Books where you gained lots of insight? Open to DMs?

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Can you list some books you gained a lot of insight from (or there were personal lessons you learned)? Maybe others have read those same books, and would love to discuss themes contained therein. Are you open to DMs over certain books' themes? How about exploring your favorite insights/personal lessons - these themes can be explored over DMs about specific mutually appreciated books. So it's like little mini book clubs over certain books, in DMs.

Note: I find it impossible to share the interesting things I find from the books I read, with NT people. When I ask what they're reading, it's the most banal tripe. I ask what insights did they gain? What lessons did they learn? They can't come up with anything. Can they at least summarize the main points made? No. Well what was the point of reading it? They know they liked it. That's the one thing they seem to know about what they read: that it was entertaining. And virtually nothing more.

For example, here are my favorites, I'd be willing to discuss in DMs:

Psychology:

• The Geography of Thought - Richard E Nesbitt
• The Village Effect - Susan Pinker
• Rule Makers, Rule Breakers - Michele Gelfand
• The Status Game - Wil Stor
• Folly of Fools - Robert Trivers

• Sapiens - Yuva Harari
• Enlightenment Now - Steven Pinker
• The Master and His Emissary - Iain McGilchrist
• The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins
• Cultish - Amanda Montell

• The Way of Chuang Tzu - translated by Thomas Merton
• Tao Te Ching - translated by Gia-Fu Feng & Jane English
• Zen Speaks - by Tsai Chih Chung (Author), Brian Bruya (Translator)

• The Mystique of Enlightenment - U.G. Krishnamurti
  

• Gem in the Lotus - Abraham Eraly
• Aesop's Fables
• "The Prince" - Machiavelli

• Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
• The Glass Bead Game - Hermann Heisse
• Jonathan Livingston Seagull - Richard Bach

• Man's Search for Meaning - Victor Frankl
• Infidel - Ayaan Hirsi Ali

the more recent, some (always in dutch);

The Prague cemetary- Umberto Eco
De waanzinnige veertiende eeuw/A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara Tuckman
Wild swans, three daughters of china -Jung Chang

The odd combo of dr Koenigswald 'speurtocht in de prehistorie' with Teilhard 'the phenomenon man'
(they meet sometimes, and K observing that T takes shortcuts to facts easily, in fact T is more driven by grandiose storymaking, {and conveniently all artefacts disappear in ww2} in a grandiose storyline from dubious darwinism to a new cult of transhumanism/ brought to you by Rockefellers' Gates(frederick) via the peking medical school) fwiw

and a good laugh with, Esther Vilar's 'the manipulated man'

Maestro CapedOwl

Thank you for a nice post topic, many of the cited book, I've read and would recommend as well. So I'll limit my list to those, not yet mentioned.

Maestra Travern

Leuk om wat Nederlandstalige boeken te zien verschijnen, ik zal dr Koenigswald's 'speurtocht in de prehistorie' eens opsporen .

All,

Of course my pm's are wide open (within reason)
I'll add "my" tldr to each title, as to already get across my summarized reception/viewing of the book. allowing of course for conversation to ensue.
I also tried to add a theme into my recommendations list, perhaps you can catch it

List:
Psychology

The Lucifer Effect by Philip Zimbardo
->My Tldr: Explores how ordinary people can commit evil acts, based on the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment. It’s both disturbing and eye-opening, revealing how context and power can corrupt.

Science

The Invisible Gorilla by Christopher Chabris & Daniel Simons
-> My Tldr: Reveals how our brains deceive us, leading to false memories and cognitive biases. The book’s famous experiment shows how easily we overlook the obvious, challenging our trust in perception and memory.

Ancient studies

Classical Controversies (edited by Kim Beerden & Timo Epping)
-> My Tldr: Focuses on debates about the reception of Graeco-Roman antiquity in modern times, including issues of politics, heritage ethics, and the spurious appropriation of ancient symbols by contemporary movements.

Fiction

Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche (in The Portable Nietzsche, translated by Walter Kaufman)
-> My Tldr: Nietzsche’s poetic-philosophical novel in which the prophet Zarathustra descends from his mountain solitude to share radical teachings with humanity. The book’s core message is that humanity must overcome itself to become a higher type of beeing, who creates new values independently, rather than relying on traditional morality or religion.

Not interested in DMs, but I'll mention some:

Nikos Kazantzakis: Zorba the Greek, and The Last Temptation of Christ

Mark Twain: Letters from the Earth (it got me interested in reading the Bible), Puddin'head Wilson

Upton Sinclair: The Jungle

Sinclair Lewis: Elmer Gantry, Main Street

George Orwell: 1984, Animal Farm

Willard Losinger: Liberal Tears

John Steinbeck: Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath

Vladislav Tretiak - The Art of Goaltending