Fans pick 100 books like The Meaning of Life

I still vividly remember the first time I read this book in my teenage years in Tehran. Its powerful rhythm, its vivid political imagery, and its sweeping vision shook me. It caught me right then and has never quite let go.

Not only has it remained relevant throughout the years, but it still reads like the literary masterpiece that it is. 

The seemingly eternal conflict in Israel/Palestine means that many readers know some basic facts about the place. But much of its history remains unknown.

What I love about this book is its patient and lucid exploration of one of such little-known histories: that of Jewish and Arab workers and how they once collaborated against all odds in the waning years of the British Mandate of Palestine, all the way up to the foundation of Israel in 1948. 

I first read this book years ago as part of my graduate studies, but its stories and characters have remained with me throughout the years

I loved this book because it gave me an inside account of many social movements from the stormy decade of 2010s that I had either lived through or followed from afar.

Based on interviews in 12 countries from Brazil to Bahrain to Ukraine, the book has a truly global reach and lets you understand a nagging question: Why did so little change in the world even as there were so many mass protests in the last decade? 

I especially enjoyed the fact that the book takes political ideas seriously while remaining readable and giving us a full-fleshed portrayal of its main characters, whether they be a leading leftist politician in Brasilia or a young protester in Kyiv. 

Biography is perhaps my favorite genre because, at their best, biographies show us how people are both made by history and make history themselves.

This book is amongst the best political biographies I’ve ever read as it gives a passionate but also fair and critical account of one of the best-known revolutionaries of the 20th century, Frantz Fanon. 

It is a book both about ideas and the humans behind them and is serious on both counts. Whether it’s deep in explaining Fanon’s turn away from orthodox Marxism or his continued attachment to Caribbean poetry, or when simply painting a picture of an afternoon in Tunis when Fanon interacted with his many friends and colleagues, it is a lively read that was hard for me to put down. 

I’ve read this book over and over and highlighted something new every time. Somehow, through the lens of Nazi death camps, Frankl validates everyone’s suffering, including my own. I’ve always known that suffering is an inescapable part of the human experience, but this helped me understand that to the brain, it isn’t relative in the ways I always thought.

Furthermore, this book helped me understand that my coping mechanisms inform suffering’s hold on me. Stories are a coping mechanism, and I learned that redirecting my attention and creating my personal narratives around what is meaningful to me rather than the source of pain is key to the cage of suffering. This book changed how I understand the importance of purpose and the power of what I build my stories around. 

This is probably the weirdest book I ever read. Certainly, the weirdest sciencey book.

It’s a dialogue between a palaeontologist and a novelist. The scientist, Arsuaga, sets up little excursions and events for Millás and himself around Madrid, and Millás writes about them. Each excursion illustrates some point about human evolution and behaviour.

As their relationship deepens, so do the tensions, as the scientist and the novelist don’t always see eye to eye. Arsuaga seems to delight in tormenting Millás by dragging him to places where he doesn’t initially get the point: pickup joints, childcare centres, and trains. They both love eating and drinking (so do I), and much of the discussion takes place over extended lunches. Sometimes, the food itself explains a point.

I loved it. Couldn’t put it down.

When I read Kessler’s book, a missing piece came into place for me. I had been working hard to absorb my loss, to be brave, to keep going...what I needed, in addition, was to find meaning in what had happened.

This book helped me ask the right questions to begin to do that. It drew me forward into a new stage of acceptance, helping me let go of underlying angst and despair.

As Martha Beck says in her book, “Integrity is the cure for psychological suffering. Period.”

I honestly believe that living in integrity is the first truth about being resilient. It’s so much harder to be resilient when we are living out of sync with our values and our most authentic selves. Living a lie causes stress and anxiety and leads to chronic illnesses.

I like how Martha spells out living purposefully and intentionally. I started reading The Way of Integrity to prepare for an interview with Martha on the Holistic Wealth podcast. In The Way of Integrity, Martha outlines a four-stage process that anyone can use to find integrity, and with it, a sense of purpose, emotional healing, and a life free of mental suffering.

Much of what plagues us—people pleasing, worry and anxiety, negative habits—all point to what happens when we are out of touch with what truly… show more.

This is a book of essays about the act of looking, especially looking at photographs and paintings and animals and other people. Thus these are essays about history, memory, suffering, beauty, and the self. Berger had a generous spirit; he wrote often about the lives of peasants and spent the last forty years of his life in rural France. Berger gazed upon the world in all its forms with composure and curiosity. 

 This book provides short summaries of the views of about one hundred philosophers of the twentieth and twentieth-first centuries.

Only one earlier philosopher is included, “the most prominent pessimist of the entire western philosophical tradition,” Arthur Schopenhauer.

One of the interesting features of the book – partly because it has rarely been attempted – is a taxonomy of the different answers that have been given to the question.