Five Books to Feed Your Mind

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

Author

Matt Karamazov
May 11, 2023 • Estimated Reading Time: 34 minutes

📚Hey, good evening!

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

There are 2,089 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"

  • My personal news, and the best of what I'm reading and sharing right now

  • A new book alert that I’m EXTREMELY excited about (for obvious reasons)

  • The latest book breakdown from the Stairway to Wisdom

  • Adopting an abundance mindset

  • My Monthly Reading Recap for April!

  • STOP letting other people set the frame of your own existence

  • Quite possibly the rarest and most difficult psychological achievement

  • My top 5 book recommendations this week

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

In one sentence…

Zorba the Greek is one of the most life-affirming books ever, and it will shock you into wakefulness and full aliveness, making you want to shake off your apathy and fatigue and dive deeply into life.

Your Money or Your Life is a wonderful - and extremely practical - personal finance book that equates money with life energy, helping you ask the deeper questions about what you’re actually making money for, and whether there isn’t a better, more healthy way of spending it.

The Daily Laws takes Robert Greene’s hugely impactful books such as The 48 Laws of Power and presents one short chapter that you can read each day on subjects like strategy, seduction, power, human nature, and mastery.

The First and Last Freedom is a collection of public talks by the master Jiddu Krishnamurti, about subjects such as creativeness, life and death, truth, suffering, anxiety, unconditional love, perception, and so much more.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being is an existentialist novel dealing with the intertwining lives of several individuals – involved in something like a love triangle, but considerably more complicated than that – and the invasion of Czechoslovakia in the spring of 1968 by the Soviet Union.

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) Alex Becker is back making videos!! Man, I was way too excited about this.

For those of you who don’t know, he just sold his company, Hyros, for $110,000,000 and now he’s back to making YouTube videos about building businesses and making money for entrepreneurs who are just starting out.

He’s actually got a GREAT book called The 10 Pillars of Wealth, for which I wrote a complete book breakdown and that you can find at the Stairway to Wisdom for free!

But yea, subscribe to his channel too if you’re into stuff like that! I find myself watching his older videos over and over again for motivation, and to remind myself of what’s really important.

2) My Monthly Reading Recap video on YouTube is live now! Finally! I mean, it’s like, mid-May!

Anyway, in this 9-minute video, I talk about the five great books I finished last month, as well as give a few bonus recommendations of other, similar books you might like.

Enjoy!

I'm also listening to  Hustle Harder, Hustle Smarter, by 50 Cent, on Audible. It’s read by him, and I’m getting a ton out of it. He’s a wicked-smart businessman and a super valuable mentor. I also loved the book he co-wrote with Robert Greene, The 50th Law!

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 .

The seven rules to follow to realize your true purpose in life—distilled by Arnold Schwarzenegger from his own journey of ceaseless reinvention and extraordinary achievement, and available for absolutely anyone.

The world’s greatest bodybuilder. The world’s highest-paid movie star. The leader of the world’s sixth-largest economy. That these are the same person sounds like the setup to a joke, but this is no joke. This is Arnold Schwarzenegger. And this did not happen by accident.
 
Arnold’s stratospheric success happened as part of a process. As the result of clear vision, big thinking, hard work, direct communication, resilient problem-solving, open-minded curiosity, and a commitment to giving back. All of it guided by the one lesson Arnold’s father hammered into him above all: be useful. As Arnold conquered every realm he entered, he kept his father’s adage close to his heart.
 
Written with his uniquely earnest, blunt, powerful voice, Be Useful takes readers on an inspirational tour through Arnold’s tool kit for a meaningful life. He shows us how to put those tools to work, in service of whatever fulfilling future we can dream up for ourselves. He brings his insights to vivid life with compelling personal stories, life-changing successes and life-threatening failures alike—some of them famous; some told here for the first time ever.
 
Too many of us struggle to disconnect from our self-pity and connect to our purpose. At an early age, Arnold forged the mental tools to build the ladder out of the poverty and narrow-mindedness of his rural Austrian hometown, tools he used to add rung after rung from there. Now he shares that wisdom with all of us. As he puts it, no one is going to come rescue you—you only have yourself. The good news, it turns out, is that you are all you need.

“There is no end point to this process. There’s no mountaintop. You’ll never ‘arrive.’ Life promises you an adventure and nothing more.”

-Ayodeji Awosika, Real Help

This book isn't going to rescue you. For better or for worse, that's something you'll have to do for yourself.

The truth, however, is that facing the fact that no one is going to come save you is what's actually going to save you. And I can't think of too many people better qualified to deliver this critically important message than Ayodeji Awosika.

Awosika is one of the most popular writers on Medium.com ever, with nearly 100,000 followers, a TEDx speaker, a self-taught 3-time author, and a world-renowned personal development expert who reaches millions of readers per year with his message of radical personal responsibility and radical self-determination.

This is a book that tells you what you need to know, not what you want to hear. This is a book that tells you how the world actually works, not how you think it should work.

Not everyone will resonate with his somewhat harsher, more realistic style, but one thing that no one can ever say about his writing is that he's being inauthentic or dishonest. There may not be Absolute Truth in this world, but this book represents his hard-won truth, which is damn near close enough, as far as I can tell.

Read this book if you want to learn from the valuable experiences of someone who has actually achieved the kinds of results that most of us want in our own lives:

*The freedom to do work that excites you and stretches you creatively.

*The opportunity to make a great living doing what you love and what you're good at.

*The mental toughness necessary to thrive in an unfair world.

*The ability to build life-changing habits and execute them on auto-pilot (even if you’ve tried and failed before).

All of the advice in this book has been battle-tested in the real world. You and I live in the real world too, and if we want to succeed there, we have to learn how to be both optimistic and realistic at the exact same time.

We need to learn how to hold two different, contradictory, opposing viewpoints in our minds at the same time without retreating to the false comfort and safety of either one of them.

There are very few guarantees in life, and you know this already. But one of them is that your existence can become an incredible adventure, once you choose to see it that way. And, crucially, once you decide once and for all to take action to shape your own future.

The real world has broken untold masses of people before our time, but it doesn't have to break us. You can break the pattern and break free. You have personal power and agency, and now you also have this book.

“It’s impossible to think that you could become a billionaire without believing that money is abundant.”

The world is never going to run out of money. It's just not going to happen. For the people who are out there solving problems, engaging with opportunities, and taking massive action to accomplish their objectives, money is constantly available, just waiting to be seized and put to work making their visions a reality.

For all the eye-roll-inducing talk of "abundance" and "manifesting" and all that...the basic idea is solid. What you focus on tends to become your reality, and you can choose either to focus on all the broke people out there or all the rich people out there and what they're doing.

Money flows to the problem-solvers of the world, and there are an astronomical number of ways to make money in this world. This is true because we will also never run out of problems to be solved! If you say that you can't find a business to start, what you're basically saying is that the world is perfect and needs nothing.

While it's true that millions of people are being lifted out of extreme poverty every year and 1,700 new American millionaires are created every day, it's also true that we still face extreme challenges that will require dedicated, creative problem-solving in order to overcome. We need entrepreneurs, and for those who build the skills necessary to solve the world's problems - even on the local level - abundance will be their everyday reality.

There is an unlimited amount of money out there, and the good news is that you can take virtually unlimited action to get it. You just have to identify a profitable opportunity, gear up, and get to work. And instead of focusing on the negative side of the equation (scrimping and saving), focus on the positive side of the equation, which means focusing on making more money. There's a limit to how much money you can save, but there's no limit to how much money you can make.

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 .

Here in my Monthly Reading Recap, I talk about the 5 books I read in April of 2023, including two that COMPLETELY surprised me with how great they were (even though they shouldn't have).

Also in the video are about a dozen more book recommendations that you might also enjoy if you like the main books that I read last month.

Have you read any of these books before? Let me know in the comments! I read every one of them.

We need to control the frame of our own existence if we want to be free.

And by “frame” I mean the boundaries or paradigm within which we operate. The “rules of our game,” so to speak. The rules and standards that we set for ourselves that guide our behaviors and shape our lives.

Stop letting other people set the limits of your own life. [ Read Time: 5 Mins ]

What are the chances that your average 18-year-old — just heading off to university for the first time — is going to be able to make the correct decision about what they want to do for the rest of their natural lives?

And yet, this is exactly what we expect them to do when we ask them to declare their major at university.

Hell, what are the chances that your average forty-year-old is going to know what they want to be when they grow up?

The brilliant psychologist Abraham Maslow thought that personal clarity on this issue was not to be taken for granted. Whatever our age, it’s not a given that we’re sure to find out exactly what we want to do with our one infinitely unlikely, finite existence. [Read Time: 3 Mins ]

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Well, great, now I have to read every single other book that Kazantzakis has ever written. Seriously, Zorba the Greek is one of the most powerful, life-affirming books you’re ever likely to come across, and I don’t think that anyone who is somewhat alive and breathing can read this book and sit still.

But yes, I might have to mention that since it was written in 1941 it is certainly the product of a different time and it contains some, “unpleasantness” where women are concerned. But I mean, we’re all adults here. We don’t have to agree with every sentiment or the views and opinions of every character in every situation.

Instead, we can sense the Life Force leaping off every page, the way that Kazantzakis shakes us each by the shoulders, shouting into our ears, ‘Live! Live now! Breathe deeply! While you still can!’

Wait, what is the book about? Of course. Well, the unnamed narrator of the book goes into business with an older man, Zorba, and they both go on to operate a lignite mine on the island of Crete. The narrator is based on Kazantzakis and Zorba is a real person whom he met early in the 20th century and who irrevocably changed the direction of Kazantzakis’s one and only life. He also changed mine.

“He stares likewise with protruding eyes and asks in the same way when astonished by the sight of a man, or a blossoming tree, or a refreshing glass of water. Each day Zorba views everything as though for the first time.”

***

“Those two paths are equally uplifting and rugged; both can lead to the summit. To act as though death does not exist and to act with death in mind at every moment – perhaps both paths are the same.”

***

“The earth’s revolving wheel, the world’s four faces that are illumined one after the other by the sun, life’s passing and our passing with it. The voices of those cranes, echoing once again within me, was the terrible forewarning that this life is unique for each human being, that no other life exists, that we may enjoy it, enjoy it here, that it passes quickly, and that no other opportunity will be given us in the whole of eternity.

Hearing this message that is so merciless yet so filled with mercy, one’s mind vows to conquer its own degradation and weakness, to conquer laziness and great futile hopes in order to catch full hold of every split second that is departing forever.”

***

“No other Paradise exists, my poor friend. Don’t listen to the priests. No other Paradise exists!”

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, and 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 are 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.

“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.”

***

“What kind of society turns its young people into a profit centre for the debt industry?”

***

“Most people have no idea how much money has entered their lives, and therefore no idea how much money could enter their lives.”

***

“Financial independence is freedom from the fog, fear, and fanaticism so many of us feel about money. If this sounds like peace of mind, it is. Fiscal bliss. And if this sounds as unattainable as being rich, it isn’t.”

I began my introduction to Robert Greene years ago with his book, The 48 Laws of Power, and I’ve read almost every book he’s ever written since. And I’ll get to the one I missed! Don’t worry!

It was actually partially because of The 48 Laws that I was inspired to take notes on every single book that I read, and that process has led me, 8 years later, to this, my 1,024th Finished Book, along with thousands and thousands of pages of notes from some of the most spectacular books ever written. In a very real way, I owe Robert Greene a debt of immense gratitude.

This one, however, is much shorter than a thousand pages, and it’s essentially a daily devotional, with one short entry each day on subjects like human nature, power, seduction, mastery, and full aliveness – which, for Greene means facing up to the reality of death head-on. It’s a brave writer – or, basically anyone – that can do that, especially since so many people still refuse to believe that death is an essential part of life.

I finished the whole book in about two weeks, while simultaneously reading other books, but you could easily take just one entry each day, apply it rigorously, and watch your life improve before your very eyes.

“Every task you are given, no matter how menial, offers opportunities to observe this world at work. No detail about the people within it is too trivial. Everything you see or hear is a sign for you to decode.”

***

“Always stick to what makes you weird, odd, strange, different. That’s your source of power.”

***

“When you are trying to figure out the motives behind some murky action, look to see whom it really benefits in the end, and then work backward. Self-interest rules the world.”

***

“Life is so harsh and distressing that people who can manufacture romance or conjure up fantasy are like oases in the desert: everyone flocks to them. There is great power in tapping into the fantasies of the masses.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti is one of my biggest intellectual influences, and ever since reading The Revolution from Within, hardly a day goes by where I don’t think of something he said, or a previous belief of mine that he absolutely extinguished.

This book is a collection of his talks, published in 1954, along with some questions and answers near the end where he discusses things like creativeness, life and death, truth, suffering, anxiety, unconditional love, perception, and so much more.

Trying to explain how life appears to someone after reading him is like trying to explain a rainbow to someone who’s never seen one.

“Without self-knowledge, what you think is not true.”

***

“If you do not change now, you will never change, because the change that takes place tomorrow is merely a modification, it is not transformation. Transformation can only take place immediately; the revolution is now, not tomorrow. When that happens, you are completely without a problem, for then the self is not worried about itself; then you are beyond the wave of destruction.”

***

“Love is not different from truth. Love is that state in which the thought process, as time, has completely ceased. Where love is, there is transformation. Without love, revolution has no meaning, for then revolution is merely destruction, decay, a greater and greater ever-mounting misery. Where there is love, there is revolution, because love is transformation from moment to moment.”

***

“You may wander all over the earth, but you have to come back to yourself.”

I would classify this an existentialist novel, and it deals with the intertwining lives of several individuals – involved in something like a love triangle, but considerably more complicated than that – and the invasion of Czechoslovakia in the spring of 1968 by the Soviet Union.

Kundera has denied that his novels contain any deeper meaning or ideas, but this one quite explicitly centers around Friedrich Nietzsche’s thought experiment of the “eternal recurrence,” whereby everything that happens in our lives has always happened, an infinite number of times, stretching backward and forwards through eternity.

The interplay of lightness and heaviness concerns the question of whether our future has yet to be determined, or if the “heaviness” of fate and the eternal recurrence places necessary restrictions on our freedom to act. One character specifically, Tomas, starts out unsure whether any commitment at all is worthwhile – in love or otherwise – since we can’t live our lives over again and test whether the decisions we make are the right ones.

These questions and answers are lived through the experiences of Tomas, who enters into a polygamous relationship with both Tereza and Sabina – and their experiences as well – and through the experience of Franz, who is dating Sabina.

As for choice and responsibility, against Tomas and indeed perhaps against Nietzsche Alan Watts would say that in an infinite universe, it’s literally impossible to make a mistake. “Free will” doesn’t mean that lonely, isolated individuals make choices within a cold, indifferent universe, but rather that the total universe is a system that “peoples,” much the same as an ocean “waves.” What we do is what the entire universe is doing in the particular time and place that you call the here and now. Now wouldn’t that be something!

“There is no means of testing which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison. We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold.”

***

“Saturday found him for the first time strolling alone through Zurich, breathing in the heady smell of his freedom. New adventures hid around each corner. The future was again a secret.”

***

“But is not an event in fact more significant and noteworthy the greater the number of fortuities necessary to bring it about? Chance and chance alone has a message for us. Everything that occurs out of necessity, everything expected, repeated day in and day out, is mute. Only chance can speak to us.”

***

“Waking up was sheer delight for him: he always showed a naïve and simple amazement at the discovery that he was back on earth; he was sincerely pleased.”

Today’s Five Books on Amazon:

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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!

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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:

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    Simply reply to this email or click here 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.

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    You’ll work 1-1 with me, and together we’ll be lining up big breakthroughs for you every single month.

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