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I love reading books by doers; that’s why I love reading books like Meditations by the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, and it’s why I also like to read Letters from a Stoic by Seneca, who was one of the wealthiest and most erudite people in ancient Rome. 

A few years ago, I used to read any book that I was curious about, and as a result, I ended up reading a lot of awful books.

Now, my only criterion for which books I read is the following heuristic:

Is this book written by a doer or some BS merchant with a theory not grounded in reality?

If the book is written by a doer and someone who exhibits virtue (or has done so historically), I will read it.

Almost every book written nowadays is written by academics or pseudo-experts with no grounding in reality, and that’s why I mostly avoid new books like the Antonine plague. 

Even when I’ve read books by courageous people, I know that it’s not enough

To really become someone courageous, someone of virtue, the primary thing you must do is perform acts of courage and virtue. 

I was reading ” Skin in the Game ” by Nassim Taleb, and he said that reading about acts of courage doesn’t make you any more courageous than eating beef makes you cow-like. And I agree.

What should come first in our lives is to try and live honourably, and that can only be achieved through living virtuously and thus courageously. It can help to read about courageous people so we can use them as a good example to act out courage and virtue in our own lives.