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10 Books That Will Make You Appreciate the Gift of Life
Matt Karamazov
March 05, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 32 minutes
I’m wayyy late with tonight’s newsletter, and it’s because I just finished publishing my latest YouTube video - about a book that could easily end up being my favorite book of 2025.
I introduce the book early on in the video so I don’t keep you waiting (my favorite from last year was The Art of Focus, by Dan Koe), then I go into a few of the books I’m reading now, what I’m looking forward to on my TBR, etc.
There’s a pretty cool milestone I’d love to share with you guys too (that I mention in the video), and that’s the fact that we just crossed 5,000 subscribers to The Reading Life!!
Actually, we rocketed past that number, and there are now ~5,400 of you reading this thing! (Thank you!)
Now, before our coffees get cold, let’s get into today’s ten books!
Tonight, Inside The Reading Life, We’ve Got:
We’ve got lots to learn today, so let’s hit the books!
“I’ve learned the hard way that if you don't put the things you want to do into your calendar, they won't happen.
I've often wondered why people are so resistant to making full use of a calendar. I guess people feel a little resistance to the idea of structuring your day to such an extent. Writing 'Go to the gym' or 'Write my novel for an hour' might seem too rigid and too structured for things we don't think of as 'work.'
But the truth is, structure gives you more freedom, not less.
By carving out specific chunks of time for different activities, you're ensuring that you have time for everything that's important to you: work, hobbies, relaxation, relationships.
You're not just reacting to whatever comes up or gets thrown at you during the day. Instead, you're designing your life according to your priorities."
“It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly.
Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.”
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.
“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.
"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.
"The final place that the game leads to is: Where you live consciously in all of it which is in nothing; you are eternal; you have finished perishing; there is no fear of death because there is no death; it's just a transformation, an illusion and yet, seeing all that, you still chop wood and carry water. You still do your thing.
You flow in harmony with the universe. You are beyond morality and yet your actions are totally moral because that's the harmony of the universe.
You see that to do anything with attachment...with desire...with anger...greed...lust...fear...is only creating more karma, which is keeping you in the game...on the wheel of birth and death; once you see that, desires can't help but fall away."
Ram Dass’s real name was…Richard Alpert (I know, close, right?), and the story of his spiritual transformation is definitely one of the wilder ones I’ve read about. Perhaps not as wild as that of his colleague Timothy Leary (let’s not, right now), his colleague at Harvard in the early 1960s.
Perhaps not surprisingly, they were both kicked out of academia for their involvement in various drug studies, including some involving LSD and other substances, but afterwards their lives took almost completely different turns.
Timothy Leary basically cracked, eventually escaped (and was broken out of) two prisons and got involved in a bunch of other shenanigans. Richard Alpert, meanwhile, traveled to India, where he underwent a spiritual awakening of sorts and changed his name to Ram Dass, meaning “Servant of God.”
His book, Be Here Now, was published in 1971 and became one of the foundational books of the “mindfulness revolution,” and led to Ram Dass becoming one of the most influential spiritual seekers of the 20th century.
I absolutely loved this book, and it’s full of short, striking sentences that I keep coming back to again and again, especially when I want to remind myself that there’s nowhere else I have to “get to,” nothing I have to “achieve” or “become,” nothing stopping me from being here now, having fully arrived, ready to live deeply and immediately.
“The earth’s revolving wheel, the world’s four faces that are illumined one after the other by the sun, life’s passing and our passing with it.
The voices of those cranes, echoing once again within me, was the terrible forewarning that this life is unique for each human being, that no other life exists, that we may enjoy it, enjoy it here, that it passes quickly, and that no other opportunity will be given us in the whole of eternity.
Hearing this message that is so merciless yet so filled with mercy, one’s mind vows to conquer its own degradation and weakness, to conquer laziness and great futile hopes in order to catch full hold of every split second that is departing forever.”
Well, great, now I have to read every single other book that Kazantzakis has ever written. Seriously, Zorba the Greek is one of the most powerful, life-affirming books you’re ever likely to come across, and I don’t think that anyone who is somewhat alive and breathing can read this book and sit still.
But yes, I might have to mention that since it was written in 1941 it is certainly the product of a different time and it contains some “unpleasantness” where women are concerned. But I mean, we don’t have to agree with every sentiment or the views and opinions of every character in every situation.
Instead, we can sense the Life-Force leaping off every page, the way that Kazantzakis shakes us each by the shoulders, shouting into our ears, ‘Live! Live now! Breathe deeply! While you still can!’
Wait, what is the book about? Of course. Well, the unnamed narrator of the book goes into business with an older man, Zorba, and they both go on to operate a lignite mine on the island of Crete.
The narrator is based on Kazantzakis and Zorba is a real person whom he met early in the 20th century and who irrevocably changed the direction of Kazantzakis’s one and only life. He also changed mine.
“Both of us feel we’ve lived our lives fully. Of all the ideas I’ve employed to comfort patients dreading death, none has been more powerful than the idea of living a regret-free life.
Marilyn and I both feel regret-free – we’ve lived fully and boldly. We were not to allow opportunities for exploration to pass us by and now have left little remaining unlived life.”
Irvin Yalom is one of the grandfathers of existential psychotherapy, along with Rollo May and others, and he’s spent his entire career counseling others with respect to the fear of death, anxiety, purpose in life, and more – basically everything having to do with being a fully alive human being on this planet. His wife Marilyn is an extremely accomplished author herself, and they wrote this book together as she was dying of cancer.
They take turns, writing chapter for chapter, until Marilyn’s health deteriorates to the point at which she’s unable to write. It’s exactly as sad as it sounds, but this is probably one of the most important books I read in 2021. It’s essential reading because, like Marilyn and Irv, all of our lives will eventually come to an end.
However, I must say that their relationship – all seven decades of it – sounds like one of the most perfect love stories I’ve ever read about. They seem to have drained every last drop out of life in those seventy-plus years.
In fact, that’s one of the things they say has somewhat fortified them against the fear of death: the fact that they’ve lived their lives fully.
This book is absolutely amazing – in case I haven’t made the case for it well enough already – but no matter how old you are, you will find something here that will help you live more intensely, love more deeply, and really make the most out of the life that you’ve been given.
We can’t stave off death forever, but we’re alive now, and now is amazing. We have this one chance to go out and do everything we ever dreamed of, and before the end enjoy this last perfect day of summer.
“Rectify your heart and you will rectify your life.”
James Allen’s prior book, As a Man Thinketh, is one of my favorite books of all time, and The Path to Prosperity is his lesser-known follow-up book - one that I found almost as spectacular as his first.
There was actually a time when I used to re-read As a Man Thinketh every single year (it’s very short - you can read it in just a few hours), and I have a feeling I’ll be coming back to this one again and again as well.
For such a short book (it’s only 71 pages), the sheer density of wisdom and insight is just tremendous. I have what, 7 pages of notes? From a 71-page book! Here I was, just copying out passage after passage, putting the book down again and again to record something awesome on nearly every page.
The basic idea of As a Man Thinketh is that our thoughts are like a garden, and that we can choose what we plant there. Not only can we choose what gets planted there, but what gets planted there will bring forth.
Thoughts of goodness and happiness, love and affection, and wealth and prosperity lead to their equivalent expressions in the external world. Maybe not on a 1:1 basis (this isn’t a book on “manifesting” or “getting rich overnight” or anything like that), but on a long-enough timescale, we become what we think about.
Most importantly, we can choose what we think about, and we should be extraordinarily careful about what gets planted in the garden of our mind.
Again, it’s not so much about thinking thoughts of making a million dollars and then seeing it in your bank account, although both James Allen and I would never discount the value of external riches. We can do a lot of good with our wealth, if we want to.
It’s more about the development of a noble character, through a process of guarding one’s thoughts against evil and pettiness, greed and envy, pessimism and despair - choosing instead an inner world of love, hope, and generosity.
It’s a process that’s almost completely under our control, and our choices of which thoughts to think are among the most important choices we’ll ever make.
“Understanding the world is one of the greatest pleasures available to a human life; and all the greater, it seems, for a human life that places itself within the world, rather than apart from it.”
In The Therapy of Desire, Martha Nussbaum, one of the most brilliant thinkers I’ve ever read, examines the medical model of philosophy, based on the work of famous Epicureans, Skeptics, and Stoics, all of whom prized the kind of philosophy concerned with real beneficial effects out there in the world, the kind which improved the lives of real people in real-time, instead of the more academic philosophy practiced today.
No stuffy, ivory-tower philosophy in this book. It’s about examining what we really want in life, how we can adjust our desires to better fit what we say that we want in life, and about developing the intelligence and insight to make sure we want the right things, in the right amounts, at the right time.
Essentially, the thinkers she discusses believe that any philosophy that doesn’t alleviate human suffering isn’t worthy of the name. Same as medicine which doesn’t cure what’s wrong with the body should never be called medicine.
Nussbaum also speaks about death quite often in the book, and The Therapy of Desire actually helped change my opinion in this area.
I was reading Antifragile by Nassim Taleb and I thought he was crazy for not wanting to live forever. And while I still absolutely, positively love being alive (I can’t repeat this enough: I do not waste a single minute of my one and only life and neither should you), I can accept Nussbaum’s - and Taleb’s - viewpoint that death is a “making way for others” that sets limits to our existence, within which all our highest values are given expression.
If no one ever died, facing death would not be courageous, our personal relationships would lose some of their poignancy, and our projects would seem hollow. I’m still struggling with this question myself, and I’m certainly nowhere near done living.
I also sympathize with Albert Camus when he said in Resistance, Rebellion, and Death that he is “against this universe, where children suffer and die.” Likewise, I’m not willing to suffer the death of children without fighting back against it, hard; but death, as a necessity and constituent of life itself, does have its place.
This book also put into words something that I’ve often felt previously, namely that the value of each individual human life is infinite.
The implication, of course, is that there is nothing that any of us have to “do” in order to become worthy of unconditional positive regard (in Rogerian terms) and nothing that we have to “become” in order to be persons of absolute value in the universe.
"For a ration of bread I was able to exchange cots to be next to my father."
Night is a powerfully transformative book, similar to - but definitely not a substitute for - books like Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl.
They were both Jews, both captured and sent to the death camps by the Nazis during World War II, both survivors who emerged to warn the rest of the world about what happened there. Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Viktor Frankl was not, but both books are unbelievably worth reading. “Powerful” really isn’t even a powerful enough word. There are no words.
Wiesel was a teenager when he and his family were abducted from their home by the Nazis in 1944 and sent to Auschwitz concentration camp, before being transferred to Buchenwald. Night is the book that came out of those terrible experiences, most horrific of which being the deaths of his entire family during his time in the camps.
The entire book is one endless, chilling warning, a demand that this must never be allowed to happen again, and certainly never forgotten. I first read Night when I was 26 and I’ve never forgotten it, that’s for sure.
I include it here in a list of books that will help you appreciate the gift of life, because…well, it’s the kind of book that can just…shake you by the shoulders, reminding you how good you have it.
“To say yes to life is not only meaningful under all circumstances – because life itself is – but it is also possible under all circumstances. And ultimately that was the entire purpose of these three parts: to show you that people can still – despite hardship and death (first part), despite suffering from physical or mental illness (second part) or under the fate of the concentration camp (third part) – say yes to life in spite of everything.”
A new Viktor Frankl book? Is this for real? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. His most well-known book, Man’s Search for Meaning sold something like 12 million copies and tells the story of Frankl’s experience surviving the Nazi concentration camps during World War II – and it also changed my life forever from the very moment I read it.
This new book is a transcript of a public lecture he gave in Vienna just eleven months after being released from the camp, and after losing his wife, children, parents – everyone to the Nazi death camps.
This man, this – I don’t even know what – was somehow, somehow able to stand up in front of an audience and declare that no matter what, life is the ultimate value, and it is always and, in every moment, meaningful and beautiful.
Both of these books are just absolutely incredible and, though I hesitate to say things like “everyone needs to read this book,” in this case that’s probably right.
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OK, that’s it for now…
I’ve got plenty more excellent book recommendations coming your way soon though!
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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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