Reading List

A lot of you have asked what I am reading. Here is the list.

 

 

What I am reading right now

  1. Essays By Michel De Montaigne
  2. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
  3. The Bible
  4. The Prince
  5. I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi – If you can get pass the title, it is a good book about personal finance. Highly recommend.

December 2015

  1. Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut – Easy read. It is a good book, but it wasn’t for me. I would not read it again. If you like nonfiction (I don’t), you will enjoy Kurt Vonnegut’s humor and satirical writing. The story touches many aspects of life, such as science, money, love, politics, and religions.
  2. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee– It’s an American classic with a great message behind it.  The book touches many difficult issues like rape, human injustice, racial discrimination and how strong bias and prejudices without society can be dangerous. However, I would not read it again. It is a good book that isn’t the right fit for me.
  3. Candide by Voltaire – Sarcasm at it’s finest. It is a quick and fun classic read if you are into fiction. It drove me crazy to see how bland naive the characters are. I enjoyed the hint of philosophy through out of the novel.
  4. The Brothers Karamazov – It is a long and good book. For someone who don’t like fiction, I enjoyed it. I didn’t read, but lI istened to the audio book version on Scribd. It paints a beautiful picture of the conflict between faith and doubt.
  5. All Quiet On The Western Front –  It is a short book that shows the horror of war in the finest way. Great read,
  6. The Third Reich by Ryan Jenkins – I strongly believe I got the wrong version of this book. It was recommended by a dear friend. It is a short book about the origins of the Nazi Party  and Hitler’s rise to power. If you want to learn those topics in 32 pages, it is a good read.
  7. Eichmann in My Hands: A Compelling First-Person Account by the Israeli Agent Who Captured Hitler’s Chief Executioner by Peter Z. Malkin – Great book. My favorite quote was “But, you see, language is mentality. One cannot understand the problem of the Jewish people without understanding its original language.” It makes reading Quran and Bible so much easier.
  8. The Giver – It is a short and sweet book. In Jonas’s world, war, disease, and suffering have all been erased. Everything is “perfect.” Everyone is the same. He is selected to be the Receiver of memories. It focuses on the importance of memory. Without memory, there is no pain. But if you cannot remember it, it is just like you have never experienced it. Pain and pleasure go together. I wrote about this topic in the past. Highly recommend.
  9. The Quran – I enjoyed reading it more than I thought. It is not a book to read for pleasure, but to understand how people think and behave. It is a good book to read over and over as you grow. The more experiences and interaction you have with people, the more things you will notice the next time you read. If you do business in Muslin countries, it’s a good book to check out.
  10. The Rich Employee by James Altucher -If you are a James Altucher’s follower, most of the content are not new. However, like most Altucher’s book, he offers unconventional personal development advice. It is a good short read. There is a good book recommendation list at the end. I wasn’t a big fan of the Choose Yourself Meetup group promotion at the end. You should also check my favorite Altucher’s book The Choose Yourself Guide To Wealth.
  11. The Prophet – It is a short but rich book. The prophet lived in a foreign city for twelve years and was about ti bear him back to his homeland. He was stopped by a group of people. They discussed different life topics: love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, houses, clothes, buying and selling, crime and punishment, laws, freedom, reason and passion, pain, self-knowledge, teaching, friendship, talking, time, good and evil, prayer, pleasure, beauty, religion, and death. My favorite poetry essay was children.

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
But seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

It is a book that I will read again. Every time I read, I will find something that I have missed before.