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10 Books That Will Teach You More About Life Than a 4-Year Degree
Matt Karamazov
July 14, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 33 minutes
I always say: some of my absolute favorite memories were made while I was at university, but there are far better (and less expensive) ways to learn about life.
You could get any of these books at your local library for zero dollars, rather than forking over $100,000 or more for a “Formal Education.”
Better yet, take $10,000 and these ten books, spend a week living in ten different cities, getting out to explore, you know, the actual world. But if $10K is a stretch right now, or you can’t travel for some other (perfectly legitimate) reason, these 10 books will teach you an awful lot.
About people, about living an unconventional life, about education and the mind, about growth, about wisdom, about belonging, about freedom…about human existence.
I loved something different about all of these books, and they each taught me an incredible amount. They were each like “puzzle pieces,” helping me fill in parts of my understanding of the world that were incomplete.
I also just published a new YouTube video you might like, where I (briefly) outlined the mindset shift that helped millions of people build an unbreakable reading habit.
And now, before our coffees get cold…let’s read!
Tonight, Inside The Reading Life, We’ve Got:
We’ve got lots to cover today, so let’s hit the books!
“I realized that they could take everything from me except my mind and my heart. They could not take those things. Those things I still had control over. And I decided not to give them away.”
“If I eat at a restaurant just once per week, spending $100 each time, and I go there for five years, I’m worth more than $25,000 to that restaurant. If you own a restaurant, do your waiters treat your customers like they are worth $25,000 in business or like they are just worth the $25 meal they’re buying that night?”
Inside my private business mastermind, Creator Launch Academy, we’re tackling one nonfiction book per week and implementing its lessons inside our businesses.
This week’s book is The Ultimate Sales Machine, by Chet Holmes, a great book where Holmes pioneered the idea of the Dream 100. 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 1,397 books, including 45 books so far this year, and if you’re interested, here’s my full Reading List.
“You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight.”
I always count myself lucky to have discovered Maxwell at a relatively early age, and as I absorbed his lessons and leadership advice I could literally feel myself change and grow.
Growth is usually painful, so I can’t say that it was entirely a pleasant experience, but I value so highly what he’s done for me and what I’ve learned in his books that I can confidently recommend them to you now.
If you’re serious about personal growth and development, you’re going to have to change. You need to change some of the things you do daily, you need to curtail some parts and bring out other parts of your personality and character, and you have to do this for a long enough period of time.
Most people won’t. But I can promise you that the effort will be worth it.
Maxwell’s books are aimed at business professionals who want to take their careers to their next level, but his advice can be adapted to the situation of almost anyone who demands more from themselves than anyone else could ever ask of them.
If you want more from yourself and for yourself, if you want to contribute more to others and bring out the best in them, if you want to advance confidently in the direction of the life you’ve imagined for yourself, then start here with this book.
It’s part of the puzzle that you’ve been missing.
“Mastery is the best goal because the rich can’t buy it, the impatient can’t rush it, the privileged can’t inherit it, and nobody can steal it. You can only earn it through hard work. Mastery is the ultimate status.”
Certain authors just become associated with certain ideas, and one that I continue to profit from handsomely – year after year after year – is Derek Sivers’ insight that when making a decision, it’s either a “Hell yeah!” or it’s a “No.”
Either you’re consumed with interest by what you’ve decided to do - it’s just so completely obvious that this is the thing you should be doing/want to do - or you’re better off not doing it at all.
How to Live is basically 27 chapters full of insights like that. He’s actually chopped the book up and trimmed it down to make it just 8% of its original size, now clocking in at just 112 pages. Each chapter vehemently yet respectfully disagrees with the other ones, like taking 27 different perspectives on the question of how to live your life.
I took two full pages of notes, and many of my own notes disagree with each other.
But they’re all true! The entire book is like that, and it’s so cool reading someone with the ability to disagree with themselves over and over and over again, yet still able to make a clear, concise, cogent case for the indisputably true assertion that this one life is your own, and you have to live it in a way that makes sense for you.
Years ago, Sivers sold his company, CD Baby, for millions, enabling him to forget about earning more money (he doesn’t need it or want it), and letting him put every single creative neuron in his brain into this one book.
In the past, he’s been a musician, a producer, a circus performer, an entrepreneur, a TED speaker, and a book publisher, but here in this book, he’s just your friend Derek.
“Something important is always happening underneath the surface.”
The “Pareto Principle,” otherwise known as the 80/20 Rule is widely recognized today, but there are few better introductions to this extremely – and I mean extremely – powerful idea than Koch’s book.
It’s more business-oriented, but there are applications of the principle available in literally every facet of our lives, which is something that’s rare in itself, for one principle to be so impactful.
Briefly stated, the Pareto Principle is the observation that 80 percent of your results will come from just 20 percent of your actions, which of course means that if you want to maximize your effectiveness and utility, you should focus as much as you can on the 20 percent that is going to drive most of your results and ignore or delegate the rest.
In business, this means that 20 percent of your customers are bringing in 80 of your total revenue.
In your relationships, it means that 20 percent of the people you associate with are bringing you 80 of the fulfillment you experience.
Originally, it was an Italian economist, Vilfredo Pareto who noticed that 80 percent of the land in Italy was owned by 20 percent of the landowners.
However, you can take this idea even further, and keep applying the Pareto Principle to the principle itself!
You’ll notice as well that 20 percent of the 20 percent is giving you most of the results as well. These numbers aren’t absolute or anything – there are 99/1 relationships, 85/15 relationships, etc. – but the principle stands up remarkably well.
Whenever you find a principle this powerful and this robust, you’re doing yourself a disservice if you don’t capture as much of the potential value on offer as you can. Apply it to your business, your investments, your time, your friends, your life.
It will change everything for you.
Koch book is definitely one of the 20 percent of books that will give you 80 percent of results in life, although I’ve heard some people say that you can apply the principle to his book too! Meaning that 20 percent of the book will give you 80 percent of its total value.
“It's easy to forget how deeply brutality was once woven into the fabric of daily existence.”
The first four hundred pages of this book read like the synopsis of a horror movie.
It’s extremely tough to make it through - not because it’s a particularly challenging book in terms of style, but rather because it details the nauseating, atrocious history of human violence across the centuries.
But then, a few hundred years ago, a fascinating thing started to happen.
Violence declined dramatically across the entire planet (with some obvious exceptions in the first part of the twentieth century, ahem), and more people started to die of diseases instead of gory, violent deaths. Pinker attributes this to several factors, including global governance, and the rise of empathy engendered by…reading.
Part of his thesis is that, coinciding with the rise in global literacy, people everywhere began developing the ability to psychologically inhabit the subjective mental states of others.
This, along with the spread of global democracy, international treaties, etc., ushered in one of the most unprecedented periods of (relative) peace in human history.
Now, obviously, it doesn’t always seem that way if you watch the news.
And he doesn’t rule out the eruption of mass-scale violence in the future.
That being said, the (again, horrific) evidence Pinker points to shows that compared to the chances you had of dying a violent death, being alive today means that you’re more likely to die of old age than an enemy’s axe.
All in all, it’s an extremely hopeful book, and even though we have plenty of work to do, much of that work has already begun.
“There is only one possible, productive solution for the relationship of individualized man with the world: his active solidarity with all men, and his spontaneous activity, love and work, which unite him again with the world, not by primary ties but as a free and independent individual.”
Most people think they desire freedom. Yet, when they gain the very freedom they say they wanted, suddenly they don’t know what to do with it.
Massive gains in political, economic, and religious freedom - spanning centuries - has mostly only resulted in a growing sense of isolation, helplessness, and anxiety.
Erich Fromm, one of the great psychologists of the twentieth century, begins his analysis in the medieval world, where he points out that, in the feudal system, people had much less freedom, but a much greater sense of belonging, structure, and certainty.
He’s not saying that we should return to that system, only pointing out that with the rise of capitalism, individualism, and the Protestant Reformation, people seemed all too eager to hand back their hard-earned freedom in various ways.
Thoughtful people may disagree with his conclusions (I myself have broken away from Fromm in recent years), but his premises are sound, namely that this loss of certainty made individuals susceptible to authoritarianism, conformism, and various destructive ideologies that came along - and that were all too happy to provide that structure and sense of belonging people had lost.
Ultimately, however, people still retain the power to choose a kind of “positive freedom,” whereby individuals embrace autonomy and self-directedness, while at the same time cultivating deep connections with others in a network of shared meaning and mutual benefit.
It requires the strengthening of reason, love, and spontaneous action, and it requires a degree of moral courage. But there’s nothing in the psychology of human beings to prevent us from being able to withstand the anxieties of freedom without liberating it.
“If you understand others you are smart.
If you understand yourself you are illuminated.
If you overcome others you are powerful.
If you overcome yourself you have strength.
If you know how to be satisfied you are rich.
If you can act with vigor, you have a will.
If you don't lose your objectives you can be long-lasting.
If you die without loss, you are eternal.”
It’s often said that you can read this book in any hour, but you could study it for your entire life.
I think that’s absolutely true, and it’s for good reason that this short little book has survived for more than 2,500 years.
Written in China, the “Old Master” Lao Tzu shares wisdom about leadership, personal development, interpersonal relations, and the fabric and structure of existence itself.
You will probably recognize some of the sayings from the Tao Te Ching, as the phrase, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” is straight from this book. I – and many others – believe that this is one of the foundational texts of world literature and I just can’t recommend it highly enough; it’s just remarkable.
It’s also remarkable how such wisdom has existed among human beings for thousands and thousands of years. Lao Tzu may have been the first person to write it down, but he learned it from someone, who learned it from someone else, all the way down the line.
Just think of how much wisdom we will be able to pass on thousands of years from now!
“The self-image sets the boundaries of individual accomplishment. It defines what you can and cannot do. Expand the self-image and you expand the ‘area of the possible.’ The development of an adequate, realistic self-image will seem to imbue the individual with new capabilities, new talents, and literally turn failure into success.”
A big claim that’s made in this book is that it’s almost literally impossible to act differently than our self-image of ourselves. Or rather, it’s possible, but we experience extreme cognitive dissonance – mental discomfort – when we do.
This has proven itself over and over again in my own life, and it resonates with some of the best advice I’ve ever received from Tony Robbins, which is to raise your standards.
We get what we tolerate in life, and if your standards are low to the ground, your life will never take off. Similarly, if our self-image is that of an unmotivated, lazy underachiever, that’s exactly the kind of life we’re going to end up living.
Now, if you don’t want that kind of life for yourself, this book can help.
It's a multimillion-copy bestseller that explores the concept of “emotional surgery,” or uncovering more of what we unconsciously believe about ourselves and to reprogram our own minds for success.
I never like to oversell these claims, because proponents of books like these tend to promise the world – the whole world and everything in four easy steps, or whatever. This isn’t that.
Just like with anything, you get out what you put in, and the work you do on yourself is the work of a lifetime. There’s so much gold here in this book, and any number of my notes on this book have the power to change a person’s life, but it has to be applied, and it has to be lived.
“The new circuits and pathways that the brain fashions in order to read become the foundation for being able to think in different, innovative ways."
There is a "before" and "after" point of learning to read that is often the defining moment in a person's life - and especially a child's life. Every book is a door to an alternate future, and tragically, for anyone who never learns to read, those doors remain forever closed.
Magically (unbelievably), books are also windows into the hearts and minds of others, not to mention that the best books also represent paths back to ourselves.
Books are so many different things to so many different people, but how does the miracle of reading actually occur? What happens inside the brain of people just learning to read?
This exact process is the focus of Proust and the Squid, world-renowned cognitive neuroscientist and scholar of reading Maryanne Wolf's investigation into the development and functioning of the reading brain.
Stunningly, human beings were never meant to read. There are no genes that code for the development of reading skills, and so each human brain has to rearrange itself in the process of learning how to read, moving beyond its original state to learn how to make sense of these strange, squiggly markings on the page.
Sometimes I think that the most amazing thing about the whole process of reading is that we can learn to do it at all. Many people all over the world - even adults - still can't, and this is always and everywhere a tragedy; a failure of education, support, and love.
Another source of endless astonishment to me is that even though it took humans around 2,000 years to develop the kind of written language we have now, we expect children to learn it in about 2,000 days.
Considering the length of time the human species has existed, it's only in the most recent portion of our history that reading and writing actually came to be, and yet so much of our civilization depends on its continued flourishing.
Proust and the Squid does a wonderful job of taking you through a tour of that history, analyzing what we're doing right - and wrong - right now, and even daring to express optimism for the (hopefully long) future of reading.
“Society is beginning to crumble around an archaic commercial-military hero-system, unrelated to the needs and challenges of contemporary life. But to turn the hero-system around to one of peace, social service, the reconstruction of society, seems beyond the imagination and capability of the people.”
Ever since being completely shattered by his other book, The Denial of Death, I've been obsessed with Ernest Becker's ideas about human meaning, the subconscious fear of death, and genuine heroism.
I also highly recommend his later book, Escape from Evil, but this book right here is enough heaviness for one day!
The Birth and Death of Meaning is a book about our social fictions, the lies we tell ourselves in order to live. More specifically, Becker shows - touring through the fields of anthropology, psychology, spirituality, and even poetry, mythology, and more - how the greatest desire of human beings is to pursue genuine heroism, and to be regarded as beings of primary value in an objectively meaningless universe.
The unlimited cravings for self-esteem, love, and respect has shaped the development of our societies throughout history, and Ernest Becker was brilliant at showing the connection between these cravings and how human beings show up in the world, the narratives we create and play out in our daily lives.
Every one of Becker’s books is written with this genuine affection for human beings, and a compassion for our unique existential situation that he lived out in his real life too. He died decades ago, but he’s one of those people I would have loved to have known personally, and who makes me proud to be alive on this planet.
“If there is something in nature you don't understand, odds are it makes sense in a deeper way that is beyond your understanding. So there is a logic to natural things that is much superior to our own.
Just as there is a dichotomy in law: 'innocent until proven guilty' as opposed to 'guilty until proven innocent,' let me express my rule as follows: what Mother Nature does is rigorous until proven otherwise; what humans and science do is flawed until proven otherwise.”
Antifragile is a masterwork, and if you don’t believe me, just ask the author, because that’s what he’ll tell you, too! I’m half-kidding, but not really.
Nassim Taleb is one of those brilliant thinkers who’s aware of the fact that he’s a brilliant thinker, and a legitimate criticism that’s been leveled against this book is that that attitude is kind of tough to take for 500 pages.
But I thought the book was fantastic! It certainly changed and improved the way I think.
The term antifragile is meant to refer to something that “gains from disorder,” or shocks, adverse events, etc. Along a spectrum, you’ve got fragile, robust, and antifragile. For example, a politician would be “fragile” in the event of a massive scandal, and it could very well mean the end of his or her political career.
Not true for someone like a construction worker or a security guard, who, even if they do find themselves in the middle of some massive, negative publicity event, they can fairly easily find another job, even if they have to move three towns over. They are robust.
The term antifragile could apply to someone like, say, an author or artist, who, even in the middle of a public-relations shitstorm, would likely find themselves exposed to a massive new audience of people who will end up buying their books, sharing their art, talking about them, and making them even more famous.
The author or the artist would be antifragile because they would profit from negative events like this, and Taleb is saying that there are entire categories of human existence where this same principle operates - and where we can tap into it to get everything we ever wanted.
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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 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
P.S. Whenever you're ready, here are two more ways I can help you:
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