Have you been thinking about starting to read again? Here are some tips for you

Spring is coming and somehow the pre-Easter time always feels like the right time to renew ourselves physically and mentally. Summer is the time of action, but spring is the perfect dreamy time when our brain, soul, and body can slowly wake up from its winter hibernation.

While reading a lot lately I found many treasures which I wanted to share with you. I divided them into three categories: philosophy, world literature and motivational books. Some of the books I have not read nowadays, but still found worth to mention, because they are my all time favorites and it is a good chance to mention them now.


PHILOSOPHY

Sun Tzu: The Art of War
This book is one of my all time favorites. Sun Tzu was a Chinese general, strategist and tactician. His work consists of 13 chapters, each of them devoted to a different aspect of warfare. It has had an influence of Eastern and Western military thinking, business tactics, legal strategy and beyond.


Marcus Aurelius: Meditations
My other all time favorite. Every time when I am stuck or need some inspiration I browse quotes from this book. It is one of my secret weapons to calm down myself, when everything gets chaotic.


WORLD LITERATURE

Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita
If I could name only two books as my favorites this would be one of them, and A Tale of Love and Darkness from Amos Oz the other. There are two story lines running parallel in the book. One is the love story of a writer called the Master and his love Margarita mixed with a surreal visit of the evil and its crew to Moscow. The other is an artistic re-interpretation of the story of Pontius Pilate and Jesus.
I like this book because to me it is a surreal bible of unconditional love and understanding.

Amos Oz: A Tale of Love and Darkness
My second favorite book besides The Master and Margarita. It tells about two Eastern-European Jewish families who immigrate to Israel before the second world war. It is far beyond a historical novel though. It is also the real story of the mother of the author, a charming intellectual woman who slowly started to fade away in her own world and got eternally lost there. I like this book, because it tells about how different we people are, and how different we perceive life and the world based on our personalities.

Gabriel García Márquez: Love in the time of Cholera
I like this book because of its innocence and triviality. An old love couple meets after 51 years, when the husband of the woman dies in an accident. Their love evokes again, and manifests in a deep and passionate relationship. It is comical and tragical at the same time.

John Steinbeck: Of Mice and Men
This one is a quite hard, but very nice reading. I recommend it only when you are in a stable and happy stage of your life, because it has a strong critical insight on society and people in general. The novel tells about the friendship of two displaced migrant ranch workers, and the inevitable tragedy approaching them. Required reading in many American schools, and at the same time a frequent target of censors because of vulgarity and what some consider for offensive language.

MOTIVATIONAL

Mihály Csíkszentmihályi: Flow
This is a very practical book about how to give a meaning to one`s life, and be happy and content at the same time.

ON MY TO READ LIST

Charles Dickens: A Tale of Two Cities
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: Wind, Sand and Stars