My Reading List:

Fiction:

  1. The Kingkiller Chronicles (Series) - Patrick Rothfuss: The most vivid writing I've ever experienced. Crack on a page. It's a world I can and do get lost in. Unfortunately the third book in the trilogy isn't out yet and has no expected release date, so prepare for a long wait.
  2. The Lord of the Rings (series) - J.R.R. Tolkien: A classic series that laid the foundation for what fantasy fiction is today. Read it. Watch the Special Extended Edition movies. Thank me later.
  3. The Silmarillion - J.R.R. Tolkien: A little bit dense, but if you enjoy the world of Middle Earth and want to know more about it, give it a spin. Don't worry too much about people and place names, you'd need a spread sheet to keep them straight.
  4. The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky: My favorite Dostoyevsky book so far. The family dynamics and interplay between the brothers make it gripping.
  5. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Is murder always wrong? That's the question on trial here.
  6. The Gulag Archipelago (abridged) - Alexander Solzhenitsyn: A slog through the gulags of communist Russia as told by a prisoner held there. Mind opening for sure.
  7. Les Miserables (unabridged) - Victor Hugo: Fundamentally different from the play of the same name. They both technically tell the same story, but the book has depth and intrigue that the play can't do justice to. Marius' story is my favorite. Feel free to skip Waterloo.
  8. 1984 - George Orwell: A classic takedown of authoritarianism and a grim reminder of how things can go wrong.
  9. Thus Spoke Zarathustra - Fredrich Nietzsche: I'm more fictionally minded than hard philosophy minded, so I found this rather accessible as far as Nietzsche is concerned. This book kept me standing when I felt the rest of my life had gone to shit.
  10. Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy: Dark, gory, wonderfully evocative of the American Southwest. Judge Holden is one of the most enthralling characters I've come across.
  11. The Alienist - Caleb Carr: Early psychology and the worlds first known serial killer. Good mystery in 1890's New York.

Non-Fiction:

  1. Maps of Meaning - Jordan B. Peterson: Dr. Peterson's dense work. A multidisciplinary study of the structure of belief and meaning.
  2. 12 Rules for Life - Jordan B. Peterson: 12 Rules with the psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy to back up why you should follow them. Clean up your room.
  3. Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious - Carl Jung: A primer on Jungian thought. I devoured it years ago. Would recommend as a base if you want to get into Jung.
  4. The Will to Power - Fredrich Nietzsche: Nietzsche's tear down of logic, religion, and belief itself. Nihilism is inevitable, what do we do after that?
  5. King, Warrior, Magician, Lover - Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette: The most complete picture of masculinity I've ever seen. A balm to a mind scoured by online "Manosphere" content.
  6. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind - Julian Jaynes: The single most profoundly perspective shifting book I've read in the last 5 years. I can't say if Jaynes is right, but damn does he make good sense.
  7. Rebuilding Milo - Dr. Aaron Horschig: A reference manual for fixing common weightlifting injuries.
  8. Walden - Henry David Thoreau: Self-Reliance, peace, a perspective on the world that still rings true today.
  9. Extreme Ownership - Jocko Willink and Leif Babin: Navy Seal's perspective on leadership, discipline, and tactics for winning in business and in life.<
  10. Ordinary Men - Christopher R. Browning: The story of ordinary guys during WW2 who got drafted into the Nazi group that followed behind the front lines cleaning up the remaining undesirables. This is how normal men with normal jobs wind up being okay killing people and dumping them in pits. A chilling warning.
  11. The Way of Men - Jack Donovan: Jack Donovan presents a harsh view of the world, but so firmly defines the place of men in it that you feel empowered by the harshness. Titrate with something softer and more humanitarian afterward.
  12. No Surrender: A Field Manual for Building Work With Heart - Paul Waggener: I debated whether or not to include this. Waggener, like Donovan, is a very controversial figure with ties to many unseemly ideas, peoples, and places. But this short book is like a tinder box when you need it most.

Un-Fiction:

  1. Spinal Catastrophism - Thomas Moynihan: The densest piece of writing I've ever come across. I've been reading classic literature for decades and I had over 20 notes with word definitions within the first 10 pages. It had a chokehold on my brain for the better part of 2 months.
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