The astonishingly popular Canadian psychotherapist and academic Jordan Peterson puts a huge emphasis on the importance of reading if you want to lead a truly fulfilling and succesful life. These are his picks. For 2017 and for 2016. 

In 2017

Literature/Philosophy

Clinical Psychology and Personality

Neuroscience

Religion and Religious History

General

In 2016

Clinical Psychology and Personality

General

  1. Derek J. de Solla Price: Little Science, Big Science
  2. Hans Eysenck: Genius
  3. Hernando De Soto: The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else
  4. John Gall: Systemantics: How Systems Work and Especially How They Fail
  5. Theodore Dalrymple: Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass

Religion and Religious History

  2. A History of Religious Ideas (Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3) – Mircea Eliade

My Books

  1. Jordan B. Peterson: Maps of Meaning

Neuroscience

  1. Jeffrey Gray and Neil McNaughton: The Neuropsychology of Anxiety
  2. Jaak Panksepp: Affective Neuroscience
  3. Joseph LeDoux: The Emotional Brain
  4. Larry Swanson: Brain Architecture: Understanding the Basic Plan
  5. JJ Gibson: An Ecological Approach to Visual Perception
  6. Elkhonon Goldberg: The New Executive Brain

Literature/Philosophy

  1. Fyodor Dostoevsky: The Devils
  2. Fyodor Dostoevsky: The Idiot
  3. Nikos Kazantzakis: The Fratricides
  4. Nikos Kazantzakis: Zorba the Greek
  5. Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita
  6. Solzhenitsyn: The First Circle
  7. Solzhenitsyn: Cancer Ward
  8. Friedrich Nietzsche: The Antichrist
  9. Friedrich Nietzsche: The Gay Science
  10. Northrop Frye: The Great Code
  11. Northrop Frye: Words with Power
  12. Robert Pirsig: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Biography

  1. Henri Troyat: Tolstoy

History

  3. William L. Shirer: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich