A Few Thoughts on "12 Rules For Life".

I can't recall exactly when I became aware of Dr. Jordan Peterson, though I'm reasonably sure it was via one of his Youtube videos. I was immediately impressed with his anti-Leftist views and his stance against the "politically correct" culture and identity politics that is taking over Western society.

I would later come to appreciate his Biblical lectures and his talks on ethics, psychology and personal responsibility. His thoughts on Christianity, Taoism, Buddhism and evolution were a big draw as well. From his Youtube lectures, I went on to listen to his podcasts, available on his website and on Spotify.

I had been wanting to read his book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos for a long time, but due to problems with my Amazon account, I was only recently able to download a copy.

I'm fast approaching 70, but I'm still a work in progress. I've learned quite a bit from his "12 rules" and if I had a time machine, I would take a copy of this remarkable book back to an earlier me. I'd be much better off today (provided, of course that I could convince the earlier me to read it).

Like myself, Dr. Peterson has a love for the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky and he references three of Dostoevsky's novels in this book - Crime and Punishment ,The Brothers Karamazov and Notes from Underground . In addition to Dostoevsky, Dr. Peterson mentions a number of novels to help explain his ideas - Lord of the Flies by William Golding, The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang, Orphan X by Gregg Hurwitz and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago . I've read the above mentioned novels by Dostoevsky, although the three could do for a re-read in 2022. I read Lord of the Flies as a teenager and it's due for a re-read as well. It's going into the queue, as are the books by Chang, Hurwitz and Solzhenitsyn.

Dr. Jordan Peterson's Book Lists

Anyone who has been a reader of my other blog is surely aware of my fondness for book lists. Since 2011, I've been keeping record of every book I've read throughout the year, and on January 01, 2012 I began what would become an annual tradition for me - the posting of the list of books I had read the previous year.

In 2015, after having read The Hounds of the Baskervilles and discovering it had been #7 on the top ten best sellers of 1902, I found a copy of said list  of best sellers and began reading those novels.

In 2017 I read the top ten best selling novels of 1917.

In 2019, I came upon The 100 best novels written in English. I was not going to attempt to read every book on the list, but I was curious to see how many of those books I had read, how many I had heard of but not read, and how many were completely unknown to me. I was intrigued by number 25 on the list. This book, Three Men In a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) became the last novel I would read that year.

On his website, Dr. Jordan Peterson has two book lists. One is an incredibly long list consisting of 51 novels, as well as books on Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry, Neuroscience, Religion and Religious History, History/Systems Analysis, and finally, The State of the World with two of his books thrown in for good measure.

The second list is considerably shorter - just 15 books. He states that this list come about by people asking him what they should read to educate themselves. He went on to say that he found the books on that list to be particularly influential in his intellectual development.

I would concern myself with the novels on the two lists and stay away from the non fiction.

I'm actually surprised by the number of books on his lists that I've already read. There are also a few that I'm surprised to find on his list.

The Maltese Falcon made, not only Dr. Peterson's list of Great Novels, but was ranked #54 on the 100 best novels written in English list. I enjoyed the novel, but frankly I can't understand how or why it made both these lists.

Another novel on Dr.Peterson's lists which I found surprising is The Master and Margarita by Russian writer, Mikhail Bulgakov. Again, I very much enjoyed that novel, enough to read twice, but I can't see it on a list for Great Novels.

Not every book on Dr. Peterson's lists are available for free download - though many are. I've collected 20 of these novels, even those I've read and will read or reread many of them this year.