What is a book you’ve read that was so good you think all men should read it at some point in their lives?

35 comments

1. Green Eggs and Ham

2. [deleted]

3. “Never Split the Difference” by Chris Voss. Retired FBI agent who basically invented the art of hostage negotiation now used by law enforcement all over the world. The negotiation and rhetorical techniques you’ll learn from that book are literally life-changing.

4. 1984, the things in that book aren’t happening to that effect, but you can see the early stages of them in our everyday life.

5. All Quiet on the Western Front

   Edit: and for those that are curious, read it. It’s relatively short and not super dense. The Netflix movie is a good movie but a poor literary adaptation so don’t think you can watch that and understand this piece of media.

6. Sons and Lovers, because every man has a mother

7. Animal farm. And try to apply it to your life.

8. The courage to be disliked if you ever feel like your “behind” or are lacking on the basics.

9. White Fang by Jack London, it’s a reminder at how fragile your life is and how meaningless it is to the wild, teaches you about discipline in wolves

10. The Book Thief

11. Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl. Should be mandatory reading at schools versus Jane Eyre.

    Edit because I missed the why portion of the question: it teaches one of the most important lessons that men should learn. The one thing that nobody can take from us. How we react to what happens to/around us. Between an action and a reaction there is a space of time where you can decide how to act.

12. The Way of Kings.

13. 1984

    Brave New World

    Fahrenheit 451

    Slaughterhouse Five

    Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

    The Tao of Pooh

14. The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm.
    Even though he wrote it in 1956, it is timeless and explains why we struggle so much.

15. The old man and the sea.

    It’s a beautifully written story about the vagaries of life.

16. The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday. I’m still not good at it but that book tries to get you to focus only on what you can control

17. I’m Ok You’re OK.

18. The dictionary

19. The Brothers Karamazov

20. Notes from the underground by Doestoyevsky, a pretty good way to open youe eyes to the type of person you can become if you’re obsessed with your station in life

21. Come As You Are. It would help a lot of my fellow men understand their female partners better and would probably lead to a better sex life.

22. The Lord of The Rings.

23. Models by Mark Manson. This book is about modern dating and men shouldn’t be afraid of rejection.

24. Meditations – Marcus Aurelius. Some gold advice on not being a bitch

25. No More Mister Nice Guy by Robert Glover.

    Of all the “man” books I’ve read, this was the most eye opening. I, like so many others, read it and felt it could’ve been a biography about me.

26. Can’t hurt me by David Goggins. Shows more about how we can overcome our challenges if we push ourselves over the limit.

27. For Whom the Bell Tolls

28. A Gentleman in Moscow

    Beautiful story of a kind, intelligent, and thoughtful man adapting to unexpected new circumstances after being sentenced to permanent house arrest on pain of death.

29. Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins

30. Of Mice and Men, it’s a great book set during the great depression, I won’t spoil the story, but I think it has a very powerful message.

31. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

32. The Once and Future King. There was something incredible about this book as I dealt with my own feelings of inadequacy and self-loathing as a grew up and slowly fell ass-backward into adulthood.

    “In the secret parts of his peculiar brain, those unhappy and inextricable tangles which he felt at the roots, the boy was disabled by something which we cannot explain. He could not have explained either, and for us it is all too long ago. He loved Arthur and he loved Guenever and he hated himself. The best knight of the world: everybody envied the self-esteem which must surely be his. But Lancelot never believed he was good or nice. Under the grotesque, magnificent shell with a face like Quasimodo’s, there was shame and self-loathing which had been planted there when he was tiny, by something which it is now too late to trace. It is so fatally easy to make young children believe that they are horrible.”

33. Every man should read the discourses of Epictetus, or at least his Enchiridion, and the Republic by Plato outside of a learning environment and for the sake of developing their character from people who were not celebrities, but advisers to kings and the forbearer of science.

    I believe these books will better a man’s ability to see the world more openly if they can approach these books with the mindset of these people being of the past and only looking at the logical patterns they try to explain. The Republic especially is wonderful.

34. Ashtavakra Gita. A philosophical treatise from the East in how to live perfectly and in harmony.

    Emil Ciorans The trouble with being born. A fantastic and pessimistic philosophical book that examines the examined harshly. A liberating read.

    UG Krishnamurti’s courage to stand alone. A great book that eliminates all concepts and ideas to where we are faced with the reality of ourselves.

    Diogenes the cynic. A fantastic novel and aphorisms that struggles against society and strives for the true self. Yet another philosophical text.

    The Chan teachings of Bhodhidharma. Zen anecdotes that promote living in the moment, thoughtlessness and tranquility.

    All of these texts, put simply, CHANGED MY LIFE.

35. Dune by frank herbert