Reddit reviews Tao Te Ching: The Classic Book of Integrity and the Way
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Welcome to the club! People come to the occult, to mysticism, because "regular" life is insufficient. It doesn't explain what we are. It doesn't include a "why". My recommendation for your first book to read is the Tao Te Ching. I recommend this translation, by Victor Mair:
https://www.amazon.com/Tao-Te-Ching-Classic-Integrity/dp/055334935X
Here's how his translation begins:
>The person of superior integrity
>>does not insist upon his integrity;
>For this reason, he has integrity.
>The person of inferior integrity
>>never loses sight of his integrity;
>For this reason, he lacks integrity.
    
>The person of superior integrity takes no action,
>>nor has he a purpose for acting.
>The person of superior humaneness takes action,
>>but has no purpose for acting.
>The person of superior righteousness takes action,
>>and has a purpose for acting.
>The person of superior etiquette takes action,
>>but others do not respond to him;
>Whereupon he rolls up his sleeves and coerces them.
I would recommend this one by Victor Mair, a respected Sinologist. His commentary is illuminating, and you will see how some of these apparent paradoxes are resolved.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/055334935X/centertaoorg-20
"In 1990, the noted sinologist Victor H. Mair translated the Ma-wang-tui version as he considered this earliest known version (by 500 years) to be far more authentic than the most commonly translated texts."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mawangdui_Silk_Texts