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📚Hey, good evening!

Tonight we’ve got five VERY different books, but each of them were spectacular in their own way.

But we’ll get into those soon enough.

Here are the books I finished this week:

Having It All, by John Assaraf (Great little book on goal setting and achievement by one of the only “positive thinkers” you can trust)

Words Are My Matter, by Ursula K. Le Guin (Spectacular collection of essays by one of the most brilliant writers of the last 100 years)

No B.S. Business Success in The New Economy, by Dan S. Kennedy (The millionaire-maker Dan Kennedy is at it again!)

The Six-Word Secret to Success, by Earl Nightingale (Wonderfully optimistic, helpful book by the famous radio host and author of The Strangest Secret)

I also published a new YouTube video (I plan to publish a LOT more videos next year), and it’s about the 7 books I’d sell my own mother to read again for the first time. Hope you like it!

But hey, let’s get into today’s Five Books!

Today we've got...

• 📚 An introduction to today's "Five Books"

• 🗨 The book quote of the week

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

• 📩 Five of my favorite newsletters that I always open

• 📖 A new book alert: featuring one of the books I’m MOST looking forward to reading, out of everything that’s come out recently

• 📜 The latest book breakdown from the Stairway to Wisdom

• ⏰ Time audits, and why you should be performing them regularly

• 💸 7 books I’d sell my own mother to read again for the first time

• 💪 The ONLY way you’re going to win in 2024

• 📚 My top 5 book recommendations this week

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

1. The Fun of It, by Amelia Earhart

2. Discipline Equals Freedom, by Jocko Willink

3. Evicted, by Matthew Desmond

4. The Ambassadors, by Henry James

5. The End of Everything, by Katie Mack

In one sentence…

The Fun of It is the autobiography of Amelia Earhart, an aviation pioneer, and the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, who also mysteriously disappeared mid-flight years later.

Discipline Equals Freedom is an uncompromising book about self-discipline and getting after your goals by the intimidating-but-really-a-good-dude former Navy SEAL, Jocko Willink.

Evicted is a heartbreaking book about homelessness in America, and it won pretty much every award a book could win.

The Ambassadors is an absolutely perfect novel by the great Henry James, about a dissolute, wayward son living in Paris and the quiet, unassuming, trusting father sent all the way from America to bring him back home.

The End of Everything is an absolutely amazing astrophysics book about how the world is going to end! Spoiler Alert: Not well!

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 .

Full Breakdown of This Book

1) I told you guys LAST week that there wasn’t much news?

Well this week there’s even less. I spent 30+ hours editing my latest YouTube video and learning new editing techniques in Premiere Pro. Then I worked out. Then I read books for the rest of the week and posted on social media.

NOT exciting.

But that’s the “boring” work that leads to all the exponential progress in life!

2) A few great books that I'm reading right now are Plagued by Fire: The Dreams and Furies of Frank Lloyd Wright, by Paul Hendrickson, Become Who You Are, by Ryan A. Bush (review copy), and Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes!

I'm also listening to  Living Untethered, by Michael A. Singer on Audible. It’s read by him, which is usually what I look for in an audiobook! I don’t know, it just adds a little something to have the author narrate his own book.

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 .

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Choose Your Enemies Wisely: Business Planning for the Audacious Few, by Patrick Bet-David

This is one of the books I’m MOST looking forward to reading, and as you may know, in the past, I’ve written complete breakdowns of Bet-David’s two previous books, Your Next Five Moves, and Doing the Impossible. 

I won’t repeat what it says in the Amazon description (below), but Patrick Bet-David has been a tremendously positive influence on me these past few years, not just in business but in life.

Choose Your Enemies Wisely isn’t on my bookshelf yet, but it will be before the week is out! It might belong on yours too!

Here’s the book description from Amazon to give you even more context:

What’s the difference between your competitor and your enemy?

You know who your competitors are. You keep tabs on them regularly, and can list them calmly, along with their strengths and weaknesses.

But your enemies are a whole other matter. They’re the haters and the doubters who said you’d never make it, the ones who stomped on your dreams. When you think about your enemies, you get emotional. You feel like you won’t let anything—or anyone—stop you.

In Choose Your Enemies Wisely, Patrick Bet-David, #1 Wall Street Journal bestselling author, founder of Valuetainment, and host of The PBD Podcast, shows how to harness that emotion to turbocharge your business, dominate this year, and grow for generations after.

But first, you need to choose your enemies wisely.

Bet-David has spent years perfecting the system that led to the knockout success of his own financial services company. Now, Bet-David shares the secret behind this system: his 12 Business Building Blocks, which will teach you how to seamlessly blend emotion and logic in your business plan.

Both a practical document for achieving goals and the fuel needed to fire up yourself and your team, this plan goes beyond the “how” and digs deeper into the “why”: not only how you’ll get funding, but why you need long-term vision; why you must build a culture that makes employees want to run through walls; why you have to know the enemy you’re out to prove wrong.

Straightforward and simple, the steps in this book will lead you to move the levers that create exponential growth and lasting success.

Read Choose Your Enemies Wisely if you are a visionary, dreamer, and big thinker. Where you are now in your business journey doesn’t matter. By following Bet-David’s plan, you will set up your business for sustainable success and accomplish your most audacious goals.

​ You Can Find More About the Book  ​ Here 

 A Brief Summary of No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs:

This book could add years to your life, and that's not an exaggeration in the slightest. It'll certainly save you thousands of hours worth of the most precious natural resource in this universe: time.

Dan Kennedy is the multimillionaire author of an entire series of books for entrepreneurs, but this one can and probably should be read by just about everyone, if for no other reason than that Dan's one of the very few people I've encountered who truly and honestly - viscerally understands the true value of time.

He understands its supreme importance, its utter irreplaceability, and also, in the case of entrepreneurship, how to turn time into wealth. That's what this book is about. It's about more than "just" money though.

Dan's is a radical, obsessive approach to time management that may be your best defense against the relentless onslaughts of what he calls "Time Vampires" and the relentless demands on your time, focus, and attention that come with living in the modern world.

Simply put, he's a phenomenon. For starters, the guy almost exclusively communicates with his business clients via fax. This is because he found that way more thought tends to go into a fax, as opposed to when you hand over your email address and anyone can bother you at any time with the smallest thing that popped into their head. But he's even more extreme than that.

I mean, fax machine...that's pretty extreme, and there are people who misunderstand the true purpose of forcing people to communicate with him that way. But he also surrounds himself with intense, visual reminders of the relentless passing of time, such as the hangman's noose he has facing him at his desk. Not. Subtle.

For out-of-town clients, he also never travels to them, and to eliminate this risk demands that they pay for a private jet(!) if they want him to come to them. Again, this is easy to denounce as "diva" behavior from a man playing power games because he can. But I stress again that this is not the point.

Faced with a choice of taking a cheaper flight to come and see him, or paying for Kennedy to fly private, they just end up coming to him, saving him who-knows-how-many hours of travel. Time he could more profitably put into his business, his writing, and his life. It's all strategy.

If you have more ideas than time, you'll find exactly what you're looking for in this book. Still, I would encourage you to look beyond his specific implementation and find what will work for you. He's not suggesting that everyone demand to be flown around in private jets and only use fax machines; he's just trying to get you to realize that your time has to be protected at all costs against its thoughtless and/or malicious waste.

The supreme importance of remaining hyper-conscious of the passing of time is also stressed in this book. Too many people seem to be okay with trading their lives for likes on social media, wasting infinitely valuable hours on apps whose very business model depends on getting you addicted. Like a casino! More on that in Key Idea #1.

All told, this is definitely a book you may want to keep close by as you start taking back your calendar, dodging pointless meetings, and driving stakes into the hearts of Time Vampires. I came away with 15 full pages of notes, and Dan's strategies and outlook made a profound difference in how I live my life and how I spend my time - which is pretty much the same thing.

Click to Read the Full Breakdown for Free

Regular Time Audits:

The best way to start managing your time is to figure out where you’re spending it now.

I'm always surprised (and a little horrified) when I run into people who know EXACTLY where their money has gone but can't remember ANYTHING about how they spent their time.

This is exactly backward.

But by tracking your time (performing regular “time audits”), you can begin to spot inefficiencies right away and make better plans in the future to help you avoid common errors.

Most people will never do this, which is why most people will never have enough time.

I made a (very) short video about it for my new time management course, Time Mastery, which isn’t free, but which you can preview here. 

You can get as detailed as you want, but I recommend tracking your time in half-hour blocks and, at the end of each half-hour, simply recording what you did during that time.

Then, using this information, you can guard against similar inefficiencies in the future. Repeat regularly.

Further Reading: Time Mastery

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

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

All 7 of these books were DEEPLY transformational for me, each one marking off distinct Before/After periods in my life.

From the moment I finished these books...

My life and the rest of the world have looked and felt COMPLETELY different.

I've literally never been the same since reading them for the first time, and to be able to go back and do that AGAIN?! Damn. I mean, maybe I wouldn't sell my MOTHER...but possibly a nephew or something.

Anyway, enjoy the video, share it with someone you think would like these books, and hey...happy reading :)

[ Watch Time: 22 Minutes ]

The ONLY Way You’re Going to Win in 2024 is by Ignoring EVERYBODY

All progress is usually more difficult in the beginning, but winning the game of business (or whatever game you’re playing) is a hell of a lot harder with all the manifold distractions assaulting your synapses and attention spans during the course of even a single day.

No wonder that nobody around you is able to get anything important done.

No wonder they’re behind, unfulfilled, struggling to face the day, much less build momentum in their lives and make big strides forward. [ Read Time: 7 Mins ]

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

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 article, 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. [Read Time: 11 Mins ]

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This autobiography was an unplanned bookstore find – I didn’t even know she wrote one – but when I saw that Amelia Earhart the famous pilot had an autobiography I bought it immediately. It did not disappoint!

She was the first woman to fly solo over the Atlantic Ocean, and she inspired a generation of men and women to follow their dreams before she mysteriously disappeared in 1937 while attempting to circumnavigate the globe. 

She’s also really, really funny, which I didn’t expect, and she had a deep personal history of reading, which didn’t surprise me one bit. Combine her natural ability and curiosity, her supportive parents and her well-stocked library, and there weren’t many obstacles that could have blocked this lady’s way. 

Her optimism for the future was inspiring as well, not to mention her leadership ability in the field of education.

She didn’t buy for a second the idea that only men could fly or that girls shouldn’t have the same supportive and aspirational upbringing either. She wasn’t like, militant or anything about it – she was just a positive force for progress and growth and her life is absolutely a testament to that. 

There’s also quite a bit of history in here about the first flights, first airports and first discoveries, etc. - some of which are hilarious, and all of which make you glad that history is populated with brilliant stars like Amelia Earhart. I love my parents – indeed, they’ve given me exactly the same kind of support that Amelia’s did – but I can confidently state that with a mother like Amelia Earhart, a child could overcome anything.

A SAMPLE OF MY BOOK NOTES FROM THE FUN OF IT: 

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Click to Download My Notes from 1,200+ Books

This book packs a huge motivational punch, even though, ironically, motivation and discipline couldn't be more different from each other.

You see, motivation can't be trusted. It can't be relied upon, since it comes and goes with the way you feel. Discipline, on the other hand, is your friend for life.

Motivation can never be allowed to dictate action, says Willink. Instead, you need to do what needs to be done, regardless of whether or not you actually feel like doing it. That’s the essence of self-discipline, of being an adult.

Jocko Willink's methods for success were developed in the SEAL Teams, where he spent most of his adult life, enlisting after high school and rising through the ranks to become the commander of the most highly decorated special operations unit of the war in Iraq. That's where he draws much of his credibility from.

This is a very short book - one you could read in a little more than an hour, I’d say - but it’s right up there in terms of power with David Goggins’ book, Can’t Hurt Me.

Jocko's book includes strategies and tactics for conquering weakness, procrastination, and fear, and in this breakdown, we'll cover important ideas like binary decision-making, as well as examine the positive use of aggression and the insidious natures of hesitation and weakness.

However, as the title implies, the whole project is mainly about freedom. Freedom from enslavement to your own mind, to addictions, to compulsions of all kinds. Freedom from the seductive call of laziness, indolence, and sloth.

Jocko also makes these valuable lessons easy to remember and apply. In the book, there are bolded passages and ALL CAPS in some places for emphasis, and his incredibly motivating and powerful ideas are captured in short, pithy phrases that you could carry around with you for life. And you probably should.

A SAMPLE OF MY BOOK NOTES FROM DISCIPLINE EQUALS FREEDOM: 

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Click to Download My Notes from 1,200+ Books

This nonfiction account of the nationwide scourge of homelessness in America has won pretty much every book award that I could name off the top of my head and dozens that I couldn't.

To name just a few, it's won The Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, The PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction, The Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, the Hillman Prize for Book Journalism, and many, many more.

So, yes, it's good.

In the book, Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond takes to the field and follows eight families in Milwaukee as they battle the indignities and hardships of being poor in 21st-century America. Economic exploitation is nothing new, but here, Desmond actually leaves the protected enclosure of academia and spends a significant amount of time experiencing first-hand what millions of Americans live with each and every day.

As Desmond says:

A SAMPLE OF MY BOOK NOTES FROM EVICTED: 

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Click to Download My Notes from 1,200+ Books

Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to. The famous line from this phenomenal, yet extremely challenging book!

Henry James, brother of the famous psychologist William James, is the kind of writer who can take a reader like me to Paris – a city I’ve never been to – and make me feel like I can see and feel and hear everything that’s going on; then, he can drop me in the middle of characters like Lambert Strether and Chad Newsome and make me never want to leave!

I just want to stay there with all of them and keep on living!

The brief plot overview is that an American, Lambert Strether is set to be married to the wealthy Mrs. Newsome, who then sends him off to Europe so that he can retrieve her son, Chad, from what she can only believe is an aimless, contemptible life in Paris.

We’re led to believe that the engagement might be off if Strether fails in this, but then again, he might be so transformed by his stay in Paris that it may not matter. We have to read and see!

This is one of Henry James’s three final novels, and it’s absolutely one of his most difficult ones. This is not easy reading. Just the complex sentence structure and confusing syntax makes me think of him as something like an early-19^th-century David Foster Wallace. Which, of course, isn’t a bad thing! Just don’t go think you’re going to take this one to the beach and read it in a single weekend.

And why would you even want to with a book like this!

The Ambassadors is full of life and heart, and Strether’s moral transformation at the hands of the refined Chad and the beguiling city of Paris itself is simply wonderful to behold. James is also very funny, though some of the jokes don’t land as well when you’re trying so hard to figure out what the sentence actually means!

One reference to James from his secretary, Theodora Bosanquet that I want to leave you with:

Perhaps a little overwrought (I rolled my eyes pretty hard at “children of light”), but this is Henry James, and I’d say the difficulty of his prose is absolutely worth the effort to arrive at a new world, illuminated.

A SAMPLE OF MY BOOK NOTES FROM THE AMBASSADORS: 

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Click to Download My Notes from 1,200+ Books

If you've ever wondered how the universe will end (No? Just me?), the fascinating, incredibly funny, and not-as-depressing-as-you-might-think The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking) presents five possible answers, based on the latest in theoretical physics.

There are many possible (and understandable) responses when faced with the loss, destruction, and decay of everything we've come to know, and even of Life itself. Many people are angry; some are curious, and I think most of us are somewhat afraid.

We know that our lives will end someday, and an increasing number of people believe that after death we just disappear, and that nothing we will ever have done will mean anything.

Hold on, I'm actually going somewhere with this...

But there's another response that's equally possible when confronting all of this, and that's to feel this kind of intense, solar-system-shattering gratitude that we've been granted this brief moment in time to experience this gorgeous universe and make beautiful things happen with our lives.

Maybe nothing will mean anything in a trillion trillion years, but Life means everything now, and even though we're never guaranteed tomorrow...

Today? Well, today's a beautiful day.

I loved this book - more than almost anything I read back in 2021 - and it inspired so much gratitude in me for people like Katie, for being able to read, for my coffee and my fireplace, for my readers (you!), and for this infinitesimal space and time between two eternities in which I get to appreciate you all.

A SAMPLE OF MY BOOK NOTES FROM THE END OF EVERYTHING:

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Click to Download My Notes from 1,200+ Books

Today’s Five Books:

1. The Fun of It, by Amelia Earhart

2. Discipline Equals Freedom, by Jocko Willink

3. Evicted, by Matthew Desmond

4. The Ambassadors, by Henry James

5. The End of Everything, by Katie Mack

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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.”

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!

Until next time…happy reading!

All the best,

Matt Karamazov

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