Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know if this elevated my “value,” but Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma was fairly impactful for me. I was already a vegetarian but it kind of cemented my belief in that choice, as well as changed how I view food. It’s also just a fascinating history of food.

If you like Pollan's book, I recommend Ultra Processed People by Chris Van Tulleken.

Before I read the book, I had come to the conclusion to give up UPFs because they made me feel awful, like I swear that I was getting a food hangover every time I ate cheetos. The book goes into great detail explaining just how bad these ultraprocessed foods are, how they are just a bunch of chemicals masquerading as food and indeed, have an addictive component that food companies exploit to further their profits at the expense of people's health. Literally draws a line between the rise in UPF and obesity worldwide. It was pretty shocking and affirming to me to read it, although the book does get a little long-winded at times.

Anonymous wrote:How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell. Outstanding, and hard to describe. Weaves together philosophy, literature, art, psychology, and so much more, all in a meditation on preserving your own mind and soul in a noisy society.

A Divine Language by Alec Wilkinson. Ostensibly a book about trying to learn calculus at age 65, it’s really an exploration of what math is, and by extension the universe, and also how we learn (or don’t).

Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. Someone else on here recommended this book in a different thread and I seconded. It gets pitched as time management but it’s really about purposeful living.

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
and also The Hidden Life of Trees by Pete Wohlleben. Both will give you new eyes to see the natural world that is all around you,

Any book by Carlo Rovelli, though his first — Brief Lessons in Physics — is my favorite.

If you haven’t read Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, it really is worthwhile. I think about it all the time.

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know if this elevated my “value,” but Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma was fairly impactful for me. I was already a vegetarian but it kind of cemented my belief in that choice, as well as changed how I view food. It’s also just a fascinating history of food.