Recently started reading a lot, any tips?

[gesushido]

Well, I started reading a lot of books about six months ago, like the works of Albert Camus or Borges. Can you recommend something similar? Or just something philosophical, but not very pressing on the mind. Is Jung good?

 

[Mana Moonlight]

Philosophical but not too difficult? Do give Viktor Frankl's Man Search of Meaning a try.
"He who has a why to live can bear almost any how"

 

[Jade]

I read 'The Gods of Pegana' recently and was really impressed by it. I think it would fit 'Philosophical, but not too pressing on the mind' pretty nicely.

 

[remember_summer_days]

Reading is my addiction

 

[MySpace Tom]

Jung is great. Really, pick out any of his books that sound interesting to you and you're probably going to get some good insights from it

 

[gesushido]

Thank you all for your suggestions, I'll try to read at least some of it in the near future

Also, what about Nietzsche? As far as I know, Camus was inspired by his ideas

 

[Jade]

Thank you all for your suggestions, I'll try to read at least some of it in the near future

Also, what about Nietzsche? As far as I know, Camus was inspired by his ideas

I started with Beyond Good and Evil, but most people tend to start with Thus Spake Zarathustra, get confused, and then either look up detailed explanations of what he's talking about or drop it altogether
TBH I don't think Neitzche is as difficult to understand as people say he is, mostly you just have to understand what he's referencing, which can be tricky since he covers a lot of different philosophers and schools of thought
I say if you don't have a background in philosophy/theology/history, start with Beyond Good and Evil. If you do, start with Thus Spake Zarathustra, it's easily his best work.

 

[microbyte]

Can you recommend something similar?

Not 100% similiar, but pretty close and interesting is Stirner. Albeit he only wrote like 1 main book "The Ego and Its Own", but it's pretty interesting.

works of Albert Camus

Just wanna see, as I know it's one of the more less known books of his, have you read A Happy Death? If not, you gotta read it. It's a fantastic book.

 

[gesushido]

have you read A Happy Death?

Actually reading it right now

 

[lovelace]

Seraphim Rose

 

[Radical]

Philosophical, but not very pressing on the mind? Assuming you want fiction, this makes me think, in no particular order:

Kurt Vonnegut
Umberto Eco
Neal Stephenson
Robert Heinlein
Hunter S. Thompson
Ernest Hemingway

Easy reading fiction, but with some interesting philosophical diversions or points of view.

 

[gesushido]

Assuming you want fiction

Not necessarily fiction..

But anyways, thank you everyone ^^

 

[MindControlBoxer]

Industrial Society and Its Future​

 

[zalaz alaza]

Industrial Society and Its Future​

This plus the recent works of Byung-Chul Han are pretty fun and easy reads that express interesting ideas. I really like essays in the range of 50-100 pages for philosophy. The Burnout Society. Psychopolitics, and his recent essay on shanzai, the asian culture of forgery, are some of Hans essays that are really good, interesting, and relevant.
You can never go wrong reading Plato, the dialogues are all short and worth your time. The republic is a bit of a slog but also worth your time. DFWs essays are great. Aquinas was a great philosopher as well.
I recommend against reading Nietzsche except as a lens through which to view present day nostalgia. He really did write some revelational works but they are boring in the same way as Hegel. I feel the same about Aristotle sans the nostalgia. He was an important philosopher but its just a bit much with the language no matter the translations I have tried.
I have a friend that swears the Cicero is the only philosopher anyone should ever read. I haven't read Cicero but I do have a lot of respect for the person making this claim.

Btw, did @Another Name respond to this thread? He is the philsopher king of agora

Also as a note, I have a practice of reading roughly 20 mins daily and I find that it generally means I have read far more than most people, even those that consider themselves avid readers. Not necessarily the best way to read I guess but i have found my personal satisfaction from this metered self education to be quite extensive.

 

[Still a Youth]

I'll get a lot of flack from academics for saying this, but if you're interested in Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell's The History of Western Philosophy is a good place to start. Basically anything you find interesting in that book you can probably just do deep dives on your own or something. Keep in mind the book is written from Russell's perspective of "logical analysis", which is the focus of the last chapter, and which is what contemporary analytic philosophy is based on. So some of the implicit opinions in it are kinda question begging or simply inaccurate (for example he calls Nietzsche "biological" which... maaayyybbee).
Something more akin to Camus is gong to be kinda hard. He's too deviant as a philosopher, unless you wanna pick up some of his influences, like de Sade or any of the radical politics he discusses in The Rebel (Trotsky, Stalin, Hitler, etc.). The only other work on absurdism I'd recommend is Thomas Negel's The Absurd, which is pretty academic.
I haven't read Borges but from a quick skim of the wiki you might enjoy Douglas Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach which is less dreamy and more science-y but with similar themes. Might pair nicely with Freud but read Freud at your own discretion i guess.

I also dont know what "philosophical but not pressing on the mind" is. I'm in too deep for that. Hopefully this helps.

edit: i didnt read the thread but @Radical 's post is good if your going for absurdist stuff. Maybe check out the Beat generation. I recently just discovered Beatdom.com.
I have a love hate relationship with Byung-Chul Han, not because he sucks but because his perspective seems pretty accurate to modern society. I hate him cause he's right

 

[gesushido]

Wow
So many authors...
Thanks, I don't even know when I'll read all this...