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- Five Great Books: The Revolution from Within, The 10 Pillars of Wealth, Frankenstein, and More!
Five Great Books: The Revolution from Within, The 10 Pillars of Wealth, Frankenstein, and More!
Matt Karamazov
July 19, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 27 minutes
Well, my entire month fell apart and it’s only the 19th!
My plan to read a book a day = Failing
My plan to publish a YouTube video every day = Failing
My plan to do 100 daily push-ups, pull-ups, and squats = Failing
That’s not to say that everything’s in shambles over here, of course.
I’m close to finishing my 7th book of the month! My business is actually generating record profits! My dad’s feeling much better and is doing extremely well with his physiotherapy and recovery plan!
The sun is shining, my friends are happy, the people I love are close by, and I’m never going to run out of excellent books to read.
But I was thinking about this the other day:
I rarely share much about my struggles and challenges - in business, in my personal life, etc. Part of it is because I’m not, by nature, a complainer. I also realize that virtually everyone (myself included) is too caught up in their own problems to care that much about other people’s!
But as part of my commitment to being one of “the good guys” of the internet, I’m not going to sit here and project an image of perfection and a 100% success rate in achieving every single goal that I set for myself.
So I’m trying to strike a balance between inspiring people with stories of my success, self-discipline, and achievement, and at the same time showing what it’s actually like to take on the world as a self-determined, self-directed business leader with a deep commitment to reading and learning from the best books.
Speaking of which…
Oh man, these five books are fantastic, and below in this newsletter I share my complete notes and summaries of each one:
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
🎥 Build an Unbreakable Reading Habit
✍ 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!
God or Space?, by Walter Mehrer: I’m getting back to my philosophy-major roots with this thoughtful book about time, existence, space, and consciousness.
It’s a shorter, but denser read, difficult to get through in some places, but I love the author’s generally optimistic worldview and his sense of genuine wonder when confronted by the universe and its mysteries.
The Expectation Effect, by David Robson: In a very real sense, when it comes to what you experience in life and how you perceive it, “you’ll see it when you believe it.” That’s the core thrust of the book, which I’ve seen play out in my own life.
Expect people to be generous and kind, and they often will be. Expect everyone you meet to be a jerk, and you’ll run into jerks wherever you go. I’m liking the science-based reinforcement of a belief I’ve long held: that you get the kind of life you expect.
From Russia with Love, by Ian Fleming: I’m working my way through every James Bond novel - what more can I say! I messed up the order a little bit, so I’ll have to go back and read Live and Let Die and Moonraker, but I’m racing through them! I’m partial to the Pierce Brosnan Bond myself, when it comes to the movies, but the books are just as good!
“The day is never coming when all the other stuff will be ‘out of the way,’ so you can turn at last to building a life of meaning and accomplishment that hums with vitality. For finite humans, the time for that has to be now.”
Build an Unbreakable Reading Habit Using THIS: Trying to brute-force your way into forming new habits is a tough, tough road. There’s actually a much easier way to shift your habits - including the habit of becoming a reader - and I lay it all out in my latest video. [Watch Time: 4:47]
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.
$100M Money Models, by Alex Hormozi: Both of Alex’s former books, $100M Offers and $100M Leads, completely transformed my business, and now he’s got a third book launching very soon! Needless to say, this is one of my most-anticipated reads, and I fully expect it to transform my business for a third time. Expected: August 16th, 2025
Hard Lessons from the Hurt Business, by Ed Latimore: My friend Ed is a former heavyweight boxer too (his record is better than mine though), and his long-awaited new book is about how boxing gave him the tools to overcome childhood trauma and alcoholism. Really looking forward to this one! Expected: August 5th, 2025
Protocols, by Andrew Huberman: Andrew’s a neuroscientist and tenured professor at Stanford, not to mention hosting one of the most popular health podcasts in the world. This book is a collection of simple, evidence-based solutions to a whole host of challenges, and a distillation of his very best advice from the podcast. Expected: September 9th, 2025
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 Wealth Ladder, by Nick Maggiulli: Everyone is at a different level in their wealth-building journey, and sometimes, excellent advice for people on Level 2 won’t work for people who are on Level 5. Nick’s book breaks down all the “levels” of wealth, and provides tailored advice for what you might want to do at each level to give yourself the best odds of succeeding financially. Expected: July 22nd, 2025
“Sirs, life is something extraordinary, if you observe it. Life is not merely this stupid little quarreling among ourselves, this dividing up of mankind into nations, races, classes; it is not just the contradiction and misery of our daily existence.
Life is wide, limitless, it is that state of love which is beauty; life is sorrow and this tremendous sense of joy. But our joys and sorrows are so small, and from that shallowness of mind we ask questions and find answers.
So the problem is, surely, to free the mind totally, so that it is in a state of awareness which has no border, no frontier. And how is the mind to discover that state? How is it to come to that freedom?”
This book was my first introduction to Krishnamurti, and he took me completely by surprise with his total rejection of authority, and his insistence on seeking the truth for oneself, not relying on any external sources of knowledge or truth.
The Revolution from Within is a collection of public talks he gave throughout the world in the 1950s, where he asks, again and again, whether or not the mind can be free of its own projections, and whether the limited human mind can ever perceive the unlimited nature of ultimate truth.
In fact, Krishnamurti speaks mostly in questions. He proceeds very slowly, and uncovers more and more questions in slowly escalating stages, the whole point of which is to provoke independent thought and objectless awareness in the minds of his listeners.
If Jiddu Krishnamurti had a dominant message, it would be that there must be a revolution in our thinking. Not an outward revolution, which is just the continuation of conditioned thought, slightly adapted according to some other philosophy (whatever it may be), but a complete and total rejection of external authority, ideology, and belief.
The whole book is just incredible, covering ideas as diverse as war and global conflict, parenting and relationships, education, spiritual belief, critical thinking, self-awareness, and personal freedom.
After I finished reading the transcript of each lecture - and even while I was reading them - I could feel myself being transformed. I knew that I’d never live the same way again, see the world the same way again, and sure enough, I never did.
“It’s amazing how people spend their lives in prisons entirely of their own making, the key dangling right there in the lock, no jailer in sight.”
I’ve never read a Dan Kennedy book that didn’t send me into a new, higher tax bracket. This one’s no exception, as he covers all the mindsets, principles, tactics, and business strategies one needs to survive (and profit handsomely) in the “New Economy.”
The post-recession economy comes with new restrictions, new obstacles, new opportunities, new revenue streams, new challenges, new demands, new rules that must be followed…new everything. Business will never be the same, and those business owners who don’t learn to adapt are the ones who will be forced to shut their doors forever.
The business landscape has even changed multiple times since I’ve been in business, and I’m a lot younger than Dan Kennedy! He’s been through it all - and emerged a multimillionaire, many times over.
Naturally today, there are several principles and strategies that are still relevant, and will likely continue to be relevant for a long time. Dan identifies them in this book, and tells you how to take advantage of them in order to win.
But there’s plenty that’s new and different. Not only that, but the rate of change is itself speeding up. Change is coming faster than ever before, and, interestingly enough, it’s only the entrepreneurs with the patience and discipline to sit with a real, physical book like this one who are going to survive and profit in the New Economy.
“By wanting to become wealthy, you are also saying that you want to accept the challenge to be better at making money than 99 percent of the people on this planet.
Just by attempting this, you are going to have to accept the fact that you must not just be good, you must be incredible. If you think differently, then you are done before you even get started."
Most people aren't wealthy. They may or may not be struggling financially, but the average person will never become rich, and this is because it's literally impossible both to remain average and make above-average money at the same time. You must elevate your financial game if you wish to become wealthy, and that process starts with embracing the mindsets and thinking patterns of the world's wealthiest people.
Now, obviously, there's a huge difference between a person's value to society and their value to humanity itself. Each and every individual's value to humanity is literally infinite - there are no “extra” people on this planet. But your value to society is what directly affects what you get paid, and the amount of wealth you can accrue in your lifetime. If you want to be rich, you must make yourself exceptionally valuable to society.
Alex Becker, the multimillionaire CEO of HYROS is uniquely suited to teach you about the mindsets and business tactics of the world's wealthiest people, because, well, he is one! He's built several successful businesses and grown them each to multimillion-dollar valuations, and he's done all this without taking on any outside investment or funding.
The 10 Pillars of Wealth will help you cut through the noise and filter out the nonsense that stops most people from being successful. It's an excellent mix of powerful mindset shifts and extremely practical application that will elevate your business game above all of your competitors.
At the end of the day, entrepreneurship is about being in charge and leading your own life. You're not waiting for someone to “pick you” to be wealthy - you're stacking the probabilities in your favor by taking massive action on the key levers that will allow you to make the most progress in the shortest amount of time.
Not being wealthy has nothing to do with your intrinsic human worth, of course, but becoming wealthy is also not just going to “happen” by accident. You have to make it happen, you have to will it to happen, you have to align all your efforts and your thinking and your resources toward making it a reality, and it's books - and teachers - like these who can help you rise above the statistics and become rich.
“No one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore me onwards, like a hurricane, in the first enthusiasm of success.
Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world.
A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs.
Pursuing these reflections, I thought, that if I could bestow animation upon lifeless matter, I might in process of time (although I now found it impossible) renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption. These thoughts supported my spirits, while I pursued my undertaking with unremitting ardor.”
This 19th-century horror story is astonishing in so many ways, not least because of the intricate story structure and because Mary Shelley was just 18 years old when she wrote it.
It’s beautifully written, spectacularly so, and she possesses Milton’s talent for making us empathize with the “monster” and feel his psychological pain as our own.
Fun fact: the doctor who creates the monster is named Frankenstein, not the actual monster, who goes unnamed throughout the novel. But basically Victor Frankenstein gets it into his head that he’s going to create a sentient being of his own, and over month and months of painstaking work and trial and error he comes up with something…else.
The monster he creates is so hideous that he is ostracized and essentially unwelcome wherever he goes, despite the fact that he isn’t evil (at first) and really just wants to make friends and join a society of equals.
His looks, and the prejudices of the people he comes across makes this impossible, leading him to terrorize doctor Frankenstein, murder several innocent people, and then escape across the frozen landscape of northern Europe, where the doctor ends up giving chase.
The novel itself is split into several different points of view, including the doctor, the monster, and a ship captain, Robert Walton. It starts off with Walton telling his story in the form of letters to his sister; then he meets a dying doctor Frankenstein, whose narrative then gives way to the creature’s itself, then back to Frankenstein, then back to Walton – it’s really spectacular how it all comes together.
Oh, and the monster is more literate than I am; it’s crazy.
“Learning is the greatest power of the human mind. Everything we've built, everything we've created, everything we've become has been the result of our ability to learn. And this great power is inherent in all of us. We are made to learn."
The athletic, artistic, and intellectual achievements of the great masters have always seemed so...magical. So...unattainable. Beyond anything we could ever hope to replicate. Until now.
In Learn, Improve, Master, Nick Velasquez pulls back the curtain on skill acquisition and mastery and shows that high proficiency and expertise isn't something reserved for a chosen few, but something that's attainable for all of us.
Attainable, that is, if we follow the proven principles of practice and learning as laid out in this book. Attainable does not, of course, mean easy. In choosing to become more than "just okay" at something, we are choosing to commit to a level of discipline and focus uncommon in the eyes of many.
But at the end of the day, the universe rewards effort, exertion, and striving. We need to go beyond what we think we can do if we want to find out how far we can really go. And as Nick reveals in the book, mastery isn't something you'll ever "arrive" at. It's a lifelong process of learning, discovery, and progress, because as they say, behind the mountains are more mountains.
If you've ever seen someone excel at the highest level of athletics; if you've ever seen someone perfectly execute a spectacular dance move, put together a phenomenal meal, or spellbound an audience with a stirring speech, and you wanted to do that too, this book will work with you to make that a reality.
Keep this book by your side as you attempt to learn any new skill or craft and you'll be able to progress so much further and faster than you'd ever be able to on your own. That's partly because what other people have done, you can learn to do.
You can also shorten your learning curve by reading about the mistakes others have made and what they've figured out on their own, without having to go through that whole painful process all by yourself.
The endlessly fascinating part of all this, though, is that you can never, ever know where you'll end up, unless you set out on the path in the first place. As Friedrich Nietzsche said:
“There exists in the world a single path along which no one can go except you: whither does it lead? Do not ask, go along it."
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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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