’s deep human wisdom that resonates with the human spirit.
If they weren’t good, they would’ve been lost in time.

Speed reading is a modern day SCAM.
When you read a book in 30 minutes, you find good ideas and a few quotes…
…But you haven’t wrestled with the hard earned wisdom the author is giving you.
Speed reading doesn’t give you time to let the book transform you.
And the whole point of reading is to upgrade your thinking…
As Woody Allen said:
“I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace. It involves Russia.”
Better to read 1 life changing book a year than 100 books on the bestseller list.

Here’s a few movies (that are hidden gems):
-Alien
-Rocky
-Psycho
-Scarface
-Mad Max
-Whiplash
-Braveheart
-The Shining
-Being There
-A Bronx Tale
-Godfather II
-Nightcrawler
-Seven Samurai
-Life is Beautiful
-Cool Hand Luke
-Groundhog Day
-Eastern Promises
-The Seventh Seal
-Captain Fantastic
-There Will Be Blood
-Little Miss Sunshine
-No Country for Old Men
-One Flew over the Cuckoos Nest

Tv shows that’ll make you think:
-Severance
-Succession

2 Amazing Podcasts you can listen to over and over
1. Hardcore History @HardcoreHistory
Start with: Wrath of the Khans (1-5)
2. The Truth Seeker Podcast @KapilguptaMD
Start wherever (Beware of enlightenment)

Thank you for reading! Follow @Fathers_Writes
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