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Five Great Books: Discipline is Destiny, Fahrenheit 451, Get Sh*t Done, and More!
Matt Karamazov
September 27, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 24 minutes
I’m back with five more great books to recommend tonight (actually, way more than five), but I want to say something important first.
Most of the people reading this newsletter will have never spoken to me personally before (we just crossed 9,000 subscribers!), but you should know that I want the best for you. I also have a lot of faith that you can figure it out, whatever “it” is for you.
Whether that’s personal struggles, business challenges, health difficulties…I believe in you, I support you, and I’m going to keep encouraging you no matter what.
I’m also going to remain a strong positive influence on you, to the very best of my ability, because we need more of that.
Reading changed my life (in case I haven’t mentioned that before!), but I’ve also had a lot of help along the way, people who have supported me, and helped me get to where I am.
So if I can be one of those people for you, well I’d love that.
Anyway, I’ve just witnessed a ton of craziness lately, negativity online, etc., pessimism…and I just wanted to pass along an encouraging word.
The world can be an unfair place, but it’s getting better all the time, regardless of what the news media or the prophets of doom keep trying to distract us from…
…And now books!
Here in this newsletter I share my complete notes and summaries of each of the following Five 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
🎥 10 Uplifting Books to Keep Your Mind Off WWIII
✍ 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!
$100M Money Models, by Alex Hormozi: This is the third book in Alex’s $100M series, and the first two books completely transformed my business. In this latest book, he basically teaches you the art of getting more customers to spend more money faster.
11/22/63, by Stephen King: This is a giant horror novel about the assassination of JFK, and a man who discovers a way to go back in time to try and prevent it from happening. I’m not even 300 pages in, but I am ripping through it - Stephen King can just write, man.
Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes: I’m not playing around anymore - I’m actually going to finish reading this book! It’s been, like, a year and I’m only on page 300 or so. In my defense, it’s massive (clocking in at 900+ pages) and it was written more than 400 years ago, so it’s not the “easiest” read. But that’s no excuse.
It actually is great, though, and I’m starting to understand why it’s an enduring classic. Briefly, it’s about a man who reads so many novels about chivalry that he decides that he’s a knight himself, and about his faithful servant Sancho Panza, who, for better or worse, is dragged along for the ride. I’m aiming to finish this one by the end of October!
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 1,417 books, including 65 books so far this year, and if you’re interested, here’s my full Reading List.
“The most important thing any of us can do is to actively and pragmatically assume our responsibilities as citizens for the world we live in.”
10 Uplifting Books to Keep Your Mind Off WWIII: The entire business model of all the news stations is to keep you watching long enough to show you more ads just so they can make more money off of you.
There's nothing wrong with that, per se, it's just that they've realized they can take advantage of human psychology and keep people watching longer by playing into their worst fears. THAT I have a big problem with.
These books, on the other hand, will make you feel good.
There's a powerfully motivating memoir in here, an incredible biography, some positive-thinking books, and even a sales book.
The common thread, however, is that they're all positive. At least three of them have the word "positive" in the title haha. Anyway, hope you find some great books in here! [Watch Time: 9:52]
If you enjoy the video, please consider subscribing to my channel and sharing it with a friend. Cheers!
“Status Anxiety” is the Source of Your Paralyzing Fear of Never Having Enough: And this fantastic book is the antidote (14 key takeaways).
The Business Book That Helped Me Buy My First Porsche: Ignore the scammy title - this book took me from minimum wage to financial freedom in 5 years flat.
The Saddest AND Funniest Book I’ve Ever Read is Also One of the Most Challenging Books of All Time: 39 flashes of brilliance from Infinite Jest that’ll make you think, laugh, cry - and probably all three at once.
The Art of Spending Money, by Morgan Housel: This is Morgan Housel’s third book, after the 6-million-copy bestseller, The Psychology of Money, and the (in my opinion) shamefully underrated Same as Ever. I cannot WAIT for this one! Expected: October 7th, 2025
The Way of Excellence, by Brad Stulberg: The last of Brad’s books I’ve read was Peak Performance, which was fantastic, and so I’m looking forward to this one as well. It’s a practical guide to realizing our potential amid the chaos of modern life. He’s also got another one I’ve been meaning to read, Master of Change, but I’m a little behind! I plan to read both though. Expected: January 27th, 2026
“Think about it: Most people don’t even show up. Of the people who do, most don’t really push themselves. So to show up and be disciplined about daily improvement? You are the rarest of the rare.”
Self-discipline has traditionally been a hard sell. Self-indulgence, quick dopamine hits, and having a good time have been winning the marketing battle lately, similar to the "battle" between chocolate and asparagus. Or between reality television and educational documentaries.
But what if the problem is simply that we've been thinking about self-discipline in entirely the wrong way?
Up until now, self-discipline may have been the equivalent of a Henry James novel in a TikTok world. But Ryan Holiday's book, Discipline is Destiny, will have you reimagining the whole concept in a much more liberating, fulfilling way.
This involves thinking of self-discipline in the "proper" way: not as a punishment, as self-deprivation, but as it really is: a pathway to even greater freedom.
Some days will be hard. Actually, that's not true...many days will be hard. The hard days will outnumber the easy ones, but the meaningful days will also outnumber the meaningless ones. Living this way won't always be easy, but it will always be worth it.
“‘Stuff your eyes with wonder,’ he said. ‘Live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.’”
At the time of writing, I’ve read well over a thousand books, and even after reading thousands more, I can’t imagine Fahrenheit 451 ever being pushed out of my top ten. Never, ever, ever. I’m made of this book.
Just like with other formative books that I’ve read, I remember exactly where I was when I first read this one, and it’s been top of mind for me ever since whenever people ask for a fiction book recommendation, or something that could “get them into reading.”
The basic storyline is that, in the future, all books are banned, and instead of fighting fires, firemen burn books. The main character, Guy Montag, is one such fireman, who unconsciously enjoys his work (“It was a pleasure to burn”) until one day, he starts reading one of the banned books, and finds that he develops a taste for it.
Since it’s illegal even to possess a book, much less read the damn things, Montag has to keep this double life a secret, developing in feeling, consciousness, and intellect while pretending to be illiterate and hiding his newfound inner life from the fire chief, Captain Beatty, who seems suspiciously well-read for someone so devoted to burning and destroying the collective wisdom of humanity.
One woman in the novel is even burned alive with her books when she refuses to give them up, prompting Montag to ask himself what it is in books that could make someone do that. Why would she stay? What am I missing?
I, for one, know exactly how that woman felt, and Ray Bradbury says so many things about reading in Fahrenheit 451 that I wanted to say about reading but didn’t know how. He gave me the words for what reading, books, and literature have added to my life - have done for me - and I wouldn’t give up my books without a fucking fight either.
“In business, you must do everything you can to protect your ideas, information, and interests and to obtain full, maximum compensation for your knowledge and expertise. The respect granted you is the respect you command and demand.”
Well, my Dan Kennedy binge shows no sign of slowing down! I’m swiftly making my way through every single book that he’s ever written, and considering that his ideas have made me sooo much fucking money (sorry for swearing), you can understand why I keep binging his books!
I’m also not a rule-follower by nature, so this one naturally spoke to me.
Exactly as the title says, it’s an unconventional guide to success that flies in the face of most of the advice circulating out there about how to succeed in business and in life. Quite frankly, most of it is written by theorists and wannabes who will never get what they want out of this life. That may sound harsh, but it’s true.
The bottom line here is that there’s always a way to succeed, but you’re not likely to find it by following the crowd. To borrow from The Third Door by Alex Banayan (another excellent book), life is like a nightclub.
Most people are standing in line in front of the main entrance, waiting patiently, quietly following the rules, hoping eventually to get in. There’s also the VIP line going back in the opposite direction, where celebrities and people with money and connections also clamber to get in. Then there’s “the third door.”
The third door is the one you make yourself. It’s where you go around the back of the building, crack open a window, climb in through the kitchen, slipping past security and the rest of the staff and making your own way in. Dan Kennedy’s book helps you find the third doors that exist all around us.
Now, all you need to do is find or develop the courage to walk through them.
“If you can’t take two weeks off from your business, you don’t have a business. You have a self-employed job. You have a trap that you’ve created for yourself, creating more work and stress with less of what you really want.”
Ironically, I read this book on vacation, and I was pleasantly surprised to learn that my business had not, in fact, burned down while I was away. That’s the purpose of this book: to help you prevent that from happening.
Two of the core ideas are that your business should serve your lifestyle, rather than the other way around, and that everything in your business is and should be a system. And ideally an understandable, repeatable one that your team can execute on while you’re gone. So that not only does your business not burn down, but that it actually grows and prospers while you’re away too.
It’s all about creating leverage through operational excellence. Those sound like LinkedIn buzzwords, I know, I know. But I don’t want to give you the idea that this isn’t a stuffy business book or anything like that. Because it’s not. It’s written under the assumption that business success is important to you - achievement is important to you - but that it shouldn’t come at the price of surrendering the rest of your life.
Building leverage is about getting out of the weeds and empowering your employees to step up and take on more responsibility, leaving you with the time, focus, and mental processing power to step up to greater responsibility yourself: doing the things (including the strategic planning) that are going to lead to exponential results.
“Plan for success as much as you plan for the weekend and you’ll be one of the most successful people in the world.”
This is a productivity and time management book by one of the greatest salespeople of all time, and it details the entire system that Jeffrey Gitomer used himself to become a legend in the industry.
Get Shit Done also draws from some of the best early 20th-century “success literature,” by people like Orison Swett Marden, James Allen, and Napoleon Hill.
Jeffrey’s read all those authors, as have I, and he gives them a wonderful introduction here. Gitomer also goes well beyond goals and productivity, moving across topics like attitude, desire, determination, resilience, happiness, and fulfillment.
As you can probably tell by the title, it’s less “serious” than other time management books, but it’s much more sincere. Here’s a guy who just loves what he does. Not all of his jokes are funny, sure, and not everyone will “get” this book, but if you want a step-by-step plan for achieving maximum productivity, check it out. It’s worth your time.
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OK, that’s it for now…
I’ve got plenty more excellent book recommendations coming your way soon though!
And if you want to learn how I’ve built an audience of 160,000+ followers across social media, became a full-time creator, and how I’m rapidly growing my audience and my profits in 2025, join us inside Creator Launch Academy and that’s exactly what I’ll teach you — we’d love to have you in the community!
With that said, I hope you enjoyed this edition of The Reading Life, and enjoy the rest of your day!
Until next time…happy reading!
All the best,
Matt Karamazov
P.S. Whenever you're ready, here are two more ways I can help you:
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