Immortality: The Quest to Live Forever and How It Drives Civilization

Stephen Cave

“Our overblown intellectual faculties seem to be telling us both that we are eternal and that we are not.”

Fascinating read on the mortality paradox

Man’s Search for Meaning

Viktor E. Frankl

“Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!”

Timeless wisdom from Viktor Frankl

You Can Master Life

James Gordon Gilkey

“We must gain victory, not by assaulting the walls, but by accepting them.”

A 1934 guide to overcoming worry and mastering life.

One Nation Under Stress: The Trouble with Stress as an Idea

Dana Becker

“Stress signified hardship, and endurance was needed to deal with it. Now … we ‘work’ to overcome stress; we don’t suffer it.”

Stress as metaphor

The Genius of Dogs: How Dogs Are Smarter than You Think

Brian Hare & Vanessa Woods

Genius means that someone can be gifted with one type of cognition while being average or below average in another.

[…]

There are many definitions of intelligence competing for attention in popular culture. But the definition that has guided my research and that applies throughout the book is a very simple one. The genius of dogs — of all animals, for that matter, including humans — has two criteria:

1. A mental skill that is strong compared with others, either within your own species or in closely related species.
2. The ability to spontaneously make inferences.

Mad Girl’s Love Song: Sylvia Plath and Life Before Ted

Andrew Wilson

A journey into “what compelled Plath to peek over the edge and stare into the abyss of the human psyche.”

How They Succeeded

Orison Swett Marden

“Genius is nothing more nor less than doing well what anyone can do badly.”

How to Stay Sane (School of Life)

Philippa Perry

“Our stories give shape to our inchoate, disparate, fleeting impressions of everyday life. They bring together the past and the future into the present to provide us with structures for working towards our goals. They give us a sense of identity and, most importantly, serve to integrate the feelings of our right brain with the language of our left.”

How to stay sane:

Data, A Love Story: How I Gamed Online Dating to Meet My Match

Amy Webb

“Bad data in equals bad data out. Algorithms that dating sites have spent millions of dollars to refine aren’t necessarily bad. They’re just not as good as we want them to be, because they’re computing our half-truths and aspirational wishes.”

To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others

Dan Pink

“It is in fact the discovery and creation of problems rather than any superior knowledge, technical skill, or craftsmanship that often sets the creative person apart.”

Dan Pink on “ambiverts,” “problem-finders,” and the surprising secrets of selling your ideas.

This Explains Everything: Deep, Beautiful, and Elegant Theories of How the World Works

John Brockman

“The greatest pleasure in science comes from theories that derive the solution to some deep puzzle from a small set of simple principles in a surprising way.”

Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

Maria Konnikova

How to think like Sherlock Holmes – fascinating lessons in mindfulness and creativity from the beloved detective:

Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition, Volume 1

Mark Twain

“If intellect is welcome anywhere in the other world, it is in hell, not heaven.”

Mark Twain on morality vs. intelligence:

How to Avoid Work

William Reilly

“Life really begins when you have discovered that you can do anything you want.”

A wonderful 1949 guide to doing what you love.

Michel de Montaigne: The Complete Essays

Michel de Montaigne

“To lament that we shall not be alive a hundred years hence, is the same folly as to be sorry we were not alive a hundred years ago.”

Montaigne on death and the art of living, at the link: