100 books like The Outsider

I heard of this book before I got sober. I felt it was too “Western trying to be Eastern Healers” and for people who had personal dysfunctions that I couldn't relate to. 

I came across it again after sobriety and realized that I was running from my past and making up a future based on my fears of the past, never really being present, which was a wack in the gut for the better. The road to healing was way more understandable when I accepted the present, knowing that I also had the power to change anything I wanted. 

This book is full of stories, using case studies that include the lives of Walt Whitman, Saint Augustine, and Russian writer Leo Tolstoy—that I found fascinating. Here psychologist William James challenges what he—and I—were both taught: namely, that religions are primarily childish fantasies (the view of Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis, in The Future of an Illusion). But after James, as a young man, experienced a terrifying depression, he describes his surprise at what felt to him like a spiritual breakthrough that enabled him to recover. James skips questions about dogma and belief, instead identifies a range of different “varieties of religious experience” that, far more than “belief,” can give rise to spiritual insight. 

Thanks to Hollywood adaptations and sometimes a greedy publisher, a great series can diminish as time passes. But that doesn’t change how cool the original was.

I love the setup of a man waking on a sailing vessel with no memory, only to discover his identity as super espionage agent. The mystery of the scenario and the intrigue as Bourne unravels his own personhood was so well done in this first book (and the first film was an excellent adaptation), and it is worth revisiting.

Erich Fromm isn’t so well known nowadays, but I am a great admirer of his. He developed a wide-ranging vision of individual and collective well-being. He investigated the whole spectrum of human nature, from the cruelty and brutality of Nazi Germany (which he personally experienced, as a German Jew who escaped to the United States) to love and altruism. This book is his last major work, in which he decries modern society’s emphasis on having and suggests that the only authentic and fulfilling mode of life is being. He develops a concept of a new type of human being who lives in harmony with themselves and the world. Fromm rarely wrote explicitly about spirituality, but it’s an underlying theme of almost everything he wrote. 

Irreducible Mind is an insightful collective volume written by scientists about the still-unsolved mysteries of the mind.

In this work, the authors examine several rogue phenomena (e.g. psychological automatisms and secondary personality, genius-level creativity, extreme psychophysical influence, NDEs, 'mystical' states of consciousness both spontaneous and drug-induced) that cannot be accounted for by materialist (physicalist) theories.

These authors further demonstrate that these phenomena are more easily explained by an alternative 'transmission' or 'filter' theory of mind/brain relations.

I love the sense of intimacy in this book.

The characters are flawed and detailed against the backdrop of London and Great Britain. It is a classic of the genre and really takes you back to the pre-internet and pre-fall of the USSR. It really captures what it was like to live in those times.

Along with Le Carre Adam Hall was my magical touchstone to understanding what being an exceptional thriller writer meant.

This book, the second in a long distinguished series, continued the crises dealt with by the British spy named Quiller. Hall had an idiosyncratic way of writing that taught me that style was as important as plot in a thriller – perhaps even more. For me, style is what grabs my attention as a reader.

Today, style is what draws me along, both as a reader and as a writer of thrillers. Style is the thread on which is built both plot and characters. It is also imperative when setting scenes in faraway places.

I came upon the novels of Philip Kerr later in life.

They were unique in as much as his main character, Bernie Gunther, was a German before, during, and after the Nazi party came to power. The tightrope Gunther had to tread between being a good German cop and having to deal with Nazi higher-ups without himself ever becoming a Nazi is what makes the series thrum with tension.

I had the great good fortune to meet Philip at the L.A. Times Book Fair to which we were both invited some years ago. Spending time with him was for me to meeting a rock star. I was privileged to make his acquaintance.

The time I subsequently spent reading his new novels gave me the distinct sense of standing beside Gunther wherever Philip chose to send him.

When, several years later, I learned that Kerr had died suddenly I was devastated.… show more.

Marketing psychologist Kit Yarrow explains how technology has rewired our brains, making us more individualistic, isolated, emotional, and distrustful. This is not a pessimistic book—it’s a practical guide to addressing customers’ desires and insecurities in a time of deep cultural shifts. Not only has she done her homework, but she also presents the results with lightness and clarity.

Back in the 1970s, a noted American psychologist, Dr. Sam Janus, whom I had the privilege of meeting at a conference, produced an unusually brave book about the private sexual lives of politicians based upon extensive interviews with sex workers in Washington, D.C., written in collaboration with the experienced psychiatrist Dr. Barbara Bess and the journalist Carol Saltus.

At one level, the private lives of political leaders should remain completely private, but at another level, it might be worth knowing that some of the people who damage the country through poor decision-making also have a long-standing history of damaging their own bodies by paying to be tortured by those women, known back then as “call girls.” I greatly admire this book, as it has provided me with tremendous understanding of the ways in which the private sexual tendencies of many human beings, especially those who endeavour to govern nations, will… show more.