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70 of My Favorite Books of the Last 12+ Years
Matt Karamazov
December 17, 2025 ā¢ Estimated Reading Time: 46 minutes
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It took me forever to get this newsletter published, because I kept falling down rabbit holes, going over my list of 1,400+ books Iāve read since 2014 and picking out 70 of the very best ones. But here we are! Theyāre all below.
I kept the ā10 Bookā structure in place tonight, because I really do like to go deep with the books I recommend, but with 70 books I also didnāt want to overwhelm you (too much).
So what I did was go deep on 10 of my favorite books, and then just list out 5 more from each year, from 2014-2025. As always, The Reading Life is designed so you can just skip around to what interests you, and you can always read the web version for easier scrolling.
Oh yeah, and I also published three new YouTube videos (Iāve been busy):
There were some other books I wanted to tell you about as well (including one of THE best business books Iāve read all year), but you know what? Pretty sure 70 books is enough for tonight. And soā¦
Now, before our coffees get cold, letās hit the books!
Favorite Books from 2014:
Favorite Books from 2015:
Favorite Books from 2016:
Favorite Books from 2017:
Favorite Books from 2018:
Favorite Books from 2019:
Favorite Books from 2020:
Favorite Books from 2021:
Favorite Books from 2022:
Favorite Books from 2023:
Favorite Books from 2024:
Favorite Books from 2025:
Tonight, Inside The Reading Life, Weāve Got:
āHereās another tip thatās a few years old, but it still holds up wellā¦
A guy won the lottery. But he waited to come forward until he had time to call everybody he knew and ask this question:
āI need to borrow $1,000 right away, and I canāt tell you why I need it.ā
This cut down dramatically the number of people who came forward after it became public knowledge that heād won the lottery.ā
āThereās a difference between competition and enemy. You can list your competitors without any emotion. But who pisses you off? Whoās the person who said youād never make it?ā
Inside my private business mastermind, Creator Launch Academy, weāre tackling one nonfiction book per month and implementing its lessons inside our businesses.
This monthās book is Choose Your Enemies Wisely, by Patrick Bet-David, a great business book about getting strategically emotional, selecting an enemy that you can use to focus all your energies on success, and going all-out.
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, Iāve read exactly 1,438 books, including 86 books so far this year, and if youāre interested, hereās my full Reading List.
āThe existentialists remind us that human existence is difficult, and that people often behave appallingly, yet they also show how great our possibilities are.ā
Existentialism was one of my absolute favorite courses in university, where my professor, Samantha Copeland (I still remember!) had us read all these fantastic books by my then-new favorite philosophers.
People like Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, earlier proto-existentialists like Nietzsche, and so many others. It was a life-changing reading list, and Sarah Bakewellās book is a brilliant survey of those philosophersā lives, work, history, circumstances, and lasting impact.
Some people āgrow out ofā their youthful existentialist enthusiasms, but I never did, and I swear to you that I never will. Because Iāll never āgrow out ofā my love of life, my expansive personal ambitions, my explosive energy, or my commitment to squeezing every last bit of life out of my life.
I got a little carried away there and went two full paragraphs without summarizing what existentialism actually is. Wellā¦Iāll dispense with boring dictionary definitions and just tell you that itās a deeply-felt attitude toward life: itās a strong, unshakeable inner conviction that life is worth living; itās yours; and that you bear ultimate responsibility for living it.
Characterized by radical freedom, authentic being, and personal responsibility, itās the definition of high-agency. There may be certain āfacticitiesā of your existence - limits that shape the possibilities of your life - but you have unlimited freedom within those limits to make your life exactly what you want it to be. Thatās existentialism.
Naturally thereās more to it than that, and Bakewell covers a lot of ground in her book.
Yes, despite the life-changing university experience that I had, never underestimate professorsā ability to turn a thrilling personal philosophy into dreadfully boring drudgery, citations, and footnotes. But this book is not that. Itās exciting, itās alive, itāsā¦epic. And it may just turn you into something of an existentialist yourself!
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Why Itās One of My Favorite Books: It reminded me that there are actually people out there who are trying to make their lives mean something, and who refuse to die before theyāve done everything they can to become themselves.
āThereās no point in writing hopeless novels. We all know we're going to die; what's important is the kind of men and women we are in the face of this.ā
This is one of my all-time favorite books about writing, and I donāt think Iāve ever laughed out loud more often than I did while reading it, with the possible exception of the work of David Foster Wallace. To answer the most pressing question, āWhy is it called Bird by Bird?ā hereās the passage where the title comes from:
āThirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that heād had three months to write. It was due the next day.
We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead.
Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brotherās shoulder, and said, āBird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.āā
Thereās so much incredible stuff in here, itās just an inexhaustible well of wisdom, creativity, and motivation for making the craft of writing your lifeās work. And now, of course, I recommend it all the time.
I have more than eight pages of notes on everything from the advantages and pitfalls of actually getting published, to the more technical considerations of character, plot, and voice, all the way through to what books are actually for, and why any otherwise sane person would want to dedicate their life to writing them.
I honestly canāt say enough wonderful things about this book, and as far as Iām concerned itās an absolutely essential book āon writing,ā right up there with On Writing, by Stephen King, and The Writing Life, by Annie Dillard, among others.
Just like a really fantastic novel, I keep coming back to it, again and again, and every time I do, I come back richer and wiser than before, in all sorts of wonderful ways.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Why Itās One of My Favorite Books: Itās absolutely hilarious, for one thing. But for another, it made me proud to be both a writer and a human being. Honestly canāt recommend this one highly enough.
āEvery new book I read comes to be a part of that overall and unitary book that is the sum of my readings.
This does not come about without some effort: to compose that general book, each individual book must be transformed, enter into a relationship with the books I have read previously, become their corollary or development or confutation or gloss or reference text.
For years I have been coming to this library, and I explore it volume by volume, shelf by shelf, but I could demonstrate to you that I have done nothing but continue the reading of a single book."
You are about to begin reading my summary of the book, If on a Winterās Night a Traveler, by Italo Calvino. Itās a postmodern masterpiece, but can be confusing if youāre reading this while distracted. So go and close the door and pull the blinds. Turn off your notifications and tell your coworkers that for the next ten minutes, youāre not to be disturbed for any reasonā¦
Alright, the previous paragraph will make more sense if youāve read the first page of this book already (itās a takeoff on it). But If on a Winterās Night a Traveler is yet another example of why postmodern fiction is infinitely better than postmodern philosophy. It was my first introduction to the work of Italo Calvino, and it completely altered what I thought I knew about what books could do.
From the opening paragraph, Calvino pulls you right into the story, speaking directly to you, convincing you to ignore all distractions, give him your undivided attention, and immerse yourself in the story. At the end, he pulls off even more magic tricks (this summary contains spoilers, by the way), and just leaves you in awe. I loved it.
If on a Winterās Night a Traveler contains ten interconnected stories, the titles of which (itās revealed) combine at the end to form a complete sentence. Thatās one of the pleasant surprises in store for first-time readers of this ābook about books.ā
The meta-narrative features two readers who are gradually, inexorably brought together by stories, during which time the first reader attempts to solve a literary mystery involving missing chapters. He buys a new book at a bookstore, but is distressed to discover that the second chapter is missing - the pages are all blank.
Thus begins his search, which leads him to start and stop ten additional novels, each a part of a literary labyrinth that culminates in an ending that comes out of nowhere and drops like a hammer blow.
All ten novels that the first reader starts and stops are nothing like each other - different plots, styles, ambience, author - and each of them ends with a cliffhanger. Calvino constantly surprises the reader (and you, the meta-reader), catching you off-guard with abrupt twists and turns that lead you, carefully, imperceptibly, onward to a deeper mystery. I didnāt even know words could do that, until Italo Calvino showed me how.
Even though the book has a beginning and an end, itās infinite - timeless, inexhaustible. I canāt imagine that it would hit with the same force on a second reading, and Iāll have to admit that not everyone will āgetā Calvinoās style at all.
But I thought it was brilliant, and you can now return to work, seeing as youāre almost finished reading my summary of If on a Winterās Night a Traveler, by Italo Calvino.
Difficulty Rating: Moderate
Why Itās One of My Favorite Books: Calvino just obliterated every expectation I had coming into this book, and I was just left in awe with what he could do with 26 letters. Amazing, amazing, amazing book.
āAt some point you have to recognize what world it is that you belong to; what power rules it and from what source you spring; that there is a limit to the time assigned you, and if you don't use it to free yourself it will be gone and will never return.ā
Ryan Holiday has read this book more than a hundred times, and I can absolutely see why.
Iāve only read it twice, but whenever I come back to my notes (which is often), Iām struck again and again by its power and force. The term ālife-changingā is thrown around a lot on the internet, but this book is literally life-changing.
Meditations was originally kept as a private journal by the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who never intended to publish it. But as will become clear as you read through my notes, the entire world has been strengthened and improved because it was published.
Marcus Aurelius was the last of the āFive Good Emperors,ā and heās also considered (rightly) to be one of the most important Stoic philosophers, right up there with Seneca and Epictetus. Those are the three that come to my mind anyway whenever I think of Stoicism.
Meditations is even more astonishing when you think of the time period Marcus lived through, which was characterized by constant wars, invasions, plagues, revolts, strugglesā¦just on and on, and Marcusās book is his impeccably honest attempt to understand himself and make sense of the universe with all this going on around him.
I honestly canāt recommend this book highly enough, and I canāt even imagine a world without it. To think that it was almost lost to the endless abyss of time is unfathomable to me, and Iām just extraordinarily grateful every time I think about it that it wasnāt.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Why Itās One of My Favorite Books: I loved everything about this book. Marcusās poetic yet practical style, his searching honesty, his philosophical rigor. To say nothing of his appreciation of life. Another incredible read!
āThe self-image sets the boundaries of individual accomplishment. It defines what you can and cannot do. Expand the self-image and you expand the āarea of the possible.ā 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.ā
A big claim thatās made in this book is that itās almost literally impossible to act differently than our self-image of ourselves.
Or rather, itās possible, but we experience extreme cognitive dissonance ā mental discomfort ā when we do. This has proven itself over and over again in my own life, and it resonates with some of the best advice Iāve 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, thatās exactly the kind of life weāre going to end up living. Now, if you donāt want that kind of life for yourself, this book can help.
It's a multimillion-copy bestseller that explores the concept of āemotional surgery,ā 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 ā the whole world and everything in four easy steps, or whatever. This isnāt 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. Thereās so much gold here in this book, and any number of my notes on this book have the power to change a personās life, but it has to be applied, and it has to be lived.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Why Itās One of My Favorite Books: Itās one of the most genuinely helpful books Iāve ever read, and it changed the way I live. From the very time I started reading it until today. Which is one of the ātestsā of whether a book is good or not, by the way!
The 10 Pillars of Wealth:
#1: Reject "Get Rich Slow"
#2: Separate Time from Money
#3: You Must Be Better Than Everyone Else
#4: Every Little Thing is 100% Your Fault
#5: Adopt an Abundance Mind-Set
#6: Forget "What If" and Focus on "What Is"
#7: Map Out the Path to Your Goals
#8: Focus Solely on What Gets You Paid
#9: People Give Money to People Who Get People
#10: Find Competitive Friends and Suitable Mentors
Most people aren't wealthy. They may or may not be struggling financially, but the average person will never become rich, and this is because it's literally impossible both to remain average and make above-average money at the same time. You must elevate your financial game if you wish to become wealthy, and that process starts with embracing the mindsets and thinking patterns of the world's wealthiest people.
Now, obviously, there's a huge difference between a person's value to society and their value to humanity itself. Each and every individual's value to humanity is literally infinite - there are no āextraā people on this planet. But your value to society is what directly affects what you get paid, and the amount of wealth you can accrue in your lifetime. If you want to be rich, you must make yourself exceptionally valuable to society.
Alex Becker, the multimillionaire CEO of HYROS is uniquely suited to teach you about the mindsets and business tactics of the world's wealthiest people, because, well, he is one! He's built several successful businesses and grown them each to multimillion-dollar valuations, and he's done all this without taking on any outside investment or funding.
The 10 Pillars of Wealth will help you cut through the noise and filter out the nonsense that stops most people from being successful. It's an excellent mix of powerful mindset shifts and extremely practical application that will elevate your business game above all of your competitors.
At the end of the day, entrepreneurship is about being in charge and leading your own life. You're not waiting for someone to āpick youā to be wealthy - you're stacking the probabilities in your favor by taking massive action on the key levers that will allow you to make the most progress in the shortest amount of time.
Not being wealthy has nothing to do with your intrinsic human worth, of course, but becoming wealthy is also not just going to āhappenā by accident. You have to make it happen, you have to will it to happen, you have to align all your efforts and your thinking and your resources toward making it a reality, and it's books - and teachers - like these who can help you rise above the statistics and become rich.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Why Itās One of My Favorite Books: Iāve read this book twice, and each time I do, I keep getting richer and richer. Thatās one reason why itās a favorite of mine!
āIf you donāt have a plan, society does, and itās been planning your life for decades.ā
This book is the definition of ānot for everybody,ā but for the right person, it could be absolutely revelatory. Life-changing. A complete āBefore and Afterā separating your old self, your old way of life, and the way youāll live forever after.
No less than 18% of the text ended up directly in my notes, and on virtually every single page there was something fascinating that either got me thinking or got me moving.
The Art of Focus is a philosophy book, disguised as a personal development book, disguised as a business book. Itās directed more or less at creators who are looking for a way to monetize their minds and earn a full-time living producing meaningful work and distributing it online.
But virtually everyone could find something life-changing inside, and it contains layers and layers of meaning that each speak directly to where people currently are on their journey from mental slavery to conscious freedom.
If you donāt want the same quality of life as everyone else (and Iād argue that you donāt!), then focus is the cure. Yes, āfocusā in the sense of being able to pay attention to something longer than a beer commercial, but also in the sense of being able to separate action from distraction, meaning from meaninglessness, and success from failure.
For a long time now, Iāve rejected the future that was just āassignedā to me by society on the date of my birth: get good grades, go to college, work for forty years, collect gold watch, die. I already knew there was more to life before I read this book. But it gave me a sense of urgency, and personal power that wasā¦electric.
Here was Dan, living free and uncommitted - except to his purpose. Living consciously and intensely, following his own curiosity, earning hundreds of thousands of dollars per month doing so.
I was already a full-time creator myself, having struggled for years to āmake it,ā and now I just had this renewed sense that even more was possible, and that my future was wide open. Decades and decades of my life opened up right in front of me, and I knew that Iād never go back to my old life for as long as I lived.
The Art of Focus was my point of departure into my most exciting future.
Difficulty Rating: Moderate
Why Itās One of My Favorite Books: This book is one of THE reasons why Iām a full-time creator today, making a great living, talking about books on the internet. Reading some of my 18 pages of notes might tell you a bit more about why itās one of my favorite books too!
āIf you decide to follow me, I will take you to where I believe our knowledge of time has reached: up to the brink of that vast nocturnal and star-studded ocean of all that we still donāt know.ā
Iām more confused now about the nature and reality of time than when I started reading, but this is a beautiful book by theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli about how our common experience of the universe doesnāt reflect its true objectivity, and how much of what we thought was true about time is actually false or misleading.
Rovelli has spent his career grappling with quantum gravity, and heās among the founders of the loop quantum gravity theory. I can spell it, but donāt ask me to explain it! Heās also intensely interested in the history and philosophy of science, and he draws on the poetry of Horace ā and specifically his Odes ā to talk about how time is stranger than fiction.
For example, time moves faster not only depending on how fast youāre going (even I knew that), but also on whether youāre closer to the ground. Seriously, time literally moves slower for short people than it does for tall people.
In the same way that your feet are āyoungerā than your head, there is no āpresent momentā that is true for the universe at all times and in all places.
Just like it wouldnāt make sense to ask, āWhere is here in Beijingā when youāre in New York, the present moment in one part of the universe is totally separate from the present moment in other parts of the universe.
Itās almost like we create time, in the same way that as we travel to the end of the universe, we would create the boundary of the universe as we kept going.
Itās difficult ā notoriously so ā to say what time āis,ā but the closest approximation would be that it is a collection of events, a process. Time and the universe are flow, change, growth, entropy, decay ā in short, movement and dance.
As Jorge Luis Borges put it, āTime is the substance I am made of. Time is a river that sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire.ā
Difficulty Rating: Moderate
Why Itās One of My Favorite Books: Iāll read almost literally anything about the nature of time, so I was already hooked going into it, but this is an astonishing book. Poet or physicist, Carlo Rovelli could be either. Here in this book heās both.
āLet 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 ā I had never heard of it before ā 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 Itās One of My Favorite Books: This book made me want to launch myself into life and take over the fucking world. Honestly? It still kinda does. If youāre into philosophy at all, and you enjoy being alive at all, you might love it too.
āWhat we are, of that we make the world.ā
This book was my first introduction to Krishnamurti, and he took me completely by surprise with his total rejection of authority, and his insistence on seeking the truth for oneself, not relying on any external sources of knowledge or truth.
The Revolution from Within is a collection of public talks he gave throughout the world in the 1950s, where he asks, again and again, whether or not the mind can be free of its own projections, and whether the limited human mind can ever perceive the unlimited nature of ultimate truth.
In fact, Krishnamurti speaks mostly in questions. He proceeds very slowly, and uncovers more and more questions in slowly escalating stages, the whole point of which is to provoke independent thought and objectless awareness in the minds of his listeners.
If Jiddu Krishnamurti had a dominant message, it would be that there must be a revolution in our thinking. Not an outward revolution, which is just the continuation of conditioned thought, slightly adapted according to some other philosophy (whatever it may be), but a complete and total rejection of external authority, ideology, and belief.
The whole book is just incredible, covering ideas as diverse as war and global conflict, parenting and relationships, education, spiritual belief, critical thinking, self-awareness, and personal freedom.
After I finished reading the transcript of each lecture - and even while I was reading them - I could feel myself being transformed. I knew that Iād never live the same way again, see the world the same way again, and sure enough, I never did.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Why Itās One of My Favorite Books: This is one of those books that just gives you nowhere to hide. It forced me to confront the limits of my own knowledge, the beliefs that were holding me back, and the lies I was telling myself in order to live.
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OK, thatās it for nowā¦
Iāve got plenty more excellent book recommendations coming your way soon though!
Thereās also my YouTube channel, where I publish book reviews, reading updates, and more each week.
And if you want to learn how Iāve built an audience of 180,000+ followers across social media, became a full-time creator, and how Iām rapidly growing my audience and scaling my profits in 2025, join us inside Creator Launch Academy and thatās exactly what Iāll teach you ā weād 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 timeā¦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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