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10 Incredible Books to Read Before 2026
Matt Karamazov
November 24, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 38 minutes
Fine, I’ll admit it. I often will choose shorter books during October—December just so that I can hit my reading goals. But I never compromise on quality!
A few of the books I’m going to recommend tonight are rather long, actually. You’re not reading Cloud Atlas in a single sitting (and personally, I never wanted it to end), and the Napoleon biography is a monster.
But a few of the other ones, like Fahrenheit 451 and Psycho-Cybernetics are both great books that won’t take you that long to read.
So read them before the end of the year, and then you can think about them for the rest of your life!
Now, before our coffees get cold, let’s hit the books!
Tonight, Inside The Reading Life, We’ve Got:
“Understand the obstructions you are putting in the way of love, freedom, and happiness and they will drop. Turn on the light of awareness and the darkness will disappear."
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This month’s book is The Millionaire Fastlane, by MJ DeMarco, a great business book about building a profitable business around the C-E-N-T-S Framework, and a book that helped me leave a dead-end job in my twenties and never look back.
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After achieving my (somewhat meaningless) goal of reading 1,000 books before I turned 30, I set a new (also meaningless but cool) goal of reading 10,000 books. As of today, I’ve read exactly 1,432 books, including 80 books so far this year, and if you’re interested, here’s my full Reading List.
“A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.”
Usually, I finish a book every two days, but I strung this one out for weeks and weeks because I was loving it so much.
It is, in no uncertain terms, a masterpiece, and now it’s one of my absolute favorite books. A look through my notes on the book might give some indication why, but it’s partly because of the unique structure of the narrative itself.
The book is arranged in six interlocking parts, told from six different perspectives, first going forward in time as usual, until the middle section, at which point it folds back on itself and goes back through the time periods in reverse order, completing each narrative.
Starting from a character traveling aboard a slave ship in the 19th century, we move forward to the early twentieth, the late twentieth, the near future, a little further into the future, then the late future and back again, with the actions and lives of each character affecting and influencing each other across time and space.
The storylines are funny, nail-biting, vicious, exhilarating, suspenseful, deep – and sometimes several of those at once.
The literary references will keep lifelong readers searchingly engaged, the cliff-hangers will keep most readers up way later than they should be, and if you’re anything like me, you’ll read this book more slowly as you approach the final page, just so you can keep the book going and it doesn’t ever have to end.
Difficulty Rating: Moderate
Why You Might Like It: Umm…because it’s amazing?! Seriously, I’m low-key envious of people who get to read Cloud Atlas for the first time. Beautifully written, a ripping good story, an ambitious design…what’s not to love?
“‘Stuff your eyes with wonder,’ he said. ‘Live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.’”
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 You Might Like It: If you love books about books, this is THE “book about books.” It’s an exciting novel in and of itself, but Ray Bradbury just has this way of conveying the power and magic just waiting for all of us between the covers of our next favorite book. It’s amazing - easily one of my favorite books of all time!
“Once you decide the type of person you want to be, you can start acting like that person immediately.”
This book from entrepreneur and investor Anthony Pompliano includes 65 letters to his children, wherein he offers his best advice on how to succeed in business, invest in the stock market, invest in quality relationships, prepare for the future, cultivate resilience and fortitude, and basically just grow into a respectable, healthy, and happy human being.
He covers a lot of ground, and his wisdom is world-class.
Pompliano is definitely a list-maker, just like myself, and for the first four decades or so of his life he’s been taking note of the most transformational lessons he’s ever learned.
Which I believe is such a great thing to do, because you really cannot trust your memory. I’ve been taking notes on every single book I’ve read since 2014, jotting down every fantastic memory I could think of shortly after they happened, and recording as much as possible as I’m living, to help myself thrive in the future.
Again, you can’t simply trust your memory.
How to Live an Extraordinary Life features such fantastic advice because Pompliano’s life actually measures up to the title. He’s lived in a war zone, invested in more than 200 businesses, started (and nurtured) a loving family, and much more besides.
I got the sense too that he doesn’t view his recommendations as commandments. They’re simply what’s worked for him - helped him to find happiness and success - and now he’s simply passing it along.
He didn’t invent this stuff, and he won’t be the last to discover it, but by writing this book, and letting us into his private thoughts, all our futures will likely be brighter and more extraordinary.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Why You Might Like It: This one’s a super fast read, but with tons of “wisdom per page.” You can open it to almost any page and find something you can use immediately to make your life better. And more extraordinary.
“No matter what external conditions occur, you need a bastion of customers with both constant, uninterruptible ability and willingness to buy. Such customers can only be found among people of affluence - not just in income, but in their net worth and emotional state. Organizing a business around any other population is, bluntly, self-sabotage.”
Dan Kennedy is the legendary marketing genius standing behind virtually every future marketing superstar you and I follow today.
He’s the guy they all learned it from, and before everyone had a copy of $100M Offers or $100M Leads sitting behind them as their Zoom background, people displayed Dan Kennedy’s books behind them.
His “No B.S.” series contains more than a dozen volumes (18 at last count) and I’m rapidly working my way through all of them. I’m inhaling them one after another, just ravenous for the principles, strategies, and tactics that are changing my financial future before my very eyes.
It seems like I enter a new tax bracket every time I finish and apply a new Dan Kennedy book.
This book, unsurprisingly, is about how to get rich people to buy your stuff. There are, understandably, only a few books on this subject, partly because there are relatively few people who are qualified to write about it. Dan Kennedy is.
His demonstrated competence and multimillion-dollar track record speak for themselves, and have helped establish him firmly among the top business professionals thinking, writing, and speaking today.
The fact is that we are living and working and selling in the New Economy, a time where consumers demand more: demand what is specifically for them, demand competence, demand politeness and excellent service, and know that they are the ones with the most power.
“Low ticket” is becoming less and less sustainable as well, forcing the smart marketers and the people who like money to go where the money actually is. In other words, to market to the affluent.
This book covers the psychology and buying behaviors of the “Top 1%” of the consumer base, how to find them, sell to them, what they like and what they’re looking for.
All the strategies and tactics are right here, and in an economic environment where blending in with the masses means poverty and death, this book will help you stand out, command attention and respect, and both protect and expand your bottom line in any economic environment.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Why You Might Like It: If you run a business, you know that virtually nothing about entrepreneurship is easy. So why make it harder on yourself by going after customers who don’t have the money to afford what you’re worth?
“My own interpretation is very different from other historians’. What brought Napoleon down was not some deep-seated personality disorder but a combination of unforeseeable circumstances coupled with a handful of significant miscalculations: something altogether more believable, human and fascinating.”
It’s difficult to imagine how someone so active, so energetic, so alive could now be still.
There have been more books written with the word Napoleon in the title than there have been days since his death in 1821, but in a very real, visceral sense, this book brought him back to life, at least in my imagination.
Most everything I thought I knew about Napoleon – which, admittedly, wasn’t all that much – turned out to be either wrong or incomplete, and in this 800-page biography that I inhaled in a week I found myself swept up in the larger-than-life majesty of Napoleon’s life and campaigns.
It’s actually astonishing how many of the institutions and laws and reforms that exist today come directly from him. Meritocracy, equality before the law, property rights, religious toleration, modern secular education and so much more were ushered in during Napoleon’s reign, and he championed all of it.
It took almost every nation in Europe banding together in order to defeat him, and they had to adopt many of his reforms themselves in order to do it.
Large parts of the book are sometimes really, really funny as well, such as the time when Napoleon called his foreign minister, Talleyrand, a “shit in silk stockings.” Talleyrand was also once asked if Napoleon’s wife Josephine possessed intelligence, and he was heard to say, “Never has anyone managed so brilliantly without it.” Hilarious!
And the whole book is like that. Just the massive scale and scope of Napoleon’s adventures, his sweeping vision, and his humanity…they all combine to make this one of the greatest books I’ve ever read, biographies or otherwise.
Napoleon’s single-minded focus, the fierce love and dedication he was able to inspire in his soldiers, his grand ambition and stunning boldness are all painted in vivid detail, and by contrast, his last days hit me as being so tragic.
I actually had a hard time reading the last 50 pages because I hated to see him brought down to earth.
It’s still hard to imagine that someone like that ever truly perished from the earth, but I’m grateful to have been able to read his story.
Difficulty Rating: Moderate
Why You Might Like It: This biography reads like an adventure novel. Seriously. It’s action-packed, wickedly funny and insightful, inspiring…it’s all of the things. I honestly can’t say enough good things about it. I literally - and I mean literally - didn’t want it to end.
“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.
The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world.
To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”
This is one of my absolute favorite books of all time (yes, I say that a lot but it’s true), and that well-known passage in the beginning (see above) is simply one of the most stirring descriptions of our Earth that I've ever heard.
The book is about space exploration, of course, but the implicit (and explicit) warning throughout is that if we don't take better care of the planet we have now, we might have to go looking for another one.
That's easier said than done, of course, so we'd better get our act together!
Difficulty Rating: Moderate
Why You Might Like It: If you love space, and you’re excited about the possibility of one day learning enough about our planet and its wonders to be able to leave this planet and explore others, you’ll love this book.
“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.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Why You Might Like It: I just know that after I read this book, I started to make astounding positive improvements in my life, and everything started gaining speed and momentum from there. It’s no exaggeration at all to say that it changed my life, and I’m convinced that it could also change yours.
“The future of language is linked both to the sustained efforts by writers to find those words that direct us to their hard-won thought and to the sustained efforts by readers to reciprocate by applying their best thought to what is read.”
Humans were never meant to read. No child is ever born with a gene that directly leads to literacy; the reading circuit has to be intentionally, rigorously cultivated, especially in the early years, and nothing about that process is guaranteed. The ability to read these words is nothing short of a miracle, and you're witnessing it right now in this very moment.
The human brain - this amazingly, vastly complex thing, this technology that you carry around in your head all day - somehow finds a way to connect the functions that already exist, like vision, language, pattern recognition, and more, and combines them in such a way that you're able to follow this sentence and decode its meaning.
Because the ability to read doesn't develop unless it's actively and effectively taught, the brain of a reader has completely different wiring from that of a non-literate person, with implications that follow a person throughout their entire lifespan.
In this book, Reader, Come Home, neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf traces the development - or lack thereof - of the reading circuit and extends her research into questions of what will happen to us as we shift from a literacy-based culture to a more digital one.
The demands of the digital world engage our brains differently, and it's become clear to researchers like Dr. Wolf that the medium(s) in which we read shape how we read, and encourage or discourage the expert analytical and reading skills that are desperately needed today - by everyone.
Difficulty Rating: Moderate
Why You Might Like It: If this book doesn’t make you unbelievably grateful for knowing how to read, then I don’t even know what to say!
“Let us summarize our conclusions briefly:
The Outsider wants to cease to be an Outsider. He wants to be 'balanced.'
He would like to achieve a vividness of sense-perception (Lawrence, Van Gogh, Hemingway). He would also like to understand the human soul and its workings (Barbusse and Mitya Karamazov). He would like to escape triviality forever, and be 'possessed' by a Will to Power, to more life.
Above all, he would like to know how to express himself, because that is the means by which he can get to know himself and his unknown possibilities.
Every Outsider tragedy we have studied so far has been a tragedy of self-expression."
If ordinary life usually seems a bit...well, ordinary...it may be because the way most human beings live their lives can be compared to an extraordinarily powerful jet airplane flying on only one engine. That's Colin Wilson's basic contention in The Outsider, where he outlines his fundamentally optimistic philosophy of New Existentialism.
It's meant to contrast with the "old" existentialism of philosophers such as Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin Heidegger, and others for whom the universe is a rather cold, dreary, abysmal place.
While they wrote about futility, "Being-towards-death," the absurd, and the inevitability of suffering, it was always Colin Wilson's contention that there is a deeper, more meaningful, and vibrant dimension to life that all human beings have access to if only they would put forth the proper effort.
I usually avoid using the words "most people," because I don't know "most people." However, it's a safe assumption that most people are nowhere even close to reaching their full potential or to living as deeply and intensely as they could be living if they tried. Most people just "coast" on one engine, never even realizing that they are much more powerful than they've ever imagined.
Human beings, according to Wilson, possess a "visionary capacity" that, if they could only tap into it, would allow them to say "Yes" to life, in spite of everything. He doesn't deny the existence of suffering and the harshness of life, but in this book, he examines the lives of individuals he called "Outsiders," who were able to come closest to realizing this ultimately optimistic view of life and the universe.
Wilson exploded onto the literary scene with this book, which came out in 1956 to massive acclaim. It's never been out of print since then, and it's been translated into more than thirty languages. What's more, is that he was only 24 years old when he wrote it! After publishing The Outsider, he went on to write more than 100 books, including six others which, along with The Outsider, comprise the "Outsider Cycle," a fuller representation of the ideas first proposed here.
The Outsider can be thought of as a survey of some of the most profound responses to urgent questions about existence, meaning in life, and how to confront death. Wilson explores the lives of key literary and cultural figures such as Hermann Hesse, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, T.E. Lawrence, Vincent van Gogh, H.G. Wells, George Gurdjieff, and a multitude of others, discussing their effects on society, and society's effects on them.
I just happened upon this book one time – I had never heard of it before – and thought it looked interesting, given that he references philosophers and writers I enjoyed reading, such as Kierkegaard, Camus, Dostoyevsky, etc. I had no idea that it would completely change my life forever after and would radically alter how I lived out each day of my one and only life.
Difficulty Rating: Moderate
Why You Might Like It: This book will jolt you into wakefulness and a fully-engaged existence, while giving you an exceptionally fascinating overview of 19th- and 20th-century existentialist philosophy that will just make you want to get out there and take over the fucking world.
“What does it mean to ‘transform’ your relationship with money? It doesn’t mean getting more money or less money; it means knowing how much is enough money for you to have a life you love, now and in the future. It means shifting from being a victim of money and the economy to making conscious choices. Anyone can do this.”
I wasn’t about to read another personal finance book. My money is generally under control, and my life is generally under control, but I still gained a ton of insight from this book. So I can only imagine that someone whose financial situation is considerably worse could benefit a ton from reading it.
Having flown through it and taken great notes, I can highly recommend it. And it’s sold close to a million copies, so it definitely resonates with a diverse crowd of people.
One major concept that emerges from the book is the idea of monitoring your “life energy” rather than just money.
A lot goes into earning money – basically every minute and every dollar that you spend before, at, or after work that somehow involves your work – and all that time and effort is your life. So you should at least make an effort to track where all that life energy is going!
The best way to manage your time is to figure out how you’re spending it now, and basically the same applies to money. Budgets may be boring, but they are lifesavers in the right hands.
The system outlined in the book is very practical, very efficient, and very helpful – I almost can’t imagine someone succeeding with money who doesn’t do and understand something similar to what the authors suggest.
Underneath it all, however, is your relationship with money – how much time you spend thinking about it, your feelings toward it, what you’re willing to do to get it under control. At one point, the authors ask: If you were money, would you hang out with you? Fair question.
So while this is not a “serious” personal finance book, it’s incredibly sincere. The practical and the pragmatic is mixed with the earnest and the heartfelt, and combined, the strategies, mindsets, and insights to be gained within this book make up time very well spent.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Why You Might Like It: This book could help alleviate much of the stress, anxiety, and overthinking that many people associate with money. Rather than teaching you how to acquire “more at all costs,” Your Money or Your Life assumes that you want to use money to live a better life.
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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 180,000+ 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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