MY TOP BOOKS

I can't think of anything more important in my development over the years than being an avid reader. Whether it's fiction or nonfiction, I trust that you'll find something on my list below that might spark your interest and even influence your life's direction. They've all left their mark on me.

1. The Fountainhead {Rand, 1943}

This book changed my life. I had read Atlas Shrugged in my senior year of high school after delving into the world of Bioshock, a video game that references it quite heavily in its projection of a dystopian capitalist society. But it wasn't until a few years later in college at the University of Pittsburgh that I picked up this earlier work of Rand's. When I started it mid-semester, I basically stopped reading my textbooks and hanging with roommates until I had finished it.

It's the story of  a young architect named Howard Roark, who struggles against a convention-worshipping society, and even the woman he loves, to design buildings worthy of his own personal standards. I think it's extremely important for every young person to read it, as the issues of individualism vs. conformists (and contrarians) is timeless and touches all of us. The same goes for a secondary theme that runs through it: the practical value of idealism.

The impact it had on me is best explained by a scene in the book itself - the first scene of Part IV in which a young boy riding a bicycle through the Pennsylvanian countryside is wondering whether life is worth living. Roark shows him it is. Roark's creator showed me it is.

{ * } Anthem, Rand's dystopian novella published in 1939, is extremely sophisticated - and underappreciated. I had never heard of it in high school, despite all the classics we were being told were great (Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, 1984, Lord of the Flies)

2. The Magus {Fowles, 1965}

I remember the moment I spotted this on the shelf when I was fifteen at my local library. The enigmatic title and cover grabbed my attention. It was Fowles' voice that made me check it out, and the psychological portrait of a deeply-flawed young man struggling to understand himself and the world at large, that made me tear through it. It's haunted me ever since.

Nicholas' flight from gray England to the lively, bright Greece in which he befriends a reclusive millionaire named Conchis begins the most interesting, frustrating, and suspenseful plot I've ever come across. It's difficult to describe the story, but I think of it as similar to The Odyssey and Alice in Wonderland , but darker, more cerebral, and heartbreaking. If you're not enchanted by Fowles' descriptions of wild Grecian landscapes, and powerful dialogue on love, sex, life, and their meanings, orleft wanting more at the story's final scene, I don't know what else to recommend than Netflix. 

In his later years, Fowles' viewed this one with a sort of favoritism and I think he's right to do so, but The Collector {1963} and The Ebony Tower {1974} deserve to be read too. The first was his first published book, and is about a butterfly collector who kidnaps a young woman he's obsessed with to keep in his home under lock and key. It's told from his perspective for the first half, and hers from the second. Ebony is a compilation of one novella, a translated medieval legend, and three short stories. The novella's ending is brilliant and the most tragic I've ever come across, even more than #6. 
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3. Confessions of an Advertising Man {Ogilvy, 1963}

David Ogilvy, considered the father of modern advertising, confesses his juiciest secret in this part-memoir/part-meditations/part-how-to book: honesty - at work and at home. His wit, brevity, and salesmanship should be a case study for all storytellers, whether you're a marketer or novelist. If you're a student of the art of communication, take notes from  one of the great masters.

{ * } The Unpublished Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising, and his autobiography, Blood, Brains, and Beer, are excellent follow ups.

{ * } I had this quote posted on my office door to read before beginning each day. You can find it in his autobiography: 

When I was sixteen we were standing in a dense crowd outside the Duomo in Florence, waiting for the flight of the mechanical pigeon which signals the arrival of a Holy Ghost. Suddenly I spied a girl, the most beautiful I had ever seen, and started elbowing my way through the crowd in her direction. "Don’t be a juggins," said my mother, "you will see dozens as pretty as her before you leave Italy." I made the mistake of believing her.

 

4. Mastery {Greene, 2012}

Greene's fifth book is all about the path to mastery. He leans on historical examples  like Charles Darwin, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Marie Curie, Henry Ford, and Zora Neale Hurston. The author's goal to discover the commonalities found in them and map those principles for the rest of us. Ultimately, with the right mode of thinking, working, and living, mastery is inevitable, Greene contends. 

I've read it several times since 2012, and learned to appreciate several of the core principles more deeply. One in particular involves Greene's observation that all great masters are incredibly failure-prone. That is, they seek out situations in which they're supposed to fail. They're seeking to test their weaknesses.

They are a long-time apprentice to others, whether it's Verocchio for da Vinci, their father for Mozart, or a team of professors for Marie Curie. They lean in to the red-ink. 

But more importantly, all masters are life-long apprentices to reality. Greene writes "You are not tied to a particular position; your loyalty is not to a career or a company. You are committed to your Life's Task." It's one thing to memorize facts. It's another thing to see them. And even harder to act accordingly. 
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5. Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes {Hamilton, 1942} & Aesop's Fables {Aesop, 500-ish B.C.}

Icarus' tragic fall. Midas' wealth. Helen's beauty that launched a thousand ships. Prometheus' gift to mankind. Hercules' strength. Achilles' heel. 

These stories are eternal. They're the original source material for Hollywood's blockbusters and Shakespeare's plays. Luke Skywalker (circa the finale of Empire Strikes Back) disregards his elder's advice like Icarus and pays the price. Romeo and Juliet are re-engineered versions of Pyramus and Thisbe, the original star-crossed lovers.

The Greeks' myths are cautionary tales and epic journeys, filled with heroes and villains, jealous gods and ambitious humans. Four thousand years haven't dated them a day, because they tap into universal human ideas and conundrums. Because they exalt man. They didn't fear the gods so much as they loved life on earth. Aesop explains the Greek spirit best in this fable: 

An Astronomer used to go out at night to observe the stars. One evening, as he wandered through the suburbs with his whole attention fixed on the sky, he fell accidentally into a deep well. While he lamented and bewailed his sores and bruises, and cried loudly for help, a neighbor ran to the well, and learning what had happened said: “Hark ye, old fellow, why, in striving to pry into what is in heaven, do you not manage to see what is on earth?”

 

6. Notre-Dame de Paris {Hugo, 1831}

You've probably heard it from me before: Literature is essential to a good life. We can't be nourished just by Hollywood eye-candy; we need eye-protein.

Victor Hugo's first novel is a banquet (and that's not saying anything about his other works I've enjoyed: Bug Jargal, Les Miserables, and Ninety Three). His characters are larger than life; that's why Hugo's books are still bestsellers (let alone in-print) 150+ years later.

I love the heroic and tragic tale of Claude Frollo, a medieval priest torn between his vows to heaven and his passion for La Esmerelda, a beautiful gypsy dancer girl. Quasimodo, a physically disfigured but spiritual giant, also loves Esmerelda and must strive to protect her from men with dishonorable intentions, and eventually an angry Parisian mob. 

It's doubtful that Hunchback will ever fade away. After all, universality is what Hugo aimed to capture in his works. He famously declared once that, "If a writer wrote merely for his time, I would break my pen and throw it away."

Thankfully he didn't. 
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7. The Four Hour Work Week {Ferriss, 2007}

This is one of the most paradigm-shifting books I've ever read. It radically changed how I thought about time management, building a career, and leaning into life's obstacles.

There are a lot of pseudo-"lifestyle design" types out there. Tim Ferriss is not one of them. For $12, you're investing in learning about much needed unconventional and practical advice. It's about re-focusing your workplace habits to let you be productive vs. simply active vs. even worse - reactive to other workers' work.

Ferriss' helped me increase my productivity easily 3x over where I was at this point last year. Since then I've written a book, started a blog, and stuck to a workout regimen for 6 months {unheard of for me}. His exercises and techniques really have made me less fearful of unknown life problems and maximizing time investments each day. 
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8. Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power {Meacham, 2013}

In Jon Meacham's exceptional biography, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, we meet a man so successful, and learned, and lively, that it's hard for me not to want to return to his world and reread it, and to know where to begin when looking at his contribution to the Enlightment's greatest project: America. 

To try to encapsulate everything I love about my favorite Founding Father (yes, I am a nerd) is really difficult, but here's three reasons (in no order): 

{ * } He worshipped heroes, but didn't follow them blindly:

Jefferson had a trinity of portraits of the "greatest men the world had ever produced": Sir Francis Bacon the philosopher, Sir Isaac Newton the scientist, and John Locke the philosopher. He also collected paintings of key American characters { Christopher Columbus, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Americus Vespucius}, which he kept in his office and library. 

{ * } He architected the future he wanted for himself:

When calamity and misfortune attacked in 1770, in the form of his Shadwell home burning to the ground, TJ, then twenty-seven, threw his focus onto designing a new home, growing a garden, and restoring his library. That home would be Monticello {Italian for little mountain}, which was inspired by a Roman temple he sighed in Nimes, France years earlier. 

{ * } He took a wholistic approach to his health: 

Throughout his entire life, Jefferson drank no hard liquor and abstained from any form of tobacco. He walked as much as ten miles a day, enjoyed hunting, horseback riding, and gardening. 

Here's my rec from last summer for a more detailed look at Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power. 

9. Made to Stick {Heath, 2007}

A few friends and coworkers over at Huckberry recommended this one to me emphatically and I'm so glad that I took them up on it. I found Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath extremely thoughtful and instructive regarding the art of communication. I'd recommend it to any business person, entrepreneur, marketer and even fiction writer (especially Chapters 3 - Concreteness and 6 - Stories). 

The authors identify and show examples of what they view as the 6 most essential characteristics of making ideas 'stick,' (understood and remembered by an audience). Those 6 characteristics are: Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, and Stories — easily remembered by the acronym, SUCCES. Each of the 6 characteristics have a dedicated chapter loaded with examples from psychological studies and real-world business situations.

Read my full review here. 
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10. The Night of the Hunter {Grubbs, 1953}

Set in rural Ohio during the Great Depression, The Night of the Hunter tells the story of  brother and sister John and Pearl, who at the beginning lose their father to his life of crime. But soon a shadowy figure named Preacher, a wolf posing as a shepherd, comes to the children and their mother searching for dead dad's loot: ten thousand dollars that's still missing. John, who hid the bank notes in Pearl's doll and swore to his father he'd never tell, is torn between keeping that promise and keeping his family safe. 

I don't want to spoil too much, but what I love about this novel is what I love about the film and other certain fairy tales like Into the Woods and Pan's Labyrinth. They explore a similar theme in different ways: the virtue of disobedience. 

You can read my full review here. ​
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OTHERS

Some of these are books, some articles, some interviews. I've revisited these often and always feel centered afterward. 
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MARKETING & ENTREPRENEURISM

{ * } 1000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly

{ * } The Lean Startup by Eric Ries

{ * } Almost anything on Chase Jarvis Live, but especially this interview with Robert Greene, author of The 48 Laws of Power & Mastery

{ * } The Gary Halbert Letter {the best copywriter}

{ * } How and Why to Keep a Commonplace Book by Ryan Holiday, as well as The Notecard System 
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FICTION & STORYTELLING

{ * } Guillermo Del Toro's Charlie Rose Interview as well as his films Pan's Labyrinth & The Devil's Backbone

{ * } The Art of Fiction by Ayn Rand (book) or better yet, the unabridged 25-hour course. Also, The Romantic Manifesto

{ * } Brain Pickings - an extremely eclectic & free blog dedicated to books

{ * } Joseph Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces & The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers by Christopher Vogler
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PHILOSOPHY & LIFE

{ * } Dan Kennedy's newly introduced The New Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz {habits, self-esteem, life purpose, no cliches}

{ * } Julien Smith's blog, which was introduced to me by his interview on Chase Jarvis. Also his book, The Flinch {leaning into fear and keeping obstacles in perspective} Also, this talk at InBound on the future

{ * } The Art of Manliness' Invisible Councilors article, as well as Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
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AFTER THOUGHTS

If you like any of these below, try delving deeper into specific authors. Being able to trace their development and common themes can be extremely rewarding.

And don't forget about indexes and selected bibliographies. For example, I discovered Ryan Holiday by way of Chase Jarvis Live. Ryan Holiday led me to Robert Greene (#4) and Tim Ferriss (#7). 

If you're looking for more books, you can sign up for my monthly Reading List for a menagerie of books, new and old, I'm working through currently. ​

SAVE OUR SOULS
Interview with artist Cyril Rolando
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AN ILLUSTRATED BOOK
OF BAD ARGUMENTS
Ali Almossawi
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PIRATE HUNTERS
Robert Kurson
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BOOKS OF HUCKBERRY
Spring 2016
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ZERO COOL
Michael Crichton
​(as John Lange)