A Confession

"A Confession" by Leo Tolstoy [1]. An autobiographical story of Tolstoy's "search for meaning" when he was, I believe, around the same age. A masterpiece in around 80 pages. From a more practical angle, I wish I had had "Early Retirement Extreme" by Jacob Lund Fisker [2] in my shelf at that age. Don't get fooled by the title, this is by no means a "highway to financial independence" book; rather, it's a really deep book about, well, sensible living strategies, considering the world we're in. The author holds a PhD in theoretical physics, and by living with around $7,000 a year as a scientist and postdoc, he retired in around 5 years in his early 30s. It's a book on thoughtful frugality, if you will. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Confession 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Lund_Fisker

I plan to reread a couple core works for myself. Of that list the ones that I’d recommend for others are: Aurelius (trans. Martin Hammond) Fear and Trembling Man’s Search for Meaning Tolstoy’s Confessions Kundera’s The Art of the Novel After doing a thorough reading of “How to Read a Book” I decided to try rereading a few books to pull more out of them. I can’t recommend “How to Read a Book” enough - despite its anachronisms and glaring faults, it’s the only book I’ve found that has genuinely made me feel that I’ve not really read a single book in my life.

I think Leo Tolstoy might be fairly well known in the US due to "War and Peace" and, possibly, "Anna Karenina". But his nonfiction or autobiographical works deserve attention as well. I would highlight two of these: "The Kingdom of God is Within you" -- I think Mahatma Gandhi considered this to be one of the three most influential books for his philofophy of "nonviolent resistence". Even though Tolstoy was already considered a literary genius in his country, the Russian czar initially banned this book due to negative imagery of the Russian church. So I think it was first published in Germany or elsewhere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kingdom_of_God_Is_Within_Y... (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kingdom_of_God_Is_Within_You) "A Confession" -- a short book that is somewhat related to the previous one; depicts young Tolstoy's "search for the meaning of life" (or, God). It had a huge impact on me (even though I read it first being 30+). This would be among my first recommendations for books to read when you're 20. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Confession Also, this might give some more context to understand Tolstoy's nonfiction:…

"A Confession" and "The Kingdom of God is Within You" by Leo Tolstoy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Confession https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kingdom_of_God_Is_Within_Y... (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kingdom_of_God_Is_Within_You)