Between your workouts, careers, and personal life, what type of books do you guys like to enjoy in your free time? Fiction, non-fiction, history, financeā¦ Iām curious to see what this demographic of people is into literature wise. Letās get talking about some books!
Personally I particularly enjoy history & philosophy, with some psychology thrown in. Favorite authors have to be Robert Greene & Jordan Peterson, and my favorite book right now is probably The Discourses by Machiavelli.
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Oh my goodness yes! Everyone has read āThe Princeā: no one really got to know Machiavelli.
My favorite book remains āThus Spake Zarathustaā. I love the presentation of it, how each chapter holds something to ponder and decode. The premise: taking the prophet and putting him into āmodernā times. And I love the feeling of fun you can perceive that Nietzsche had in writing it.
For a quicker read, āIn the Penal Colonyā by Kafka is SO much better than Metamorphosis while still very much capturing the spirit of Kafka. The Trial was also a solid piece of his. Honestly: I just didnāt care for Metamorphosis.
I also love just about anything that Arthur Schopenhauer wrote.
On the lifting front, I make it a policy to read āPowerlifting Basics Texas Styleā by Paul Kelso at least once a year. Itās that good, and I always pick up something from it. And itās just enjoyable. And anything Dan John writes is worth reading. Also, every lifter needs to read āThe Complete Keys to Progressā by John McCallum.
I could go on, but thatās good for now.
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One of my personal favorite is Heart of Darkness. Itās so much more meaningful reading as an adult over when I had to read it in HS.
It is my personal opinion that every man should read The Things They Carried and Going after Cacciato by Tim Oābrien
Lately I have been reading books on bees/beekeeping to try and overcome my fear of bees.
Other books I like to read at this point in my life: anything that improves my knowledge of the physical world (nature, physics, mathematics,etc), discourses (Suttas) of the Buddha, the occasional horror novel (read a lot of stephen king as a teenager), getting more into biographies as I get older too.
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Moby Dick is my favorite book and the 1956 film adaptation is probably my favorite movie. The special effects are laughable but Gregory Peck was sensational as Captain Ahab. I realize people are split on this book many people love it but a lot hate it.
āThe Harder they Fallā by Budd Schulberg was a 1940s novel about the Mobās involvement in boxing, also a great film adaptation which I think was Humphrey Bogartās last film, and also featured boxing legends Max Baer and Jersey Joe Walcott.
āThe Purposeful Primitiveā by Marty Gallagher was very informative in terms of strength training methods and I think Mr. Gallagher is also a very talented writer and storyteller.
Another book Iād add is āThe 4-hour Workweekā by Tim Ferriss - I should add Iām not a big fan of his overall (and personally didnāt find most of the specific advice in the book particularly helpful) but I did fall in love with the concept of figuring out what he called the āminimum effective doseā - which is probably the āPareto principalā repackaged -
rather if we can take a minimalist approach and end up at āgood enoughā for things that are not really a top priority in life we have more time/energy we can focus that on things that are a higher priority.
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Fiction-wise, I get drawn into hard[er] sci fi. Iain Bankās Culture Series; Charlie Strossā Accelerando, Glasshouse, Halting State; Neal Stephensonās Diamond Age.
Iām reading a long kind-of-silly Chinese webnovel with my five-year-old, kind of a hybrid Chinese/Western fantasy story: Coiling Dragon. Hardly quality writing, but itās entertaining. Dragons, swords, honor, betrayal, magic, etc. Itās very very long. In ebook form, weāre 3,600 pages into 21,000. Maybe a year left until we finish itā¦ But there lots of opportunities for educational discussions among the themes.
As far as what I mostly spend my time reading, itās just a bunch of random things around constantly-changing interests. Iām partway through an 1800s navigation book. Read a few diet books recently. Working through some stuff on learning Classical Chinese, which occasionally bounces out into re-reading bits of the Dao De Jing and Confucius.
Slowly making my way through Dune, but Iām not really much of a fiction-reader.
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My number one pick is the Holy Bibleā¦i read a few chapters every night before bedtime
Other books I absolutley love are the Jack Reacher novels, Jesse Stone novels and if i am in the old wild west mood then its the Smoke Jensen novels, i also read the Womens Murder Club series from Patterson and the Texas Ranger series from Patterson
I also have read most of Ellington Dardens books and Bruce Leeās striking thoughts and his Jeet Kune Do book that i have had since the early 80s
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Growing up, i read all of the Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan booksā¦total adventure and fantasy, loved pretending to be Tarzan thru those stories
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Penthouse Letters
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I completely agree with you about Machiavelli. The Prince was just a letter send by Machiavelli to a Medici that happened to be published. The Discourses and especially his History of Florence are what I think he should really be defined by.
I have heard many good things about Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and obviously Nietzsche as a whole, but I havenāt read any of his work as Iāve prioritized other philosophers.
I also havenāt read any Kafka, nor Schopenhauerā¦ I feel like Iāve been slacking!
Any particular recommendations for Schopenhauer?
I havenāt read The Things They Carried since high school, but I would love to go through it again sometime. Tim OāBrien is a very talented author.
Are there many books about bees? Seems like a super specific topic lol.
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Iāve heard Moby Dick is a very dry novel, and Iāve definitely heard that thereās a split consensus on it. Iād love to read it sometime.
I think a lot of people struggle with that, and try to be super good at so many different things. I definitely will look into Tim Ferriss. I do struggle with reading fiction, but I am working on allowing myself to let go and be immersed into a āfantasyā world. The Harder They Fall sounds interesting!
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21k pages?! How dense is each page, cause thatās outrageous! Iāll definitely check it out, it seems like the type of thing that you could go through over the course of a couple years.
Seems like you have an interest in Chinese literature particularly. Is Confucius hard to read?
Canāt go wrong with The Bible haha.
Have you read any of the Lonesome Dove series? It was written sometime in the 1920s/30s, but the first book is a Pulitzer Winner, and itās western themed. Iāve been meaning to buy it for a while.
I didnāt know Tim Patterson wrote books! /s
I guess I may be too young, but I did not realize Tarzan was a book seriesā¦
A man of culture I see 
More than you would initially think though only a couple are available at my local library.
The books is where Tarzan came fromā¦late 1800ās
James Patterson, lol
never read the lonesome dove series
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Isaac Asimov, Tolkien, Frank Herbert and few others.