A friend of mine is breaking into non-fiction books.
They’re currently reading 4000 weeks, by Oliver Burkeman.
I loved that book, so much practical, and accessible, advice on dealing with the constraints of living in time.
Yesterday, I volunteered to put together a list of half a dozen other non-fiction books that I similarly liked.
I’m putting it here too for later reference.
Several books about reorienting our attention toward our surroundings:
How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell,
A Natural History of Empty Lots by Christopher Brown, and
On Looking by Alexandra Horowitz.
All of these are primarily about “getting outside, mentally and physical, and noticing more of the world”.
How to Think by Alan Jacobs.
I would call it How to think for yourself.
I sent B a copy not because he doesn’t already think for himself, but because seeing it clearly articulated can be helpful with any parts of that skill that are still challenging.
Books about working with your brain:
The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt and
How to Think Like Shakespeare by Scott Newstok.
Both of these are about how our brains work.
The first one is more focused on what our brain does, and the latter is thinking about thinking from several different aspects.
I gave my copy of Haidt’s book to my dad, and I think I’ll just buy myself another (used) copy.
A book that is related to the previous two, but from a completely different angle is
When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron.
There are many excellent lessons for how our own brains / psychologies work and respond to the world.
The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bullshit by John V. Petrocelli.
This book is a manual. Some things this book codified for me:
the difference between lies and bs is that bs doesn’t care if it’s true or not;
humans default to accepting new information as true, it’s easier than skepticism;
humans prefer not to update their world model, they will make up stories (bs) to excuse information that they’d rather not integrate.
Another book that relates to truth vs just talking is
Nexus by Yuval Harari, but only the first ~half.
It’s an excellent exposition on the differences between information and truth, and the tools that humans brought to bear on that problem at ever-larger scales (stories, books, bureaucracies), and some of the problems that have resulted (e.g. literal witch hunts).
It becomes less compelling when he starts speculating about the consequences of our latest AI hype.
Last is a writing book,
The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker which is about writing well and clearly.
It sounds like an absurd book to recommend, but I found it to be (mostly) really quite interesting and engaging, and informative.
Very practical: it’s also helpful as a decoder for noticing when writing is bad, and can help with figuring out what is wrong so you can decipher the underlying message.