I’ll never run out of reading material
Now that I’m a few weeks into my process to read more this year, I’ve decided to formalize something that’s been bouncing around the back of my head for a while.
I call it my “infinite reading list”.
No, not that there are an infinite number of books I’ll never get around to reading. Something smaller and much more practical.
My infinite reading list consists of those books that I intend to read repeatedly for the foreseeable future. (Hence the Mobius strip.)
Those books currently include:
- The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations for Clarity, Effectiveness, and Serenity – by Ryan Holiday, Stephen Hanselman
- Man’s Search for Meaning – Viktor Frankl
- The War of Art – Steven Pressfield – Also including:
- Steal Like an Artist – Austin Kleon – Also including:
Subject to change, of course.
There are two themes that, to me, are very evident: meaning, and creative productivity.
Frankl’s book is divided into two sections: his World War II experiences and his explanation of “logotherapy”. The latter’s premise is that people find happiness(?), contentment(?), and perhaps even mental health when their lives have meaning. While the book is on my list for the first part — his concentration camp experiences — the second part is a valuable overview of something that, to me, makes sense.
Pressfield’s and Kleon’s books are on my list (I consider each of the two sets a “series”, if you will) primarily because of the encouragement and reminder of the creative mindset and the mental framing required to carry it out successfully.
So, what does it mean to be on my “infinite” list?
Ultimately, all these books have a permanent home on my Kindle devices. While I’ll “remove” other books as I read them, these are always with me and always ready to be opened up when I feel the need or have a few moments to rekindle my spirit.
Updated 2021-01-23: Added Daily Stoic
I downloaded the book, which, like the other great scientist’ s and humanity’s thinkers books are available online. These great people don’t demand money (of course, if you want a paperbook, you have to pay), they are interested in distributing knowledge, on a bigger scale – in a progress of humanity.
Some words about meaning of life. The last century USA astronomer Carl Sagan said (approximately) that we are the only (known to us) living form of matter knowing itself. We are the Univers’es matter try to know itself. From this follows the main, the most important value and sense of life for all human beings: to save, to maintain mankind, the part of which we are. On a smaller scale: the most important duty, task and responsibility for any human being is: to preserve the achievements of our culture, to pass them to the next generations, to avoid the ominous the so called global problems, not let them destroy our civilization and its achievements.