I was trying to come up with a way to organize my books. The genre system doesn’t really work – it’s always about what the author wrote the book for, not what I use it for. When Alinsky wrote Rules for Radicals in the 1960’s he probably wasn’t thinking about the internet. Still, it’s the centerpiece of Internet Strategy shelf. I decided to label them that way, by what they’ve taught me, connections and what I applied it to. Things like “Hustling,” “America” “Evolution (which includes evolutionary pysch, some economics, sex memoirs) or my favorite, “Animals”
If there was a fire or I had to abandon most of my library, there’s one shelf I would grab. It’s the only one that matters. It’s my Life section – books with life lessons, advice, morals, ways of being. They could all fit well their original genres (non-fiction, economics, philosophy, literature) but to me they only feel right together. They were all consumed the same way, under the same guiding idea:
“My advice is really this: what we hear the philosophers saying and what we find in their writings should be applied in our pursuit of the happy life. We should hunt out the helpful pieces of teaching and the spirited and noble-minded sayings which are capable of immediate practical application–not far far-fetched or archaic expressions or extravagant metaphors and figures of speech–and learn them so well that words become works.” – Seneca
So this is my Life section:
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Sherman: Soldier, Realist, American by BH Liddell Hart
The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The 4 Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss
Empire of Illusion by Chris Hedges
The Image by Daniel Boorstin
Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer by Fred Kaplan
The Fish that Ate the Whale by Rich Cohen
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
Man’s Search for Ultimate Meaning by Viktor Frankl
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
Totto-Chan: The Little Girl at the Window by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi
The Harder They Fall by Budd Schulberg
What Makes Sammy Run by Budd Schulberg
Letters From a Stoic by Seneca
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War by Robert Coram
Classic Feynman by Richard Feynman
Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
The Gift of Fear by Gavin De Becker
The Discourses by Epictetus
Reflections and Moral Maxims by Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
On The Good Life by Cicero
The Dip by Seth Godin
Death Be Not Proud by John Gunther
Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me) by Carol Tavris
Ask the Dust by John Fante
Masteryby Robert Greene
48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
I’ve done the same with my Delicious account. I couldn’t tell you whats in half the articles I tagged “life” but I know that I absorbed something from each of them. I don’t want to be like that. THIS is how to think. Innovation or Exploitation?
I’m in no position to give anyone life advice. I’m still figuring mine out. But these are the books and themes I’m basing my life on. It’s working out so far.
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