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10 Books That I Wish EVERY Non-Reader Would Try at Least Once
Matt Karamazov
October 06, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 39 minutes
I literally (and I mean literally) couldn’t imagine what my life would look like if I hadn’t discovered reading…
If I hadn’t inhaled more than 1,400+ books.
If I hadn’t consulted regularly with some of the most brilliant minds, living or dead, who have ever walked this gorgeous green earth.
Not only can I not imagine it, I don’t even want to imagine it. There’s no question that my life would have turned out profoundly worse if I hadn’t become a Reader, and I hate to see other people miss out either.
Now, since you’re reading this newsletter, I’m going to go out on a massive limb here and guess that you’re a reader too. So you know exactly what I’m talking about! I mean, aren’t non-readers just…missing out?!
You’ve likely read at least one book from this list (maybe even all of them), but if one of these books reminds you of someone you know who’d probably love it, send them my book notes!
Or shake them by the shoulders or something.
Whatever you have to do to get a damn book in that person’s hands!
If you haven’t read all of them, you’re likely to find some great new books here too. All of them are easy reads, and all of them are just…spectacular.
Also, if you want to remember more of what you read, check out BookGenius - it’s a very cool new iPad/iPhone app featuring book quizzes, podcasts, book clubs (I’m starting one on the app), and more.
I’m an advisor to the company, and I can get you 56% OFF your annual subscription.
Before we get into tonight’s books, I also want to quickly mention that Morgan Housel’s follow-up book to The Psychology of Money (and Same as Ever), The Art of Spending Money, comes out tomorrow!
There’s also another book coming out tomorrow that I can’t wait to read (both books are on their way to me now, actually) called The Upside of Down, by John Ulsh.
I received an advance copy, and it’s an amazing story of resilience and overcoming. I’ll be sharing my thoughts on Instagram when it gets here.
Now, before our coffees get cold, let’s hit the books!
Tonight, Inside The Reading Life, We’ve Got:
“Within these pages, the meanings of ‘good reader’ have little to do with how well anyone decodes words; they have everything to do with being faithful to what Proust once described as the heart of the reading act, going beyond the wisdom of the author to discover one’s own.”
“If you’ve ever worked in sales, you’ll know that for every 100 leads, usually less than 30 will answer a cold call or respond to an email.
For the 30 who do answer or respond, less than 10 will want to book in a full sales call thereafter. Of the few who do book in, it would not be uncommon for just one or two people to buy via the sales call itself. 100 leads, 30 answers, 8 sales calls, and 2 sales at $5,000 each. That is very typical.”
Inside my private business mastermind, Creator Launch Academy, we’re tackling one nonfiction book per month and implementing its lessons inside our businesses.
This month’s book is How To: $10M, by William Brown, a great business book that contains everything you need to know about scaling a coaching and/or e-learning business to more than $10,000,000 in revenue. Click here to claim your free trial, and join our business book club for educational content creators!
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 1,420 books, including 66 books so far this year, and if you’re interested, here’s my full Reading List.
“Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. The same way that money multiplies through compound interest, the effects of your habits multiply as you repeat them.
They seem to make little difference on any given day, and yet the impact they deliver over the months and years can be enormous.
It is only when looking back two, five, or perhaps ten years later that the value of good habits and the cost of bad ones becomes strikingly apparent.”
I would unequivocally state that Atomic Habits is the definitive book on habits. It’s a 20-million-copy bestseller(!) that has lived up to all the hype, and I ended up with about eight pages of notes - I mean, this thing is packed with everything you need to know in order to set yourself up for every kind of success in the future.
One of the most powerful ideas for me was the idea that we should be far more concerned about our current trajectory than with our current results. The fact is that it takes time to get where we want to be in life, and the only thing we have absolute control over is the direction in which we’re heading.
Many years ago, Socrates would be asked many times, “How does one get to Mount Olympus?” Olympus, if you recall, is where all the gods hung out. So really, the questioner was asking how do we get to the top, to paradise, to our goals?
In response to this question, Socrates would always say, “Make sure that every step you take is in that direction.” Good habits are steps, and when you have all your habits aligned with your destination, you almost can’t help but arrive there eventually.
Everyone who has ever succeeded at anything, ever, has started out extremely far away from where they wanted to end up. Over time, their good habits pulled them closer and closer to their own version of Mount Olympus.
So the trajectory idea is big. One of the other big ideas was that every single action you take is like a vote for the person you want to become.
If you want to get fit, then every time you go to the gym or eat a healthy meal is a vote for who you will be in the future. Every time you pick up a book, you’re voting to become a reader, etc. Take those two ideas alone and you can change your life. But there’s so much more to this book, too.
According to him, the central question that James Clear is trying to answer through his work is, “How can we live better?” He’s spent years and years focusing on this question; reading, listening, learning, observing, speaking with people who are killing it in life, and he’s taken every single thing he’s learned and jammed it into this book.
As Clear says, we don’t rise to the level of our goals, or what we say we’re going to do; we fall to the level of our habits.
‘Atomic’ habits are the smallest-sized things that you can do immediately - today, now - that will let you steamroll past everything that’s been holding you back until now.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Why Non-Readers Might Like It: People who don’t read usually say that some book or other isn’t “practical.” Well, you’re not going to get much more practical than Atomic Habits. It’s packed with ideas that you can use now, today, to improve your future exponentially.
“The problem in our country isn't with books being banned, but with people no longer reading. You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
At the time of writing, I’ve read well over a thousand books, and even after reading thousands more, I can’t imagine Fahrenheit 451 ever being pushed out of my top ten. Never, ever, ever. I’m made of this book.
Just like with other formative books that I’ve read, I remember exactly where I was when I first read this one, and it’s been top of mind for me ever since whenever people ask for a fiction book recommendation, or something that could “get them into reading.”
The basic storyline is that, in the future, all books are banned, and instead of fighting fires, firemen burn books. The main character, Guy Montag, is one such fireman, who unconsciously enjoys his work (“It was a pleasure to burn”) until one day, he starts reading one of the banned books, and finds that he develops a taste for it.
Since it’s illegal even to possess a book, much less read the damn things, Montag has to keep this double life a secret, developing in feeling, consciousness, and intellect while pretending to be illiterate and hiding his newfound inner life from the fire chief, Captain Beatty, who seems suspiciously well-read for someone so devoted to burning and destroying the collective wisdom of humanity.
One woman in the novel is even burned alive with her books when she refuses to give them up, prompting Montag to ask himself what it is in books that could make someone do that. Why would she stay? What am I missing?
I, for one, know exactly how that woman felt, and Ray Bradbury says so many things about reading in Fahrenheit 451 that I wanted to say about reading but didn’t know how. He gave me the words for what reading, books, and literature have added to my life - have done for me - and I wouldn’t give up my books without a fucking fight either.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Why Non-Readers Might Like It: Plenty of people try to beg, plead, and motivate on behalf of books, telling people that books will “improve” them, that they’re essential to becoming a critical thinker, or really, that they’re just plain fun. Books are and can do all of those things, but Bradbury doesn’t beg. He makes you feel it.
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
Every now and then, a capital-B Book comes along. You probably know exactly what I mean. For me (and literally millions of other readers over the intervening decades since it was published), this was one of those Books.
Viktor Frankl was a World War II Holocaust survivor who spent years imprisoned in four separate Nazi death camps, losing his entire family before he was set free by the invading Russians and spent the rest of his life helping people find the real meaning of their lives.
This Book is already massively popular, and yet still not as popular as it deserves to be. Something like 16 million copies have been sold, but even attaching any number to it at all almost cheapens the infinite value of this incredible, inimitable, life-transforming Book.
Frankl’s fundamental message is that we always possess the freedom to respond to our circumstances, not to be crushed by them. Our lives are up to us, and as long as we have something – or someone – to live for, no fate or tragedy is insurmountable.
Difficulty Rating: Moderate
Why Non-Readers Might Like It: I suspect that most people who “don’t read books” just haven’t come across anything so powerful and transformative as Man’s Search for Meaning. I don’t want to meet the person who’s unchanged by this book.
“Life is long if you know how to use it.”
As far as moral essays go, this one from the ancient Roman statesman Seneca is one of my favorites. Written in 49CE, it’s addressed to his father-in-law Paulinus, whom he advises about how to expand time, prevent it from being squandered on nonsense, and use it in the best way we can.
I read this book in 2015, and since then, I’ve probably taken about 5 full years of my life back due to taking Seneca’s advice and rejecting everything that diminishes the value of my time, and placing my focus squarely on where I’m able to experience true fulfillment and purpose.
Spoiler Alert: It’s NOT where modern society keeps dragging your focus back to.
Nothing against society - I love society! - but it’s not set up to help you be happy or fulfilled in any way. Pretty much the opposite, in fact.
You’re born and bred to keep the system going: pay attention, get good grades, get into a good school, pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans, hundreds of thousands more to experience “the dream of home ownership,” etc.
Again, nothing against education or owning your own house. It’s just that these things are expensive; in money, yes, but also in time. And society’s answer doesn’t have to be your own.
What Thoreau said is true: the price of anything is the amount of life you’re required to exchange for it, and so you can think of On the Shortness of Life as a collection of Seneca’s best arguments against trading your life away for trivialities.
It’ll teach you the true value of time, how little we actually need to acquire and possess in order to experience peace of mind, and how you can defend yourself against the priorities of those who would steal your most important possession and give you back something infinitely less valuable in return.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Why Non-Readers Might Like It: Another reason why lots of people “don’t read” is that they see books as disconnected from the realities and concerns of their daily lives. But what could be more relevant to a life well-lived than transforming your relationship with time itself!?
“Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time? That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere, and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past nor the shadow of the future.”
After you’ve read The Alchemist (coming up later on this list), the natural next step is to slip into Siddhartha, which is exactly what I did back in 2015. It’s quite a bit deeper and more subtly complex than Coelho’s book, but that’s not to take anything away from The Alchemist! Both books shaped the course of my life, and still do.
Again, the story here is simple. A wealthy Indian Brahmin ditches his life of wealth and ease and goes off in search of spiritual fulfillment and identity. Nothing about this search turns out to be easy or straightforward, and Siddhartha makes many mistakes.
It’s astonishingly difficult to become who you are, as it turns out, and he makes something of a mess of it occasionally - you may be able to relate!
But he eventually finds that the perfection he was seeking already exists - has always existed, and will always exist forever and ever. All he has to do - though, paradoxically, it’s the most difficult thing of all to do - is to become completely and totally and fully himself.
He has to walk his own path and allow others to walk theirs. He has to learn and experience and become transformed by a deep appreciation and reverence for life. And he has to travel the entire path to find that he’s arrived at the very beginning.
Now, his life can begin again. And, after reading Siddhartha for the first time, mine did too.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Why Non-Readers Might Like It: Not to sound elitist, but the number of independent thoughts you can have are directly proportional to the number of great books you’ve read. This book will open your mind in ways that likely don’t even seem possible to non-readers.
“When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”
Like many people, I remember exactly where I was when I read The Alchemist for the first time. I was working as a bouncer in Halifax, Canada, on a Sunday night when there was hardly anyone at the bar.
Reading The Alchemist on my phone, I barely looked up the whole night (I was great at my job), and nearly finished it before last call. As it happened, I ended up finishing it in my car, in my driveway at home the same night I started it.
The book is a future classic about a shepherd boy, Santiago, who leaves behind his home and everything he knows in order to go live his “personal legend,” and search for a treasure that he believes is buried far away.
On his way from Andalusia to Egypt, he meets a king, an alchemist, all manner of people – good, bad, indifferent – who draw him closer to or further away from his treasure and make him question how badly he wants to realize his personal legend at all.
As Paulo Coelho says, the moment you really, really want something, the whole universe conspires in helping you achieve it. But it’s not going to be just handed to you. You’ll be made to suffer for your personal legend, to prove how badly you want to realize it, and to question the deepest beliefs you’ve ever held.
Everyone who’s ever suffered and sacrificed for a big goal will see themselves in Santiago. In my own life, help has come to me from so many unexpected sources, but, like Santiago, it wasn’t until I mapped out unexplored territories within myself that the universe started to rearrange itself and to reveal to me the outlines of my very own personal legend.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Why Non-Readers Might Like It: Math may not be my strong suit, but on average, everyone loves The Alchemist. It’s just one of those books, man. It’s perfectly okay not to like it, of course (and I never judge people for their reading choices), but many a reading journey has been catalyzed by this book.
"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 Non-Readers Might Like 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.
“Don’t turn reading into the intellectual equivalent of organic greens, or some fearfully disciplined appointment with some elliptical trainer of the mind.”
I can give you the names of a multitude of books about reading; books about books, books about libraries, etc., but this is one of the absolute best I’ve ever come across.
Jacobs basically uses this book to say everything about reading that I’ve always wanted to say about reading, and I think it might feel like as much of a relief to you as it was to me when I first read it.
First off: not everybody reads books...and that’s totally cool. I mean, books completely and totally changed my life for the better, but I don’t think any less of anyone who doesn’t read as many books as I do, or hasn’t read some particular book that snobs think everyone “should” read.
There’s always going to be someone smarter than you, or someone who’s “better-read” than you, but people read for different reasons, they’re further ahead or behind in their own personal reading journeys or what-have-you, and that’s why it was so refreshing to hear Alan Jacobs say that it’s perfectly alright to quit books that you’re not enjoying, and that reading should never feel like an obligation!
The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction takes a lot of the pressure off of people to tackle these ridiculous “100 Books You MUST Read Before You Die If You Want People to Think You’re Smart and Come to Your Funeral” lists or whatever. It’s all nonsense, and Jacobs exposes it for the nonsense that it is.
As he says, the world doesn’t need fewer readers, so if books have ever even once ignited your curiosity or your passion, then you have to do whatever it takes in order to keep that fire alive. That’s what’s most important, not which books you’ve ticked off of some list.
The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction covers a lot of other ground too. For instance, Jacobs refutes the idea that “nobody reads anymore.” His book is part confidence-builder, and part tour of the reading life as populated by millions of eager readers, hundreds of massive bookstores and thousands of smaller, independent bookstores, numerous book clubs, etc.
He also discusses the rise of reading on electronic devices, the rise of silent reading (I just assumed that people had always read silently, but apparently not, for reasons that are obvious now that I’ve read his book), the benefits of re-reading books you’ve already read, etc. There’s a lot here.
Overall, the tone of Jacobs’ book is warm, supportive, and encouraging, and as I said, I think it’s one of the best books of its kind out there, one that can bring together readers of all genres and ability levels. Jacobs would also agree with Mortimer J. Adler (author of the admittedly somewhat stuffy tome, How to Read a Book), that the point of reading isn’t how many books you can get through, but how many of them can get through to you.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Why Non-Readers Might Like It: This book is a fantastic “argument” in favor of reading, but it doesn’t hit you over the head with it. Jacobs gently encourages people to discover (or rediscover) the magic and power of reading, and after finishing it, I suspect many non-readers would suddenly find themselves wondering what exactly they were missing out on.
“The hardest financial skill is getting the goalpost to stop moving.”
Out of nowhere, here comes this finance book from an obscure author that completely changed how I think about money and solidified some core concepts with which I was already familiar. This book blew up when it first came out, and it’s no surprise why.
As you can guess from the title, it deals with the personal, emotional side of money and the role it plays in our individual lives.
Money is completely neutral; it will change aspect and feel depending on whoever it is that’s thinking about it, worrying about it, or pursuing it. Money doesn’t care about anything we’re feeling, it just responds to how we feel about it.
That sounds more woo-woo than I meant it to sound, but there’s none of that stuff in here. It’s actually similar in some ways to Tim Ferriss’s instant classic, The Four-Hour Workweek, especially the discussion of how critical it is to spend money to buy time, and how everyone’s financial strategy makes sense to them, regardless of how crazy it may look on the outside.
No one is crazy, we just bring our whole psychology to the topic of money, and the result is a real circus! Housel also has a follow-up book coming out tomorrow called The Art of Spending Money that I just ordered myself. Can’t wait!
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Why Non-Readers Might Like It: I think one of the reasons why this book was so massively popular is that it met a lot of people where they were. Money is a mirror, and we see ourselves in it, which is also reflected in this book. Even non-readers stumbling on this for the first time would have felt “seen” by this book and liked it.
“So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things.
The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.”
I first read Tuesdays with Morrie in 2015, the year after I started keeping track of every book I read. I already knew that I loved books - that there was something special about reading that I wanted always to remain in my life, but reading this book completely sealed it.
Tuesdays with Morrie brought home - though not for the first time - just how much power and force, how much knowledge and wisdom could be contained between the covers of a single book, and I never looked back! It’s the true story of the reunion between an old professor, Morrie Schwartz, and his long-ago student, Mitch Albom, just before a debilitating disease would take the professor’s life.
What happened to Mitch is what happens to many of us: we get caught up in the business of living, and we lose track of people. We become involved in the pursuit of status, success, and external rewards, and we just kind of…forget that there’s more to life than weighing ourselves down with things.
In the last months before Morrie died, Mitch would visit him every Tuesday (just like he used to during college), and they’d talk about life. All of life - the most important parts, the only parts that anyone would even remember once they got as close to death as Morrie was.
Over the course of those final months, Mitch would get one “final lesson” from the professor, and he’d find clarity on what was truly important in life and how to live it.
It’s actually kind of hard to imagine that Morrie isn’t still alive somewhere! Without writing something schmaltzy about him being “still alive in these pages” or anything like that, reading Tuesdays with Morrie really does transport you right back to 1997 when these final visits took place.
It’s also a very small book, in many ways. It’s an intimate, vitally important, very human conversation between two close friends, and my guess is that you, as a reader, will come away glad that you were able to witness it - in whatever year you find yourself reading it.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Why Non-Readers Might Like It: You have a heart of stone if this book didn’t inspire you, and change you on a deep level. Any non-reader who picks this up and doesn’t like it probably doesn’t even enjoy being alive either…and I’m only half-kidding.
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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 160,000+ followers across social media, became a full-time creator, and how I’m rapidly growing my audience and scaling my profits in 2025, join us inside Creator Launch Academy 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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