7 Books I’d Sell My Own MOTHER to Read Again for the First Time

YOUTUBE 📚 THE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE 📚 PATREON

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📚 Hey, good evening!

For the record, my mother’s not actually for sale. I mean, if you are somehow able to help me go back in time before I read these 7 spectacular, life-altering books, I’ll field some offers but —

Actually no, wait, she’s my mother! I love her!

But these books…

I’ll think about it, is I guess what I’m saying here.

All seven of these books were Before/After experiences for me, though, each of them dismantling my old life and the way I thought about it, changing me forever from the moment I finished reading them — some of them after only the first page.

In this email, we’ll go in the order in which I first read them, and I’ll share what made them so transformative, along with an epic quote or two.

The first book on this list is one I nearly finished reading in one sitting, the fourth gave me a “book hangover” that lasted for months, and the sixth one is directly responsible for changing my thinking in a way that enabled me to achieve the kind of mental, financial, and lifestyle freedom I enjoy today.

I’ve also turned this article into a YouTube video (which took me ~30 hours to make, but I’m not trying to guilt you into watching it haha) and you can watch that here if you’d prefer.

I can’t wait to start talking about these books (truly!), so let’s get right into them!

Book #1 that changed everything for me was…

1. The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho

Like many people, I remember exactly where I was when I read The Alchemist for the first time. I was working as a bouncer in Canada, on a Sunday night when there was hardly anyone at the bar.

Reading The Alchemist on my phone, I barely looked up the whole night (I was great at my job), and nearly finished it before last call. As it happened, I ended up finishing it in my car, in my driveway at home the same night I started it.

The book is a future classic about a shepherd boy, Santiago, who leaves behind his home and everything he knows in order to go live his “personal legend,” and search for a treasure that he believes is buried far away.

On his way from Andalusia to Egypt, he meets a king, an alchemist, all manner of people — good, bad, indifferent — who draw him closer to or further away from his treasure and make him question how badly he wants to realize his personal legend at all.

Everyone who’s ever suffered and sacrificed for a big goal will see themselves in Santiago.

In my own life, help has come to me from so many unexpected sources, but, like Santiago, it wasn’t until I mapped out unexplored territories within myself that the universe started to rearrange itself and to reveal to me the outlines of my personal legend.

This Book on Amazon: The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho

2. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury

Once again, I was sitting in my car — working a different minimum wage security job — when I read this book on my phone, the hours melted away as I swiped through page after page after page and left my old life behind on page one.

Reading Ray Bradbury, you’re struck by the thought that this man KNOWS.

He loves books, loves what reading can do and does for the mind, the soul, the person, the world; he saw that reading was under threat, and his fictional dystopia is the literary equivalent of shaking someone by the shoulders, begging them to look at what they stand to lose by letting books disappear.

The main character, Guy Montag, is a fireman, but in the future, firemen don’t fight fires — they burn books.

His job is to destroy printed books wherever he finds them, and burn down the homes and libraries in which they’re found, until one day, a particularly dramatic burning (I won’t spoil it for you) causes him to question what it is in books that make people feel so strongly about them and defend them so fiercely.

Fahrenheit 451 is not a long book, and it’s a fairly easy read, same with the next book on this list.

But if you’ve ever felt yourself being changed by a book, or distressed and perplexed by the fact that people seem to be able to go their lives without ever feeling their magic or their power, you’ll find yourself within the pages of this book.

This Book on Amazon: Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury

3. Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse

Siddhartha and The Alchemist have become kind of conjoined in my mind, although they’re very different from one another. I honestly couldn’t pick a favorite between them, although I’d lean toward Siddhartha.

By the time I read it, pretty much any sense that the “traditional” path that society was offering me had disappeared, and I knew that I didn’t have to live in the way anybody else expected me to live.

Siddhartha confirmed this.

It’s the story of a well-off Indian Brahmin who goes off in search of spiritual meaning and personal fulfillment, and the twists and turns of the story, the mix of good actors and bad actors, good fortune and ill, and the idea that the path has to be made by walking all really appealed to me and made the story more real.

This was the 175th book I had ever read since I started counting, but I still had no idea where I was going or would ultimately end up.

Certainly I had no idea that I’d be living the kind of life I do today. But I made my own path by walking it, and this book helped me realize that further along the path I made myself is always the right direction.

This Book on Amazon: Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse

4. Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace

This is the book that gave me a book hangover that lasted for months.

It also took me months to read, and I remember lugging around this 1,000-page book while working my hospital security job (no more sitting in my freezing car reading books on my phone in the dark!) for the two months it took me to finish it.

Set in an addicts’ halfway house and a tennis academy, the book is about a videotape that’s supposedly so entertaining that once you watch it, you lose all interest in doing anything else — almost like an advanced psychology weapon — that several different groups are trying to find and use for their own purposes.

Infinite Jest is simultaneously the funniest and saddest book I’ve ever read in my entire life, and the author, David Foster Wallace, is a legitimate genius.

The book uses something like 20,000+ unique English words (sending me to the dictionary every two pages or so), and includes hundreds of pages of end notes, some of which even have their own footnotes. And you have to read them too, because often they’re even funnier than the actual book!

You also receive major Nerd Cred for having read the end notes and footnotes to Infinite Jest. That’s just something that nobody can ever take away from you!

Anyway, yea. Life changing. Epic. Impressive as any towering monument you’ve ever seen in real life. And to read it again, for the first time! I wish!

This Book on Amazon: Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace

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5. Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell

Cloud Atlas proves that postmodern fiction is so much better than postmodern philosophy. Not even a fair fight.

Years before I thought about selling her for the chance to read it again for the first time, I begged/demanded that my mother read it herself and she loved it just as much as I did.

We also watched the movie version, but I do NOT recommend doing that before you’ve read the book. It’s confusing as hell! I mean, I read the book first, and even I had trouble following the movie.

Anyway, the book begins in 1850 with one character, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California, who, en route, starts treatment for a rare species of brain parasite.

Then the story jumps to Belgium in 1931, to a composer named Robert Frobisher, and then again to the 1970s where we meet up with a West Coast reporter named Luisa Rey, and then again to modern-day England, then again to a dystopian near-future set in Korea, then finally to Hawaii in the far future. But that’s where it gets crazy.

The narrative then goes back through time, traveling the same route except in reverse, going back through all the previous storylines and filling out the course of events, all the way the author revealing how each character connects, and how “their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky.”

You can probably see why the movie version was weird as shit. I mean I liked it (it had Tom Hanks in it!), but yea. The book! The book! Read it.

This Book on Amazon: Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell

6. The Millionaire Fastlane, by MJ DeMarco

Okay, so I’m back in my car again, still working for minimum wage, at the beginning of 2020, completely unaware that I’m about to start reading a book that, in 3 years, will allow me to start a business doing what I love (even though the author warns against that), gain hundreds of thousands of followers on social media, deliver products, services, and creations I’m proud of, buy my first Porsche, and open up my entire future.

That book is The Millionaire Fastlane, and it changed everything for me.

At the time, I actually didn’t mind my little low-paying job where I got to read books all night and basically be left alone. But resentment for that job and the people who did not leave me alone — indeed, who actively, maliciously made my life worse in many ways — was building up, and my situation was getting bad enough to make me want to change.

It’s funny: if you’re just doing “okay,” your motivation to make any big changes in your life isn’t going to be strong enough to actually do it.

You need to hate your lack of results so much, despise your current situation so intensely, that you refuse to settle for the life you have. That’s how it works. That’s one of the most valuable things that The Millionaire Fastlane taught me.

To be fair, “the fast lane” means about 5–10 years, as opposed to slaving away for 50 years at a job you hate, that you could get fired from at any moment, where you’re just fed scraps from the table of your bosses who are basically making all the real money.

But my story has a happy ending though, because even though I won’t technically be a millionaire until early-mid 2025 or so, this very moment I can read books in my Porsche whenever I want and nobody can tell me where to park it or how long to sit there for.

This Book on Amazon: The Millionaire Fastlane, by MJ DeMarco

7. The Count of Monte Cristo

Thrown in a deep, dark dungeon for a serious crime (that he didn’t commit), Edmond Dantès learns of a great treasure hidden on the Isle of Monte Cristo and determines to find it, assume a stolen identity, and use his newfound obscene wealth to take revenge on the three men who conspired to put him away.

The Count of Monte Cristo is 1,200 pages long — not a weekend, beach read for sure — but I did not want it to end. Part of me STILL lives there, and this novel made such an astounding impression on me that I’ve had as much trouble escaping it as Dantes did escaping the dungeon fortress d’If.

There are so many great things to love about The Count of Monte Cristo, but it also left me with a deep, abiding hatred of legal sliminess and injustice that I’m sure will never leave me. It’s also a ripping good story, which is what I’m consciously turning my life into!

This Book on Amazon: The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas

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Every last one of these books made a monumental impression on me, and I would like nothing more than to see you read and enjoy them for the first time too.

I’m actually interested in what people think of the books I recommend, so I’ll be reading/responding to all the comments in my video review as well.

I actually want to know whether you’ve read these books, what you thought of them, whether you’d sell off a relative or two for the chance to read them again for the first time, all that stuff.

But I can’t force you to take an interest in any of them. To paraphrase The Count of Monte Cristo, all I can do is wait and hope.

Until next time…happy reading!

All the best,

Matt Karamazov

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