Good but preachy

A short review of The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness

It was good until the last two chapters.

Naval’s Almanack is only that–an almanack of his aphorisms.

If you follow him on social, this book is a collection of his tweets.

Explained, expanded, expounded, sometimes, exaggerated, this guide contradicts itself.

Preachy towards the end, Naval subscribes to discovering the original sources of ideas.

But the book is not an original.

It’s his own reflection on Homer’s Iliad, on Buddhism and meditation, and Richard Feynman on Physics.

He says he is not religious.

He’s spiritual.

Happiness is freedom from, and not freedom to do what you want.

Answering the question of “What is the meaning of life,” Naval says there’s none.

He claims to live in the moment. Life is fleeting. If you understand that, then you’re happy.

Naval is a modern day philosopher.

But like others who lived before him, he is conflicted.

He embraces science and mathematics. But when it comes to ideas of an afterlife, he dismisses them as folly.