📚 Welcome back to The Reading Life!
As you might know (or not!), I donate $1 every month to the literacy charity First Book on behalf of each Premium Member of this newsletter.
As of March 1st, 2026, we’ve raised a total of $787 to help children learn to read, and to provide books to everyone who wants to read them!
It’s a cause that’s extremely important to me, and so I’d like to thank you all for helping out! I know firsthand how much books and reading have improved my own life, and to pass on that gift to others is one of the most important things that I do.
Naturally, I hope to raise a lot more money in the future, but we’re just getting started!
If you want to help out by becoming a Premium Member of The Reading Life, click here (and check out everything that being a Member gives you access to), and if you’d like to make a donation to First Book on your own, click here!
Now, tonight, I’m also sharing my complete notes and summaries of each of the following Five Great Books:
In This Issue of The Reading Life, We’ve Also Got:
📖 What I’m Currently Reading
📕 Books I’ve Finished This Month
📜 The Book Quote of the Day
🎥 You’ll NEVER Change Your Life - Until You Do This
✍ My Latest Medium Articles
✅ New Book Releases Coming Soon
📚 Tonight’s Five Main Book Recommendations
🏅 Earn Rewards for Referring This Newsletter
Let’s not wait for our coffees to get cold…let’s hit the books!
The Arabian Nights, translated by Richard Burton: Thousands of years later, The Arabian Nights still has a hold on our collective imaginations. Sinbad the Sailor, Aladdin, and so many other stories you’d likely recognize in here. It’s just a spectacular read, and the Richard Burton translation is one of the best!
I’ve been reading about 20 pages a day, so I’ll likely be reading this one for a while (it’s 730 pages long, in my edition), but exactly like the main character, I just want to keep stretching it out! Highly recommend this one if you love old books and want to get to the root of some of our greatest literary traditions.
The Beginning of Infinity, by David Deutsch: This is my personal “Book of the Month” for March, which means that I’m spending the whole month on it, diving deep into it, testing it, arguing with it, exploring it, and making sure that I really understand it, instead of resting on the surface of the book. I think it deserves such a close reading.
The book is about explanations that transform the world, and the basic argument, as I understand it right now, is that progress is potentially infinite. Human beings keep running into problems, but then we also keep generating novel solutions to those problems, each one of them leading to more interesting, complex problems that keep moving humanity forward.
Sooo many of my smartest friends kept pushing this book into my hands, so I just had to push it higher on my reading list!
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, I’ve read exactly 1,471 books, including 17 books so far this year, and if you’re interested, here’s my full Reading List.
“The reward of the good consists in the faith that one is good, the punishment of the evil is in the fact that one is evil.”
You’ll NEVER Change Your Life - Until You Do This: Once you understand how the Compound Effect works, your life will never be the same.
But you have to do more than just understand it. You also have to let it work long enough for it to actually work its magic. And yes, it really is one of the closest things to magic that exists in this world. [Watch Time: 3:42]
If you enjoy the video, please consider subscribing to my channel and sharing it with a friend. Cheers!
How to Live on 24 Hours a Day: This lost self-help book from 1908 holds the key to owning every hour of your day.
Michael Jordan’s Personal Trainer Wrote This Book to Help You Become RELENTLESS: Read it if you want to leave “average” behind forever.
Do the Hard Things First: Plus 11 Other Procrastination-Killers to 11X Your Productivity
Beyond Belief, by Nir Eyal: I’ve read two of Nir’s books so far, and this one is about science-backed ways to stop limiting yourself and achieve breakthrough results. Even if you’ve read plenty of books on the subject already, you’ll likely to come away with tons more from this book that you can use immediately. Expected: March 10th, 2026
How to Try Again, by Steve Kamb: This a guide to help readers transform their lives by giving up more often, failing faster, and mastering the art of starting over. I read Steve’s first book, Level Up Your Life (about how to turn your life into a video game) years ago and loved it. So I’m excited for this one too! Expected: June 16th, 2026
Incorruptible, by Eric Ries: This is a book about why good companies go bad, and great companies stay great, by the author of The Lean Startup. He argues that, As organizations grow, the systems that govern them - ownership, incentives, charters, accountability, and decision-making - quietly reshape behavior. When those systems are poorly designed, even principled leaders are pushed toward outcomes they never wanted. Expected: May 26th, 2026
Inside the Box, by David Epstein: This is David’s follow-up to his previous book, Range (which I really liked), and it’s about how Limits are the key to stimulating creativity, innovation, and collaboration. Essentially, adding constraints can make us better, and free us to do great work. Expected: May 5th, 2026
Protocols, by Dr. Andrew Huberman: Still a long way to go before this one comes out, but it’ll be an essential guide to improving brain function, enhancing mood and energy, optimizing your health in all kinds of ways, and rewiring your nervous system for high performance and a better life. Expected: September 15th, 2026
Vibe: The Secrets of Strong Connections in a Lonely World, by Adam Grant: With the loneliness crisis showing no signs of slowing down, and with the world becoming increasingly divided along ideological lines, making time for friends and establishing strong, supportive communities has never been more important. Adam Grant’s newest book goes into the science of these strong connections, and how you can stay sane in crazy times. Expected: October 13th, 2026
“Who controls the past controls the future, and who controls the present controls the past.”
Goodreads says that this is one of the most terrifying books ever written, and I’m inclined to agree! It’s set in an oppressive, authoritarian future, where Winston, the novel’s protagonist, is in the process of “waking up.”
You’ll recognize plenty in this book from today’s political and social discourse: ideas like “doublespeak,” and “groupthink,” etc. What’s funny is that both sides of nearly every political debate believe that their ideological opponents represent the oppressive regime in the novel. What’s even more funny, is that both sides tend to be right!
Interestingly, the U.K. government recently included 1984 in a list of books that served as indicators of potential “right-wing” extremism, which tells you basically everything you need to know. It turns out that governments everywhere don’t like their citizens waking up. This was listed next to books like The Lord of the Rings, by the way!
In the book itself, citizens of Orwell’s horrifying dystopia are constantly monitored by the State, and their very reality is controlled by what the government allows them to see. It’s very “matrix-like,” which is another term you’re likely to be familiar with!
Their thoughts are controlled, their news and information are controlled, even their actions are controlled - the only thing that stirs Winston’s mind in the direction of rebellion is a woman named Julia, and the humane impulses she stirs up in his heart.
“The die-hard crypto skeptics like to pretend these real use cases don’t exist, but they do. The crypto true believers might try to pretend that the seedy underbelly of the industry doesn’t exist, but it does. The challenge for a newcomer is being able to tell them apart.”
This is a nonfiction book, but it reads like a novel. It’s the compulsively readable story of Nat’s total immersion in the scam-and-get-scammed world of crypto speculation, and I just flew through this one.
You’ll likely end up learning quite a bit more about crypto and decentralized finance (at least I did), even though it doesn’t feel like you’re being taught at all. It just feels like you’re reading a thriller.
Long story short, Nat started off in 2021 knowing hardly anything about crypto, but he and his wife had a new baby coming, and when he heard about all the crazy money that his friends were making (i.e. gambling) in the digital wild west, he started to get a lot more curious. Before long, there was no turning back…
In less than a year he’d made millions of dollars writing code, had wild, “is-this-even-real?” adventures in selling pictures of monkeys for two hundred thousand dollars, been hacked, been scammed, been suspected of scamming…at this point, Nat’s like the Hunter S. Thompson of cryptocurrency, except, you know, without the drinking and the drugs.
But yeah, this is a ripping good read, and Nat’s a fantastic storyteller. He’s certainly the main character of this story, but in the hands of a lesser writer you wouldn’t be nearly as interested - fascinated, even - to know what comes next.
They say that crypto developers don’t sleep, but this book will keep you up too!
“For Fred Rogers, it was always this way when he was with children, in person or on his hugely influential program. Every weekday, this soft-spoken man talked directly into the camera to address his television ‘neighbors’ in the audience as he changed from his street clothes into his iconic cardigan and sneakers.
Children responded so powerfully, so completely, to Rogers that everything else in their world seemed to fall away as he sang, ‘It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood.’ Then his preschool-age fans knew that he was fully engaged as Mister Rogers, their adult friend who valued his viewers ‘just the way you are.’”
Children can always spot a fraud; they know when someone’s not being authentic or when they’re different from who they claim to be – which is evidence that Mister Rogers was the real deal. He was one of the most inspiring early childhood educators ever, and he saw the best in kids, which made it possible for them to bring out the best in themselves.
There are astonishing stories on nearly every page of this book, such as when the TV station held an event where children could come and meet Mister Rogers – thousands of kids showed up, lining up for miles and blocking the street like it was a college football game or something.
But no matter how long the line was, he would get down on one knee, look each kid in the eye and make sure they knew that they mattered. He took kids and their questions seriously, he made a massive effort to give them the best possible start in life, and I just…I just want to be like him!
It’s funny: you keep reading page after page of this book and you’re like, “There has to be like some sort of scandal, a dark corner of his life, some secrets…” but no; Mister Rogers was exactly who he said he was, and though there may not be angels, there are people who may as well be angels – that was him.
When you offer that kind of unconditional love and support to children, every single morning on his television show for more than 30 years, the kids are going to grow up just fine.
As you can probably tell, I highly, highly, HIGHLY recommend this book to pretty much everyone, and I’ve been thinking about it almost every single day since I read it.
His story is surprising, sad, exciting, inspiring – everything you wouldn’t expect from that nice man in the cardigan that used to show up every morning and tell you that he loved you just the way you are.
“All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth; letters a republic. Actually she had heard this phrase, the republic of letters, used before, at graduation ceremonies, honorary degrees and the like, though without knowing quite what it meant.
At that time talk of a republic of any sort she had thought mildly insulting and in her actual presence tactless to say the least. It was only now she understood what it meant. Books did not defer. All readers were equal, and this took her back to the beginning of her life.
As a girl, one of her greatest thrills had been on VE night, when she and her sister had slipped out of the gates and mingled unrecognized with the crowds. There was something of that, she felt, to reading. It was anonymous; it was shared; it was common. And she who had led a life apart now found that she craved it.
Here in these pages and between these covers she could go unrecognized.”
The “one-liner” for this book drew me in right away. It’s a novella about how the (fictional) Queen of England, after one day finding herself inside a mobile library and being too polite not to borrow a book, becomes an obsessive, voracious, and rapacious reader, causing all sorts of mayhem for the palace staff and the country at large…Sold!
The Uncommon Reader is such a cool little book. You can finish it in just a few hours (or less if you’re a particularly fast reader), and it’s got everything that dedicated bibliophiles love about books and reading.
It’s hilarious, honest, and sincere. It’s maddening at times (like when various members of the Queen’s retinue grow to dislike how much she’s reading and neglecting her other duties and try to sabotage her), but it’s also genuinely fun to read.
The Queen herself is the “uncommon reader” of the book’s title, but as the novella unfolds, Alan Bennett does a wonderful job of showing how reading widely, intelligently, earnestly, and yes, for fun can change virtually anybody’s life for the better.
“Freedom is the highest form of success.”
This is a very simple, easy to read book about freedom. It’s about lifestyle design, mental strength and flexibility, and also about how we can move ourselves closer and closer to our own version of freedom if we’re sufficiently motivated to do so.
What I liked about the book (besides its simplicity, relatability, and applicability) is how Darius devotes the first few chapters to untangling the various ways in which we’re unfree.
We chain ourselves down in so many ways, and this very simple, straightforward book will help you identify them, plan them, and in some cases prevent them, so that you can work on those things first. Because it really is just like how Toni Morrison says: if you wanna fly, you gotta give up all the stuff that weighs you down.
Having achieved an extraordinary degree of freedom in my own life, I know that it’s not necessarily easy, and so I also liked that Darius doesn’t offer up very many easy answers.
Of course, some of the answers are easy, like spend less than you earn, avoid debt, invest the difference in a “freedom fund” of your choosing, stop hanging around with people who limit you in various ways, etc. Those are all relatively easy things to do that will ultimately lead to a much greater degree of freedom in your life.
But he also recognizes that freedom requires sacrifices, and that you’ll often come up against some hard choices. Choices that you’ll have to make for yourself, and with whose consequences you’ll be forced to live. No one can free you except yourself, and you’re never free from the responsibility of choosing how you’ll live your life.
One thing that I’ll stand behind 100% though is that gaining your personal freedom is always worth it in the end. You can do anything (legal) that you want with your life, and you don’t have to live according to anybody else’s conception of “the good life.”
The good life is yours to create and live. But one of the most important things that books like this can do for you is to get you to realize that it’s possible to become free. It’s a future possibility that’s open to you, and it may be even closer than you think.
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OK, that’s it for now…
I’ve got plenty more excellent book recommendations coming your way soon though!
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With that said, I hope you enjoyed this edition of The Reading Life, and enjoy the rest of your day!
Until next time…happy reading!
All the best,
Matt Karamazov
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