Which book do you recommend most often to others, and what makes you pass it on?

Read Becoming a Writer, by Dorothea Brande. Then do what it says, including the tasks you think are impossible. You will particularly hate the advice to write first thing in the morning, but if you can manage it, it might well be the best thing you ever do for yourself. This book is about becoming a writer from the inside out. Many later advice manuals derive from it. You don’t really need any others, though if you want to boost your confidence, “how to” books seldom do any harm.

Yeah. Every year, I read The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. So, they’re probably books that you’ve – I mean, it might have been books that you’ve covered in your show here. So, one of them is Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, one of the greatest things ever. I come back to that advice so many different times, it’s the same even in the Pink household, where we’ll just say – like one member of my family would say to the other who’s struggling, “Okay, bird by bird. Bird by bird.” And so, I am a huge – and I stumbled into this book – I remember where I got this next book, I got it in the airport in San Francisco, in the bookstore in the SFO. And for some reason, I picked it up because it had this really weird cover. But one of the first editions of The War of Art by Steven Pressfield had this kind of silvery cover to it. And I bought that book in – I think it was a campus bookstore in SFO, just because it’s – I went, “Oh, it’s silver cover, and it’s really short.” I got it and it was like, “Oh, my god. I can’t believe how good this book is.” And so, I have even have a little sign on my desk here that says, “Beat the resistance.” So, I’ve given that book a out a lot too. So Pressfield and Lamott. And then – man, I have to say, Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning is up there too. Less – I’ve given that out less, but that’s a hugely important book for me.

Well, other than Man’s Search For Meaning , which is probably my number one gift, recently, the last couple years there’s a book called The 100-Year Life . The 100-Year Life , written by a couple Brits, and it sort of says, “Imagine the future where the average person lives to 100. How is that going to change on a personal and societal basis?” It’s a really interesting, observational book. The Happiness Curve , which we talked about earlier. The U-curve of happiness is what we call it. The name of the book is by Jonathan Rauch, it’s called The Happiness Curve . That’s become a favorite to gift. I also love Danny Meyer the restaurateur. He’s got one of the best books on hospitality ever written, which is called Setting the Table .

I’m very suspicious about recommending books to people because there’s the risk they might listen to what you say. And if you’re recommending to them the book that is not the most valuable next book they should read, in a sense, you’re wronging them. So I don’t give people books that often. One thing I try to encourage people to do is to read more about music and the arts, not a particular book. But I say take the creators you love, whoever, whatever they may be, and read about them. If it’s The Beatles, great. If it’s Beethoven, and really dig into what you might think of as your hobbies, but to read about them in an intense way. And just think about Beethoven. How did he manage his career? What were his productivity tricks, what did he do wrong? And think through some of the questions you’ve written and talked about at length, but in the context of your cultural heroes. If it’s like, what do I tell people to read most often? I am not myself religious, but usually I’ll tell my non-religious friends they ought to go read the Bible. It’s a wonderfully deep and brilliant book and most non-religious people, even most religious people, barely know it, or Shakespeare.

Oh, what a great question. I actually gifted one recently. So a friend of mine, Ian Dawson, he trains mountain rescue people, mountain rescuers in Scotland. He was working with me at the North Pole and he’d never seen a polar bear before. He absolutely fell in love with the environment and I gifted him a book called Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez. Have you read that? Tim Ferriss: This is on my to-read list, Of Wolves And Men by Barry Lopez is one of my favorite nonfiction books I’ve read in the last 10 years. Sue Flood: Oh, it would be. Tim Ferriss: And Arctic Dreams , I was just saying on the way here in the airplane that I wished I had Arctic Dreams , so I haven’t read it yet. Sue Flood: It is a magical book and yeah, I gifted that to Ian and I know he loved it and yeah, that is a great read. You have to immediately dash off, well perhaps not now, but when you get back to civilization. Yeah, that’s a really beautiful book and I’ve bought that for quite a few people.

Oh, I mean, there’s one that I actually gifted to you that I especially love.

Well, certainly the one book that I’ve gifted the most in my life was a book that I first read when I was 15 and I reread it almost yearly. It’s a book called Watership Down and —