Books I have read about human nature:
What You Can Change...and What You Can't by Martin Seligman
Authentic Happiness by Martin Seligman
Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert
The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt
Flourishing: Positive Psychology and the Life Well Lived by Haidt, et. al.
Influence by Robert Cialdo
The Moral Animal by Robert Wright
The Mind Mapping Book by Tony Buzan
Mind Wide Open by Stephen Johnson
Blink by Malcolm Gladwell (also The Tipping Point, but who hasn't?)
Against Depression, Listening to Prozac, and Should You Leave? by Peter Kramer
The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz
Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
How To Want What You Have by Timothy Miller
Psyching for Sport by Terry Orlick
I have recently obtained, but have not yet read:
Everything Bad is Good For You by Steven Johnson
Brain Rules by John Medina
The Resilience Factor by Karen Reivitch
Of course, I also have my share of traditional self-help books on the shelf, e.g. The Now Habit, Getting Things Done, The Portable Coach, Organizing From The Inside Out, The Artist's Way, The Inner Game of Tennis, etc.
I've been pursuing the topic of how we become who we are, and what characteristics about ourselves we can change through effort and attention, and which areas of self-improvement yield the most fruitful rewards in terms of contentment, for more than 10 years. I have formed some opinions on the matter -- some pretty directly sprung from various books and psychological studies, as I understand them, and some in contravention of what the experts say, springing from my own experience and observation of people.
I've mostly avoided academic tomes. These books are popularizations of scientific studies, full of the flaws that kind of writing has. I read them for gist, and rarely take notes. There's plenty that I don't understand, either because I don't read closely or the information is incomplete, or because there's a contradiction in the studies that isn't addressed. Today I advised a student who is applying for graduate programs in social psychology, and I felt a small pang of envy. But generally, I'm pretty satisfied with the superficial level of these books -- summaries instead of in-depth reporting of experiment design, etc.
I've been thinking lately about the ways in which I distrust academia, and the alternative paths I've chosen for myself to learn things. More later.