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Five Great Books: Mastery, You Can Just Do Things, Start Thinking Rich, and More!
Matt Karamazov
September 20, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 27 minutes
YOUTUBE đź“š CREATOR LAUNCH ACADEMY đź“š PATREON
I’m back with five more great books to recommend tonight (actually, way more than five), and in case you missed it, (here) are 3 of the books that changed my life the most, how to build an unbreakable reading habit (here), and 10 fascinating books that will increase your intelligence (here).
There’s actually a better-than-decent chance that I finish reading my 1,500th book (since 2014) this year, which is just…wild. But here in this newsletter I share my complete notes and summaries of each of the following Five Books:
đź“š Mastery, by George Leonard
In This Issue of The Reading Life, We’ve Also Got:
📖 What I’m Currently Reading
📕 Books I’ve Finished This Month
đź“ś The Book Quote of the Day
🎥 This DARK Book Makes Experts Go Viral
✍ My Latest Medium Articles
âś… 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 200 pages in, but I am ripping through it - Stephen King can just write, man.
Billion Dollar Communication Skills, by John A. Brink: I’m actually IN this book! My name and story appears in a section about social media marketing and branding, so I may be a bit biased when I recommend this book - but it is great.
John’s one of the most genuinely accomplished entrepreneurs I know, and he’s got decades of experience building and scaling profitable companies. To do that successfully, you’ve got to possess billion-dollar communication skills, which is exactly what he teaches in this book.
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 1,414 books, including 62 books so far this year, and if you’re interested, here’s my full Reading List.
“Forgetting yesterday, neither will I think of tomorrow.
Why should I throw now after maybe? Can tomorrow’s sand flow through the glass before today’s? Will the sun rise twice this morning?
Can I perform tomorrow’s deeds while standing in today’s path? Can I place tomorrow’s gold in today’s purse? Can tomorrow’s child be born today?
Can tomorrow’s death cast its shadow backward and darken today’s joy?
Should I concern myself over events which I may never witness? Should I torment myself with problems that may never come to pass?
No! Tomorrow lies buried with yesterday, and I will think of it no more.”
So Good They Call You a Fake is one of the best books I've ever read on the subject of expert positioning, but the tactics that million-dollar ghostwriter Joshua Lisec covers in the book can get pretty dark.
There's nothing illegal (or even immoral) about his methods, but they are bound to get you absolutely hated. BUT...hated by the right people, which is actually what you want, as I explain in the video. [Watch Time: 6:37]
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
“The desire of most people today for quick, sure, and highly visible results is perhaps the deadliest enemy of mastery. It’s fine to have ambitious goals, but the best way of reaching them is to cultivate modest expectations at every step along the way. When you’re climbing a mountain, in other words, be aware that the peak is ahead, but don’t keep looking up at it. Keep your eyes on the path. And when you reach the top of the mountain, as the Zen saying goes, keep on climbing.”
For context, I have 11+ pages of notes from Mastery. From a 176-page book. If that tells you anything about how amazing I thought this book was. So yeah, easily my favorite book of the year, of any year.
Briefly, it’s about human potential, and the evolutionary destiny of human beings to learn - and keep on learning for as long as we live. But it’s about so much more than that.
It’s about how the modern world relentlessly socializes us, sapping us of our original creative energy and forcing us to conform to a world that stifles our most noble, most human impulses for generativity and greater life. It’s about committing to a life of excellence, about all the fantastic rewards associated with traveling such a path, and how to really live while you’re alive.
On the surface, Leonard talks about martial arts, and his experience as a fighter pilot, to explain the 5 essential keys to mastery and how to achieve your athletic, creative, and intellectual potential. But on a deeper level than that, it’s about how not to waste a single moment of your one and only life.
So many of the things we do each day feel “in-between,” as though they’re not part of our “real” lives. We climb stairs to get somewhere else, never for the sake of climbing. We drive, not for the thrill of commanding an unbelievably complex machine (the car) by using an even more unbelievably complex machine (our brain), but merely to arrive at some other distant point in time and space.
But in the same way that the point of dancing isn’t just to get to a particular spot on the floor, attempting to gain mastery in any worthwhile endeavor isn’t just about the end result. It’s about the process, the plateaus, the pleasures of being here while you’re alive, and feeling every moment of your existence. Mastery is one of the greatest, purest distillations of this philosophy for living, and George Leonard gets it.
“This book isn’t about being reckless. It’s about understanding when and how to break the rules strategically to create opportunities. Life isn’t a straight path with clear instructions. It’s a maze, and those who succeed aren’t the ones who wait for the main door to open. They’re the ones who find a side entrance, carve their own way forward, or knock the whole wall down.”
I’ve known Jay ever since he was sixteen years old, which wasn’t that long ago, by the way. The things he’s been able to accomplish between then and now has been nothing less than astonishing, and it’s mostly because of his life philosophy of taking “Permissionless Action.”
The world won’t wait for you to get ready, and life-changing opportunities don’t tend to come looking for you. In Jay’s case, he sent a cold email to the founder of newsletter platform Beehiiv and landed an internship before he was out of high school.
He then went on to become the head of content for phenomenal entrepreneur Noah Kagan, and then moved to Vegas after being hired as a social media strategist for Leila and Alex Hormozi. He chose himself for those roles - he didn’t just stand around waiting to be picked.
Most people (and I don’t often say “most people,” but in this case it’s justified) are following the same life-script: fall in line, wait to be told what to do, hold off until they’re “qualified” to do what they’ve always dreamed of doing.
Permissionless Action is different. It’s all about going unscripted. It’s about rejecting the default settings of your life, and going all-in on your grandest ambitions.
The “script” might be somewhat reassuring to the average person (and I mean this: there’s nothing wrong with working a “regular” job, if that’s what you want to do), but it rarely - if ever - leads to the life you want. For that, you have to make some big moves, take drastic action, and go out dream-hunting.
“Owning your time is the ultimate milestone of wealth and success. Reclaiming your time is more exhilarating than a thousand sports cars, more flashy than a hundred Rolexes, and better than the most delicious five-star meal in the world. When you get to a place where you don’t have to sell your time for money, the world of possibility opens up.”
By this point, I’ve read a ton of personal finance books, and I’m in danger of thinking that I already know everything I need to know about money. For one thing, that’s not true. Money is a complex subject, and even world experts have blind spots in their level of understanding. But the benefits of reading books like this go even deeper.
“Thinking rich” means thinking rich most of the time, and not falling back into old patterns of behavior. It means saturating your consciousness with thoughts of wealth accumulation, strategic investing, sensible frugality, and contentment. And it means returning to these ideas again and again.
So yes, even though a lot of the material in this book was familiar to me, I resisted the urge to say, “I know that already!”
A major truth when it comes to good habits - financial or otherwise - is that many of the right actions are easy to do, but they’re also easy not to do.
It’s relatively easy to keep track of your spending and review your credit card statements each month; it’s relatively easy to wait 24 hours before buying something (to give yourself a cooling-off period); it’s relatively easy to toss a few dollars per month into the stock market and pick up a personal finance book every so often.
But all those things are also easy not to do.
Start Thinking Rich covers all the simplest, easiest, and most effective actions you can take to gain control of your financial life, but it also helps you act rich, which means something different than most people think it does.
Real rich people, for the most part, aren’t flashy. In fact, they get rich in the first place (most of them) by living below their means, saving more than they spend, buying liabilities instead of assets, and more.
What I also liked about this book is their focus on earning more money - going on the offensive, not just skipping lattes and pinching pennies. There’s a limit to the amount of money you can save each month, but there’s no limit to the amount of money you can make each month, and the authors did a good job of proving that crucial point.
They’re also not scared to (politely) offend, by which I mean they are perfectly willing to take an unpopular position if it means helping you change your financial life.
All in all, Start Thinking Rich is a wonderful starting point for anyone desirous of a better life, and an excellent reminder of the financial principles and practices that will both get you rich and keep you rich for the long term.
“Perhaps the fact that I was exceedingly fond of reading made me endurable. With a large library to browse in, I spent many hours not bothering anyone, after I once learned to read.”
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.
“Prior to his success on Everest, Hillary had been part of another expedition, in which the team not only had failed to reach the summit but also had lost one of its members.
At a reception for the expedition members in London, Hillary stood to address the audience. Behind the platform was a huge photograph of Everest.
Hillary turned to face the image of the mountain and exclaimed, 'Mount Everest, you have defeated us. But I will return. And I will defeat you.
Because you cannot get any bigger, and I can."
Reading this book feels like gaining access to secret knowledge - except nothing here is a secret. John C. Maxwell has exposed millions of people to these life-changing and career-lifting ideas over many decades of global thought-leadership.
Maxwell's books always pass the test for whether I'll decide to read anything else he's written: immediately after I read his book (and many times, during), my life just gets better. Sometimes in profound ways.
This book, naturally, is all about choices, and specifically, those choices that are always leading us either toward or away from our desired future.
Every single thought we think and action we take is either a +1 or a -1 on the road to achieving our vision, and Success is a Choice is studded with +1s on every damn page. It's a book about stacking the odds in our favor by doing every single thing within our power in order to give us the best possible chance of succeeding.
A lot of it comes down to simply making the right choices, and this is a manual for how to do that (virtually) every time.
Making the right choices - over and over again until you win - is how you eventually construct your dream life, and consistently making the incorrect choices will make this as-yet-unrealized dream life a more and more distant reality. It's really as simple as that.
We all start with different talents and abilities, advantages and disadvantages, and it's the choices we make in addition to our talents that makes the greatest difference.
It's in the choices we make to believe in ourselves; to fire up our passion; to initiate action; to focus our energy; to cultivate good relationships; and embracing practice (all covered in the book) where we can recognize our power to make the desired changes in our lives. It's choices, all the way down.
In the end, your level of success is mostly determined by your choices, multiplied by your effort. Luck exists, sure, and not everything worth attempting has a 100% chance of succeeding. We know that. But there are three things that the most successful people on the planet all do exceedingly well: they get started, they keep going, and they never give up.
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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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