Books Worth Reading and Rereading

I forget most of what I read, yet I'm confident that reading is the most important thing I do. This seems paradoxical, so let me explain.

Learnings persist even after we forget where they came from. I don't remember learning my ABC's, yet it's clear that I know them. Similarly, the books we read add to our mental library of knowledge without our realizing it. Years after reading, we find that we just know things.

But there are millions of books to filter through, and most are a waste of time. How do you know which ones to read?

The key is understanding that the best learnings are worth revisiting. I'd rather learn the best thing twice than to learn something new.

On the first read you get the dopamine hit of novelty — the "a-ha!" moment. But it takes subsequent reads to transform ideas into actions, and actions are what change your life.

So chances are, the best thing for you to read is something you've already read. I agree with the advice that instead of reading everything, you should read the 100 best books for you over and over again.

In that spirit, the list below contains books (and tweets, essays, talks, etc.) that are worth revisiting for me. Perhaps some will be for you, too.

My Book List

• Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products — novelty is an important and underrated factor in our daily thinking and behavior
• Write Useful Books: A modern approach to designing and refining recommendable nonfiction — designing something to be frequently shared goes far beyond the common advice to simply make it good
• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion — six approaches are remarkably effective at influencing human behavior, including yours
• The Courage to Be Disliked: How to Free Yourself, Change Your Life, and Achieve Real Happiness — experience a unique way of thinking
• Thinking, Fast and Slow — our intuition behaves differently than effortful thinking, and it's wise to understand its shortcomings
• The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter — knowledge and culture passed down through generations are dramatically superior to raw intelligence
• The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion — the beliefs and values we think are innately human are often quite arbitrary and specific to our own particular culture
• The Mom Test: How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you — asking for opinions and predictions yields inaccurate answers, so ask for proof instead
• The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley — how to change your mind, change the world, and live fully in under 40 years
• Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger — basic wisdom is underrated, and taking a few simple maxims seriously for a long time will get you further than almost anyone
• Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress — pessimism is contagious enough to dominate the conversation, even when the case for optimism is obvious and strong
• Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die — ideas can be engineered to be memorable, and simplicity is key
• How to Get Rich (without getting lucky) — getting a few high-level decisions right dramatically improves your ability to generate wealth
• The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business — there's lots to learn about business, but you can grok the basics, and btw here they are
• Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! — following your curiosity can lead to a truly fulfilling career where the work itself is the point
• Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies — the Goldilocks principle as applied to peoples: the causes of our differences may not be innate or recent, but instead found in the middle centuries of surprising ecological developments
• Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media — something as surprising as widescale propaganda can arise from simple systems and incentives, no conspiracies necessary
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People — principled living will get you further than amassing a collection of clever tricks and hacks
• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind — shared fictions are a powerful tool to unite and organize otherwise-unrelated people
• Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy — markets can do good at massive scales where planning is impossible