I don't think there's such a thing as a favorite book.
But there are books filled with such incredible repositories of thought that it is a criminal injustice not to transfer those thoughts to neural connection.
Hot take: reading is not time-consuming. Not really. It is time-consuming in the sense that it consumes time, but not in the sense that it consumes so much time that it isn't worth doing. I've always had trouble understanding how people can commit so easily to a movie (2 and a half hours!!! no exceptions!!!!!) and not to a book. You can put down a book anytime.
1. How to Make Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie
“Please be a person." - Cat Tang
This book literally taught me how to be a person. If you only have time for one, (though really, what else are you doing with your time?) this is it.
2. Excellent Sheep, William Deresiewicz
Probably more relevant considering I, a college student, have college student friends, than to the general public, but it's an important read regarding what we consider to be success and how that affects the way we interact with the world. #success #AmericanDream
3. Moonwalking With Einstein, Joshua Foer
“I imagine an ox being bombarded with oranges to represent oxalate transitioning to citrate.” - Cat Tang
This book changed the way I think about memory, spatial representations, and the rose-colored glasses of life. It's mostly about the World Memory Championship and memory techniques, but Foer gives remarkably memorable reasons why memory is important in the first place. #memory #repetition
4. Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell
I am an AVID fan of Malcolm Gladwell, and Outliers is just another reason why. Gladwell breaks down the traditional norms of success and how we assume people reach those pinnacles, demonstrating that luck and coincidence play a far greater role than we historically have attributed to it.
5. Left to Their Own Devices: How Digital Natives Are Reshaping the American Dream, Julie Albright
Honestly, I don't recommend reading past ⅓ of this book. That being said, the first third is very, very interesting. If you've ever wondered about why people are willing to sell all their material possessions and live in a tinyhouse, or how we live in a culture of detachment, I think the first ⅓ is a thought-provoking read. The rest, however, seems to be correlational evidence that indicates we should all collectively get off our phones. And like... we know.