I am an avid, passionate reader of psychology books, since studying it in the past and one of the most recent I read ( and would recommend) is Incognito: The secret Lives of the brain by David Eagleman which is about the subconscious.
In it he states a simple lesson: most of what we do and think and feel is not under our conscious control. He explains that our consciousness is like a tiny stowaway on a transatlantic steamship taking credit for the journey without acknowledging the massive engineering underfoot.
What he is saying in the book is that we tend to think that most decisions we make are at a conscious level when it fact the reality is the opposite. The conscious part of the brain exists simply to program the subconscious, which governs the large part of our daily lives. Think for a moment when you drive a car. Are you driving on a conscious level or subconscious? Subconscious. This may surprise some as they believe it would be on a conscious level. The conscious part was needed to primarily create the automated program in our brain to allow our decision making to be quicker i.e. drive without thinking of how much pressure to apply to the pedals, how to steer etc. All done at subconscious levels. Its a bit like a Captain steering a ship ( conscious level) when it reality the real work is been done by the actual mechanical workings of the ship ( subconscious level)
Worth reading for anyone interested in how we make decisions and the conscious/ subconscious levels.