Five Books to Feed Your Mind

"Once you learn to read, you will be forever free." -Frederick Douglass

📚Hey, good evening!

First off, let's welcome all the new people who joined us since last time!

There are 1,847 of us in total now.

Thank you (yes, you!) for trusting me to bring you the absolute best book recommendations I can each and every week!

As always, these are long emails full of great books and tons of cool surprises.

But I never expect that everyone will be interested in every single thing I publish.

So, feel free to jump around and dive into whatever does interest you!

Today we've got...

  • An introduction to today's "5 Books"

  • The best of what I'm reading and sharing right now

  • Two fantastic online creators you need to know about

  • A new book alert from an incredibly impressive woman who can help you get into the best shape of your life

  • The latest book breakdown from the Stairway to Wisdom

  • A look at one of the most troubling mental states you could possibly inhabit, but one that we each need to enter - and probably will enter - in order to reorient our lives and get to where we want to go

  • My reaction to some of the most hilarious and bewildering 1-star reviews on Goodreads and Amazon

  • How to figure out what truly matters - and see that almost everything else doesn’t

  • How to “invoke the Muse” by maintaining prodigious levels of self-discipline and consistency

  • My top 5 book recommendations this week

  • A special gift for reading all the way to the end

In a single sentence…

A History of Reading is an astonishing tour of the history of, well, reading, full of incredible stories, tragic events, wonderful coincidences, and inspiring instances of the power of books and the written word.

Effortless is about challenging the idea that everything worth doing needs to difficult, and that the hard way is necessarily the best way.

Reinvent Yourself is a collection of blog posts from hedge fund manager and podcaster James Altucher, all about finding your way in life, staying relevant, and keeping pace with the future while living more or less on your own terms.

Modern Man in Search of a Soul is a comprehensive introduction to the work of great psychoanalyst Carl Jung, which includes his writings on topics like the primitive unconscious, and the relationship between psychology and religion.

The Dispossessed is a utopian novel by one of the all-time greats of science fiction, Ursula K. Le Guin, which goes into all sorts of topics like capitalism, individualism versus collectivism, and a whole bunch of other “isms.”

Here in this email are summaries of each book, along with a sample of my best notes, and if you want my complete set of notes on these books, you can find them on my  Patreon .

Pro Learning Tip:

 Getting a membership to Medium is one of the best investments I've ever made in my continuing education. The quality of the writing on Medium is superb, and some of the smartest, most interesting thinkers publish there regularly.

1) Not much news this week (I am actually pretty boring most of the time), but I did just cross 90,000 followers on Instagram! Thanks to everyone who…well basically everyone who’s ever followed me, liked a post, left a thoughtful comment, or sent me a nice message…thank you, everyone!

As part of the giveaway, I donated $90 in the winner’s name to First Book Canada, one of my favorite education charities. Congratulations to Jerry Sanders! You and I (and all of us) are helping kids everywhere discover the magic of books and reading.

2) It was also my favorite day of the YEAR recently…St. Patrick’s Day! Man, I had so much fun. It was just incredible.

I’m not even much of a drinker (although my coffees were fairly Irished-up all day long), but I don’t know…there’s just something about a whole bunch of people together at the same time, drinking for the same reason, having a good time, that’s always been very special to me.

St. Patrick’s Day is another day that makes me feel wonderful to be alive - and happy to share the planet with 8,000,000,000 other awesome people - and I hope you had (at least almost) as much fun as I did!

3) A few great books that I'm reading right now are  Persuasion, by Jane Austen,  Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen , and  Life Force, by Tony Robbins .

I'm also listening to  The Secret to Success, by Eric Thomas, on Audible. I used to love his YouTube videos - he’s got great energy - but I haven’t paid attention to him in a while! Time to rectify that.

Nowadays, I listen to about 3-4 audiobooks a month, and I always listen to them on Audible. No other audiobook service even compares. You can also get a 30-day free trial  right here .

You know I love to support new and old friends of mine who are doing awesome things (or simply amazing people I've stumbled upon around the internet), so here are a few people you should know about:

1) First up is my friend Alberto, who runs Books for Sapiens on Instagram and Twitter, and who shares more intellectually demanding books than you usually find on those platforms.

I mean, he shares plenty of popular books too, but I respect the fact that he’s not intimidated by those books that ask just a little bit more from us.

He’s a dedicated, knowledgeable reader himself, and he’s on a mission to help you choose the right book. I’ve been following him and sharing his stuff for a while, and it would be great if you would check him out as well!

You might just fall in love with reading even more.

2) The second person I want to introduce you to is someone I don’t know personally, but man, am I glad I found him. His name is Zach Pogrob and he is OBSESSED.

As someone who’s also obsessed with achievement, big goals, and living while I’m alive, I instantly resonated with Zach’s posts, and I’m a firm believer that becoming obsessed with something can make your life better.

Reading and lifting are my two obsessions, and Zach advises pursuing your obsessions relentlessly. You’re alive, he says, so you may as well act like it! Follow the path of obsession, and let it lead you to purpose, intensity, and more life.

Zach just reached 1,000,000 followers on Instagram, but he’s also on Twitter, and his newsletter, Ten Bullets, is pretty epic as well.

Do you know someone I should know?

I’m always looking to connect with accomplished, inspirational, and good-hearted people who share the same interests that I do…especially books!

So if you have a favorite author, influencer, creator, etc. that you think I might love to meet (and maybe feature here), let me know! You can just hit reply to this email anytime and tell me about them. Thanks!

Staying healthy and feeling good about yourself doesn't have to be complicated, and if your body isn't looking the way you want it to right now, perhaps you could try a simpler approach!

Even more importantly, looking good and feeling good isn't about beating yourself up or being too rough on yourself.

Health and fitness should make you feel GOOD - it should make your life BETTER, and picking up Emily Hu's book is a step in the right direction.

It's the perfect combination of supportive encouragement and expert advice.

She's a 3X world record-holding powerlifter who also has a Master's in Science degree in biomedical engineering from Duke University and is a published orthopedic researcher - so she obviously knows her stuff.

Her advice WORKS.

But her advice is also SIMPLE, pragmatic, and easy to follow.

Whereas other fitness authors try to stir up dissatisfaction with your body and make you DISLIKE yourself enough to buy their books...Emily takes the opposite approach because she's been where YOU are.

She went from NEVER having competed in sports before, to becoming an all-time world record holder with professional sponsorships in 3 YEARS, to being recruited by NBC for Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's The Titan Games, AND while working a full-time job in biomedical research the entire time.

She's got the elite, world-class knowledge to help you reach your goals, but she also knows what being healthy and feeling good about yourself can do for your self-esteem, your happiness, and your general enjoyment of life.

Fitness doesn't have to be overly complex, and it doesn't have to be an endless struggle.

Read Emily’s book and she will show you the way!

Having read it myself, I can HIGHLY recommend it to you, and you can find a link to the book right here!

Happy reading, and...happy lifting! 📚💪🏻

“Connecting is a philosophy of life, a worldview. Its guiding principle is that people, all people, every person you meet, is an opportunity to help and be helped.”

-Keith Ferrazzi, Never Eat Alone

 A Brief Summary of Never Eat Alone:

No one is self-made anymore, if they ever were at all. Total self-reliance doesn't exist either, which is actually great news for all of us, because we rise or fall together.

Connection and relationship are the law of the universe, and this book will help you put that law into action to build a powerful network that will help you realize your greatest ambitions.

In order to achieve what's possible for you in life and business, you need a strong, healthy network full of other altruistic individuals who want to see you succeed, and...more good news...it's never been easier - and more necessary - to do that as it is today.

Keith Ferrazzi became the Chief Marketing Offer at Deloitte & Touche Consulting, the youngest-ever CMO at Starwood Hotel & Resorts, then the CEO of Yaya Media, before starting his own company. He's built up a personal network of more than 10,000+ people that he can rely on to take his calls, and whom he can assist in helping to get what they want in life.

Never Eat Alone is one of the greatest networking books ever written - a certified classic - but it's not literally all about who you have dinner with. Not completely. It's so much more than that, and Keith uses both his own story and the stories of influential power connectors like Katherine Graham, Bill Clinton, and Dale Carnegie to illustrate his best tactics for gaining influence by being valuable to others and cultivating your network.

It's about becoming valuable to the people you're connected to and being a resource for them, someone your whole network can rely on to help them get things done. It's about winning yourself, while making sure that, at the same time, your friends are winning too.

Now is the most exciting time to be alive in the history of the planet, and more opportunities exist today to both get everything you ever wanted and to help other people do the same.

Goodwill isn't finite, and Ferrazzi demonstrates the truth of this statement throughout the entire book. As we assist others and accept their assistance in turn, we expand our total possibilities and begin to access our full potential - together.

The Valley:

“When a whole society is built around self-preoccupation, its members become separated from one another, divided and alienated. And that is what has happened to us. We are down in the valley. The rot we see in our politics is caused by a rot in our moral and cultural foundations - in the way we relate to one another, in the way we see ourselves as separable from one another, in the individualistic values that have become the water in which we swim."

-David Brooks, The Second Mountain

My sincere hope is that you never have to spend too much time in the "valley," because it's definitely not the kind of place you want to be.

The "valley" is David Brooks's term for the anguished season of searching and self-questioning that comes when you find out that the "first mountain" of worldly success and achievement was resting on air.

The entire edifice of success and achievement and "I don't need anyone's help to be free" that you've organized your whole life around comes crumbling down, and now you find yourself in the valley, wondering what to do and where to go next.

Now, there are two ways we fall from the first mountain and wind up in the valley. The first is when we reach the success that we've been striving for this whole time and we realize that it does nothing for us. We've reached this point that everyone and their brother is trying to get to - we finally made it! - and then we realize that it could never make us happy. It leaves us empty.

The other way occurs when we're still climbing, and we experience some radical shock or life event that boots us right off the first mountain and shows us clearly and immediately that we're headed for disaster.

In many ways, this is the best-case scenario, because we realize early on that the "prizes" that society dangles in front of us will never really fill us up and we need to embark on a search for what does actually matter.

Either way, most people do actually have to experience being in the valley at least for a little while, because we're not often motivated to make a change unless something hurts.

Usually, life on the first mountain isn't "that bad," and so we're never really forced to take stock of our direction. It's like the story of the guy who was sitting on a nail. When somebody asked him why he was sitting on it, he replied, "Because it doesn't hurt enough to move."

As Brooks explains, there is a long human history of entering and emerging from the valley:

It's exactly like Saint Augustine's "dark night of the soul" that he had to go through in order to find the meaning of his life. It's the same for everybody. These dark nights expose our perilous position on the first mountain and at dawn, they show us the path to the base of the second mountain:

Note: This is a sample from my other newsletter, Stairway to Wisdom. Along with the book breakdowns, you get a premium weekly newsletter packed with insights and ideas like this one. Get your 14-day free trial here .

I don't even know what to say. These 1-star book reviews on Goodreads and Amazon are just...BREATHTAKING. I mean, yea...well, you'll see when you watch the video. My favorite is the last 1-star book review. It's just one line, in all caps, it comes out of NOWHERE, and I can't stop laughing. Enjoy these epic 1-star book reviews and let me know which one was your favorite!

Essentialists, by definition, focus their limited time and attention on the activities and pursuits that are going to yield the most meaning, the highest rewards, and the largest returns on investment.

They know that almost everything doesn’t mean anything, but they also know that there are still a large number of valuable things that are drowned out by all this inconsequential nonsense.

Even though, statistically, almost nothing matters, Essentialists realize that there are things out there that matter an exceptional amount, and it’s their job to explore the world widely enough in order to find them. [ Read Time: 5 Mins ]

To gain the assistance of the “gods,” we first need to show up. Replace “gods” with “luck,” “the universe,” “probability,” or whatever else, but the fact remains: discipline, routine, and focus will take you where you need to go.

And sometimes, where you need to go is straight to your writing chair, painting easel, dance studio, squat rack, or workshop.

You need to be in the same place, at the same time, exhibiting the same high level of commitment to your chosen craft — you can’t let up for even a single day or even a moment.

Once you’re there, you need to really be there.

You need to say, aloud or to yourself: “This is the level of effort I’ve committed to. This is where I said I would be. And this is when I said that I would be there.” [ Read Time: 3 Mins ]

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You can absolutely judge this book by its cover, because it is exactly what it looks like: a history of reading. Not “the” history of reading, for reasons that Manguel will make clear in the end, but it’s easily one of the most fascinating and exciting books on the subject you’re ever likely to find.

Part of what makes this book so special is Manguel himself, and how he weaves personal stories of his own well-traveled life throughout, including how the famous writer Jorge Luis Borges came into the bookstore Manguel was working at as a teenager and asked Manguel to read to him; Borges had gone blind by this time.

There are chapters on “forbidden” reading, about the truly heinous attempts made by members of certain groups to stop members of other certain groups from reading; there are chapters on why and how human beings ever became able to read at all; there are chapters on libraries, reading at work, reading at school, reading in the unlikeliest of places.

Easily one of my favorite books, this one can be enjoyed by anyone who has ever had the entire course of their lives changed by a book. If you’re anything like me, you’ll finish the book gripped by this gratitude for the ability to read – and the easy access to books – and you’ll want the same ability and access for everybody the world over.

“And yet, all of a sudden, I knew what they were; I heard them in my head, they metamorphosed from black lines and white spaces into a solid, sonorous, meaningful reality. I had done this all by myself. No one had performed the magic for me. I and the shapes were alone together, revealing ourselves in a silently respectful dialogue. Since I could turn bare lines into living reality, I was all-powerful. I could read.”

***

“When I was ten or eleven, one of my teachers in Buenos Aires tutored me in the evenings in German and European history. To improve my German pronunciation, he encouraged me to memorize poems by Heine, Goethe and Schiller, and Gustav Schwab’s ballad ‘Der Ritter und der Bodensee,’ in which a rider gallops across the frozen Lake of Constance and, on realizing what he has accomplished, dies of fright on the far shore. I enjoyed learning the poems but I didn’t understand of what use they might possibly be. ‘They’ll keep you company on the day you have no books to read,’ my teacher said.

Then he told me that his father, murdered in Sachsenhausen, had been a famous scholar who knew many of the classics by heart and who, during his time in the concentration camp, had offered himself as a library to be read to his fellow inmates. I imagined the old man in that murky, relentless, hopeless place, approached with a request for Virgil or Euripides, opening himself up to a given page and reciting the ancient words for his bookless readers.

Years later, I realized that he had been immortalized as one of the crowd of roaming book-savers in Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. A text read and remembered becomes, in that redemptive rereading, like the frozen lake in the poem I memorized so long ago – as solid as land and capable of supporting the reader’s crossing, and yet, at the same time, its only existence is in the mind, as precarious and fleeting as if its letters were written on water.”

***

Menander: “Those who can read see twice as well.”

***

“Like no other human creation, books have been the bane of dictatorships.”

This is the follow-up to McKeown’s excellent book, Essentialism, which breaks down the art of stripping down your activities and efforts to what is, well, essential, and leaving it at that. We live in an age of limitless possibility and opportunity, but the price we pay for that is full consciousness of everything that we could do but don’t have time for. Essentialism was about simplifying our schedules and strategies, and Effortless is about reducing complexity and hardship.

Some things work the best and can help you attain the best results because they are hard, such as, say, doing squats, as opposed to leg extensions at the gym. There’s no question that squats deliver the most impressive gains in muscle mass as opposed to leg extensions, but squats are also really, really hard, which is why most people don’t do them.

However, equating difficulty with effectiveness is a dangerous error, says McKeown. Just because something is hard, doesn’t mean that it’s the best way to do things. What if our most challenging tasks could be made easier? That’s what Effortless is about.

The hero is not the person who stayed at the office until midnight, slaving away at an impossible task; the hero is the person who left early because they found an easier way to achieve the same results. Discern the difference between laziness and effectiveness, and effortless results become possible for you.

Another major theme here in this book is recovery and burnout, and I would say that it’s certainly the part of the book that has the potential to improve many people’s quality of life the most. Stress is literally killing the modern workforce, but Effortless is the antidote.

Inside its pages, you will learn about the Effortless State, Effortless Actions, and Effortless Results, and also about how to leverage your assets to bring more of what matters to you into your life and eliminate the excess.

“It’s like we all automatically accept that the ‘right’ way is, inevitably, the harder one. In my experience this is hardly ever questioned. Indeed, if you do challenge this sacred cow, it can be uncomfortable. We don’t even pause to consider that something important and valuable could be made easy. What if the biggest thing keeping us from doing what matters is the false assumption that it has to take tremendous effort? What if, instead, we considered the possibility that the reason something feels hard is that we haven’t yet found the easier way to do it?”

***

Effortless State: When you’ve put yourself in the optimal headspace and physical state to take on whatever it is that you have to do. When you’ve “sharpened the saw.” Now you can do some chopping.

Effortless Action: When you stop working past the point of diminishing returns, and instead maintain a system for doing high-quality work, consistently over time, without burning out.

Effortless Results: When the results of the work you put in now have beneficial and asymmetrical results down the line, such as when exercising now makes every consequent activity more enjoyable because you’re able fully to participate in it.

***

“Do not do more today than you can completely recover from today. Do not do more this week than you can completely recover from this week.”

***

Henry David Thoreau: “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”

This book keeps reinventing itself as it goes along, and, while it’s not exactly a book I “can’t stop thinking about,” I was able to find plenty of useful ideas here, and several that occupied my mind for hours.

It’s about reinvention, obviously, but since it’s mostly a collection of Altucher’s various blog posts, there were a few entries in here that were just tenuously tied to the topic of reinvention.

That’s not a criticism, by the way, but rather a gentle caution to expect lots of jumping around in terms of subject matter. We’ve got chapters on negotiation, what he learned from Elon Musk, what he learned from Richard Branson, what he learned from chess, what he learned from Pope Francis, etc. Reinvent Yourself is not about just one thing, but rather surrounds and attacks from the problem of change and growth from every possible angle.

One thing I always appreciate about Altucher’s writing though is that it’s honest and real, backed with real-life experience and a genuine love of communication via the medium of writing. He has to write; he can’t not write, and that’s what usually makes for great writing.

***

***

Pope Francis: “The media only writes about the sinners and the scandals, but that’s normal, because a tree that falls makes more noise than a forest that grows.”

***

This is one of the foundational books of 20th- century psychology, and Carl Jung has influenced everyone from Joseph Campbell to Jordan Peterson and me.

After his break with Freud, Carl Jung developed his own thinking with respect to the ego, primitive religion, the function of myth, and much more, all while respecting the fact that various approaches to psychology that differed from his still contained bits of truth. He kept the good, discarded the bad, and subjected his own ideas to the most rigorous scrutiny.

You might recall having heard of the “collective unconscious” – well that was one of his contributions to psychology, along with various approaches to understanding the self, and combating the alienation and disengagement from life experienced by many after the First World War.

Modern Man in Search of a Soul contains some of his most influential essays and writings and it’s a spectacular introduction to some of his ideas on how human beings can live forthrightly in the world; that is, with faith, hope, love, and insight.”

“Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses. I am the oppressor of the person I condemn, not his friend and fellow-sufferer.”

***

“Who are forgiven their many sins? Those who have loved much. But as to those who love little, their few sins are held against them.”

***

“The living spirit grows and even outgrows its earlier forms of expression; it freely chooses the men in whom it lives and who proclaim it. This living spirit is eternally renewed and pursues its goal in manifold and inconceivable ways throughout the history of mankind. Measured against it, the names and forms which men have given it mean little enough; they are only the changing leaves and blossoms on the stem of the eternal tree.”

***

“We have to grant to these persons that it is hard to see what other goal the second half of life can offer than the well-known goal of the first. Expansion of life, usefulness, efficiency, the cutting of a figure in social life, the shrewd steering of offspring into suitable marriages and good positions – are not these purposes enough?

Unfortunately, this is not enough meaning or purpose for many persons who see in the approach of old age a mere diminution of life, and who look upon their earlier ideals only as something faded and worn out.

Of course, if these persons had filled up the beaker of life earlier and emptied it to the lees, they would feel quite differently about everything now; had they kept nothing back, all that wanted to catch fire would have been consumed, and the quiet of old age would be very welcome to them.

But we must not forget that only a very few people are artists in life; that the art of life is the most distinguished and rarest of all the arts. Who ever succeeded in draining the whole cup with grace?”

Le Guin is one of my absolute favorite novelists, even though I didn’t love this book. It won a bunch of awards and sold a bunch of copies, so I may hold a minority opinion here, but I enjoyed The Lathe of Heaven much more.

But she’s a beautiful writer, and like I always say, reading her stuff out loud will show you how talented she really is. The first part of The Lathe of Heaven, for example, read aloud, is absolutely gorgeous writing, and there were flashes of that here too.

The basic storyline is that a brilliant physicist named Shevek leaves his home planet to visit the “mother” planet, Urras, which is billed as a utopia by its upper-class residents. Of course, not everyone on Urras believes it’s a utopia, and Shevek soon seeks to expose the inequality, scarcity, and fear that lies below the polished surfaces of Urras.

A few of the main themes here have to do with anarchism and capitalism, and when approached intelligently by someone as thoughtful and perceptive as Le Guin, books have the power to change minds and shift beliefs. I’ve always been a fan of her brand of feminism, and especially her biting brilliance as she points out what should be obvious to anyone paying attention.

She doesn’t hit you over the head with it, though, so her words actually do have the power to change minds, more so than if she were to just join in the regular shouting matches people seem to love.

Anyway, this may not be the best introduction to her work (I would probably start with A Wizard of Earthsea), but damn it, I liked it, and I’ll definitely continue working my way through her whole oeuvre.

“Sacrifice might be demanded of the individual, but never compromise: for though only the society could give security and stability, only the individual, the person, had the power of moral choice – the power of change, the essential function of life. The Odonian society was conceived as a permanent revolution, and revolution begins in the thinking mind.”

***

“Even where the green faded into blue distance, the dark lines of lanes, hedgerows, or trees could still be made out, a network as fine as the nervous system of a living body. At last hills rose up bordering the valley, blue fold behind blue fold, soft and dark under the even, pale grey of the sky. It was the most beautiful view Shevek had ever seen.

The tenderness and vitality of the colors, the mixture of rectilinear human design and powerful, proliferate natural contours, the variety and harmony of the elements, gave an impression of complex wholeness such as he had never seen, except, perhaps, foreshadowed on a small scale in certain serene and thoughtful human faces.”

***

“Paradise is for those who make Paradise.”

***

“The sunlights differ, but there is only one darkness.”

You made it to the end! Congratulations!

You're now among the rarest of the rare.

I mean, that was a lot of books!

But I hope you found something here that looked interesting!

Personally, I’m obsessed with sharing the magic of books and reading, and so I love it when one or more of my book recommendations “hits.”

Also, if you know someone who might love this newsletter, you can just send them this link!

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I also want to thank you for reading this newsletter all the way through to the end and to thank you for real, I’m going to give you a 1-month free trial to the Stairway to Wisdom.

That’s twice the free trial period that most people get, because people who finish what they start - and have the patience to do a lot of reading - are usually the ones who love the Stairway to Wisdom the most.

Enjoy!

And remember, you can just hit "reply" to this email to ask me a question or offer a book recommendation of your own. I may take a while to respond, but I read every one!

All the best,

Matt Karamazov

P.S. Whenever you're ready, here are three more ways I can help you apply the wisdom found in the greatest books ever written to your life:

  1. I’m going to be leaving some casual spots open for personal mentoring, alongside what I do for my monthly clients, and the first choice always goes to the people on my email list. Simply reply to this email if this is something you're interested in working with me on, and I'll let you know more about it, answer all your questions, etc. Areas I can help you with include reading more books and remembering more of what you read, growing your business, getting into better shape, and building mental toughness and resilience. You’ll work 1-1 with me, and together we’ll be lining up big breakthroughs for you every single month.

  2. I've released 50 complete, in-depth book breakdowns on the Stairway to Wisdom that respects both your time AND your intelligence and will help you become the person you've always known you were capable of being. Read them for free here.

  3. Join my free Substack publication, The Competitive Advantage, where I teach high-level, high-impact self-discipline tactics and strategies to help you progress toward your goals. You'll also join a supportive community of other winners all moving forward together in the direction of where we want to be in life. Join here.

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