Two books everyone should read at least die trying
Nowadays, most people have a list of 10 books you should read. I mean it is good at and all. But I have decided to talk only about two books you should read. Those books are Sapiens and Man who mistook his wife for a hat. In my mind, there are two main reasons to read a book. The first one is to improve your knowledge. The second one is to change your perspective about a subject. So, I am suggesting these books on the reason for, changing your perspective.
Firstly, I am going to talk about Sapiens; a brief of history humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. So, in short, this is a summary of human history from an anthological perspective. This book is written in a very simple manner, and anyone can understand what the author is talking about. The main reason, I am suggesting this book is because it was instrumental in changing my idea about religions. It is not changing per se, but it is more about, I got a better understanding of religions. Because in that section, the author talked about how religions influence our agricultural revolution, city building, killing of thousands of people, and wiping out whole civilizations. We do have to accept the fact that religion did play a huge role in building human societies and it is one of the reasons why we are here today. It is very important to acknowledge that fact. Now we must substitute religion with much less destructive things that can glue our societies together. As a side note, I even got rid of the fear of hell thanks to Sapiens. When you look at how the concept of hell begins. I realized that hell is the same as the man in the sky.
The second reason is how it enlightens me about human nature. For the majority of human existence, we have lived as tribes. And we still carry those instincts or traits with us on to the modern age. Because of that people are still doing stupid things to protect their “tribe”. People have always killed each other’s to protect their own tribe. As far I understood, this is why there are even kingdoms or even countries for that matter. Because we need to join a tribe to protect ourselves and to reproduce. That way we can pass our genes to the next generation. By reading Sapiens, I became more optimistic about humankind. At first, I thought humans are becoming worse or being corrupted by these new technologies. But that is not true. Contrary to popular belief, we are getting better. Living standards are now better compared to 100 years ago. People are living longer, and people have more rights. Overall, people are having a better time compared to a person living maybe 70 or 80 years ago.
On to the second book, The man who mistook wife for a hat by Oliver Sacks. I know the topic of the book might be very funny. But trust me, it is a very depressing book. The book is about different neurobiological disorders and how those disorders can affect a person. This book too is also well written. But if you need to understand it, you need to have some kind of knowledge about biology or how the brain is functioning. The author tries to explain it, but at least for me, it is not enough. That does not mean you can’t understand the book. It means, if you know the background, you can go that extra mile.
I am choosing this book for one reason. This book shows how lucky we are. At least most of us are. You have to read the book to fully grasp what I am trying to tell you. I will give a brief example to elaborate on my point. There is one patient in that book, his condition is that his memory always gets reset at the end of the day. I am not joking! You can read it yourself. So, think about, whatever you do in a day, it all gets erased. You have to start a new the next day from scratch (not in scratch but at least without the memory of the previous day or memories of a couple of maybe years.) for the rest of your life. Just think about it for a moment. See how lucky we are. We can fall in love with someone, we can do the stupid things we might regard or we might even do that we will enjoy for the rest of our life. We are lucky enough to remember those things. But for that poor fellow, he cannot have any of those things. That is why I told you at the begging, this book changes my mind. It teaches me or shows me how lucky I am. Even with the faults I have.
So, this is why I suggest these two books. There are better books. But, I think you should add these two books to your list. Because trust me, these will open your mind to a whole new dimension of life. And it will teach you many different lessons.
