Post: #1

Gentlemen
I would like to hear your thoughts on this subject.

As I've begun to read more books in recent years I have few times stumbled upon some really shitty ones. After that I started to refer to different tops, top 100 clasics, top 50 most influential etc.
I bet everyone is reading the same books, will this make you think as everyone else, thus deminishing your individuality?
It is generally considered reading to be good and beneficial, but is there a healthier way of reading.

How do you pick your books?

Post: #2

Only if we all read the books the same way. I might read a book and interpret it in a way that most may not. However, I think most people are better off reading something rather than nothing. The surest way to become a stale person is to not do anything.

Post: #3

The idea behind reading a book is not necessarily that you adapt the author's beliefs unequivocally, but rather that you take time to view them objectively and if you find them to be agreeable you can incorporate them into your own worldview.

I know what you mean though. People reading the last Malcolm Gladwell book think that it will revolutionize their way of life. Good luck... if you see a book on the Bestseller's list nowadays you should probably stay away.

I pick my books by sticking to the classics, written by men who lived an admirable life and preached brilliant ideas (even if I don't agree with them). I also like to read books from Manosphere guys and similar authors.

On that note, I recently started a website dedicated to the best books for men for this very reason:

http://www.MasculineBooks.com

The site is in it's nascent stages, but I hope it will contain hundreds of fantastic books in the near future.

Post: #4

^ Your blog makes me feel a bit nostalgic. Whatever happened to Great Books for Men?

Post: #5

(04-05-2015 10:14 PM)Fortis Wrote:  Only if we all read the books the same way. I might read a book and interpret it in a way that most may not. However, I think most people are better off reading something rather than nothing. The surest way to become a stale person is to not do anything.

Interpretation is the name of the game. We could all read the same book and in a discussion come with a dozen different interpretations.

Post: #6

Check out this guy's reading list.

Seth is right about sticking to the classics. It puts our modern existence into perspective in a way that most people miss.

Like right now I am reading Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and it is humbling to hear how he thought people were terrible and disrespectful, and that was back in the second century. That tears down the myth that people today are so much worse and that there was some utopia in the past.

When you read it should be to gain new perspectives to incorporate into your everyday life, not necessarily to seek somebody else's advice on how exactly to live your life. Some of the best books I have read have been autobiographies where the person just told their story without really trying to give you a list of tips and ways to live your life.

When you read a story like that you are free to learn and take away what strikes you instead of what the person thinks is important.

Post: #7

Having familiar points of reference in movies, music, books, or anything just allows you to better communicate with people, I feel. You begin to speak the same language. It doesn't mean that you agree 100% with everything you ever read, but it allows you to use the same vocabulary when discussing ideas.

For this reason I love sharing good books with my friends, all my favorite books I have given away.

Post: #8

A lot of good thoughts.
I guess to overcome sameness, you just have to read more. So that you have so much more perspectives on any given subject.
Judging by this forum it looks like the smatrest men have the biggest weakness for poosy
I read (listen to) around 50 books a year, mostly classics or audiolectures and I must say I have hard time finding anyone to discuss it with.

Post: #9

(04-05-2015 10:29 PM)Fortis Wrote:  ^ Your blog makes me feel a bit nostalgic. Whatever happened to Great Books for Men?

He's usually found on Dalrock's blog

TBH, it's tough to find anyone reading anything of substance these days, so I doubt that we are all going to die of Tennyson poisoning any time soon

Post: #10

As long as you develop your own opinions about the subject matter and are able to interact with the text, I don't think reading the same books as everybody else will kill your individuality.

If we play the same sport, will we turn into the same person? I don't think so.

Post: #11

If everyone read the same books it would increase the sense of community because we would all the same reference points in books to discuss.

As for whether or not people would be more or less the same afterwards is just conjecture. However, having a shared sense of community because people can discuss the same sets of ideas is how all great cultures, civilizations, and institutions are built:

- Every church known to man
- The founding of a new government
- Art movements
- Science movements

Worrying about whether or not people become more or less individual seems like a fruitless waste of time in light of the above.

Post: #12

"Seth is right about sticking to the classics. It puts our modern existence into perspective in a way that most people miss."

I once got a tip to not take a history or lit class whose syllabus contained mostly books written in the last 50 years. Good judgment.

Post: #13

To add to what has already been said about "it depends on your interpretation":

I have read a few good books more than once. Each time, I am at a different period in my life. My focus, and what I relate to in more depth, changes depending on what is happening in my life. It also changes based on what else I have recently read. I like classics for this reason, and rarely pick up modern mass fiction.

As an example, I read War and Peace a few years ago, after I had learned about game and the unfiltered truths of men and women. I found myself laughing at how Tolstoy depicted neuroses of various characters, as I was filtering it through a very nascent red pill lens. Similar with Snow Crash, which I have read 2 or 3 times. It took on a different meaning.

So, just within my own reading, I don't get the same impression when I read the same book at different times. Someone who's grown up a life completely different from me will cherish passages that I hadn't. Sometimes, when I learn this, I want to know why. I also enjoy the shared experience of someone who has read a classic, like Moby Dick, and enjoyed similar passages. Like the intense competence of Queequeg.

Post: #14

No, it would not kill your individuality, if anything it would enhance it. This is why we have the 'Canon of Western Literature', having read most of which is a prerequisite for being regarded as educated and erudite. Before the advent of television, people had to read and think and discuss books for their education. Depth and commonality of reference is an invaluable aspect in the refinement of ideas - ie, you can only maximise the subtlety, and uniqueness of your own views if others are sufficiently educated to debate meaningfully and force you to think.

Post: #15

The very fact that some books are prescribed in high school/lycee, and people stay more or less the same after that reading, is the simple proof that books do not change people.
The interesting point, however, is that authors still make impression of being more colourful people than their rather uniform readers...just to flip the perspective....maybe a reader's individuality has never been, or has never been too individual...?

Post: #16

(01-14-2016 08:01 AM)H1N1 Wrote:  No, it would not kill your individuality, if anything it would enhance it. This is why we have the 'Canon of Western Literature', having read most of which is a prerequisite for being regarded as educated and erudite. Before the advent of television, people had to read and think and discuss books for their education. Depth and commonality of reference is an invaluable aspect in the refinement of ideas - ie, you can only maximise the subtlety, and uniqueness of your own views if others are sufficiently educated to debate meaningfully and force you to think.

I think that the great summary of this point of view - plus something about the doubts of guardians of a canon - is in Hermann Hesse's Glasperlenspiel, the novel for which Hesse got the Nobel prize and thus was officially elevated to heavens of canon.
As much as some canon is needed at the beginning, during education process, at the end it will lead to ossification. There is no better example, an example simultaneously canonical and perverse in its canonical content, than the fate of Homer and Plato in antiquity: starting as some spoken art, a sort of Glasperlenspiel actually, having their heyday as living philosophy of the day, they left those times in the shape of occultist doctrine. Now, which western ideas do function in the way of esoteric knowledge nowadays...? Hint: no, reading Marcus Aurelius and Seneca, even Giordano Bruno, does not mean that we are starting new Renaissance.

Post: #17

Quote:Would reading the same books as everyone else kill your individuality?

The answer to this question is undoubtably yes. Have you ever hung around with Ayn Rand assholes? All they read is Ayn Rand, and they all act like robots.

Post: #18

You have to read books as if the author is making his case to you. Which is the correct and only reasonable way to books, but it doesn't seem like the way most people actually read books. I have read plenty of far left political theory, bad history, bad philosophy, and all of it on purpose. This approach would immediately set you apart from the average reader, even if you did stick to popular books (which you should not).

The best way to select books is as part of a self-directed investigation. Make sure that you make full use of the Gutenberg project. Old (by which I mean, 19th century and earlier) books are invaluable for a variety of reasons - perspectives that are completely alien to our times, a complete absence of any kind of political correctness or progressive narrative, etc. It is fascinating to read a Confederate make his case for the righteousness of slavery, to read the ideals of democracy and liberalism savaged by the perspective of an absolute monarchist, or to read a German in 1910 describe the evils of Britain & France.

Post: #19

I like to read Classics myself, but sometimes I indulge in more recent publications if I think there's merit to it and isn't simply recycled garbage. As others had put, most people don't bother to read in general so the fact you're doing so is already something that puts you out of the ordinary category. People also don't tend to think critically either, which is also rather stupid when it comes to reading in general. It should stir your mind to think thoughts that it might not otherwise entertain, but you should be able to accept or reject them on your own.

I remember one time I got in an argument because this woman who was all about literature went on about how J.D. Salinger and Albert Camus were wonderful writers and how she loved Catcher in the Rye. My sin was that I told her that I thought it was overrated and that Holden Caulfield was not "genius" but just an obnoxious teenager, and was also unimpressed with Camus. I don't remember if it was The Stranger or the Plague that was being discussed, either way the books didn't do much for me and I dared to challenge the notion that he was as great as a writer as men like Goethe.

As somebody else already said, just because you read the same books doesn't mean you necessarily have to think the same, and most people just parrot the same opinions because that's what "educated" people do and is a way of virtue signalling.