Meditations & Observations: TOP 3 BOOKS OF 2019: Recommendations.
Rituals and habits form over time. Looking back, reviewing and examining the year past is one of the best habits i could ever have hoped to fall into. It is logging and documenting my past year, and looking and noting in a codified manner my lessons that I have learnt. Hopefully enabling me to learn from them.
You can read my 2018 recommendation list here.
Reading books is one of the highest roi activity one could partake in and as such it makes sense to honestly review and see which ones were the best. It is a lifelong habit that I do not think enough people take advantage of. This is sort of a letter to myself, although i do have actual reviews and lessons learnt logs, that i update and maintain, a hobby picked up from work, which is more technical journaling. This serves as a reflection of my mindstate at certain junctures of life.
As ever, humans are curious, they want to learn and grow and be the best versions, if you are reading this then you are likely described above you seek our knowledge, crave it. understand that you need it in order to live up to your potential, when you see marble, you should see opportunity of great works of art. this is the finest aspect of the human condition and i find it is my humble civic duty to bring out the best in my fellow man. to fan the flames of those with curiosity, in the hopes that this will echo out and spread like a wildfire amongst humankind, a better humanity.
So here we are again, some new friends, some old. My online following continues to grow diligently, and i am forever grateful if even only one person reads this, finds it valuable and shares it. Sharing really does go a long way and it is good karma.
TLDR:
- HAGAKURE
- Metaphysics of WAR — Evola
- Can't hurt me — Goggins
- Bonus.
The year of 2019 was for me, the final year of university, and it was one where I had plenty of time of self reflection and getting to know some people intimately, it wasn't focused so much on outward growth, but rather inward reflection and refinement. I can certainly say that I left the year better than I had entered it, as a person and overall in life. This is reflected in certain life choices and is reflected in certain areas of my life where I had to consume certain types of content. This is most certainly reflected in my book choice and the books I naturally gravitated towards.
The theme of all the books that follow, are that they are militaristic and martial in nature. One on the nature of the samurai, one of the metaphysics of the warrior and war, and one a tale of a soldier as told by him, his story. The bonus also fits into this theme too.
HAGAKURE. (see link for quote thread)
Reading last years recommendations, i focused on quake books, books that shake up your worldview. i suppose then hagakure did not shake up anything, it reinforced and solidified my foundations. My foundations being heavily steeped in religious conservatism emphasising detachment from the material world and then was later reinforced by the stoics and their teachings of stoicism.
i would call it a good book on foundations and principles. it is a very focused book, the entirety of it being on solely and objectively on a few essential items. but all these things it talks about are really one thing. the way, the code.
I was raised with the notion of death for the very early aspects of my life. a good death ought to be the first and last thoughts one thinks of before doing anything.
this book, hagakure, brought it back. i had been aware of the book for quite some while, having been familiar with other far east classics such as Lao Tzu, and Sun Tzu. But i only read it when Mimetic Value emphasised i ought to push it up my reading list.
How i read the book. how you read a book i have come to learn is how you watch a movie and it is one of the vital lessons i learnt from hagakure, everything matters. how you do anything, is how you do everything. It emphasised to me romantic notions and of beauty. I read half the book on pdf, and other parts of it via audiobook while going on very very long hikes for hours on end. Walking for the sake of walking is underrated. Listening to books while going on hikes is underrated also. The real reason is that it engages your brain in other ways, you associate different things while walking and listening and reading. i highly recommend it.
this is a solid foundation for you to use. use this book as a book to help purify your thinking patterns. for me it made me realise the lack of value in most of the things i did. For me memento mori is a useful practice and a foundational world view and practice.
a quote:
“Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily.”
In further reflection I think this has become one of the more important books I have ever read, mainly in part to how succint it makes its points. Although literal spiritual guides have literal relevance as most people alive are not spiritual warriors, there are some that do still yearn for a higher purpose and higher meaning.
Metaphysics of War — Evola
I am not sure why or how i came to read this book. but it was one of the best reads of the year. if you are familiar with evola, i think you would say its not his best work, or that it was droll and repeating. but i think this book is worth reading more than any other simply because of the ways of thought it introduces into the new reader who is not familiar with this view. of tradition and of a type of perennialism. my review in that sense would be a defence of it, it has become sort of cool in some parts of the internet, the parts most do not know of, to downplay evola as a whole. But i think he has become too popular in some other circles, and this has resulted in some minor intellectual rebellion. of course with all authors, it is better to judge them by their actual works than by their adherents, this is true in most cases, it is easy to lump things together and forgo nuance.
Despite the bad reputation, which i am not sure even deserves much comment, because i am sure evola will last longer than many of his critics. i think the book is worth visiting, even if you are off put of the surrounding politics, i would still recommend a libertarian read marx, and a communist read friedman.
It gives a view that war itself is human nature and not only that but that the act of itself is a holy act, a divine right. my own thoughts of it would be more analytical and say that human evolved alongside war and war itself acted as a way for selection as a mechanism and way to deal with population and malthusian limits of the time, and that it has in a sense become a symbiote of human nature, politics in many senses is still war. and war itself is still ongoing and in my opinion always will be ongoing. i do see the strength of the argument that humanity itself has known war alot more than it has peace.
even our closest animal relative, the chimp undergoes war and engages in ritual brutality, i am not sure what else to tell you when faced with these facts of human nature of nature itself staring back at you. of course there is good too, for some the practice of war itself brings peace. and for other war is an end in and of itself and as such should be seen as a goal for mankind, to this effect the argument goes that war produces innovations and drives the economy and such, that we would not be here without war. i think in my opinion this is again true, but unsavoury, sometimes it is nice to eat something savoury. to that effect we humans also devised of ways to engage in war without the cost, and via this we created sports.
War is metaphysical.
For the third book, i wasn’t too sure, i read a lot of nietzsche, alot of generic self help such as ultra learning, and the book range which emphasised that generalists are actually much better than specialists, which resonated with me as i do feel like a generalist, until i had to specialise for work, which is funny as you progress you either become more generalist by becoming a manager or specialising even further, and the problem can become a conundrum many face in their careers.
The only other major philosophical work i really read was some throwaway occult books and god and golem inc, which talks of the cybernetics of religion, this was great for my madru.org work on memetics.
But to carry on the theme, I think the next book is apt due to its cultural relevance in certain circles.
Can’t Hurt Me — David Goggins
This book I took a while to read, but when i got into it, it went by really quick. David goggins has become somewhat of a celebrity through his philosophy, of embracing the suck, of embracing the pain. This story, is his story, the story of his life. How he grew up and how he had to overcome certain issues in his life and how they transformed him.
Again the themes within are similar to Julius Evola’s Metaphysics of war, and these two books are interesting in juxtaposition although one is considered a soldier and a fitness and ultramarathon guru, his clips going viral on social media. One tells the tale and philosophy of the warrior within the larger context of tradition and history, and the other is a warrior's tale of how he created himself over and over and why, and what his motivations were, and what drives him and continues to drive him.
As I detail below, these books this year were arguably more introspective. As such they were more entailed to give me perspective on different things and how to approach the mysteries of life.
If you cannot travel, I suppose you can read.
The ideology of goggins is not for everyone, and not everyone will get it, but those that do, will be able to find solace in this extreme lifestyle of constantly pushing your limits to see how far you can go… again this is certainly not for everyone, not everyone wants to climb everest either, but we can all recognise the monument.
His book I think is certainly controversial. And that is good, and that is how it is designed to be, if anyone does anything in the public realm, expect there to be someone who does not like, we as humans care too much about the opinions of others, and care too much about the negative aspects that we are faced with. If you were to read this book, it will address this, the only person who matters is the one who stares back at you in the mirror every morning.
I think the main reason that I read this was purely to get another insight into life and I am starting to enjoy more narrative in the types of books that I tend to choose to read, the large existential problems aren't the same from when i was younger. What kind of life I can lead and why.
Bonus: The Duel or A Point of Honour -Joseph Conrad.
Looking back on this essay and my previous 2018 review, as i have written this in dribs and drabs over a long period of time, slowly adding to multiple idea essays. I have noticed an increase in my ability of writing this too was a conscious effort, i can sit and write a lot more within a shorter time period. and looking back on the differences in the books i chose. They reflect an evolution in desires and tastes. This next selection reflects my evolving taste, as it is quite out the foray of my natural appetite of reading, mainly due to it being fiction, however I was told sometimes fiction can give you more information than non fiction, and I think that is definitely true in this case.
The books i chose this year were very internally focused, and the ones last year were more applicable for external ideas, they were less steeped in self help or improvement or world views and philosophies on how to navigate through the world. Philosophy to a large part should enable you to wield the tools of inquiry and sophistry so that you can develop your own frameworks and allow you to “cope” with the outside world.
over the course of 2019, i focused on focusing and gained the ability to read a book cover to cover in a single sitting. it was painful and required a lot of will power.
over the transitionary period of 2019 and 2020, in a single day, new years day, I read a book, the duel by joseph conrad. I suppose this is a new ritual i hope to keep up in the years to come, not only are these end of year reviews and rituals good for the general remainder of the year, they optimise and getter better with time as do i. i hope to continue to improve. The book I read was the duel by Joseph Conrad, now one of my favourite novelists, not that i am an avid reader of novels. But his works stand out for me, for being very poignant.
The novel is about two napoleonic officers who have a feud, that is caused over a misunderstanding and it continues over decades and over countries. This book is a book that showed me what can give way to passionate hatred and these abstract notions of honour that we hold. And how to act when your honour might be challenged.
The opening sentence is one i resonate with, it equates Napoleons quest of conquering europe as one as a duel. I suppose one should ought to live their life also as a duel, you vs life. a sort of conflict, and i think this is reflected in the novel, what it means to duel, and what it means to retaliate and keep it going no matter what, no matter the losses that may be incurred. Mutually assured destruction on the most atomic scale, between two men. The protagonist always in the face of disrespect and his honour being challenged remains ever a gentleman.
The story of a yin yang locked in a battle, until one overcomes the other. I think more people could turn to this novel in how to act in the face of ever increasing squabbles on the internet and in life general, there will always be conflict, how you conduct yourself is dependent on you. A great book on consequences.
Call to action!
By GRITCULT.
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