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Hello friends đź‘‹
Recently I was having a discussion with some friends about “canonical reading lists.” The concept is simple. If you wanted someone to learn as much as possible about you based on reading a handful of books, what books would they be?
This got me thinking about my own canonical reading list and the books that have had the most lasting impact on me. It helped me to view the question through the lens of, “if I could only read 5 books over and over again for the rest of my life, what would they be?” It took me far too long to whittle my list down to manageable size, but I wanted to share the output with you.
The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson
I have been a lover of fantasy books since I first began reading, but reading The Way of Kings during my sophomore year of college stands out as a watershed moment in my love of fantasy. On a more superficial level, it was the first book I ever read by Brandon Sanderson. Brandon Sanderson has gone on to become my (and seemingly everyone else’s) favorite author. I’ve read essentially his entire catalog of books (most of them multiple times). There are very few authors who I have simultaneously learned more from and who have brought me more joy while reading. Way of Kings wasn’t just an enjoyable read, it spoke to me in a way that few other books have.
Roshar, the world upon which The Way of Kings is set, is a brutal one and the characters who live in it are deeply flawed. Amidst these flaws, they still find a way to strive toward higher ideals of honor, virtue, and conduct. In the eponymous book The Way of Kings, the Alethi War Code, and the Oaths of the Knights Radiant, I found inspiration that I still carry to this day. The heroes in this story are flawed and in many ways doomed to fail. Some may have supernatural powers or be capable of incredible feats of strength, but I find that their true heroism is their willingness to get knocked down, to fail, to hurt those around them, and yet still be willing to get back up and try to be a little bit better tomorrow than they were yesterday. That’s an ideal I think we can all strive towards.
The Republic by Plato
Plato’s magnum opus, The Republic starts by asking the question is it better for a man to be just or unjust, and winds its way through discussions of the ideal state, the metaphysics of reality, the afterlife, and more. I am in a book club reading through the great books of western civilization, and of everything we have read so far, The Republic is the book that I think most belongs in the pantheon of greatest ever written works.
When reading The Republic I was most struck by how much it has to say that is relevant to our modern age. Questions about censorship, freedom, societal roles, work, leadership, and more have just as much relevance today as they did 2,500 years ago. I especially loved his concept of how to train his philosopher kings, the Guardians, the parable of the cave, and his myth of Er exploring the underworld. Plato is the world’s first thinker that developed a system able to square the unreliability of perception with a metaphysics of objective truth, and many of his ideas help to form the bedrock of western civilization. Reading The Republic not only was one of the most enjoyable and interesting books I have ever read, but it really is transformational in the way you see the world. I'm not sure there is another book that has fundamentally changed the way I view the world like The Republic has.
The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander
I picked The Timeless Way of Building up about a year ago and have been so enamored with it I have reread it twice since. Author Christopher Alexander was a Professor of Architecture at UC Berkeley and asks the question: Why do the great buildings of the past have this special quality that we cannot seem to replicate in modern building efforts? His answer is that what sets the great buildings of the past apart is that they contain “the quality without a name”. A quality partially captured by the words alive, whole, comfortable, free, exact, egoless, and eternal but which cannot be fully described by any of them individually. Not only does this quality inhabit the great buildings of the past, but he claims that, “the search which we make for this quality, in our own lives, is the central search of any person, and the crux of any individual person’s story.” Alexander contends that there is a way that we can recapture the ability to build buildings, towns, and lives that include this quality without a name and prescribes his process to do so over the course of the book.
There are some books that you read at the perfect time and I think this was one of those books. If I had read it years ago, I am not sure it would have inspired me in the same way, but reading it in this moment, has been a lightning rod around which so many of the concepts and ideas I have been pondering over the past year or two have coalesced. I still find myself thinking back on this book nearly every day and it has even inspired a new writing project which I am excited to tell you more about soon…
Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry
Jayber Crow is a book I only read recently but I can already tell that it is one that will stick with me for a long time. I have found it coming up again and again in conversations and have been regularly recommending it to others. Wendell Berry’s Port William series is centered around the life and people of a fictional small town in Kentucky with each book/short-story focused on a resident of the town. Jayber is Port William’s barber and though the book is ostensibly about his life story, at times it feels like the town itself is more of the main character and Jayber is simply the observer. Jayber is born in the country surrounding Port William and after an odyssey away, finds himself drawn back and forced to come to grips with his role in the fabric of the small town where he was born.
Jayber Crow is perhaps the most beautiful exploration of the glory of the ordinary I have ever read. The novel flows in a slow, meandering way but touches on deep topics such as love, faith, ambition, work, technology, and our relationship with nature. The book is a wonderful encapsulation of a viewpoint that I find myself being drawn more and more towards. A viewpoint that places special emphasis on people, relationships, community, and living in balance with nature. It has left an indelible mark on me and made me question some of my previously held assumptions. I am excited to read more Berry and to also come back and reread Jayber Crow further down the road.
The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni
Perhaps the biggest surprise on the list. When I was assigned this for a book club, a 19th century novel about 17th century Italian lovers sounded like the least interesting book I could possibly imagine. It started out slowly with the inner workings of village politics involving Renzo and Lucia, a young couple with the intent to marry in the village near Lake Como. As the novel evolves it becomes a sprawling epic capturing the ethos of historical Italy through the lens of religion, duty, family, politics, and crisis. The book is exceptionally written and would definitely belong on the short-list of Italy’s canonical books. For modern readers, The Betrothed presents an incredibly rich tapestry through which to discuss modern issues of faith, family, work, and the obligations we have towards one another. In particular, there is a scene where Cardinal Borromeo is chastising Don Abbondio for the failure to perform his duty that is among the most powerful passages I have ever read. Another element that makes the book especially relevant today is the occurrence of the Black Plague that struck Milan in 1630. One cannot help reading about this pandemic and draw startling parallels to what occurred in our modern society in 2020.
Honorable Mentions
The only way I was eventually able to achieve a shortlist of five was if I mentioned all the other books that were in contention for one reason or another. This is the list of books that just missed out on my canonical reading list in roughly the order of how close they were to being included.
This is the book that I look back on as the point where I started maturing into the adult I am today. It is a book about how falling in love with the process of becoming who you want to be is far more important than striving for specific goals, status, or accolades.
Every good endeavor is a book about the interaction between faith and work and how Christians should think about their work through a biblical lens. My biggest takeaway is our calling to be gardeners or cultivators. We may not have a say in the plot of land we are given, but we always have the opportunity to cultivate it for better or worse
My favorite completed fantasy series. Come for Jordan’s epic world building including unique peoples, cultures, and magic systems. Stay to spend time with the all-time great cast of characters, many of whom start out incredibly annoying but over time grow to represent some of the most standout character work in the genre. Reading the Wheel of Time feels like hanging out with best friends.
After reading every one of Brandon Sanderson’s works (some many times), I consider this to quite possibly be his crowning achievement. This Hugo award winning novella is equal parts engrossing and thought provoking as it explores questions of whether people really can change and the impact our lives have on those around us.
The Great Divorce is a powerful short describing souls in Hell taking a field trip to Heaven and the various choices they make to return to damnation. Best summed up by the quote “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.”, The Great Divorce is my favorite of CS Lewis’ works and nearly impossible to beat in terms of how impactful it is in such a short amount of pages.
The Abolition of Man is CS Lewis’ scything take down of moral subjectivism. It remains strikingly prescient over 80 years after it was written and reveals the rotten underbelly of much of the modern scientific and philosophical project. “We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”
I have a confession to make, for over a decade now I have been a card-carrying Lord of the Rings hater. Hate is probably too strong of a word. I just found it generally overrated. In recent years I finally committed to reading through the books. I still found Fellowship to be obtuse and overly grandiloquent. Two Towers started to grow on me, but I was still not quite sold. The Return of the King was a stunning Tour de Force that somehow redeemed the prior two books and justified Tolkien’s place in the pantheon of writers. In some ways I really think the Lord of the Rings series is better read as a single epic book as opposed to broken up into three partial and imperfect short novels.
Inspired by his own sysophisian pursuit of literary perfection, Tolkien’s short story, Leaf by Niggle, is about a man’s struggles to see his life’s work realized on Earth and the realization that though his Earthly legacy may fade away, the impact he made through his relationships, echoes into eternity.
Springboard was written by one of my favorite professors at Wharton and is a guidebook to helping you explore some of life’s biggest questions. I participated in and subsequently led a discussion group based on this book, and it was one of the most formative experiences of grad school.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
Taken at a surface level, this book is a flawed, confusing, convoluted tale of one man’s simultaneous struggle with mental health and parenthood. All of those things are true, but the reason this book has had such a lasting impact on me is that Pirsig’s discussions of his Metaphysics of Quality were my first exposure to philosophical ideas like objectivity, telos, and virtue. Concepts which, years later, I am spending an increasing amount of time exploring.
The first book I recommend when speaking to any would-be product managers. Inspired is the quintessential book for understanding the “product mindset” and why building with the customer in mind matters so much to building successful technology products.
A book about why you should think of your life as a story and the benefits of setting yourself on a path for adventure. This is a really helpful book for developing an agentic mindset and not falling prey to the overwhelming societal narrative that we are all victims of circumstance.
The Righteous Mind argues that the values that undergird political ideology might not be as different between parties as you’d expect. This book really helped me to see people who hold opposing views, not as bad or stupid, but as simply putting more emphasis on some values and less on others.
Will and Ariel Durant spent over four decades crafting an 11-volume collection of world history. They then distilled the most important themes and lessons learned from that endeavor into 100 pages. This has become one of my most recommended books ever and it is hard to compete with the richness of the insights especially when compared to the overall minimal commitment it takes to read this book.
This was the book that taught me how to write. My favorite course in undergrad was an Introduction to Modern Political Theory class and Leviathan was one of the main works we focused on. The way Hobbes builds his arguments from basic building blocks up towards grandiose claims has stuck with me and continues to be a writing/persuasion style I seek to emulate.
I hope this list provides some insight into who I am, what I believe, and what I aspire towards. What is your canonical reading list?
Until next time,
Erik
