Book

Books are where human ideas and experiences are shared with the world. There is something timeless about books. It is incredible how the Bible managed to survive all these centuries of turmoil.

Best Books

The best books should be read and reread.

Best Books for Productivity

• Deep Work $\to$ For staying focused
• Atomic Habits $\to$ For developing good habits that compound over time ([[books/The Power of Habit|The Power of Habit] is more theoretical)
• The 4-Hour Workweek $\to$ Also eliminating distractions
• 7 Habits of highly effective people?

Best Books for Social Networking

• How to Talk to Anyone $\to$ notes in Communication Skills
• TO READ: Talking to Strangers

Best books for Thinking Clearly

• The Great Mental Models Volume 1
• The Great Mental Models Volume 2

Quote

Mortimer Adler famously said “Reading a [great] book should be a conversation between you and the author.”

To read:

• Biography of Mao recommended by Shaheer

Book List

list from "books"

Book Recommendations

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/264.Books_That_Everyone_Should_Read_At_Least_Once

Essays

• Elements of Style proposed by Casey Neistat
• Three Days of Happiness proposed by Ivy Lei
• (80 pages) On the shortness of life proposed by Emily Chiu
• The Checklist Manifesto proposed by Derek Rayside
• The Souls of Black Folk recommended from Just Mercy

• From Zexi’s list, I think “Quiet” is quite an awesome book to read

Books

• Mindfulness: Think Like a Monk
• Happiness: Ikigai

Fiction (I am right now super into fiction)

• The Alchemist
• On Earth, We’re Briefly Gorgeous
• Fahrenheit 451

Books that should be required reading for creators (recommended by Colin and Samir)

1. Creativity, Inc. by Edwin Catmull and Amy Wallace 
2. The Courage to be Disliked by Fumitake Koga and Ichiro Kishimi
3. Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon
4. The Practice: Shipping Creative Work by Seth Godin
5. The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

Tips

If you find yourself wanting to reach the end of the book, it’s probably because you don’t want to read this book. Or you don’t enjoy this book.

So just switch books. Get to one that will touch one, one that you want to read for hours. One you will devour in a single sitting.

See Reading for why I read. Follow me on Goodreads!

Highlighting System to steal from Thomas Frank

• Q $\to$ Quote and use the "" around the passage you want
• ? $\to$ disagreement or question mark
• F $\to$ Further reading
• • $\to$ Important passage
• ex $\to$ example backing up a main point

Notetaking for books

One of the greatest values I have seen this year from reading is actually taking down notes of the book, like sitting in front of the computer and stopping. It is so much easier afterwards to refer back to my notes. So helpful… wish I did it for The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fck, but at that time I didn’t know about Obsidian.

I would take notes for books to improve my retention.

That is the pure purpose, to better understand and make my own connections. I want to do it on Obsidian as well and want to find a system to do that.

Write chapter summaries after you are done with it in your own words, this is practicing Active Recall.

For Non-Fiction: For example reading a brief history of time, you can write out your assumptions first, before learning the content. Feynman Technique

Also see Reading for more techniques?