I Finished 5 GREAT Books Last Month

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Even though the fourth book I’ll be sharing with you tonight did actually live up to all the hype, it still hasn’t dislodged The Art of Focus from its spot as the best book I’ve read so far in 2024.

It’s so good, in fact, that I have 8 pages of notes so far, and that’s even before I fill them out by typing up the full passages from the book. Right now, I just have 8 pages of this:

The numbers on the left are the page numbers where I can go back and find the full passage that I want to copy out for my notes, and where it says “bot,” that just means that it’s located at the bottom of the page.

I jot that down too while reading so I can save time later. Instead of searching the whole page for the part that I want, I either have “mid” for middle, or “bot” for bottom, and I won’t write anything if it’s near the top.

When I do my spaced repetition and forced recall exercises, all I need to know is where to find what I’m looking for. When I publish my book notes on Patreon, however, I’ll have them all filled out.

By the time I’m done, I have no doubt that I’ll have 20+ pages of takeaways and insights.

That’s coming soon, along with a BIG update for Patreon Members.

Tonight’s newsletter features the five books I read last month, and here are just a few “quick hits” I’ll mention before we get into those:

🎥 My latest YouTube video lays out how you can multiple books all at once, while remembering (almost) everything. I also share the five book apps I always have downloaded on my phone, how Stephen King reads so much, and more. Watch the video.

✅ Premium Members of The Reading Life are getting Dan Nicholson’s book, Rigging the Game, completely for free. Here are my book notes/summary (free for everybody).

📈 I’ve got a podcast episode with Steve Selengut, author of Retirement Money Secrets, coming out tomorrow. His book actually got me excited about investing again, and I’ve been recommending it pretty consistently. Subscribe here to get notified when the podcast comes out.

✨ An inspirational book I reviewed this year, also endorsed by Jack Canfield (Chicken Soup for the Soul): The Success Guidebook, by Elizabeth Hamilton-Guarino.

☕ Here’s an underrated business memoir from the billion-dollar entrepreneur responsible for growing Green Mountain Coffee, a man who’s also done a tremendous amount for his local community and the world at large. Honestly, the cover’s pretty bland. That’s why it’ll get ignored. There’s gold in there though.

I just threw a bunch of books at you, so let’s slow this down a little bit and get into the five books I finished last month and learn more about each of them.

Without letting our coffees get cold, let’s dive straight into the first book!

Tonight, Inside The Reading Life, We’ve Got:

📜 Book Quote of the Day (Below)

📚 Beyond Positive Thinking, by Dr. Robert Anthony

📚 Feel-Good Productivity, Ali Abdaal

📚 No B.S. Guide to Powerful Presentations, by Dan S. Kennedy

📚 Never Enough, by Andrew Wilkinson

📚 The Sticking Point Solution, by Jay Abraham

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We’ve got lots to learn today, so let’s hit the books!

1. Reframe Your Brain, by Scott Adams

2. Homeless to Billionaire, by Andres Pira

3. Always Be the Buyer, by Dan Sullivan

4. The Obvious Choice, by Jonathan Goodman

5. Living Young, Dying Old, by John A. Brink

I’ve been exploring the limits of consciousness for years now (spoiler alert: I haven’t reached any limits yet), and so any book that promises to offer me a better map of the territory immediately makes it onto my reading list.

I had actually never heard of this book before, despite it’s being in its 30th anniversary addition and selling more than a million copies. Lots of books sell a million copies nowadays, I guess!

Somehow, I ended up with 10+ pages of notes, and I haven’t even finished typing them all out yet. It’s not everybody’s type of book, sure, as it does have plenty of Law of Attraction elements to it (which is not always a bad thing, just usually a bad thing).

But no matter who you are, what your aims are, and what you believe, seeing your future as clearly and vividly as the literal present — as though everything you want is already real, right in front of you — is one of the most powerful skills you can develop.

Everything I’ve ever done and achieved, I’ve seen it in my mind LONG before I ever pulled it into my reality.

Olympic athletes will tell you the same thing. You’d be hard-pressed to find any of them who won’t tell you that they watched their own victories in their mind hundreds of thousands of times before they ever entered that Olympic stadium.

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Ali Abdaal is the world’s most-followed productivity expert, and this, his first book, is an easily accessible guide to getting more done, based on the premise that when you feel better, you perform better.

Veterans of productivity/business books may be a little “advanced” for some of the concepts in the book, but you’ll likely never be “too advanced” to find at least something extremely valuable here. I’ve read hundreds of similar books, and I still came away with many pages of notes!

Ali’s basically the polar opposite of the “David Goggins” school of getting after it (Ali would never use the phrase “getting after it” haha), and so if you’re put off a bit by Goggins’ intensity, you might prefer Ali’s approach.

Personally, I utilize both, and I see value in both.

There are times when you need to mentally kick your own ass, and there are times when you could probably stand to be a little kinder to yourself, and Ali’s books contains dozens and dozens of strategies and tactics to help you with the latter. Highly recommend!

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This isn’t Dan’s best book (THIS is Dan’s best book), but I found this guide to profiting from stage and online presentations to be extremely relevant to where I am right now in my business, and it was immediately applicable.

It’s no exaggeration to say that if you’re able to craft just ONE profitable presentation for your business (and/or for yourself), it can make you rich.

As Jim Rohn used to say, when you find something that works, keep saying it! Rohn was Tony Robbins’ mentor, and Tony, if you notice, got rich with basically ONE presentation that he’s delivered (and adapted) thousands of times.

Same with Dan Kennedy, same with a lot of the speakers and authors we admire. Here’s an ultra-famous speech, an excellent one I might add, delivered thousands of times.

This book, while not fantastic, covers everything from preparedness, to confidence, selling from the stage, and a lot more. And I mean, even Dan Kennedy’s worst book is better than a most people’s best book, so there’s that too! I plan to read everything he’s ever written, and I’m almost there!

Get This Book on Amazon: No B.S. Guide to Powerful Presentations

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This is easily one of the best books I’ve read all year, the business memoir of Canadian SaaS entrepreneur and (former) billionaire, Andrew Wilkinson. There’s a great story behind the “former,” by the way.

Andrew didn’t exactly grow up “poor,” but he did work as a barista at one point, mopping floors at five in the morning (I did the same thing when I was younger, but at a bar), before burning the boats and building his various companies to massive valuations, eventually entering into deals with investment legends Bill Ackman and Charlie Munger, to name just two.

Never Enough is more of a cautionary tale of extreme wealth, greed, and envy. James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, said it was like going to business school and therapy at the same time, and I’d say that’s pretty accurate!

At one point, in a succession of high-powered meetings with various centimillionaires and billionaires, Andrew noticed that they ALL — without exception — envied the person just a little bit “above” them. Some of them were nicer than others, but during this particular week, every wealthy person he met with turned out to be bitter, envious, melancholy, and greedy for more.

It was during this whirlwind tour, meeting with the “ghosts of billionaires past,” so to speak, that Andrew realized that theirs wasn’t a life he wanted to live.

That’s also NOT to say that all billionaires are like that. Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett were/are exactly who they appear to be. But they’re the exceptions that proved to Andrew that stockpiling more wealth just for the sake of more was only going to end in darkness.

I won’t ruin the ending of Andrew’s story, but yeah, this one’s a phenomenal book, not to mention one that contains a wealth of business insight and valuable lessons.

Get This Book on Amazon: Never Enough

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Jay Abraham’s just brilliant, one of the best marketers in the game, and I’ve learned a tremendous amount from his books, most notably, Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got.

He always comes through with dozens of profitable tactics and strategies, several of which I end up using, that help me bust through business plateaus and get to the next level.

This particular book is all about attacking those major constraints — sticking points — that are keeping you from attaining that next level.

With constraints/bottlenecks, what you usually want to do is solve them in order. In the beginning, the bottleneck of your business is probably leads. Not enough people know who the hell you are.

Once that’s “solved,” or at least ameliorated to some extent, you move on to the next constraint, which might be sales, or building your team to handle all the incoming leads, etc. It never ends. You just keep graduating to better and more profitable levels.

What’s also encouraging about all this is that hard economic times do NOT affect all businesses equally. They simply EXPOSE the badly built businesses and take them out, while leaving plenty of opportunity for the prepared, the knowledgeable, and the courageous.

Even if the economic situation takes a nosedive, you can still not only survive, but also do extremely well financially, while many of your competitors suffer and go out of business. Like Warren Buffett says, once the tide goes out you can tell who’s been swimming naked.

Get This Book on Amazon: The Sticking Point Solution

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OK, that’s it for now…

More excellent book recommendations coming your way soon!

And if you want to learn how I’ve built an audience of 150,000 followers across social media, became a full-time creator, and how I’m rapidly growing my audience + profits in 2025, join us inside The Competitive Advantage 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 week!

Until next time…happy reading!

All the best,

Matt Karamazov

P.S. Whenever you're ready, here are three more ways I can help you:

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