5 Books to read📚
#110 | Your Information Diet
Hey folks👋
Welcome to Wisdom Letter #110.
This email will take less than 2 minutes.
We are continuing our series of posts around your information diet.
Last week we discussed the 5 best newsletters to read.
Today let’s talk about the must-read books.
We will share 5 books that will help you think better, live better!
But first, if you’re new, please signup to The Wisdom Project, we send one email per week that helps you become healthy, wealthy, and wise :)
Now, let’s go👇
On Books📚
We are no more into performative reading (reading for vanity, or reading to show it off!)
That’s why this year we are reading books that are most applicable to our personal and professional endeavors.
We’re not reading books from lists or people’s recommendations.
When we want to learn a specific topic, we find out the best book in that area and read it.
And we don’t read cover to cover, we try to extract the best lessons as easily as possible.
I think everyone should read like this.
Having said that, there are few books that are universally applicable and everyone should read.
Today we want to shortlist 5 such books -
Sapiens | Yuval Noah Harari
It’s one of the most recommended books of the last 5 years. But unfortunately, very few people end up reading it in its entirety.
It’s a must-read.
It’s about the big history of mankind, how we came to be who we are today.
Fascinating book. Do check it out.
Thinking Fast and Slow | Kahnemann and Tversky
This is a book about how our mind works.
There are 2 systems of thinking in our mind - System 1 and System 2.
System 1 is our lizard brain that controls our animal instinct, System 2 is the intellectual brain that takes care of deeper cognitive tasks.
Fantastic book, backed by 30 years of research by 2 scientists.
Both won the Nobel prize.
Don’t miss this book.
Fooled by Randomness | Nassim Nicholas Taleb
This is a dense book.
Taleb’s writing is equal parts funny, irreverent and confusing.
But the arguments he makes in his books are genius.
This is his first book in the “incerto series” and his decades of research around uncertainty and luck.
You might have heard of the Black Swan and Anti-Fragile in the same series, we recommend reading them as well, but the best place to start is Fooled by Randomness.
It explains the unpredictability of events in life beautifully.
The Psychology of Money | Morgan Housel
This is not a book about making money.
This is a book about how we deal with money, how we think about it, how we act around it.
It’s written through the lens of our financial history.
A fascinating book is written in a simple yet effective style.
Must read for all.
Man’s search of meaning | Viktor Frankl
This is part biography, part philosophy.
Viktor was a guy who survived the Nazi concentration camps in World War 2.
Lived to tell the tale of the camps, and more importantly, how we found meaning in the most wretched conditions to live.
How he found the will to the will to live when all had been lost.
This book always moves me when I read.
Don’t miss it.
Related -
📂 From the archives
This week, that year -
Thank you for reading🙏
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See you next week.
Cheers,
Ayush & Aditi