Favourite books
I often get asked what my favourite book recommendations are, so here they are! I will update this list accordingly.
1. Incerto series by Nassim Taleb
The Incerto series are packed with some of the best mental models there are for life.
There are 4 books, each with their own theme: Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, Antifragile and Skin in the game. There is also a book of aphorisms called The Bed of Procrustes, but that one is not like the others and I don’t consider it a must-read.
Nassim is a former successful options trader turned probability PhD/theorist turned philosopher. His area of interest is risk, specifically tail risks.
In finance, options have a strange property where they can gain in value when being exposed to volatility – in this case volatility being perturbations in the price of the underlying stock. Before antifragility there was no common “non-trader” word for this effect, other than being long gamma. Nassim took this concept and framed a system how you can use it for life, not options. I used to work in quantitative finance and by doing that and reading these books, I have changed how I look at almost everything in my life. I swear by these books. But be warned: Nassim can be a bit aggressive in his hatred towards pure theorists and academia who he argues “can never survive in the real world”. His Twitter is not particularly healthy either. But the core message of his books is still fantastic.
Through reading these books, you will learn about convexity, the large impact of unforeseen events in your life, the non-linearities of our world and how you can set yourself up so that you gain from the chaos and disorder instead of being brought into ruin. You will approach serendipity the right way. You will become antifragile, not robust or fragile. You will learn to embrace skin in the game in everything that you do and be fueled by risk, and learn why it’s a shit idea to cross a river that is on average four feet deep. You will learn why turkeys shout that they have never been better fed and their numbers are booming just the day before thanksgiving, and how probability of ruin for the turkey is different from the probability of the butcher given the information disadvantage of all variables.
Letters from a Stoic by Seneca
Seneca’s wisdom is timeless. It teaches you how to enjoy life more. He is a stoic philosopher but a more antifragile one and a little more laid back. He was one of the richest men in Rome, the advisor to mad emperor Nero who eventually ordered Seneca to commit suicide.
In The Annals, Tacitus wrote of Seneca’s death and recorded his alleged last words: “I leave you the example of my life, the best and most precious legacy now in my power. Cherish it in your memory, and you will gain at once the applause due to virtue, and the fame of a sincere and generous friendship.”.
Reading Seneca is very enlightening. It strikes a chord with me that is a healthy balance between seriousness and health. I’m a big Seneca fan. Out of all the stoics, I like him the most. It’s very readable yet “packs an insightful punch”. It’s not written in hard-to-decypher aphorisms like Nietzsche, it’s plainly served through easy advice.
Some of my favourite quotes are from Seneca:
“As we wait for life, life happens”
“We suffer more in our imagination than in reality”
“A gem cannot be polished without friction and a man cannot be perfected without his trials”
“All cruelty stems from weakness”
“What is the use of overcoming opponent over opponent in the boxing ring if you can be overcome by your temper”
“Noone becomes a laughing stock who laughs at himself”
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius was Rome’s last good emperor, the very ideal of the “Philosopher King”. He had private journals which are the basis of Meditations. At the time of writing it, he was the most powerful man on Earth. He never intended his journal to be shared with anyone. Miraculously, some servants saved it upon his death – probably impressed by reading the contents. These manuscripts somehow survived for thousands of years. It is just packed with remarkable insights. It is a book you must have read once in your life. I have saved some excerpts and quotes, but there are of course many more. It’s fascinating that this almost sage-like figure had the weight of the world on his shoulders. As emperor, he led Rome through a plague and war. All his children save one died. We get a peek into his most private thoughts and learn how he dealt with problems under pressure.
I wish politicians our time were of his caliber.
“All is as thinking makes it so”
“The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.”
“Your duty is to stand straight, not be held straight”
“Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.”
“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”
“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”
“Fight to be the person philosophy tried to make you”
“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
“I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.”
“It is bad luck that this happened to me. No. You should rather say ‘It’s my good luck that although this has happened to me, I can bear it without pain’. So why see more misfortune in the event than your good fortune in your ability to bear it?”
“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own - not of the same blood and birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are unnatural.”
“Here is a rule to remember in future, when anything tempts you to feel bitter: not “This is misfortune,” but “To bear this worthily is good fortune.”
Man’s search for meaning by Viktor Frankl
A harrowing book into the concentration camps of WWII by a jewish psychologist. Viktor spent several years of his life in concentration camps. He tried to understand why some people died and some people did not. It will give you a new perspective on life, suffering and the meaning of all things. Viktor did not want his experiences and all these lives to be wasted. Viktor’s conclusion was that you need to instill purpose into yourself, as summarized into the quote below. I stand by that every person should read this book at least once in their lives!
“The man who has a why can endure any how”
Stolen Focus by Johann Hari
The motto of our era: I tried to live, but I got distracted. It is no secret that the internet and phones are very addictive. Personally my opinion is that the future will be divided by aware and exploited individuals. In this book, Johann takes us through a personal journey. He was depressed and had no ability to focus, so he went off-the-grid for several months. It was the best thing he had done in years, and this prompted him to dig into what was going on with his head.
We get to learn many things about surveillance capitalism, the business model that thrives on torturing the online voodoo doll of yourself. Johann outlines many of the problems: it’s all made to be as addictive as possible. Not only will that ruin your attention, but to keep you hooked, content will end up crazier and crazier. It is tearing society apart by polarization and fringe conspiracy theories. And to top it all of, we are fed with the blame and that it is “our fault” so we have to employ tools such as meditation to cope. The modern equivalent of “Let them eat cake” is really “Let them be present”.
Johann then takes a swing to the entire idea of surveillance capitalism and declares that business model to be idiocy for our health. It is as smart as when people added led to gasoline for profit, creating one of the biggest health hazards of our time. But at least then they didn’t blame us for breathing the air.
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
Best sci-fi book I have read. It makes you think about what’s out there. I don’t want to spoil anything, other than I read this book cover-to-cover in about 16 hours from opening it the first time. I could not put it down.
It’s going to be turned into a movie starring Ryan Gosling.
Can’t hurt me by David Goggins
One of the most motivating stories I have ever read. David Goggins went from a 300+ pounds loser spraying for cockroaches to a special forces soldier within the Navy SEALs, to ultra marathoner and world record holder in pullups. He overcame his traumatic past and became a real force. While reading this book, I went out running several times! Absolutely love it. I have to admit David is quite.. hardcore and certainly will not be appreciated by everyone, but if only a percent of his drive rubs off on you then you will be happy you have read the book.
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
This is a fascinating book about how intelligence can be a burden but also shines light on how we treat the mentally challenged. We learn how increased understanding of the world can cause relationships with people to deteriorate. It will also teach you healthy things about ego.
Honorable mentions
These books are not for everybody, so they are tricky to recommend, even though they are fascinating books:
- The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solhenitzyn
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
- The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
- Born to Run by Christopher McDougall
- Discourses and selected writings by Epictetus
- Factfulness by Hans Rosling
- The Practicing Stoic by Ward Farnsworth