the best books you will never read...ever

THE BEST BOOKS YOU WILL NEVER READ...EVER HOW TO

Just wrap your head around this: At some point around 170 AD, the single most powerful man in the world sat down and wrote a private book of lessons and admonishments to himself for becoming a better, kinder and humbler person.

THE BEST BOOKS YOU WILL NEVER READ...EVER HOW TO

It simply tells you how to live a little better. I imagine because it’s one of the few texts that wastes no time on pretension or explanations of the world. You can get a PhD in philosophy and not be forced to read this - and that’s a travesty. Those familiar with my writing will not think this is an unknown book. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (Gregory Hays translation, do not read the others, they suck) Some favorites: “The mightiest rivers are easy to cross at their source.” “Avarice is the source of its owns sorrows.” And of course, extra-applicable to this list, “Many receive advice, few profit by it.” 3. The best philosophy comes from people who were not “philosophers.” Syrus was a slave and his moral maxims are far better than perhaps the most famous book in this category, those of Duc de la Rochefoucauld. The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus: A Roman Slave by Publius Syrus Machiavelli learned them, as this book inspired The Prince. There are so many great lessons in here and I wish more people would read it. His greatest book is about the latter, it’s the best biography written of Cyrus the Great (aka the father of human rights). For whatever reason, his work is not nearly as famous, even though it is far more applicable. Xenophon, like Plato, was a student of Socrates. Cyropaedia (a more accessible translation can be found in Xenophon’s Cyrus The Great: The Arts of Leadership and War ) Put down your David Foster Wallace and pick up one of these.

Sure, you might have heard of a few of them (in which case, consider yourself part of the minority) but far too many people haven’t.

They are all great pieces of literature or learning and at the same time, mostly unknown. Which is why I put together the list of books below in their rough historical order. Humble yourself to think that our grasp of the lists of the “best” of these books will always miss more than it captures. Memoirs, histories, aphorisms, essays, treatises, tutorials, exposes, stories, epics–it’s all there. The Western world has been publishing books for some 3,000 years. It’s just that you have to remember for every Great Gatsby out there, there were 10 others written at the same time about the same thing that for whatever twist of cultural fate and cumulative advantage are mostly lost to us (one of the books on this list fits that definition to a T). Not to say that the books in our “canon” aren’t valuable, because they certainly are. What does following in the footsteps of everyone else get you? It gets you to exactly the same conclusions as everyone else. Reading is about insight into the human experience, about understanding.

Checking off the various books from your high school curriculum, and then, perhaps the “100 Greatest Books Ever Written” is the educational equivalent of skating to where the puck is and not where it’s going. If you are able to pick up even just 2 or 3 of these motivational books, you will be well on your way to living a more inspired life.Here’s the problem with reading the books that everyone else has read. This book is going to inevitably touch your heart and inspire you in ways many other motivational books could never even dream of doing. In the end, the two come together to create one final class: lessons on how to live a good life. In this book, Mitch joins Morrie through the final months of his dying professor’s life every Tuesday to discuss the important messages of life in a truly beautiful and heartwarming fashion. This novel which shared the wisdom Mitch Albom received from his college professor Morrie Schwartz, has sold over 12 million copies around the world.

The best books you will never read...ever