Books & Articles What is your favourite book and why?

[alexlaguma]

Interested in hearing from some of you guys about what your favourite book is, and why.

I've always been a big reader ever since my Mum taught me how to read before school. I think its been a huge factor in my success. Despite being a bit of an idiot at times throughout life, my love of reading (and the skills that gives you) has always helped me.

My favourite book is Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. Not because I think it is the most amazing book of all time, but more because of what it represents to me. I was given the book when I was 15 (nearly 20 years ago) and at that time I was going down the wrong path. I had been kicked out of school, was constantly in trouble with the police, and life didn't look like it was going to pan out for me. But when I read that book ... everything changed. I realised straight away that I had the ability to change everything and it was up to me to take control of my life.

The funny this is, because I was so young when I read it, I just accepted everything in the book as the gospel truth. I wasn't old enough to be skeptical or question any of the teachings. I just accepted it as true ... "If I follow this advice, I will be successful, it is as simple as that". And that belief system then carried me back into school, through college, university and eventually into a high paying career. I genuinely think if I had not have read that book at that specific time then things would have turned out very differently for me. So that is why its my favourite, because of the change it represented in my life.

Anyway, what are you favourites? I love taking recommendations for books from people. It doesn't have to be non-fiction by the way, I love a good novel as well ... so feel free to share whatever your favourite is (and why!)

 

[Chase]

@alexlaguma,

Think and Grow Rich is a wonderful book. That's quite an impact it had on you.

I haven't read that one in a long, long time. I remember liking it a lot but I barely remember it now.

Probably due for a reread.

I've got so many favorite books it's hard to choose. I've got a couple of recommended reading lists on Girls Chase (2012 | 2018) and going by the 6-year interval between the last two it's probably time for me to make another.

But as far as all-time favorite books are concerned...:

• Non-fiction: Plutarch's Parallel Lives of the Greeks and Romans. When you read older books, you find constant, continuous references by all the writers to Plutarch and the men he biographies. Then you read it and understand. There is no better handbook ever written to being a man than Plutarch. In short narratives, he describes a man's childhood and origin, his character, his great deeds, his great foibles, and how it all ends up for him. You end up liking all these men, some nearly flawless heroes, some very flawed anti-heroes, and each tale ending with the man's death adds a bittersweet element to every biography. You become very aware of your own strengths and character flaws, and hopefully wiser to the pitfalls every man faces, as you read it.
  
  
• Fiction: The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft. "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." So says Lovecraft in his essay on writing horror. I was reading Stephen King in 8th grade when I picked up a Lovecraft book at a bookstore one weekend. My father, who reads everything (now that he's retired, he reads a book a day... he's read about 600 books since he retired 2 years ago), told 13-year-old me that Lovecraft was the only writer he couldn't read, because Lovecraft gave him nightmares. I had to read him after that endorsement! Lovecraft innovated a number of horror and sci-fi stories that have since become tropes. Most modern horror and many modern sci-fi writers cite him as an influence. Lots of books and films today could clearly be described as "Lovecraftian", but there's still a sense his stories give you of cosmic proportion and the insignificance of man in the cosmos that are unique to his writing. Also, The White Ship, The Quest of Iranon, and The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadeth are some of the most beautiful, poetic tales I have ever read. For a writer of cosmic horror, Lovecraft was also uniquely talented at writing tales of beauty too. The Silver Key more deeply captures the nihilistic alienation of a man in modern culture than anything else (and it was written 98 years ago!), yet ends on a dreamlike, beautiful, and strange note, totally apart from the nihilistic despair it begins with, and totally different from any modern "happy ending" or "bait-and-switch ending" or anything like that you'd expect.

If I can be allowed some runners up, Edward Gibbons's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (for non-fiction) and the manly tales of Edgar Rice Burroughs (for fiction) would be my choices.

Chase

 

[Atlas IV]

Can't Hurt Me by David Goggins is one of my recent favourites.

It's the auto-biography of a man who was dealt the worst possible hand in life - black man with a nightmare childhood and no prospects, and through sheer discipline and mental fortitude transformed himself from an obese and depressed teenager into an unbreakable machine of endurance and strength. He's a being of sheer willpower - the only man in history to have completed the highest elite training for Navy SEALS, Army and Airforce, and he broke several Guinness world records for pull-ups and triathlons.

Throughout the book he describes his mental framework, which is basically conditioning yourself to embrace pain by doing the things you don't want to do. It's a practical and personal book that really allows you to get inside his head. Worth listening to some of his podcast interviews too. Whenever I'm feeling lazy to go to the gym or do anything active, I "channel the inner Goggins" and it kicks me into gear lol.

 

[Will_V]

Xenophon's book 'The Persian Expedition' is one of my all time favorites, read it multiple times already. I think it was mentioned by @Chase somewhere on the forum, in any case at some point I picked it up. I like how it describes leadership in the context of complete chaos - it's not about someone who was a king by birthright, or who prepared for, studied, and positioned themselves for it within a hierarchy or social system, but someone (various people really) who rose to very difficult and desperate occasions, far from home and surrounded by opposition.

I love all Carl Jung's work, for example 'Man and his Symbols', it satisfies my interest and curiosity about the unconscious depths of the human mind.

For fiction I like James Mitchener's historical novels, since they tend to span great lengths of time which I enjoy. I like historical novels in general when they are very detailed and immersive. Shogun is another one I really enjoyed.

I used to read a lot of science fiction, but I've soured a bit on that, scifi books in general just got worse and worse imo since the 70s, and now scifi is usually just a bunch of tired dystopian tropes about AI or aliens, or some self-absorbed cyberpunk stuff. The best stuff is Arthur Clarke, Asimov, Heinlein, James Blish, and a lot of not very famous people from the 'golden era'. But I think half the value of scifi is its relevance to the current times, and it just so happens that current scifi is pretty poor.

I don't really read much self-help books, even though there are great ones out there. I much prefer to learn by example - I'll read biographies of historical figures, entrepreneurs, football coaches, and people in general who accomplished something great in difficult circumstances.

 

[Teevster]

Thomas Hobbes - Leviathan
Victor Turner - From Ritual to Theater.
Machiavelli - Discourses on Livy (fuck the Prince, it sucks)
Marquis de Sade - Philosophy in the Boudoir
Carl Schmitt - The Concept of the Political
Wilhelm Reich - The Invasion of Compulsory Sexual Morality

List goes on...

 

[Swati]

THE 50th LAW BY 50 CENT AND ROBERT GREENE

 

[Chase]

THE 50th LAW BY 50 CENT AND ROBERT GREENE

Isn't it 48 Laws of Power?

What happened to #49?

50 Cent just blasted that law and went straight to 50... probably while singing, " I know you like my style... "

 

[Conquistador]

I’ve recently discovered the novels of Harold Lamb, who as it turns out inspired the entire genre of sword and sorcery with his historical fiction. Really good stuff.

You can get them all on archive.org and/or Gutenberg. I started with Marching Sands, which is top-notch.

 

[Spyce D]

Isn't it 48 Laws of Power?

What happened to #49?

50 Cent just blasted that law and went straight to 50... probably while singing, " I know you like my style... "

It's a different book . Co authored by both 50 and Robert Greene ... I remember .

 

[POB]

48 Laws (the original) is a must read.
Musashi comes to mind...it is the bible of the lone wolf carving his way through a fucked up world who wants to bring him down.
Shogun goes in that same direction, but more from lone guy in a foreign land perspecive.
Really likd Under the Dome by Stephen King, a great microcosm of the prejudice present in smaller communities.
Lone Wolf and Cub if you like violence and stoicism.

 

[Spyce D]

I haven't read many books , but here is my list.

1. Chanākyā Neeti - (trans: chanakya's policy )

2. Six glorious epoches of indian history - helped me in shaping my morality , and shedding a lot of insecurity that came due to the education system .

3. The perfumed garden . ( Arabic literature/manual about sex )


A book I like is a bit controversial to post ( even for here ) . So , won't post about it .

Anyways , I used to read mangas filled with violence but can't anymore . Had some change in life and now avoiding this genre .

But , my favourites were vagabond , berserk , Vinland saga , kengan Ashura , baki , kimetsu no yaiba .

Never could read hajime no ippo , tho .

 

[Swati]

Isn't it 48 Laws of Power?

What happened to #49?

50 Cent just blasted that law and went straight to 50... probably while singing, " I know you like my style... "

50 is different, I have never seen him bend to anything, always faces it head-on

on both levels of the playing field, legally and physically, one of the few I've seen Sue his own lawyer for malpractice

this dude is truly a rare breed

as he aged, he probably noticed he can't be getting into low-level shoot-outs anymore like in earlier days

recent story:

he had a long-lasting rap beef with an old a G-unit member he showed up in his city for an event, and another rapper's manager looking to jump him with 10 gangster dudes, 50 cents had a group of navy seals with bulletproof vest bodyguards carrying extended clips ARs..... yeah the "gangstas" ran away ahahahaha

 

[Energy]

THE 50th LAW BY 50 CENT AND ROBERT GREENE

I read the 50th Law and 48 Laws in my earlier days and it was counter productive for me as the social beginner I once was. They encourage me to overthink things and play power games when in fact I didn't have neither the social intuiton, nor the fundamentals to do that yet.