Reading is an important part of my life. Fiction and non-fiction. Nowadays a large number of people relies on all sorts of digital media, filled with self-proclaimed experts on any topic imaginable. If you really want to know something about the world you live in, find out who were/are the important thinkers on this subject and read their books.

Some of the books I recommend:

Stefan Zweig - The World of Yesterday
Colm Tóibín - anything he has written, a future Nobel Prize winner for literature. Especially The Master, The Magician, Brooklyn, Long Island.
Jane Gardam - Old Filth, The Man in the Wooden Hat, and Last Friends
Gabriel Garcia Márquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude, Autumn of the Patriarch, Love in the Time of Cholera
Julian Barnes - Sense of an Ending, The Noise of Time

The man was a brilliant visionary, ahead of his time. A selection of his books:

Amusing Ourselves to Death - Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

“It’s unlikely that Trump has ever read Amusing Ourselves to Death, but his ascent would not have surprised Postman.” –CNN

Originally published in 1985, Neil Postman’s groundbreaking polemic about the corrosive effects of television on our politics and public discourse has been hailed as a twenty-first-century book published in the twentieth century. Now, with television joined by more sophisticated electronic media—from the Internet to cell phones to DVDs—it has taken on even greater significance. Amusing Ourselves to Death is a prophetic look at what happens when politics, journalism, education, and even religion become subject to the demands of  entertainment. It is also a blueprint for regaining control of our media, so that they can serve our highest goals.

“A brilliant, powerful, and important book. This is an indictment that Postman has laid down and, so far as I can see, an irrefutable one.” –Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World

Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology

A witty, often terrifying book that chronicles our transformation into a society that is shaped by technology.

"A provocative book ... A tool for fighting back against the tools that run our lives." — Dallas Morning News

The story of our society's transformation into a Technopoly: a society that no longer merely uses technology as a support system but instead is shaped by it—with radical consequences for the meanings of politics, art, education, intelligence, and truth.

The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School

Postman suggests that the current crisis in our educational system derives from its failure to supply students with a translucent, unifying "narrative" like those that inspired earlier generations. Instead, today's schools promote the false "gods" of economic utility, consumerism, or ethnic separatism and resentment. What alternative strategies can we use to instill our children with a sense of global citizenship, healthy intellectual skepticism, respect of America's traditions, and appreciation of its diversity? In answering this question, The End of Education restores meaning and common sense to the arena in which they are most urgently needed.

Teaching as a Subversive Activity

A no-holds-barred assault on outdated teaching methods—with dramatic and practical proposals on how education can be made relevant to today's world.

Building a Bridge to the 18th Century: How the Past Can Improve Our Future

In Building a Bridge to the 18th Century, Neil Postman offers a cure for the hysteria and hazy values of the postmodern world.

Postman shows us how to reclaim that balance between mind and machine in a dazzling celebration of the accomplishments of the Enlightenment - from Jefferson's representative democracy to Locke's deductive reasoning to Rousseau's demand that the care and edification of children be considered an investment in our collective future. Here, too, is the bold assertion that Truth is invulnerable to fashion or the passing of time. Provocative and brilliantly argued, Building a Bridge to the 18th Century illuminates a navigable path through the Information Age - a byway whose signposts, it turns out, were there all along.

Conscientious Objections: Stirring Up Trouble About Language, Technology and Education

In a series of feisty and ultimately hopeful essays, one of America's sharpest social critics casts a shrewd eye over contemporary culture to reveal the worst - and the best - of our habits of discourse, tendencies in education, and obsessions with technological novelty. Should education transmit culture or defend us against it? Is technological innovation progress or a peculiarly American addiction? When everyone watches the same television programs - and television producers don't discriminate between the audiences for Sesame Street and Dynasty - is childhood anything more than a sentimental concept? Writing in the traditions of Orwell and H.L. Mencken, Neil Postman sends shock waves of wit and critical intelligence through the cultural wasteland.

Crazy Talk, Stupid Talk

According to Postman, "stupid talk" is language that is recognized as foolish because of its vocabulary, tone, or suppositions. "Crazy talk" is syntactically and semantically acceptable, even persuasive, but it promotes ideas that are irrational, inconsequential, and even malevolent.

What about Me? The Struggle for Identity in a Market-based Society - Paul Verhaeghe

In What about Me?, Paul Verhaeghe’s main concern is how social change has led to a psychic crisis and altered the way we think about ourselves. He investigates the effects of thirty years’ acceptance of neo-liberalism, free-market forces, and privatisation, and the resulting relationship between our engineered society and individual identity. It turns out that who we are is, as always, determined by the context in which we live.

From his clinical experience as a psychotherapist, Verhaeghe shows the profound impact that social change is having on mental health, even to the extent of affecting the nature of the disorders from which we suffer. But his book ends on a note of cautious optimism. We can once again become masters of our fate — if we accept the challenge.

Borderline times - Dirk De Wachter (Dutch)

We leven in borderlinetijden. In de psychiatrie is borderline vandaag met voorsprong de vaakst gestelde diagnose. Bovendien is de lijn tussen patiënten en niet-patiënten flinterdun. Zijn wij collectief op weg naar ziekte en ongenoegen?
Psychiatrie is de spiegel van de wereld waarin we leven. Dirk De Wachter schetst borderline dan ook als een maatschappelijk ziektebeeld.
Eén conclusie staat als een paal boven water:
In onze westerse maatschappij zijn de symptomen van borderline niet ver te zoeken. Meer nog, ze kenmerken onze leefwereld. Wij zijn ons brein in de tijd.
Gelukkig zijn er andere, meer hoopgevende signalen met vooruitzicht op herstel. Onze wereld lijkt aan een grens te staan. Mensen verzetten zich uitdrukkelijk tegen de symptomen. Hechting, engagement, solidariteit en gemeenschapszin zijn waarden die broodnodig zijn om weerwerk te bieden tegen de huidige borderlinegesteldheid van dreigende verbrokkeling, impulsiviteit en zinloosheid.

De depressie-epidemie - Trudy Dehue (Dutch)

In 'De depressie-epidemie' constateert Trude Dehue dat hoewel Nederland over het algemeen een welvarend, vrij, veilig en dus vrolijk land is, antidepressiva er tot de meest geslikte medicijnen behoren. Is depressie een biologisch verankerde ziekte, die nu pas goed herkend en behandeld wordt, of praten de hulpverlening en de farmaceutische industrie ons psychische stoornissen aan? Talloos zijn bovendien de andere therapieën, de zelfhulpboeken en internetpagina’s over depressiviteit. Trudy Dehue betoogt dat de diagnose vaak onjuist is of niet afdoende, en stelt er andere tegenover.

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma - Bessel van der Kolk

Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world's foremost experts on trauma, has spent over three decades working with survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, he uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers' capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust. He explores innovative treatments—from neurofeedback and meditation to sports, drama, and yoga—that offer new paths to recovery by activating the brain's natural neuroplasticity. Based on Dr. van der Kolk's own research and that of other leading specialists, The Body Keeps the Score exposes the tremendous power of our relationships both to hurt and to heal—and offers new hope for reclaiming lives.

The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture - Gabor Maté

By the acclaimed author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, a groundbreaking investigation into the causes of illness, a bracing critique of how our society breeds disease, and a pathway to health and healing.

In this revolutionary book, renowned physician Gabor Maté eloquently dissects how in Western countries that pride themselves on their healthcare systems, chronic illness and general ill health are on the rise. Nearly 70 percent of Americans are on at least one prescription drug; more than half take two. In Canada, every fifth person has high blood pressure. In Europe, hypertension is diagnosed in more than 30 percent of the population. And everywhere, adolescent mental illness is on the rise. So what is really “normal” when it comes to health?

How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen - David Brooks

A practical, heartfelt guide to the art of truly knowing another person in order to foster deeper connections at home, at work, and throughout our lives.

As David Brooks observes, “There is one skill that lies at the heart of any healthy person, family, school, community organization, or the ability to see someone else deeply and make them feel seen—to accurately know another person, to let them feel valued, heard, and understood.”

And yet we humans don’t do this well. All around us are people who feel invisible, unseen, misunderstood. In How to Know a Person, Brooks sets out to help us do better, posing questions that are essential for all of us. If you want to know a person, what kind of attention should you cast on them? What kind of conversations should you have? What parts of a person’s story should you pay attention to?

Meditations - Marcus Aurelius

Written in Greek by the only Roman emperor who was also a philosopher, without any intention of publication, the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius offer a remarkable series of challenging spiritual reflections and exercises developed as the emperor struggled to understand himself and make sense of the universe. While the Meditations were composed to provide personal consolation and encouragement, Marcus Aurelius also created one of the greatest of all works of philosophy: a timeless collection that has been consulted and admired by statesmen, thinkers and readers throughout the centuries.