People usually misunderstand my Reading List, which is my personal “wishlist” of titles I think I need to check at some point It’s actually more of a legacy list, I usually handle titles that I need to check later inside Emacs, but I’m too busy to organize those inside my Org-agenda. , as some list of books I recommend reading (this also happens with my Books list). My bibliography list contains the titles that I open in my reading system As you can guess, inside Emacs. . They are not sorted by any means. I was asked multiple times to provide a reading list for people who are not into reading. Important note here, it’s very important that I won’t add it as a side note: do not fall for “reading cults”. You do not have to read books to be a ’bookworm’.

Reading is not a thing you should be doing as an end for itself, but something that we do as an end for something else (more on this at About ’Book Communities’). This was one of the reasons that made me stand always against reading lists; if you want to learn about something, you should read about it, not because reading is good but it happens to be the most efficient way to get information, if those information were possible to be held in other formats (let it be voice) that were efficient than books, I’d definitely stop reading books.

Why am I changing my view now? I’m not. I still think that people should only read about things that interests them (like a certain set of topics they would love investigate). However, nowadays most people have programmed and mainstreamed soft interests, they lack simple knowledge about what’s around to even be interested in. I’d sort this list in the same way I’d like my child to read about the world, history, science and arts. It’s a short list, you should pick up your path from here. Although of that, I will, as aforementioned, write it as it were the same path I’d go to educate my child This should imply of course that this list is totally biased. .

• [2024-01-31 Wed 17:12]: this list is still in beta and open for suggestions.

• All titles must not be skipped unless tagged with “op.” (optional").
• Each title has a number appended to it in this form: d. 3. This is a difficultly indicator. Do not take it seriously, nothing is really hard.
• The first section “Fundamentals, logic, thinking and critical thinking”’s required books (books that are not tagged with op.) are required in the next lists, and they are sorted.
• Some titles will have a single digit after them, this digit refers to a footnote, the footnotes are at the end of the page.

It was hesitating where to put this section: after or before the Fundamentals, I decided finally to put it before it. Most people do not have a clear position from their desires and goals (let those be a limited desires -like achieving something or buying a product- or a longtime goal).

The average desires are —just similarly to the average mindset and views— usually manipulated and programmed, unlike consciousness, desires are manipulated unintentionally [most of the time], rather that manipulation usually results from the social structure.

So, how to know what do you really want/need/desire? First by understanding how those can be subconsciously manipulated. The following articles and videos should be a good start.

• How to know what you really want (Psyche Guides)
• [video][02 min] René Girard Explains Mimetic Desire
• [video][16 min] The Scapegoat Mechanism
• Secrets about People: A Short and Dangerous Introduction to René Girard
• [video][103 min]Introduction to Mimetic Theory

• [2025-03-29 Sat 22:03] Many people have the problem of not listening. This might be caused by brainrot, short attention span or ADHD-related disorders or by the fact that you just did not learn to listen. If you think that you are not a very well listener, it’s better if you start by reading the book: You’re Not Listening: what you’re missing and why it matters by Kate Murphy. I didn’t read it myself (only a few chapters), but trusted sources told me that it will teach you a lot.

Logic, thinking, and critical thinking and introductory philosophy.

• Informal Logical Fallacies (Vleet, J.)    d. 1/10

  Logical fallacies are things we experience everyday in native conversation and our daily exposure to media. We use many fallacies all the time in arguments, and they usually help. Take for example ad hominem:

  A: “I believe we should invest more in renewable energy sources to help combat climate change.”

  B: “You’re not even a scientist, you’re just a musician. Why should anyone listen to your opinion on climate change?”

  ’A’ indeed does not have a reason to justify his questioning. But is that a good argument enough for B? for most people the discussion ends there.

  There are many logical fallacies that are not easily recognizable, learning about them and how to refute them should be a very fun process. This book is about 90 pages and it’s easy to read. If you speak Arabic, check المغالطات المنطقية لعادل مصطفى, much better version.

• A History of Western Philosophy (Russell, B.)    d. 5/10
• The Polymath (Ahmed, W) I disagree with the author on some aspects, however, this book is very important to escape some of the limits that modern educational systems impose on us, mainly: the myth of specialization.    d. 4/10
• Critical Thinking (Bowell et al.)    d. 3/10    op.
• Beginning Mathematical Logic (Smith, P.)    d. 5/10
• In Praise of Idleness (Russell, B.)    d. 3/10
• Philosophical and Mathematical Logic (De Swart, H.) Read this if you found logic101 an interesting read.    d. 8/10    op.

My goal in this section will be giving you a generic view on human history and its anthropological interpretation, but also with learning about real human historical events.

• The Naked Ape (Morris, D.) humanhistory101 provides some critique for this book.    d. 3/10
• A People History of The World (Harman, C.)    d. 6/10
• The Human Web (McNeill et al.) This is a great alternative for humanhistory101, although it gets replaced by it. It has an Arabic version.    d. 6/10    op.
• The Russian Revolution (Smith, S. A.)    d. 3/10
• The Ottoman Age of Exploration (Casale, G.)    d. 5/10
• The Arabs: A History (Rogan, E.)    d. 5/10
• Killing Hope (Blum, W.)    d. 5/10
• Before Taliban (Edwards, D. B.)    d. 5/10
• All The Shah Men (Kinzer, S.)    d. 5/10
• Engineers of Jihad (Gambetta et al.)    d. 7/10
• State of Terror (Suarez, Y.)    d. 6/10
• A People History of The United States (Zinn, H.)    d. 5/10

• The Atoms of Language (Baker, M.)    d. 6/10
• Quantum Theory (Polkinghorne, J.)    d. 5/10
• Cosmology (Coles, P.)    d. 4/10
• Thinking, Fast and Slow (Kahneman, D.)    d. 6/10
• Choice Theory (Allingham, M.)    d. 5/10
• Cryptography (Piper et al.)    d. 5/10
• Why Evolution Is True (Coyne, J. A.)    d. 5/10
• Evolutionary Psychology (Buss, D. M.)    d. 7/10

Although I do not regard psychoanalysis as a science, those books by Freud mention many interesting facts to think about, and will encourage you to question many things.

• Group Psychology (Freud, S.)    d. 5/10
• Totem and Taboo (Freud, S.)    d. 7/10
• Psychology of Sex Relations (Kinsey, A. C.)    d. 5/10
• The Social Animal (Aronson, E.)    d. 6/10
• Cognitive Science (Friednberg et al.)    d. 8/10
• The Story of Art (Gombrich, E)    d. 6/10

I personally believe that being a power user is necessary even for people who do not have IT-related lives, computer science is the mechanical engineering of the modern world.

• Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (Sussman et al.)    d. 7/10
• Algorithm Analysis (Shaffer, C.)    d. 7/10
• Operating Systems (Arpaci-Dusseau et al.)    d. 7/10
• Database System Concepts (Silerschatz, A.)    d. 7/10
• Introduction to Probability and Statistics (Ross, S.) This book is an advanced read for new learners, it’s a post-graduate level course. Why it’s here? It will show you how data (even shallow data, like metadata) can be critically useful for gathering useful information, and teach you how to do it too.    d. 8/10

• Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (Schumpeter, J. A.)    d. 6/10
• The Indispensable Chomsky (Chomsky et al.)    d. 7/10
• Who Rules the World? (Chomsky, N.)    d. 5/10
• Media Control (Chomsky, N.)    d. 5/10
• The Myth of Development (Oswaldo, R.)    d. 5/10
• Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (Boétie, E.)    d. 6/10
• The Myth of The Rational Voter (Caplan, B.)    d. 6/10
• The Dark Side of Democracy (Mann, M.)    d. 7/10
• History of Economic Thought (Hunt et al.) Also check Dr Anwar’s: Anwar Shaikh: Historical Foundations of Political Economy    d. 8/10

The previous sections had non fictional books, those ones are not “fictional”, although some of them are, or more precisely not introduced here as fictional

Comments? Suggestions? Email me at lr0[at]gmx[dot]com.