Those of you who’ve followed my blog for a while know how much I love to read. I’ve talked about a lot of books in my posts but I haven’t dedicated a post to the books that have stuck out the most to me, until now. These are some of the books I’ve most enjoyed reading, either because they’ve been entertaining or useful, or both in some cases. Without further ado, here are a few of my favorite books.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
This is the first in a series of five imaginative and hilarious books by Douglas Adams. Space travel, planetary destruction, creative language translation, matter transformation, and clever wordplay abound in this book. Adams’s writing style is unique and endlessly enjoyable to read. It’s no wonder, then, that this has become one of the most widely-read, popular, and referenced books (and series of books) ever written.
A wonderful little book about how freeing it is to have the proper perspective. Don Miguel Ruiz explores the benefits of following the agreements: Be Impeccable with Your Word, Don’t Take Anything Personally, Don’t Make Assumptions, and Always Do Your Best. The agreements are simple to understand, difficult to live by, and well worth the effort.
How to Win Friends and Influence People
I’ve read a lot of self-improvement books and this is the one that started it all for me. It contains a lot of Dale Carnegie’s wisdom in successfully navigating social situations, winning people over to your way of thinking, and other useful life skills. Introverts should buy and study this book; it will work wonders for them. The book may be old but its timeless advice is just as practical now as it was when it was first published.
Most people probably aren’t aware of how prevalent and powerful habits are in their lives. I wasn’t until I read this book. Charles Duhigg explains why we develop habits, how we can change them, and how successful people and organizations have used seemingly insignificant habits to accomplish their major goals. Throw in a little bit of free will exploration in the last chapter and this is an incredibly interesting and practical book.
How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big
Scott Adams, best known for creating the popular Dilbert comic strip, lays out his strategies for success in this book. He covers such subjects as managing energy, using systems rather than goals, learning useful skills that mesh well with each other and provide more value together than they do separately, making healthy food taste good, and lots of other life hacks. Additionally, he adds just enough humor to keep it fun through the heavier subjects, making this one of the more enjoyable as well as useful self-improvement books I’ve read.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Stephen Covey absolutely knocked it out of the park with this one. He packed so much good stuff into this book, most of which is centered around character growth and progressing as a person. To truly be effective requires first focusing on self-improvement and then turning one’s focus toward improving the world. Plus he included a quick-reference index near the end of the book for finding specific lessons in a pinch. This is one of the best books I’ve ever read in any category and if it’s not right at the top of my list of best self-improvement books, then it’s definitely in the top three.
Have you ever wondered why, as the subtitle says, good people are divided by politics and religion? Well, look no further. Jonathan Haidt uses countless studies, experiments, and facts about our brains to offer the answer. In the process, he suggests that humans are far more irrational than we’d like to think, that the way we think largely stems from survival techniques used by our ancestors, and that there are major advantages to joining political or religious “teams”. The lessons I’ve learned from this book have helped me relax and see people with whom I disagree more fairly than I’ve done in the past. With all of the present turmoil and hostility, this book could act as a way to put out some of the fires and foster dialogue rather than division.
Mindfulness and presence are subjects I rarely see anyone else discuss. This is a shame as they’ve done a world of good for me since I started looking into them. Eckhart Tolle goes through his ideas about the mind, consciousness, ego, suffering, death, and several other subjects in this fascinating book. It took me a long time to start accepting some of the ideas he discusses, but I’ve gradually accepted increasingly more of them as I’ve seen firsthand how they work. This is one of the most helpful books I’ve ever read and I periodically listen to the audio version of it when I drive around. If you’re looking for ways to relieve stress, be at peace, better get along with others, and generally relax in life, you should check it out.
