Hello! We’re talking about books every college student (or college bound high schooler) should read!!
So, I read a lot. If I were to describe myself, I would start with reader… and then go on to struggle to describe myself as anything else because my life has been in flux.
And “reader” would honestly feel less honest as of 12/13/20 because I have not been reading as much as I used – a shift from main hobby to something I only really make time for a couple times a week at most. Life is in flux so much and I’m trying to adapt.
One way, however, that I’m learning to adapt is reviewing lessons that I’ve learned in the past and, you know what the main place I’ve learned many easy-to-review-and-relearn lessons? Books!
Given my age, they’re books I read in high school and the earlier years of my college career. They’ve been incredibly helpful for me so I’ve detailed them here and have tried to clearly detail their usefulness so you can dive into the ones that will help you the most where you are.
High School
How to Be a High School Superstar by Cal Newport
Starting with books most helpful for high schoolers, How to Be a High School Superstar is fantastic for college bound high schoolers and can be useful as early as freshman year. It’s full of great study techniques and advice that isn’t taught in most schools (and certainly wasn’t taught in mind). Much of the techniques can be seen in How to Become a Straight A Student (Cal Newport’s study technique book for college students), but the techniques are more geared to material that would be covered in a high school setting.
However, being a high school superstar (especially in the case of a college bound high schooler) has a bit to do with standing out in college applications. This book has a ton of case studies and practical advice on how to organize your activities in a way that can help you get into selective schools.
Given the nature of the advice, though, it’s also great for people wondering in general how to organize their free time around stuff they’re passionate about and have a more fulfilling high school experience.
Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff for Teens by Richard Carlson
High school can be hard. Fears about the future, family struggles, and taking on new or compounding responsibilities can be overwhelming. I have found that your mindset is not only one of the few things within your control, but it also has a huge outsized impact on your well-being.
It’s targeted to teens, but not in a condescending way. It can actually make you realize you can have more agency and impact in your life than you previously thought, but in a way that targets ways they may feel helpless, like deciding on the future or enacting change in the world.
This book is good for:
- Keeping calm in stressful times
- Having a helpful perspective
- Not getting thrown about your emotions or the emotions of others
- Staying on track and living the life you want to live
Preparation for Your Twenties/ Post Grad Life
The Defining Decade by Meg Jay
This book is great for people in their twenties, no matter how lost or on track you think you are. It puts much of the terror of being on your own and beginning to create your life into context and makes a lot of it seem manageable. It can also be helpful to shift the mindsets of people who see their twenties as a death sentence or as a holding period before real life starts.
A core message of this book is that your twenties are just one decade, but they’re not inconsequential and you should treat them, and yourself, like they matter.
So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport
So Good They Can’t Ignore You is a great read for anyone trying to figure out how to decide on a career, but especially for those of us just diving into the career market, or even simply picking a major.
It rejects the advice to follow your passion, or to even try to find it in the first place (as most people probably don’t have a clearly defined passion) and to focus on trying to find a fulfilling career, that you may in fact be passionate about.
This search for a career is based on becoming competent in a field and having valuable skills that you can exchange for control, mission, and a variety of other things that make up a satisfying career.
This is a great read, full of case studies and stories to drive the point home.
Academic Success
Make It Stick by Henry L. Roediger III, Mark A. McDaniel, and Peter C. Brown
Have you arrived in a new learning environment and learned that you have no idea how to study? Do you think your study skills are okay, but might need some improvement?
This book is for you (and is recommended by almost all of my professors.
It’s full of the most current and proven science on learning and it teaches you how to really learn and retain information. This book also has examples of how to apply these strategies, as well as many case studies, so you have a starting point on how to integrate these tips into your life.
The researchers partnered with a storyteller, so the book is not as dense as it could be. It’s not exactly an easy read, but it’s absolutely worth it.
How We Learn by Benedict Carey
Another book for those of us who need help learning how to study effectively. This gives you a great background on the neurological basis for information retention as well as many practical tips and examples, as does Make it Stick. However, this was written by a journalist, so it is arguably easier and more engaging and gets to the point a bit faster.
If you were to choose only one of these two, I would go with Make it Stick, because I feel like it’s closer to the source, but How We Learn is great and if density is a barrier then go with How We Learn instead.
How to Become a Straight-A Student by Cal Newport
Another book by Cal Newport! What can I say? There are many of these on this list.
This book is a great primer for college students and college-aspiring high school students. It acknowledges that many of the skills required for making it through college (e.g. study skills, time management skills, etc) are sparse amongst incoming freshmen and then teach you how to solve them.
This is a great read, but I recommend taking what works for you and leaving what doesn’t (generally a great tip for all productivity/ self-help/ self-improvement books), as trying to fit perfectly in the mold of the student that would use all these tips exactly as presented will work against you.
How to Win at College by Cal Newport
If you are wondering how to get the most out of your tuition and you need some ideas, this book is a great place to start. Newport covers a variety of subjects, from condensed versions of his study advice to how and why to have a grand personal project.
A running thread through much of this book (a thread, I admit, that I didn’t notice the first couple of times that I read this book) is that confidence and self-belief is key. And this book is full of ways to establish that self confidence and self belief that will get your through tough tests as well as terrifying internships.
So, along with getting many different ideas on how to become a much cooler you, you get tips on how to build a self that can whether temporary defeats.
Lifestyle Design
General
Essentialism by Greg McKeown
Essentialism is in a sense minimalism if it’s marketing focused more on the value and time management and commitment side of things and less on the stuff. (I know that minimalists will argue that it is more than stuff, and I do believe it is, but the marketing….eh, it focuses mostly on stuff).
This book will help you systematically examine your life and get to the core of what you value. It will help you learn what you actually need to spend your time and energy on for a good life, and how to make that shift).
Finances
The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley, and William D. Danko
These next three books are three different takes on financial independence. The Millionaire Next Door is a book for you if you feel like you could figure out the execution off financial advice, but really don’t know where to start.
There are nuggets of actionable advice mixed in with case-studies, data about the working class rich, and stories based on real life that have been modified to protect the innocent. My family has been a fan of this book since I was young, so strangely enough this financial advice book is close to my heart.
I Will Teach You to be Rich by Ramit Sethi
I Will Teach You to be Rich is a great book if you need a step by step plan. It covers automating saving, investing, managing your credit, and so much more. I also feel like the plan can be altered for your own specific needs and goals.
Tonally, this book is engaging and full of personality and is great read.
Personal Development
Productivity
Atomic Habits by James Clear
Habits are the building blocks of life and Clear’s tips in this book can really help you build out and maintain the ones you want and need to live the life you want.
These tips are very practical and actionable, ranging from introspection and deliberate building of your identity to changing your environment so it better facilitates your habits.
I’ve loved Clear’s blog for a couple of years now and this book certainly doesn’t disappoint.
Other recommendations for changing your habits are The Power of Habits and Mini Habits.
Grit by Angela Duckworth, PhD
Grit is defined by Dr. Duckworth as passion and perseverance for long term goals and it is essential for succeeding at a high level. This book is a great insight into what makes someone gritty and how you can build that in yourself.
(There’s also a fun examination into the interplay of talent and effort/ hard work and how success is more complicated than those two components).
Bored and Brilliant by Manoush Zomorodi
The wandering mind can produce great mundane ideas as well as groundbreaking ones (I imagine it depends on your critical thinking skills and creativity as well as the contents of your mind/ resources the wanderer has to draw from).
Bored and Brilliant contains a stepwise plan to help you take advantage of not overstimulating yourself for a second as well as an indent exploration of why you should try being bored.
Zomorodi explores mindfulness, the workplace, reading actual books, and so much more. It’s a very interesting read and I hope you check it out.
Deep Work by Cal Newport
Deep Work is a boon to anyone who wants to not only increase their productivity but increase the things of value that they produce.
This book argues that for many knowledge workers, work produced in a deep state of focus is what will create most value in your field as well as increase your skillset the most.
Deep Work argues why this is so, how to fit deep work into your life, and how to build the focus skills necessary to carry this out.
Mental Health
The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie
The Language of Letting Go hits an emotional sweet spot for me. It is a book of daily motivations on a variety of things that go into growing into a person who is more peaceful, resilient, and compassionate (to yourself and others).
Beattie covers everything from setting boundaries to “acting as if” to what self care truly means (this book was written many years before the term became so commodified to the extent that we know now).
Whenever I need some clarity (which is everyday), I can always find something in this book to make the day seem more manageable.
Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff and It’s All Small Stuff by Richard Carlson
This book is a personal development/ self-help classic and the grown up version of Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff for Teens. In the one-hundred passages in this book, Dr. Carlson shows the way to being less caught up in the little things is to be more compassionate and when given the option to believe the best or the worst, to believe in the best, amongst many other tips.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Made Simple and Retrain Your Brain – Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in 7 Weeks – both by Seth J. Gillihan, PhD
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is one of the most effective forms of therapy for anxiety and depression. It focuses on giving you the tools to thrive and take care of yourself despite your mental health by exploring how thoughts direct feelings and as a result your actions. Interestingly, CBT works on both doing things when you don’t feel like it as well as changing your thought processes.
I’m not a mental health professional, so I can’t make any promises, and if you are able to I would recommend seeing a mental health professional. However, these books have been helpful to me, the former being more of a guide with end of chapter questions and the latter being more of a workbook.
At the very least, it helped me develop some tools on how to better deal with my mind.
A great accompaniment to these books is The Great Courses audio program on CBT. This program shows how CBT may work in the presence of an actual therapist and may instruct how you go about helping yourself.
Self Discipline/ Mindset
The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday
Are you easily swayed by your emotions, overly sensitive to the point that its a problem, and generally feel helpless? Try stoicism.
Stoicism is a philosophy that calls for you to focus on what you can control (your mind) and focus on that alone.
This book follows many case studies of people who have done so in the past as well as giving general guidance to help you employ this very helpful philosophy into your own life.
The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday
The Daily Stoic is just as it sounds: daily stoic meditations to help direct your day and think better and move through the day as if you are in control of that which you can control. Everyday there is a quote and a commentary beneath. I personally feel like reflecting on the quote itself is enough.
Understanding the World
Choose Your Own Adventure
One of the most important reasons for reading is to better understand how the world works. It makes you a better citizen, a better student, a more compassionate neighbor, a more imaginative person in general.
As a student, having more structures and systems that you understand gives you more and stronger frames of reference to hang new information on. This helps you learn better and retain information better as learning is essentially about making mental connections and the more plentiful and salient the connections, the more likely that you would be able to recall information later.
In general, I feel more at peace and more capable of thinking useful and novel thoughts the more I understand how the world works. The more I understand something, the more I feel able to interact with it productively.
So How Do You Do This?
I recommend starting at your interests. You like startups? Read about the world of venture capital. You’re wondering about the current state of the United State’s political parties? Read a book that tracks the evolution of the parties from the beginning of the United States to now (the only book that I can think of that kind of does this is the American Pageant textbook that my APUSH professor used, but it was honestly the most fun textbook I’ve ever read so I will recommend it unironically.
Below are some recommendations of books that I really enjoyed and found helpful and compelling.
Recommendations
Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond – If you’re interested in learning about one framework for why power and resources and even nation lines have been organized the way they have in the world (and a bit on why they have stayed that way), this book makes a very compelling argument for the uses of Gun, Germs, and Steel, as well as how idea transmission works latitudinally vs longitudinally.
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell – Are you interested in learning more about extreme success than merely hearing some nebulous thing about hard work? This book goes into many components that could contribute to absurdly high/ unprecedented levels of success. What environments and cultures and timings lend themselves to helping someone become an outlier?
Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell – This book, amongst many other things, goes into why we are actually terrible about making reliable judgements about people we don’t know and the consequences that can have for society.
The Rise and Fall of Alexandria by Justin Pollard and Howard Reid – This book is engaging and surprisingly funny. It discusses societal structures, politics, and religion in between discussing the establishment of Alexandria and its fall.
Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari – Homo Deus is chiefly a philosophical examination of how the world could be in an era in which, according Harari, human beings have been elevated to the level of God. This power is exemplified through our control not only of ourselves and others, but of nature around us. It’s very interesting and very imaginative and provides fun logic puzzles to muddle through and argue with.