The best books to reduce anxiety about uncertainty

My mother was a huge fan of the book – so, I had access to that universe very early on through the book, movies, game. It was my first exposure to science fiction, and much of it stuck. I found especially handy how simple the structuring of the story was, how the author lays out dialogue vs. description. The universe seems complex, yet it is made simply so by not adding too much hard science-fiction style nerd-stuff (or none at all, to my mind 2the lore" is very tastefully done) – yet, there is not enough romance to my taste, and belonging to a great royal lineage and being schooled by high-class sorcerers isn't exactly relatable – but the story is an epic, and it is not supposed to.

Since I have been thinking in the direction of creating an RPG/Action/Adventure game out of the universe that I'm baking, I picked up something that has already achieved that (note: that's before the fancy TV series came out). Witcher is a messy book, and I'm not exactly in love with the characters (except for the vampire), yet, it is hard to put down. The events unfolding with and around the characters are... well, eventful, and the questions the author manages to bring up in my head need answers. The complex universe is complexly done—the lore is rich with earthen mysteries—suppose, Polish folklore and such attempts of folklore honoring or revival, to my mind, seem like an interesting thing to do – it is the untapped power of exoticism. I mean, aren't we all worn out by the most common, comic-book revived characters from the Greek Pantheon, Viking Mythology, or most used tropes and archetypes of Christianity? I mean, they are great, but they stopped feeling "fresh" a long while ago... In local folklore, there is a lot of "old" that can be used to bring up something "Fresh" without having to really invent anything sketchy.

King is a true master when it comes to simplicity and clarity. He writes as much as if he gets paid by page, and sometimes I would wonder, couldn't this have been presented with fewer words? Yet, for most of the time when I read, there were no words – the picture was just running! Loved the mixed-up themes in the world – a cowboy knight, barren landscapes, a mystery man in black, and vivid companions for the adventure.

What an incredible character she is – read as an adult, she's inhuman, really – like a sort of a jester, or a demon with a flaming head. It's a children's book and reading it didn't require straining the brain at all but there were the occasional emotional moments (really grim ones at that), which made me put down the book and meditate on "what the fuck just happened?" Pippi is a treasure – I find her way more interesting as a character than say, Alice (of the Wonderland) – yet only the latter gets movies and games made out of her and the wonderland universe (and even so, they still leave out the good funky parts 😋).

Incerto, that is Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, Antifragile and Skin in the Game (+ Bed of Procrustes, which is a collection of very smart aphorisms) are not exactly fiction, but maestro added fiction into it anyway. Nero, Fat Tony, Jevgenia demonstrate on unrelated occasions how the ideas and properties (found in the "real world" discussed in the book would unfold. The overall theme of the book, however, discusses risk - risk-taking. And believe it or not, risk exists in all domains of life, hence, using this book to meditate on it deeply made me appreciate... It made me appreciate life, and all things in life – more than I used to. It might sound like a lot, and it is... If there is just one non-fiction book you will read, make it Taleb's Incerto.