10 Books You Dont Want To Miss Reading Tim Ferriss ~ Chris Williamson

The most commonly gifted books that you have given to other people?

Awareness by Anthony de Mello. I think the subtitle is The Promise, The Promises and Perils of Reality, something like that. Very short read.

Apocalyptic.

Yeah. It's, it's a tough love book. It's not for everybody, but it's, it's good medicine for the right people at the right time. So Awareness by Anthony de Mello, and I have a full shelf of this book in my guest bedroom in my house.

It's all the same book?

Yeah.

Fantastic.

Uh, I have a few shelves that are all independently filled with different books that are books I gift. Another one is Gold, which is a collection of Rumi poetry, new translations, um, by Helen Liza Gaffory, I believe her name is. Outstanding collection. Also very easy to read, not intended to be read front to back. It's just like-

Pick it up, put it down

... a little nightcap.

Yeah.

A little nightcap before you go to sleep. And I do think the sort of, uh, mystic inspired poetry, since it can be so slippery from the standpoint of language, but it's very evocative from a feeling perspective, is very good for heady people to read before bed as a way of pulling themselves out of the tactical, practical, nitpicky bullshit that they might obsess over otherwise. I find it very calming. So that's, that's another that I gift a lot. How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan, I have a number of copies of, in part because I get so many questions about psychedelics and psychedelic-assisted therapies and the science, and that's a very, very good primer for people who want a, an overview. As is the Netflix series, miniseries, How to Change Your Mind, especially the MDMA and psilocybin episodes, which have some fantastic case studies. For a period of time, and I could still do this, but it's not the chapter that I find myself in currently, The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker.

Mm-hmm.

I think if you want one book on being effective, doing the right things, not just being efficient, doing whatever you're doing quickly and well, The Effective Executive, as old as it is, is-

How old is that book now?

... the best that I have found. Couldn't even tell you. 30, 40, 50 years.

Still holds up?

Oh, yeah. Still holds up.

What about fiction?

Fiction. There are a number of books I've gifted a lot. [chuckles] Motherless Brooklyn, which is, uh, basically a detective noir story that was also turned into a movie by Edward Norton. And the ad-adaptation was very good. There's a stand-in for Robert Moses, uh, famous from the book The Power Broker. I mean, famous for other reasons, but, uh, that was very well done adaptation. It's about a detective with Tourette syndrome.

[laughs]

So there's a lot of laughs as well. Uh, but wonderfully written book. Uh, that's shorter. There are many, many fiction books that I could recommend to folks. If I'm trying to convert a nonfiction purist into someone who can, who can consider fiction-

Hmm

... because I think fiction often describes truth in a stickier way than nonfiction.

Completely agreed. But look at what nonfic- the best nonfiction tries to do. It uses stories, right? Don't make a point without a story. Don't have a story without a point.

Yeah. So even though it's,