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Persuasion is fucking awful, and was enough to make me write off Austen entirely.

There are so many good books, I don't see much point in wasting time on that kind of trash

Relating this to Cialdini's Influence, I'd wager this is due to reciprocity. Whether real or not, when you apologize, you're making a concession which triggers the "click, whirr" effect described in the book. Persuasion is a fascinating topic.

Interesting, I never considered "Thinking Fast and Slow" and " "Persuasion" to be psychology books or I would not have read them

I find all these pretty great:

- Persuasion (liberal democracy, free society): https://www.persuasion.community/

- Money Stuff (finance, also sort-of comedy?): https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/authors/ARbTQlRLRjE/matthe...

- Stratechery (tech companies and strategy): https://stratechery.com/

- Stay Tuned with Preet & Cafe Insider (law and politics): https://cafe.com/stay-tuned-podcast/

- The Morning Paper (CS papers): https://blog.acolyer.org/about/

- Slate Star Codex (rationality, currently in a weird state): https://slatestarcodex.com/

Some new ones I subscribed to, but haven't read a lot of:

- Sam Harris: https://samharris.org/

- Andrew Sullivan: https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/coming-soon

- Benedict Evans: https://www.ben-evans.com/

The Bible was not written as single work the way novels like Persuasion are though. It is really a collection of books of very different origins and genre. Some books are laws where individual rules can be examined and there are collections of proverbs. But there are also parts which are longer narratives.

https://www.amazon.com/Robert-B.-Cialdini/e/B000AP9KKG - Robert Cialdini's books are good.

Never Split the difference from Chris Voss is a good book. Persuasion and negotiation are also as much about effective listening. Something I've practiced hard this year is to be mindful of creating a pause before I respond. Pause for like 2 seconds.

For investing, etc - highly recommend starting with this - https://mebfaber.com/timing-model/

Forget stock picking, it is generally a fool's errand.

Also - Tony Robbins did a good job with his book "Money: Master the game". Look up the "All weather strategy" from Ray Dalio referenced in that book. Diversification across non-correlated assets, compounded over time creates wealth.

I separate my books into levels. Level 0 are the books that I reread steadily over the years (also the ones that I pack in my suitcase when I'm moving as opposed to shipping), so I'll just post that list here, in no particular order: 'Good Poems' edited by Garrison Keiller; 'Pride and Prejudice' by Jane Austen; 'Persuasion' by Jane Austen; Fitzgerald's translation of 'The Rubaiyat'; Ford Madox Ford's 'Parade's End'; Hafiz, 'The Gift'; Modesitt, 'Gravity Dreams'; Heinlein, 'Time Enough for Love'; Bulgakov, 'Master and Margarita'; 'Ovid in Love' (Guy Lee's translation of the Amores).

I've been revisiting a lot of Le Guin's novellas ('The Found and the Lost' is a great collection) and Borges's stories since the election. They have been a source of great comfort.

I find that I don't reread nonfiction. I'll reference something I remember in it, but I can't think of a work of nonfiction I've reread in the past few years.

Which ones have you tried?

If you want to have something to talk about when people are talking about female authors and Austen inevitably comes up, I'd recommend Persuasion, and maybe Emma provided you are OK with imagining your own ending to make it the slow-motion soul-crushing tragedy it so clearly wanted to be.

Persuasion wasn't given her final punch-up editing pass before she died, and so it lacks much of the "gosh I, the author, am so clever and my remarks so cutting!" tone that I've been unable to get past in her other books (save Emma) while still actually being reasonably clever. It's also quite short. Emma is kind of a take-down of that exact tendency in Austen herself, so it worked OK for me.

Mind: if you're not OK with the prose, tone, and topics of 19th century English literature in general, you'll hate any of it regardless.

Anyway, it can be a good thing to get a taste of the "foreign" in reading.

I don’t know about unbiased, but seeking out smart individuals who try to be correct has worked the best for me (and then Axios for general news updates, SF Chronicle for local).

Some quick ones:

- Stay Tuned with Preet (legal policy stuff)

- Persuasion with Yascha Mounk (nuanced policy and politics, liberalism)

- Making Sense with Sam Harris (nuanced discussions on culture war topics, but other interesting stuff too).

- Noah Smith Substack

- Money Stuff with Matt Levine (finance)

- Stratechery (best tech analysis)

- Rationally Speaking with Julia Galef

- The Diff (more financial and company analysis)

- The Weekly Dish with Andrew Sullivan (center right, but reasonable - gives me a nuanced perspective on issues I may hold different positions on)

- Coleman Hughes has been interesting too.

- Astral Codex Ten (not really news, but an insightful blog on a wide variety of topics).

- Tyler Cowen and Marginal Revolution

- Balaji Srinivasan on Twitter (not news, but usually interesting and forward looking), same thing applies to others on Twitter if you can find them.

Any of these is 10x better than something like the NYT, on a regular basis. The MSM writing and discussion isn’t even close in complexity or depth. MSM anchors don’t seem as smart (imo) and are mostly preaching to their own choir with whatever motivated reasoning they need to do so.

Currently: Emma, by Austen, and Debt: The First 5,000 Years by Graeber. Both good.

Recently finished Austen's Persuasion and Dickens' Oliver Twist. I'm trying to fill in big gaps in my reading of major English novels. Both were good. Dickens seems to have more compassion, which I appreciate. The two most moving scenes belong to his two worst villains. Persuasion was great though, and in many ways (compassion aside) a better novel than Dickens', not that they really deserve to be compared to one another. Persuasion's the first Austen novel I've managed to finish; usually I bounce off them in the first chapter or two. Looking like I'll make it through Emma, too, but it's certainly rougher going. Made it farther than I did on my last attempt, anyway.

The Things they Carried by O'Brien is up next after Graeber, probably, on recommendation (and loan) from a friend.

I haven't read it recently, but I feel compelled to recommend Revolutionary Road by Yates at every opportunity.

Thanks for bringing up one of my favorite authors, but Jane Austen should be used with caution.

1.) Generally speaking her novels focus on the direct experience of family and friends. She's cutting on issues like the hypocrisy of the clergy and the indolence of the landed gentry. Issues from society at large like the emergence of the English middle class intrude only implicitly. In fact she's commonly criticized for her narrow view. [0]

2.) Within those bounds there's a sizable military presence in both 'Pride and Prejudice' (soldiers at Meryton, Brighton, and elsewhere) as well as 'Persuasion', where many of the main characters are drawn from the English Navy and spent much of their life at sea.

I can't prove it but have long suspected the characters would have been quite different had they been published 15 years before or after. Within the scope of her concerns the society she portrays seems quite militarized.

[0] http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/novel_19c/a...

35. Persuasion – Jane Austen