A small poll — drop your must-read books in the comments.

A small poll — drop your must-read books in the comments. Like, what you think absolutely has to be read 🙂
I’ve got a few principles by which I filter out literature or articles:
1/ any popular business books/articles can go to hell — they’re written with the idea they have to land on a wide audience, which means they’ll be exploiting ideas “as close as possible to the broadest circle of people,” namely:
• how damn hard it is to do anything and how you need to work a lot (the corporate mantra; number of hours guarantees literally nothing, since it’s just a multiplier of your talents and understanding)
• recipes for happiness (there aren’t any; if there were, we’d have noticed for sure)
• lessons from mistakes (it’s very hard to derive; nobody knows the whole story, usually it’s only a part)
2/ any books that are basically TV shows — conditional Harry Potter and so on — for me it’s easier to just watch the movie
3/ books about successful success

My small personal reading list:
1/ History: In the Shadow of the Sword (Arab history), Hobsbawm (just about everything), History of Western Philosophy, Commentaries on the Gallic War, When the King Loses France (Druon)
2/ Philosophy: Seneca (so life’s easier, so to speak; Stoics are useful), Schopenhauer, early Nietzsche, Heidegger (to understand the modern)
3/ Science: The Evolution of Physics (Einstein), Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman (well this is more like entertainment), The Emperor’s New Mind (Penrose): here I only know physics, I can’t do the rest and I don’t know it
4/ Economics: Adam Smith, Piketty, Damodaran
5/ Just in the background: The Laws of Leadership (Roosevelt), World Order (Kissinger), Descartes’ Discourse on Method, I also recommend reading the Quran (well, an adaptation or some simple translation)