Reddit reviews Early Daoist Scriptures (Daoist Classics , No 1) (Volume 1)

Daoism is wonderful, but in the West, it's even more common to find New Age ideas among self-proclaimed Daoists who have read the Dao De Jing and called it a day than it is to find Westerners misrepresenting the dharma. Many think it's simply about doing whatever you want or "going with the flow", paying no mind to the thousands of years of philosophical development. To fully grasp it, you absolutely must spend time around hereditary Daoists from places like China, or at least read about them. There is a big difference in how historical Daoists have practiced versus what people on the internet do.

I would stay away from books like the Tao of Pooh, or anything similarly named The Tao of [X] personally. They might be entertaining, but they are often not correct. For a beginner, I would instead recommend Seven Taoist Masters, translated by Eva Wong. It's a narrative, but it introduces many of the core ideas of a significant number of Daoists and requires less interpretation than do things like the DDJ.

For some information on Daoist practice in China, there are the Daoism chapters in The Souls of China by the journalist Ian Johnson.

Finally, if you are interested in something a little more dry and historical, take a look at Early Daoist Scriptures, which goes into many ideas that internet Daoists won't discuss. Things like spirit bureaucracy and mediation between realms.

Don't let yourself fall into the trap that many others do when approaching it, which is to arrogantly assume you know everything after reading a single book and are now in tune with the universe. Daoist ideas are just as rich as the Buddhist canon and the Western world desperately needs a more nuanced understanding of it.

Oh god, forget it!

Not only are the vast majority not translated, even if they were, most of them are only legible by people with specific training.

One book you can read which is fairly accurate is early daoist scriptures
https://www.amazon.ca/Early-Daoist-Scriptures-Stephen-Bokenkamp/dp/0520219317

Which has much of the important early material from zhengtong daozang and is very accurate.

For quanzhen material you should just read it as it's own thing and not worry about Dao zang until you have the lay if the land.

Thanks again for putting that together. Forgive me if I've said this before, but it might be worthwhile to add the works of Prof. Stephen Bokenkamp, such as

• "Early Daoist Scriptures" (1997) which includes an original translation of the Xiang'er
  
  
• "Ancestors and Anxiety: Daoism and the Birth of Rebirth in China" (2009) great stuff in the intertwining with Buddhism
  
  
• "Book Review: A Brush with the Spur: Robert Joe Cutter on the Chinese Cockfight"
  Review by: Stephen R. Bokenkamp
  Journal of the American Oriental Society
  Vol. 113, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1993), pp. 444-449