Quote:
Originally Posted by dan300
Right, so I went through my list, removed a load of the shit, and replaced the shit with much better material. Think of the first list like a rushed, rough draft. There's some classic works of literature in there now that had been on my radar. It's also been reduced from 52 to 40. Quality over quantity.
I had 125 books in my eBook app and I deleted 51 of them. When I thought to myself "do I really give a fuck about El Chapo, or the true life account of Pablo Escobar's brother?", the answer was no, I don't give a flying one.
You'll see one self-development style book in there by Robert Greene. I figured that since I claim him as my favourite author in this genre, I'd delete everything else in the genre and only keep his work.
It feels great to have removed all those books. One of my problems was that once I'd download a book, I felt some sort of obligation that one day I'll have to read it. It gave me an overwhelming anxiety that I had all these books building up, but now I've been relieved of that burden and will never again read books for the sake of reading them.
I'm much happier with this list..
1. Totalitarianism in the Twentieth Century
2. A night to Remember (Titanic)
3. The Kreutzer Sonata (Tolstoy)
4. Dear Leader: Poet, Spy, Escapee (North Korea)
5. The Laws of Human Nature (Greene)
6. The Road to Wigan pier (Orwell)
7. Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
8. The Nemesis File (SAS vs Provies)
9. Shantaram (G. D. Roberts)
10. Nothing to Envy (North Korea)
11. South: The Endurance Expedition
12. The Years of Extermination 1933 – 1945
13. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
14. Auschwitz: A Doctors Eyewitness Account
15. KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps
16. The Brothers Karamazov
17. Ratline: Soviet Spies, Nazi Priests
18. Hitlers Willing Executioners
19. A Clockwork Orange
20. The Night Lives On (Titanic)
21. The First Circle (Solzhenitsyn)
22. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
23. The Origins of Totalitarianism
24. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
25. Dear Reader (North Korea)
26. The Time Machine (H.G Wells)
27. Nazis on the Run
28. Catch-22 (J. Heller)
29. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
30. The Girl with Seven Names (North Korea Escapee)
31. A New World (Huxley)
32. The Science of Evil
33. The Choice: Embrace the Possible (Auschwitz Survivor)
34. Beyond Good and Evil
35. Under the Same Sky (North Korea Escapee)
36. The Gulag Archipelago
37. Island (Huxley)
38. Escape from Freedom (North Korea)
39. The Black Count (The real Monte Cristo)
40. Meditations
Some might think it's still heavy on the totalitarian and Nazi stuff, but as I said before I'm deeply interested in this.
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I don't read as much fiction, but I really rate "A Clockwork Orange", I prefer it to the film, probably my favourite novel/novella. "A Brave New World" is good, I remember enjoying it more than "1984". Have you read "American Psycho"? Starts off a bit slow, but I found that quite entertaining. I've read "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" as well, but with that, I preferred the film.
In terms of self-help books, have you tried Alain de Botton? Of the little I've read from Robert Greene, (which was about half of "The 48 Laws of Power") I wasn't that impressed, but I suppose it's personal preference.