Eric-Jorgenson The-Almanack-of-Naval-Ravikant indd

Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It by Kamal Ravikant
I’ve actually been reading my brother’s book, Love Yourself Like 
Your Life Depends on It. I thought it was very succinctly writt en. 
(Obviously a plug for my bro.)
He’s the philosopher in the family—I’m just the amateur. He 
has a great line in his book:
I once asked a monk how he found peace.
“I say ‘yes,’” he’d said. “To all that happens, I say ‘yes.’” [7]
The Tao of Seneca: Practical Lett ers from a Stoic Master
My most listened-to audiobook. The most important audio-
book I’ve ever heard.
How to Change Your Mind by Michael 
Pollan
There’s a good book Michael Pollan 
wrote recently called How to Change 
Open the camera on your phone and hover over this image.

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Your Mind, and I think it is a brilliant book everybody should 
read.
The book discusses psychedelics. Psychedelics are a bit of a 
cheat code in self-observation. I don’t recommend drugs for 
anybody—you can do it all through pure meditation. If you 
want to accelerate ahead, you know, psychedelics are good for 
that. [74]
Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee’s Wisdom for Daily Living by 
Bruce Lee
Oddly enough, Bruce Lee wrote some great philosophy, and 
Striking Thoughts is a good summary of some of his philosophy.
The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
This book reads like a modern-day poetic religious tome. It’s 
up there with the Bhagavad Gita, the Tao Te Ching, the Bible, 
and the Qur’an. It is written in the style where it has a feel of 
religiosity and truth, but it was very approachable, beautiful, 
nondenominational, and nonsectarian. I loved this book.
He has a gift for poetically describing what children are like, 
what lovers are like, what marriage should be like, how you 
should treat your enemies and your friends, how you should 
work with money, what can you think of every time you have 
to kill something to eat it. I felt it, like the great religious books, 
gave a very deep, very philosophical, but very true answer to 
how to approach the major problems in life. I recommend The 
Prophet to anybody, whether you’re religious or not. Whether 
you are Christian, Hindu, Jewish, or atheist. I think it’s a beau-
tiful book, and it’s worth reading. [7]

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N A V A L ’ S R E C O M M E N D E D R E A D I N G · 217
SCIENCE FICTION
I started with comic books and sci-fi . Then I was into 
history and news. Then into psychology, popular science, 
technology.
Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges
I love Jorge Luis Borges, an Argen-
tine author. His short story collection 
Ficciones, or Labyrinths, is amazing. 
Borges is probably still the most pow-
erful author I have read who wasn’t just outright writing 
philosophy. There was philosophy in there with the sci-fi. [1]