Since childhood, under voluntary and involuntary circumstances, countless required books have been obtained. The list of required books for middle school students, Peking University, college students and xx recommended books is huge and complicated, listing well-known writers and masterpieces, but it has become a nightmare.

Later, in the fragmented era of the Internet, it became a routine action to make a list of books. There are crazy lists on Douban, and there are books on Zhihu, which are frequently used by Foucault, Heidegger, Wittgenstein and Husserl ... However, I believe that many people will feel like illiterates when they look at these classic lists that must be read.

Collect these classics that you claim to have to read, and put them into your Kindle until it is full of 4G or 8G memory, which is about 8, to 1, books. Then you will find out what kind of frustration it is that you can't finish reading these books in your life.

However, it is even sadder that when you make up your mind to chew on some classic books, you find that they are either obscure or you can't read them because of old ideas. There are some classic works in the field. After reading them, it is found that unless you want to dig deeply in this field, it is really a waste of time. It is better to collect new works and papers in the field and understand them systematically as soon as possible.

So, after years of reading, I have formed a set of unnecessary reading goals in my mind, so as to exclude those classics (only representing my personal views) that are unnecessary to waste time in the voluminous mountain of books:

Out-of-date bibliography

There are such books that were published very early and suddenly became popular after a long time of tepid. Their popularity does not actually mean how classic the content itself is, but it is often just due to timing or official recommendation.

Chrysanthemum and Knife:

This book is a fossil-level book, written by Ruth Benedict, an American anthropologist, and published in 1946. Aren't these two pieces of information enough to explain everything? It is a book written for Americans, which provides a window for Americans to understand the oriental civilization. On the contrary, the Japanese nationality discussed in it has made countless people feel a sense of identity in China, and regarded it as Japan's refusal to plead guilty.

Such a book, written with the brush strokes of the center of western civilization, should have been resisted by eastern civilization, but it has always been used by us as a classic to interpret Japan. Moreover, after 6 or 7 years, we still follow the conclusion of this book to understand Japan.

The national character that Chrysanthemum and Knife tries to explore is a very outdated concept today. Today, no sociologist will assert the eternal characteristics of a society by analyzing the national characteristics of a certain person or certain emotions in the history of the times. This way of inferring the reasons from the results is originally a wrong historical view, let alone talking about today's citizens.

If you have seen Chrysanthemum and the Knife and are deeply impressed by the assertion that it describes the Japanese character, I suggest detoxification as soon as possible. With today's developed information, documentary prints are a dime a dozen, and it is a better way to get to know this neighbor who is separated only by clothes and water than to look for clues in the pile of old papers.

Interpretation of Dreams:

With the exposure of the Stanford prison experiment, psychology, as a science, is always in jeopardy because of its natural weakness in demonstration. And if this book is a must-read for the introductory classics of psychology, I am afraid it is also a disaster.

The Interpretation of Dreams is a classic work of Freud. It was written very early and is regarded as the beginning of understanding the subconscious psychological process. The book puts forward that "dreams are the satisfaction of unconscious desires", "widespread Oedipus complex" and "children's sexual consciousness and motivation" all provide quite meaningful ideas for psychological research.

But as a must-read classic, I'm afraid it will cause too many misunderstandings. The Interpretation of Dreams is full of Freud's personal subjective assumptions, and too many of them cannot be falsified, let alone be considered as reasonable scientific arguments. Therefore, if we can't reasonably pick pearls in this muddy book, it will inevitably directly affect people's cognition of psychology.

If you really want to know and understand psychology, you might as well start with more theoretical books. Psychology and Life, Social Psychology and Say No to Pseudopsychology are all more suitable choices than Interpretation of Dreams.

Mob:

Gustav? Le Pen's "Mob-A Study of Popular Psychology" can be said to be the most familiar face in the book list madman, and it is very enjoyable to read. It's like a collection of gossips, which makes people feel a strong sense of rising intelligence. It seems that after reading the book, they are outside the populist culture, and watching this group of "rabble" naturally produces a sense of carefree when everyone is drunk and I wake up alone.

This book itself should not be regarded as a classic required reading. From the perspective of social psychology, this book lacks sufficient logical argumentation. What the whole article has is how to attract readers to clap their hands and cheer with a more passionate tone and direct judgment on values.

China's criticism of the national character of Latin people was supplemented by the criticism of China's national character in Mob. The dense epigrams and surprisingly consistent examples really made China people feel carefree and dripping with joy. Yes, no country in the world looks down on China people more than China people. These endless words, such as "your country's pills", "your country's magical country", combined with this book, all play the role of self-denial.

I don't think it must be read, not because the book is not good, but because I don't want to see such another form of populism, which will bring new divisions to the culture.

Meditations:

This ancient and ancient book, after being recommended by senior officials, has inexplicably become a classic and has to make people feel magical.

When the Analects of Confucius and Mencius were recommended, no one read them; When recommending Zi Zhi Tong Jian and Shi Shuo Xin Yu, no one read them. On the contrary, this translated and retranslated work from a country with different cultures and histories suddenly became an explosive product.

Because it is easy to read, it takes a few minutes to read several famous sayings that are easy to understand and spread. Coupled with a few slightly compelling nouns, such as "ancient Rome", "Marcus Aurelius" and "Stoicism", there will always be a sense of being a literate person.

I don't think it is necessary to read it, because these translated third-hand characters are not more profound than our four books. If you just want to find some famous sayings and aphorisms, aphorisms are more suitable.

The impressive philosophical works

Pretending to be forced is the characteristic of this era, and for young artists, talking about philosophy seems to be a means to embody the constraint. Take a look at A Brief History of Western Philosophy and Sophie's World, which rank high on the best-selling list, and you will know that young artists are full of curiosity about the philosophical world, but they stop at obscure philosophical works.

If someone doesn't graduate with a Ph.D. in philosophy and often talks to you about Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger ... you can talk to them boldly. If he talks to you about ethics and morality, you can talk to him about mind and body. He talks to you about the relationship between language system and the world, and you talk to him about the structure and logic of science itself; In short, you can't understand each other, and you can't see each other's depth. You just need to have a superficial understanding of the theoretical content of these philosophers, and you can probably talk to him for a few days and nights without revealing the truth.

In the philosophical contempt chain of literary youth, the more popular the book, the less it should appear in the recommendation list, and the less popular the work. If you ask him to recommend some books about philosophy to you, he will definitely not recommend A Brief History of Western Philosophy and A History of China Philosophy, but tell you to read Wittgenstein's Introduction to Logical Philosophy, Spinoza's Ethics and Heidegger's Being and Time ... Then you will find that you can't even read the second chapter of these books.

today's philosophical research is no longer the age when people stood under the colonnade and were impassioned thousands of years ago. It has entered a more subdivided field, and the research is more obscure. At the same time, with the intervention of scientific development, many functions of past philosophy have been replaced by science.

Why not be a student of philosophy? Those obscure philosophical works really don't need to be read. Even if you read it, you probably won't understand it. Isn't it good to have this time to enjoy life and watch a movie tour?

Conspiracy theory works

Conspiracy theory is a poisonous category. It is precisely because human nature is always willing to pry into secrets and prefers to cover the original story with darker explanations.

Currency War is a typical example. It has been published in five editions so far, and it is about the Rothschild family, a Jew who came to the United States from Europe, and manipulated the world through financial conspiracy. Making waves in the financial world, controlling the lifeline of the global economy, and accumulating wealth has exceeded $5 trillion ... It sounds like it is not an economic work, but a fantasy novel.

The conspiracy theories of Apollo 11 landing on the moon, American-made September 11th conspiracy, American Area 51, Illuminati and so on all tell sensational and fascinating stories.

This kind of story should be read as an interesting story. If it is really taken seriously, it will be really poisoned.

biographies of famous people in China

biographies of famous people in China are most accustomed to deducing the reasons from the results. Most of the words are written in the Spring and Autumn Period, and the contents are shoddy and selected everywhere, and eventually they are put on the shelves of airport bookstores and become bestsellers.

Don't read this kind of books. It is quite simple and convenient to compile the story of a popular and successful person. It has a formula that is very easy to implement, such as how to grow up, how to shape people's design, how to face life problems, how to meet life mentors, how to choose, how to act, and how to face life after success ...

Success is a story that is difficult to identify and reproduce. Business success, in particular, has more complicated reasons. Opportunity, environment, personality and choice all affect the final result. If you read these words collected everywhere, you can cultivate invincible magic, and then I am afraid everyone is a business wizard.

The truly meaningful words and the secret of success will not be hidden in such bestsellers, but need to draw nutrients from more basic words and build a personal knowledge system at a lower level.

On this earth, hundreds of thousands of new books are published every year, and the information content on the Internet is infinitely expanding. A huge amount of information impacts the eyeballs and minds, making people unable to think. At this time, if you waste time and read a bad book that you don't have to read, it will feel like eating a fly.

Life is short and the sea of books is infinite. Don't waste your life on meaningless words. You can watch movies, travel and play games ... it's better than never believing that there will always be good books after being trapped by a bad book.

There is no necessary reading list in life. A book that suits you, that you are willing to read and explore, whether it is elegant or vulgar, professional or ordinary, is a must-read as long as you like it.

Grandpa Martin said in Game of Thrones, "Reading can experience a thousand kinds of lives, but people who don't study can only live once. May each of us experience countless kinds of life.