BONUS | 3 High School Books You Need To Read Again

We are in the process of filling our banned books library here in Bastrop, Tx and if you want to be part of this project, you can send your books to: Painted Porch Bookstore ATTN: Banned Books 912 Main St Bastrop, Tx 78602 United States 📚 Pick up your own copy of the books mentioned in this episode from The Painted Porch https://www.thepaintedporch.com/ | https://www.thepaintedporch.com/ 🎥 Watch this episode on Ryan Holiday's YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyaPwChvq6Y: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyaPwChvq6Y 🎙️AD-FREE https://dailystoic.supercast.com/| Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing toThe Daily Stoic Premium https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content:https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ ✉️ FREE STOIC WISDOM https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail | Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email athttps://dailystoic.com/dailyemail See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

• 0:14Ryan Holiday?

  Three books that I read in high school that I'm rereading now, and you should too.

• 0:23Ryan Holiday?

  All right, so actually, this year is the 100-year anniversary of The Great Gatsby. This is the copy that I read in high school. I actually, there's a new 100-year edition, published by Scribner's, that's really, really good. This is the edition that I reread. As the ancients said, "We never step in the same river twice." So I'm not the same person I was when I read this when I was 15 or 16. I'm not the same person I was when I reread it when I was 25 or 30 or 35, and rereading it now for probably the 10th time, I'm a different person. And you know, you always take different things from the books. What I like about this is my edition,

• 1:07Ryan Holiday?

  you can see the different color highlighters, the different color notes. I clearly spilled food on it at some point. When I read this in high school, I thought it was about the Jazz Age. I thought it was about corruption. I thought it was about power. I thought about the American dream. And as I read it, when I'm older, I'm struck even by just the first lines. "In my younger and more vulnerable years, my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you have." I graduated from high school in June 2005. My aunt gave me a copy of Man's Search for Meaning. Ryan, this is one of my mom's favorite books. I think there is great value between these covers. I wanted to pass on part of your grandmother to you on your graduation.

• 1:52Ryan Holiday?

  Congratulations on your life path. This is one of the most incredible books you will ever read. Viktor Frankl is in three different concentration camps. He loses his family. He loses his wife. He loses his life's work. And yet, he comes out of it. Convinced that that life does still have meaning, that while struggle is unavoidable, our job is to take that struggle and that suffering and to turn it into something. This is one of the bestselling books of all time for very good reason. This was an incredible man with an incredible story. There's also a sequel, basically, to this book that came out during the pandemic that I was really struck by. It's a collection of his essays. It's called "Yes to Life in Spite of Everything", which is a perfect encapsulation

• 2:36Ryan Holiday?

  of the wisdom of Viktor Frankl's thinking that we say yes, we keep going despite everything. And reading this book at 18, I hadn't really gone through anything. And so I could only understand what he was saying at one level. And as I've lived the last 20-plus years of my life, I've come to understand these ideas more and more and more. And I think you will too. Then the last one, I read Fahrenheit 451 in high school. And I remember thinking that it was about government censorship, that the government sends their firemen to destroy books because they're, you know, in a Big Brother way, trying to prevent people from access to information. But when you reread this book now, in light of our current culture and political environment, you realize that's only a small part of it,

• 3:19Ryan Holiday?

  that actually, the censorship was coming primarily from the bottom up. That it was people not wanting to be offended, not wanting to deal with unpleasant or difficult ideas. That was the pain that they were trying to solve by burning the books. There's a passage in the book that I guess I missed as a high schooler, trying to just write an essay about the book, where Captain Beatty explains to Montag why the books are banned. He says, "Colored people don't like little black Sambo. Burn it. White people don't feel good about Uncle Tom's Cabin. Burn it. Someone's written a book about tobacco and cancer of the lungs. The cigarette people are weeping. Burn the book. Serenity, Montag. Peace, Montag. Take your fight outside. Better yet, to the incinerator. Forget it all. Burn it all. Burn everything.

• 4:03Ryan Holiday?

  Fire is bright and fire is clean." You just realize so often that what you read the first time was only hitting you at some level, and that there's a deeper understanding, there's a deeper level that all this is working on. And of course, now, as they're banning books all over Texas, as people are asking for safe spaces, and at the same time, there is real government censorship, which I myself have personally experienced, you realize that this book is more timely and timeless than ever. Inspired by Fahrenheit 451, we are turning the storefront next to my bookstore, the Painted Porch here in Bastrop, Texas, into a banned book library, a free lending library where people can take and leave any banned book that they want,

• 4:48Ryan Holiday?

  totally for free. It's a service, it can't be shut down. If you want to help support us in this banned book library, send us a banned book, we'll put it there, or come by, donate one, take one, whatever, we'd love to have you. We'd love to have your support. You can send those books right now, though, to 912 Main Street here in Bastrop, Texas, and we'll put it in our new banned book library.