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📚 Welcome back to The Reading Life!
You’ve probably heard that fewer people today are reading books than ever before.
Unless, of course, you were tucked away somewhere reading, and didn’t hear about this. If that’s you, then I regret to inform you that we have something of a literacy crisis on our hands!
Here’s an excellent video on that, by the way, a video that I wish I’d made myself.
Anyway, amid the awfulness of amazing books not being read, fewer people reading books means that only the most popular books are being read, and lesser-known books like the 10 incredible ones I have for you tonight are in danger of being lost forever!
I cannot, and will not let that happen, so here in this newsletter I’m going to be sharing 10 amazing books that I desperately want to save from obscurity.
There’s nothing from before 1900, but still, I never see these books being talked about anymore, and that’s a damn shame. With the possible exception of the first book, which is a classic spy novel that’s not really a spy novel…
The others include the unfinished last book of David Foster Wallace, the autobiography of Amelia Earhart, an analysis of the alienation of American society in the 1950s through to today, the true story of an inmate at an insane asylum who helped create the Oxford English Dictionary, and more!
My latest YouTube video is also live, featuring 7 books to help you take the wheel of your own life.
And now, before our coffees get cold, let’s hit the books!
The Upside of Down is a powerful true story of resilience, as John Ulsh recounts his journey from a catastrophic accident and a near-hopeless prognosis, to overcoming immense physical and emotional challenges - offering readers an inspiring roadmap to rebuilding their lives, embracing adversity, and reclaiming their personal power. (Buy on Amazon)
Tonight, Inside The Reading Life, We’ve Got:
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“It’s a curious truth that when you gently pay attention to negative emotions, they tend to dissipate - but the positive ones expand."
“Who you are, what you think, feel, and do, what you love - is the sum of what you focus on.”
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 Deep Work, by Cal Newport, an incredibly influential productivity book about achieving deep, sustained focus, and doing excellent work.
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 1,488 books, including 34 books so far this year, and if you’re interested, here’s my full Reading List.
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“Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud, but the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that everything is stooping and hiding a face? If we could only get round in front…”
I knew next to nothing about Chesterton going into this book, and it ended up being one of my favorite books of all time. It’s an existentialist novel about a secret society of anarchists and the detective assigned to infiltrate and expose them, but it’s also sooo much more than that! Man it’s so good.
Okay, so the Council of this anarchist organization each take their names from the days of the week, and the police detective who slips in and takes the place of Thursday is in for an earth-shattering, ego-shattering surprise.
I don’t even want to give any more away, because it’s just sooo amazing. If you’re familiar at all with the philosophy of Alan Watts and Colin Wilson, you’ll “get” this book right away.
The only other thing I’ll say about it is that, on top of being a fantastic “metaphysical thriller,” it’s the kind of intelligently optimistic book that just makes you happy to be alive.
Reading it, you get the feeling that the experience of living the life you’re living now is a piece of “absurd good news,” and that, even though you won’t pass this way again, all the mysteries, the joys, the disappointments, the trials, the strange adventures, the beauty, and the wonders of this magical Earth all make life worth living.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
“If thou wouldst right the world, and banish all its evils and its woes, make its wild places bloom, and its drear deserts blossom as the rose - then right thyself.
If thou wouldst turn the world from its long, lone captivity in sin, restore all broken hearts, slay grief, and let sweet consolation in - turn thou thyself.
If thou wouldst cure the world of its long sickness, end its grief and pain, bring in all-healing joy, and give to the afflicted rest again - then cure thyself.
If thou wouldst wake the world out of its dream of death and dark’ning strife, bring it to Love and Peace, and Light and brightness of immortal Life - Wake thou thyself.”
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.
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 (and much of this book as well) 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.
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.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
“The ‘English dictionary,’ in the sense that we commonly use the phrase today – as an alphabetically arranged list of English words, together with an explanation of their meanings – is a relatively new invention. Four hundred years ago there was no such convenience available on any English bookshelf.
There was none available, for instance, when William Shakespeare was writing his plays. Whenever he came to use an unusual word, or to set a word in what seemed an unusual context – and his plays are extraordinarily rich with examples – he had almost no way of checking the propriety of what he was about to do.
He was not able to reach into his bookshelves and select any one volume to help: He would not be able to find any book that might tell him if the word he had chosen was properly spelled, whether he had selected it correctly, or had used it in the right way in the proper place.
Shakespeare was not even able to perform a function that we consider today as perfectly ordinary a function as reading itself. He could not, as the saying goes, ‘look something up.’”
This is a book about the making of the Oxford English Dictionary (Wait! Don’t stop reading yet! I promise it’s not boring!).
The “mystery” this book explores has to do with the fact that one member of the gigantic effort to compile the dictionary had submitted more than ten thousand entries before anyone knew much of anything about who he was.
He never visited the main office where most of the work was taking place because, well, he couldn’t travel; he was an inmate at an institution for the criminally insane.
This is a wild story, and true, as far as the records go; and even though it involves murder and madness and mayhem, you don’t end up with the sense that there’s a “bad guy” here.
W.C. Minor (the inmate and prolific reader/contributor to the dictionary) looks to have suffered some horrific PTSD during the American Civil War and ends up killing a stranger in the early hours of the morning after his mind had been taken over by paranoid delusions.
Pursued by psychotic visions, he ends up chasing this man, George Merrett, into the street, and mistakenly shoots him in the neck. Again, true story…
Obviously, he’s guilty of murder, but the story of Minor’s particular madness, and the parallel effort to construct the Oxford English Dictionary with Minor’s help is just fascinating and incredible.
You feel sorry for Minor, you feel sorry for Merrett, and you’re just swept up in all the… unlikeliness of the whole thing – and, speaking for myself, you end up feeling grateful that events unfolded as they did, and that a writer as talented as Simon Winchester came along to write everything down.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
“Through particularly bumpy going, while I tried to fly and also to pump gas from the reserve into the gravity tank, I lost my map. In that ship, it usually lay open upon my knee, fastened with a safety pin to my dress. But in the strenuous moments over Texas, the pin was somehow loosened and the map blew away.”
This autobiography was an unplanned bookstore find – I didn’t even know she wrote one – but when I saw that Amelia Earhart (the famous pilot) had an autobiography, I bought it immediately. It did not disappoint!
Amelia was the first woman to fly solo over the Atlantic Ocean, and she inspired a generation of men and women to follow their dreams, before she mysteriously disappeared in 1937 while attempting to circumnavigate the globe.
She’s also really, really funny, which I didn’t expect, and she had a deep personal history of reading, which didn’t surprise me one bit.
Combine her natural ability and curiosity, her supportive parents and her well-stocked library, and there weren’t many obstacles that could have blocked this lady’s way.
Her optimism for the future was inspiring as well, not to mention her leadership ability in the field of education. She didn’t buy for a second the idea that only men could fly, or that girls shouldn’t have the same supportive and aspirational upbringings either. She wasn’t like, militant or anything about it – she was just a positive force for progress and growth, and her life is absolutely a testament to that.
There’s also quite a bit of history in here about the first flights, first airports and first discoveries, etc. - some of which are hilarious, and all of which make you glad that history is populated with brilliant stars like Amelia Earhart.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
“If a civilization is spiritually sick, the individual suffers from the same sickness. If he is healthy enough to put up a fight, he becomes an Outsider.”
This is the follow-up to one of my favorite books of all time, The Outsider. Here in this book, we’re going over many of the same themes – existential anxiety and the urge to more intense life and being – with a special focus on, well, religion and rebels.
Outsiders and rebels want more life, not less, and we feel horribly constricted by a society of self-assured and ignorant Insiders who have never wondered at the miracle of their own existence or felt horrified by their own inevitable death.
This book is for people who actually enjoy being alive, and who don’t want to shrink from it any longer. Colin Wilson also explains how the religious attitude is the one appropriate to those who love life – in fact, it’s probably the only “reasonable” response when faced with all this beauty and grandeur and mystery.
This doesn’t mean accepting some God “out there” who’s going to come and save everyone, but rather an overwhelming acceptance of life as it is, regardless and in spite of the harsh necessities and bitter tragedies.
Difficulty Rating: Intermediate
“In order that any society may function well, its members must acquire the kind of character which makes them want to act in the way they have to act as members of the society or of a special class within it.
They have to desire what objectively is necessary for them to do. Outer force is replaced by inner compulsion, and by the particular kind of human energy which is channeled into character traits.”
This is an absolutely incredible book about social alienation in American society, and it remains supremely relevant, even though it first came out in 1950. Far too few people are talking about it though! It contains so many keys to life.
Riesman introduces terms like tradition-directed, outer-directed, and inner-directed to describe various approaches to life, and he breaks down the multiple psychological influences felt by each member of society as they’re socialized to exist within a world that refuses to recognize their own individuality and potential modes of expression.
It’s not so much that being inner-directed is “better” than being outer-directed or tradition-directed, but rather that the pressures of conformity prevent the realization of true self-hood, and society deprives the individual of the possibility for “genuine heroism,” as people like Ernest Becker have described it.
To keep society running smoothly, it needs cogs for the machine, people who will want to live the way society needs them to want to live in order to function. People, real people - individuals - want a mission; they want excitement and adventure and to be of service.
But instead, society trains them to “want” to become middle managers in corporations, to have 2.3 children, to go on annual vacations, and to drive two-year-old used cars.
The individual wants to become a hero, he or she wants to direct their own life, to shape their own identity, and to become a person, but “the crowd” stifles them into settling for a promotion every few years, and maybe an award at the annual gala and a gold watch.
Again, by no means am I or Riesman saying that there’s anything “wrong” with having a 9-5 job and a family, or conforming to some extent.
We exist in a society with others, and there are certain social practices and norms that keep everything running smoothly as long as they’re adhered to.
The Lonely Crowd, however, simply explores how that socialization happens, what it does to the psyche of the individual who, rising in consciousness, feels in his soul that he’s destined for more, and what “more” might actually look like.
Difficulty Rating: Intermediate
“The next suitable person you’re in light conversation with, you stop suddenly in the middle of the conversation and look at the person closely and say, ‘What’s wrong?’
You say it in a concerned way. He’ll say, ‘What do you mean?’
You say, ‘Something’s wrong, I can tell. What is it?’
And he’ll look stunned and say, ‘How did you know?’
He doesn’t realize something’s always wrong, with everybody. Often more than one thing. He doesn’t know everybody’s always going around all the time with something wrong and believing they’re exerting great willpower and control to keep other people, for whom they think nothing’s ever wrong, from seeing it.
This is the way of people. Suddenly ask what’s wrong, and whether they open up and spill their guts or deny it and pretend you’re off, they’ll think you’re perceptive and understanding.
They’ll either be grateful, or they’ll be frightened and avoid you from then on. Both reactions have their uses, as we’ll get to. You can play it either way. This works over 90 percent of the time.”
This is the most boring book I’ve ever read, and I mean that in the best possible way. I say that both because the book was unfinished at the time of Wallace’s death, and because the book deals with boredom and attention as its central theme.
Semi-autobiographical, largely fictional, it’s about one of the most boring workplaces you’re ever likely to find – the IRS - and how, on the other side of boredom, the richest opportunities to experience real life can be found.
Other reviewers have noted that it’s likely that the 547 “completed” pages were part of a much longer work, since it’s pretty much all setup, and the plot is a little bit underdeveloped.
All this is to say that, if you’ve never read anything by Wallace before, maybe don’t start with this one; but if you have read him before and do appreciate his style, this book might actually become one of your favorites.
I know I said it was boring – and yes, it does drag at some points (I mean, it wasn’t finished!) – but I did feel kinda sad at the end, like Wallace was finished talking to me, and like I’d never get the full import of the urgent message he’s sending all of us with this book.
Difficulty Rating: Intermediate
“He who is silent is forgotten; he who does not advance falls back; he who stops is overwhelmed, distanced, crushed; he who ceases to become greater, becomes smaller; he who leaves off gives up; the stationary is the beginning of the end - it precedes death; to live is to achieve, to will without ceasing."
Weakness of will is the only thing stopping you from achieving everything you've ever wanted to achieve in this life.
The opportunities for great achievement and relentless goal attainment are abundant today, but it's the will to achieve that's scarce, the will to keep going that's lacking, and the will to drive forward no matter what that's going to be the difference-maker between your outstanding success and dismal failure.
Luck exists, but volume and perseverance negate luck. We create a substantial portion of our own luck by being tenacious, relentless, and irrepressible. This book, An Iron Will, is a classic from all the way back in 1901(!) that will help you become exactly that: irrepressible.
Orison Swett Marden was the pre-eminent self-help authority in the earliest parts of the 20th century, and he was also the founder of SUCCESS Magazine, a publication that's still going strong today.
If you think of people like Dale Carnegie, Norman Vincent Peale, Stephen R. Covey, Tony Robbins, and Zig Ziglar - Orison Swett Marden was the man who inspired their journeys of personal development.
In An Iron Will, Marden explores the importance of mental discipline, toughness, and perseverance to our happiness and success.
The world tends to take us at our own valuation and believes in the person who believes in themselves, and regardless of what you intend to achieve, An Iron Will is how you'll arm yourself with the strength and power necessary to achieve it.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
“To actually know this consciously, to realize that we were not intended to reach breaking point so quickly and easily, would obviously alter a man’s whole approach to his life and its problems. To effect such an alteration in human consciousness was Gurdjieff’s central aim.”
George Ivanovich Gurdjieff was one of the most charismatic, enigmatic, powerfully self-possessed mystical teachers of the 20th century, and this book is a short introduction to his life and work. Gurdjieff taught that most humans exist in a state of "waking sleep," where they remain unaware of their infinite potential and ultimate value as human beings.
Colin Wilson believed that most human beings are like great big and powerful jet airplanes attempting to fly on just one engine. That is, we possess vast lakes of "vital reserves," or extra energies that we habitually fail to call upon.
So if you feel as though there is something missing in your life, that the world is more gray and bleak than it could be or should be, then you're beginning to wake up.
This whole book is about getting that process started. It's about the effort to attain self-knowledge, and the super-effort that full aliveness may require. It's about abandoning destructive habits and automaticity, and about keeping the mind awake.
It's about firing up all the engines.
This philosophy is about kicking everything about your life into high gear, but nobody is claiming that it's going to be easy. To realize how powerful we are, and how alive we can be, however, is to effect a revolutionary alteration in human consciousness.
It really is like waking up.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
“It is not we who are permitted to ask about the meaning of life – it is life that asks the questions, directs questions at us – we are the ones who are questioned!
We are the ones who must answer, must give answers to the constant, hourly question of life, to the essential ‘life questions.’
Living itself means nothing other than being questioned; our whole act of being is nothing more than responding to – of being responsible toward – life.
With this mental standpoint nothing can scare us anymore, no future, no apparent lack of a future. Because now the present is everything as it holds the eternally new question of life for us. Now everything depends on what is expected of us.
As to what awaits us in the future, we don’t need to know that any more than we are able to know it.”
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 16 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 (still relatively unknown, still in danger of being lost!) 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.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
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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 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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