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📚 Welcome back to The Reading Life!
It was a lot harder to make a list of “10 Books Everyone Should Read” than I thought it would be, but I’m pleased with my book selections, and I think you will be too.
They’re mostly nonfiction recommendations, but I did add one of my favorite novels at the end. Maybe I’m wrong about this, but I think it’s a lot harder to make a fiction list.
People’s literary tastes are just all over the place (in a good way), and the favorite book of one person is the most hated book of someone else!
For example, I loved The Alchemist, but some people say that it’s overly simplistic and formulaic. I also loved Infinite Jest, but some people say it’s too complicated and pretentious! You can’t win.
Anyway, I stand by all ten of these books, and they cover a wide range of themes - everything from preventing the horrible sting of regret, finding your “Definite Chief Aim” in life, getting rich (in many different senses of that term), cultivating your innate creativity, making the most of your life before it’s too late, and more.
All ten of them changed my life profoundly, gave me hours and hours (days!) of intellectual stimulation, and made my life so much richer and more beautiful.
And now, before our coffees get cold, let’s hit the books!
Tonight, Inside The Reading Life, We’ve Got:
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“Just because you have enough money doesn’t mean you can afford it.”
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After achieving my (somewhat meaningless) goal of reading 1,000 books before I turned 30, I set a new (also meaningless but cool) goal of reading 10,000 books. As of today, I’ve read exactly 1,489 books, including 35 books so far this year, and if you’re interested, here’s my full Reading List.
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“It's not the big things that add up in the end; it's the hundreds, thousands, or millions of little things that separate the ordinary from the extraordinary.”
Once you understand how the Compound Effect works, your life will never be the same.
But you have to do more than just understand it. You also have to let it work long enough for it to actually work its magic. And yes, it really is one of the closest things to magic that exists in this world.
The basic premise of the book is that small, seemingly insignificant actions, taken consistently over time, lead to stunningly massive results.
One of the most powerful illustrations of the Compound Effect in action would be Warren Buffett’s wealth. Yes, he’s been a millionaire since he was in his thirties, but 99% of his wealth came after his 65th birthday. And he’s been investing since he was a child!
Even things like reading 10 pages a day from a nonfiction book, hitting the gym three times a week, or making a habit of tackling difficult conversations head-on; they don’t seem all-important in the moment.
But stack them together, over a long-enough time horizon, and you’re more knowledgeable than 99% of people in your field, healthier and fitter than 99% of the people your age, and with the emotional intelligence of the 1%.
That’s the power of the Compound Effect. Hardy’s book will illustrate in persuasive, visual terms what it looks like in the real world, how to build and maintain momentum, and how to harness the same force that Warren Buffett himself called “the 8th wonder of the world” to help you make exponential progress in the areas of life you care about most.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Why Everyone Should Read It: If you start using it, the Compound Effect will make unimaginably large goals seem possible for you. Inevitable, even. It’s going to work either for you or against you no matter what. Honestly, the younger you are when you learn how it works and really appreciate its power, better off you’ll be.
“Having a definite chief aim will serve you whether you want to make money, express yourself in the arts, become a leader in your field, or defeat injustice and evil. Some of us want all these things. But the door of greatness cracks open only to those who approach their dreams with one special, overarching focus - a Definite Chief Aim.”
I first discovered Mitch’s work through this book, and immediately upon finishing it I went on to read three or four more of his books in rapid succession - to me, it felt exactly like discovering the philosopher Colin Wilson’s work for the first time. That is to say it just made a massive, positive impression on me from the very beginning.
This particular book is a recapitulation of Napoleon Hill’s ideas from Think and Grow Rich, specifically the idea of a Definite Chief Aim - a Massively Transformative Purpose, as some have called it - or the major purpose of one’s entire finite existence.
If that sounds a little grandiose, the book itself is actually wonderfully easy to read and it’s perfect both for people who have never read Napoleon Hill and for people who’ve loved the original.
My own Definite Chief Aim, for example, is to read 10,000 books. There’s no “timeline” for this - it’s just a goal I want to reach eventually - and I’ve engineered almost literally my entire life in pursuit of it. That’s how you know it’s a DCA.
It’s almost completely consumed my waking existence, and the filter for whether or not I’m going to say “yes” to something, or go somewhere, or do something is whether or not it’s taking me closer to or further away from this main goal.
Reading is what I’ve devoted my life to, because I love it that much.
The Miracle of a Definite Chief Aim will help you discover a DCA if you don’t have one already, but it’ll also help you deepen your commitment to it once you’ve found it, and more. I’m so glad I discovered it when I did, and this book helped clarify my ambitions tremendously!
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Why Everyone Should Read It: You shouldn’t stress yourself out trying to decide on your “Purpose,” but I can tell you that having a Definite Chief Aim myself has given me incredible focus and clarity as time goes on. It helps me orient my life, organize my days around what’s most important to me, and it’s also made me a lot happier!
“Never let the quest for more distract you from the beauty of enough.”
You can have virtually anything you want in this life, but you can’t have everything, and certainly not all at once.
In my experience, and as a result of reading this book, I believe that life is best lived in seasons, and that the best decisions are made while keeping the entire scope of your life in mind at all times.
The 5 Types of Wealth (one of the absolute best books I read in 2025, and by a wide margin) will help you optimize, if not maximize, your Time Wealth, Social Wealth, Mental Wealth, Physical Wealth, and Financial Wealth across your lifespan.
The thing is that maxing out any single one of these stats is inevitably going to mean lagging behind in some other area. You can dedicate your entire life to the accumulation of wealth (and many people do), but in that scenario you can just as easily come to the end of your life realizing that you unthinkingly sacrificed the best years of your life to do it.
You can find yourself alone at the mountaintop, the mental stress of having “made it” causing you to spend all your money buying back your health, the clock of your life winding down to zero, leaving you with no time left to turn it all around.
Similarly, Tony Robbins refers to the “Four Burners,” and that’s a great way of thinking about your priorities as well. Let’s say Five Burners, since we’re talking about The 5 Types of Wealth. But when you’re trying to “heat up” one specific area of your life, you start cranking up that specific burner.
For example, if you want to prioritize your physical health and mental peace, that’s fine, but you should realize that this means you won’t have as much time available to go out with your friends every weekend or advance your career as fast as you might be able to otherwise. You can have anything, but not everything.
One of the many things I like about The 5 Types of Wealth though is that Sahil Bloom is not “anti” ambition - far from it.
In this book, he’s just showing you that our societal scoreboard is broken, and that you can in fact reject the default path, thereby setting out on your own, toward a life that’s strategically designed to fit your priorities.
Again, you can have virtually anything you want in this life, but you have to be willing to pay the price.
And what you’ll also find is that the compound effect of these individual, smart, conscious choices multiplies your efforts across your lifespan, leading inexorably to a life that’s simpler, freer, happier, and wealthier than you ever could have imagined.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Why Everyone Should Read It: This book helps you get the “big rocks” right, the most important things that together make up an excellent life, and shows you how to get them in the most efficient way possible. It’ll help you set up your own scoreboard, draw up your own rules, and live your own life.
“You have only this life to live. Your happiness, healthiness, greatness, and wealthiness depend on using your days well.
So shift from focusing mostly on the things you need to do into a clearer and more concentrated sense of what you need to strip out of your hours.
Mastery is far more about the pursuit of simplicity than the seduction of complexity. And a meaningful and satisfying life is sometimes more about what you take out of it than what you put into it.”
I still remember being introduced to Robin Sharma’s books while working my old minimum-wage security job, sitting in my car, “guarding” some event-ground or whatever overnight (but let’s be honest, I was reading, and it could have burned down for all I’d have noticed), having my eyes blown open to my own possibilities by books like The Greatness Guide, among others.
He’s definitely a part of the reason why my reading habit remains so strong to this day, and I’ve never, ever been disappointed by one of his books.
This book is no exception, though it is, of course, exceptional! Not all of the sentences land perfectly (some of the corniness certainly brushes my ear the wrong way), but if you ever have a 12-hour shift that you have to get through somehow, then definitely pick up The Wealth Money Can’t Buy. You won’t be working for minimum wage for long.
The book is about expanding your definition of wealth to include 8 different forms of wealth: wellness, family, craft, money, community, adventure, service, and growth.
In exactly the same way that Bob Marley said some people are so poor that all they have is money, Robin Sharma says that even the most financially prosperous people are surprisingly poor when it comes to the things that truly matter for a life of happiness, vitality, and serenity.
It seems that society conveniently forgot to tell us that all these additional forms of wealth even existed, before they shuttled us off, crammed together or alone in little tiny boxes, headed to make some other person extraordinarily financially wealthy, while neglecting to grow our own various forms of wealth.
Robin Sharma will help you correct the balance, and you can tell that’s true because financially, he doesn’t need to write books. Naval Ravikant once said that if they wrote a book to make money, don’t read it, and it’s highly unlikely that Sharma actually needs it. He has to write - he has to be of service - and that’s the only reason why this book exists.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Why Everyone Should Read It: The world is a noisy place, and as all these other people try to force their priorities on you, it’s so easy to miss what’s truly important. This book, however, reads like a series of notes from a trusted friend who wants to see you happy, successful, and at peace.
“Through you, the universe that surrounds us all comes into focus.”
Legendary music producer Rick Rubin has probably guided more of your favorite songs into existence than you realize, no matter whether you listen to country, rock, rap, metal, or anything in between.
Ever since co-founding Def Jam Recordings from his college dormitory in the 1980s, he's produced albums for Slayer, Adele, Jay-Z, Neil Young, Johnnie Cash, and a huge number of other artists that have very little in common other than the fact that they all record songs.
But being an artist isn't so much about what kind of art you make, or some particular volume of output, but rather it's about your relationship to the world and how much of it you can pick up through your senses. And how much of what you see you're able to pass on to your audience to help us see it too.
How much of an artist you are is directly dependent on how much awareness you can bring to your direct experience of life. The more aware you are, the more of an artist you are, and everyone can learn how to deepen their perception of their internal and external worlds. We can all be artists.
The Creative Act contains 78 philosophical "musings" on the nature of art and the laws of creativity, although most of those "laws" are more or less made to be broken. Really, the only law that Rubin says is "less breakable" than the others is the need for patience.
The fundamental idea behind much of his advice is that we are all artists, and each of us has something meaningful to contribute to the world, whether we're actively working to make it real or not. That's part of the magic that he often brought to the studio, and that's part of the magic he put into this book.
Difficulty Rating: Easy/Intermediate
Why Everyone Should Read It: We’re all born artists, but over time, the great big World just takes it out of us. This book helps you rediscover that natural, endlessly exciting way of perceiving external reality you had when you were younger, and it’ll make your life deeper and richer in all kinds of unexpected ways.
“When you give away 10% of your income, you lose 10% of your purchasing power, which is minor compared to the 110% increase in happiness you will gain."
Just because you're old doesn't mean that you automatically have much valuable wisdom to share. Some people haven't really lived 10,000 days, they've just lived the same day 10,000 times. Kevin Kelly, however, is an exception, and it turns out that the brilliant and insightful tech innovator gives excellent life advice.
For anyone hearing about Kelly for the first time, he is the co-founder of Wired magazine and a highly-praised futurist and author whose optimistic outlook on the next chapter of human history has inspired a generation to think bigger and to advance confidently into the next stage of human evolution.
As Kelly says in the quote that began this summary, the life advice presented in this book was originally intended for his young adult children to help them navigate the hazardous future we all find ourselves hurtling towards.
But the very act of writing them down caused him to realize that he had much more to offer than he thought he did when he began, which resulted in him eventually compiling this wonderful collection of 450 wise, practical, and incredibly valuable aphorisms.
The range of subjects they cover is as wide and deep as life itself, and so you'll find here advice about setting ambitious goals, cultivating peace of mind and equanimity, dealing with loss, organizing your life around adventure and spontaneity, dispelling anger and sadness, minimizing regret, and so much more.
Now, in a book with hundreds and hundreds of wise, practical aphorisms, my choices about which ones to expand on and which ones to ignore likely say more about me than they do about whether they're the "best" aphorisms or the "most useful" ones.
As you read the book and filter this life advice through your particular worldview, situation, and understanding, you're probably going to disagree with at least a few of them, or find them irrelevant or silly, etc. But which ones those are will change depending on who you are. That's part of what makes books so magical!
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Why Everyone Should Read It: If it's true that your quality of life is roughly equal to the quality of the 20-30 people who give you the best advice, then you'd be wise to include Kevin Kelly in that group!
“Regret is not dangerous or abnormal, a deviation from the steady path to happiness. It is healthy and universal, an integral part of being human. Regret is also valuable. It clarifies. It instructs. Done right, it needn't drag us down; it can lift us up.”
It's more or less a universal human experience to look back on the path we never followed and feel a nagging, painful, sometimes sinking, sickening feeling that we've somehow missed our chance, that we've traded our many unlived lives for this one, real life, and that it could have been so much better had we simply acted differently.
Virtually everyone has experienced something to the same effect, ranging from "That might have been nice," to "Damn, I really should have done that," all the way to "I've thrown it all away and I'll never, ever recover from this."
In this book, The Power of Regret, Daniel Pink refers to regret as our most misunderstood emotion and shows how it can potentially be transformed - transmuted into something extraordinarily valuable. We can reflect on our regret, reorganize it in our minds, reconceptualize it, and then use it to live better with all the time we have left.
What's more, navigating regret (and life) is always an ongoing process of closing certain opportunities while at the same time opening new ones. Every action we take determines the possibilities that are available to us in the next moment, and we are always choosing, even when we do nothing.
But we are not helpless against regret, as Daniel Pink argues in this book. We can enlist this misunderstood, potentially painful emotion in the service of living a larger life, gaining redemption, and reclaiming at least a portion of our remaining, unlived lives.
Difficulty Rating: Easy/Intermediate
Why Everyone Should Read It: Regret might be one of my most hated emotions, and I’ve greatly reduced the amount of times I’ve felt that sickening feeling ever since I read this book. If you hate the feeling of regret as much as I do, then you should get a lot out of this book.
“My account of social welfare, then, requires any governmental use of coercion to satisfy very demanding constraints: it must be compatible with equal dignity and non-humiliation, it must be accompanied by public acknowledgement of the seriousness of wrongdoing, and it must be justified to the person involved as only one part of a much more comprehensive project in which we reasonably aim to promote social welfare.”
Martha Nussbaum is one of the most brilliant thinkers I’ve ever discovered in all my wide reading, and, just as the title would suggest, this book is about something that not only surrounds us, but can also overtake us, causing even the best of us to lose a bunch of IQ points: anger.
I was a nightclub bouncer for over a decade, and so I’ve seen some anger in my day. I’ve felt its corrosive influence in my own life, and I’ve seen its deleterious effects on the wider society. So I’m especially grateful for someone of Nussbaum’s brilliance to come along and show us what we’ve all been missing when we talk about anger - and its equally misunderstood corollary, forgiveness.
Nussbaum claims in her book that people are generally confused about anger: about when they should be angry, if ever, and about the role it plays in both public and private life. Most striking (no pun intended) of all for me was her dissection of the current, retributive criminal justice system.
We seem to have this erroneous belief that if we make someone else suffer for what they’ve done to us, or to our community, this will make the first injury somehow disappear.
But even in the private sphere, we have so many ill-conceived notions about anger, so many half-formed thoughts and vague ideas about what it’s good for and where its limitations lie, which make it so urgently necessary that we clarify our thinking before we let anger spin out of control, and let forgiveness lose its redemptive power.
Where forgiveness is concerned, is it really the best way of transcending anger? Or does it sometimes cheapen itself by disposing us towards projects of humiliation and diminishment of the “other” as a condition of abolishing our anger? Is forgiveness always good everywhere, and anger always bad everywhere? We need a closer look. We need Nussbaum.
She’s clear-thinking and wise and kind and generous, and she’s exactly the kind of guide you should wish for when you’re looking to understand the all too human emotion of anger.
Difficulty Rating: Intermediate
Why Everyone Should Read It: Because it’ll make you a calmer, more empathetic person, of course! That in itself might be sufficient motivation, but it’ll also help you deal more effectively with your own anger, experience more mental peace, and help you move forward to better things.
"Whatever news we get about the scans, I'm not going to die when we hear it. I won't die the next day, or the day after that, or the day after that. So today, right now, well this is a wonderful day."
I’ll warn you straight up that this is one of the saddest books I’ve ever read, but out of all the books I have read, perhaps only a few have made a bigger impact on my life and work. I recommend this book all the time, and you should absolutely watch Randy’s “Last Lecture” on YouTube if you can spare the time. Please, spare the time.
Plenty of professors give talks titled “The Last Lecture,” the idea being that they would reflect on the totality of their lives so far and offer their most life-changing wisdom, the kind of advice that you’d give knowing that this was your very last day on Earth. As it turns out, this was Randy’s last lecture, something he knew going into it.
Randy’s father used to say that whenever there’s an elephant in the room, introduce them, and so he began his original lecture by showing the audience his latest CT scans.
The scans showed an aggressive cancer spreading quickly throughout his body, and he mentioned in the beginning of the lecture that his doctors predicted that he had only a few months to live.
I warned you in the beginning…
The actual lecture you’ll see on YouTube is barely sad at all though! Except for maybe the ending and the beginning. But the book that came out of it is nothing less than heartbreaking. And brilliant. And phenomenal. And everything in between.
Like I said, I recommend it all the time, and it’s rarely - very rarely - that anyone will tell me they weren’t profoundly changed by it. I know I was.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Why Everyone Should Read It: This is another book that just touches on something so essential about being alive on this planet - I can’t imagine that too many people could read it without being fundamentally transformed in some way.
“Strange about learning; the farther I go the more I see that I never knew even existed. A short while ago I foolishly thought I could learn everything – all the knowledge in the world. Now I hope only to be able to know of its existence, and to understand one grain of it. Is there time?”
Remember that episode of The Simpsons where Homer discovers that all these years he’s had a crayon stuck up his nose and that that’s why he’s so dumb? Well, that episode is based on this book, which has also been made into a movie.
It’s also one of my absolute favorite books of all time, and what Daniel Keyes has to say about intelligence and friendship is just so incredibly powerful.
The basic plot is that Charlie Gordon, a bakery assistant with a sub-normal IQ, goes in for an operation that the doctors assure him will increase his intelligence. They’ve already tested it on mice, and one of those mice – Algernon – shows promise as being a medical miracle.
The story’s told in the form of Charlie’s diary entries, and the structure of the novel I found particularly fascinating, if hard to transcribe. At the beginning of the book, before Charlie has the operation (or “operashun,” as he spells it), his diary entries are simple and riddled with mistakes and poor thinking – as one would expect.
But when the operation starts to take effect, the clarity of the diary entries very gradually improves – and then keeps on improving – all the way to the point where Charlie becomes smarter than all the doctors and professors performing and monitoring the operation.
It’s so powerful because you see the evolution, the gradual coming to fuller consciousness, where Charlie realizes that all these years the people he thought were his friends were actually making fun of him, and that some of the professors see him as less than human.
Charlie, however, is insistent, and rightfully so, that he’s a real person now, and that he always was – no matter what his IQ or ability.
But when Algernon shows signs of mental decline and loss of the intelligence granted to him by the doctors, Charlie wonders whether the same thing is going to happen to him. The Third Act of the book is just…amazing. On so many levels: literary, intellectual, emotional, just all the levels.
Difficulty Rating: Intermediate (But Barely)
Why Everyone Should Read It: I really should have put more fiction on this list! I feel like it’s a bit harder to make a list of “Novels Everybody Should Read” than it is for nonfiction, but in this case, Flowers for Algernon is just such a powerful statement about humanity, intelligence, and human dignity, that I really do hope you check it out!
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OK, that’s it for now…
I’ve got plenty more excellent book recommendations coming your way soon though!
There’s also my YouTube channel, where I publish book reviews, reading updates, and more each week.
And if you want to learn how I’ve built an audience of 200,000+ followers across social media, became a full-time creator, and how I’m rapidly growing my audience and scaling my profits in 2026, join us inside Wealth Creators and that’s exactly what I’ll teach you — we’d love to have you in the community!
With that said, I hope you enjoyed this edition of The Reading Life, and enjoy the rest of your day!
Until next time…happy reading!
All the best,
Matt Karamazov
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