From my first desk job working at my college newspaper.

My first job was working at a small deli and grocery store in Lake Tahoe when I was 15. It was a job that came full circle some twenty years later when my wife and I bought a place called ​Tracy’s Drive-In Grocery​ in 2021, a little place that’s been in business since 1940.

I’ve had my fair share of gigs in between.

I worked in fast food. I was the director of marketing for a publicly traded company. I’ve been a lifeguard. I dropped out of college to be a research assistant to an author. I worked a desk at a talent agency in Beverly Hills. I’ve started multiple businesses. I’ve freelanced. I’ve been lucky enough to speak and consult with multi-billion dollar companies and Super Bowl winning sports franchises, family offices and law firms.

I wouldn’t say I’ve done it all because that’s one thing you learn–how much you have left to learn–but I have done a lot. I’ve had to think a lot about how to be a good employee as well as how to be a good boss. I’ve seen what makes good companies succeed and bad companies fail. I’ve seen how people get ahead…and how people get stuff.

I’ve also written a lot about this over the years, as I was figuring it out. In fact, many times I had to talk to bosses about this “little thing I do on the side” which was writing until eventually, the business stuff itself because of the stuff I do on the side. And now I have to have the conversation the other way with the people who work for me at ​Daily Stoic​ or ​Brass Check​ or at ​The Painted Porch​ or at ​Tracy’s​: Ok, but what do you really want to do and how can I help you get there?

Anyway, this post is about that. The best of those lessons—things I wish I’d been told when I was just starting and things I still tell myself. Some of them might be exactly what you need to hear right now. Some might not apply to you yet, or ever. That’s okay. Whether you’re just starting out, looking to make a big change, or aiming to reach new heights in your current role, I hope you’ll find something here that helps you navigate your own unique path.

1. Be quiet, work hard, and stay healthy. It’s not ambition or skill that is going to set you apart but sanity.
2. I remember once I called Dov Charney, founder of American Apparel, about some little success I’d had on some project. He was very busy and frustrated that I’d interrupted, but politely, he said, “Ryan, you are calling me to tell me that you did your job.” I thought of that conversation when I saw that famous scene in Mad Men where Peggy complains that Don never says thank you. “That’s what the money is for!” he tells her.
3. The thing that’s wrong about imposter syndrome is that for the most part no one is thinking about you at all. They’re too busy with their own doubts and their own work.
4. When I was starting out as an assistant in Hollywood, someone told me that the best thing I could do was make my boss look good. Don’t worry about credit, they said. Forget credit so hard that you’re glad when other people get it instead of you. It ended up being pretty decent advice, but it was nowhere near the right wording. I think a better way to express it would be: ​Find canvases for other people to paint on​. Come up with ideas to hand over to your boss. Find people, thinkers, up and comers to introduce them to. Cross wires to create new sparks. Find what nobody else wants to do and do it. Find inefficiency and waste and redundancies. Identify leaks and patches to free up resources for new areas. Produce more than everyone else and give your ideas away. The person who clears the path ultimately controls its direction, just as the canvas shapes the painting.
5. Very rarely have I ever let anyone go because they did not have the skills to do their job. It’s almost always their unwillingness to learn those skills or their inability to take feedback.
6. When I was 20 years old, I was working at this talent agency in Hollywood, and I got invited to this important meeting. As they were talking about stuff, I interjected and said something. My mentor took me aside after and he said, why did you say that? Did you think it actually needed to be said or did you just feel like you wanted to have something to say? I think about that all the time. It’s in ​The 48 Laws of Power​ — Always say less than necessary. Saying less than necessary, not interjecting at every chance we get—this is actually the mark not just of a self-disciplined person, but also a very smart and wise person.
7. The boss/mentor/biz can’t want you to succeed more than you want it. You have to be the driver of your own life/career/advancement.
8. I was working full time at American Apparel but planning my next move, saving my money and thinking about writing a book. Over lunch one day, Robert Greene told me, Ryan, while people wait for the right moment, ​there are two types of time​: Dead time—where they are passive and biding and Alive time—where they are learning and acting and getting the most out of every second. Which will this be for you?
9. When you’re lacking motivation, remind yourself: discipline now, freedom later. The labor will pass, and the rewards will last.
10. When I first moved to Austin in 2013, I went out to lunch—fittingly—with a writer named Austin Kleon. I was a longtime fan of his book ​Steal Like an Artist​ (his book ​Keep Going​ is another favorite). After we ate, he drove me around the city, showing me things and giving me advice. Austin was a little older than me and already married with kids. I remember asking him how he made time for it all. “I don’t,” he told me. “Life is about tradeoffs.” And then he gave me a little rule that has stuck with me always: ​Work, family, scene. Pick two​. Your creative output, your personal relationships, and your social life—balancing all three is impossible. You can excel in two if you say no to one. If you can’t, you’ll have none.
11. Lengthen your timeline. Opening my bookstore, ​The Painted Porch​ (delayed a year by COVID) taught me that ​it always takes longer than you think it’s going to take​. That’s Hofstadter’s law. And even when you take the law into account, you’re still surprised.
12. ​All success is a lagging indicator​… all the good stuff (and bad stuff) is downstream from choices made long before.
13. Lyndon Johnson said that the way to get things done was to get close to those who are at the center of things.
14. Robert Greene’s metaphor for mastery is being on the inside of something. When we start a new sport, when we get our first job, when we approach a field we haven’t yet studied, we are on the outside of. But as we put in the work, as we familiarize ourselves with every component, as we develop our intuitive field, we eventually make our way to the inside. This is a metaphor from Robert I think about constantly. I don’t want to be an outsider on anything I do, I want to make my way inside it.
15. Focus on effort, not outcomes. ​Just try to make contact with the ball​. Give your best effort, make contact with the ball. Let the rest take care of itself.
16. In 2013, I started a business with a partner that ​my wife warned me against working with​. I remember explaining to her why she was wrong and that I couldn’t possibly not do this because of some vague gut instinct of hers. The business turned into a nightmare, and it turned out that this partner was not someone I should have worked with. This shares a commonality with almost all my mistakes and regrets: Not listening to my wife from the beginning. You have to learn whose judgment to trust. You have to learn who knows you better than you know yourself, and you have to be able to trust and defer to them.
17. The trope that a day job takes away from your art or your hustle is stupid. There was a great exhibition at the Blanton Museum a couple years ago about artists who had day jobs. I wrote 3.5 books while I was the Director of Marketing at American Apparel. I started my own marketing company while I was a writer. I have my ​bookstore​. A job for someone coming up is like a trust fund you’ve earned. It helps.
18. Learning is priceless. Robert Greene used to have to nag me to submit my hours when I worked for him. To me, the money was an afterthought, I knew the real return was my access to him, that he would answer my questions, that I could see how a real pro did the job.
19. My career in Hollywood came to an end when one of the talent managers took a dislike to me (I told this story at the beginning of my ​appearance on Joe Rogan​). When I ended up at American Apparel, I asked Robert Greene about how to prevent that from happening. He pointed out my problem before was that I had only had one ally or patron. I needed to cultivate relationships with multiple decision makers/power brokers at the new company, especially a place as political and full of intrigue as American Apparel. So that’s what I did–you don’t want to be dependent on a single thread or a single vote of confidence. You need redundancies. You need relationships.
20. When you’re building a business, salaries/staff can feel expensive. But if you succeed, you’ll regret giving up equity so cheaply.
21. Dov Charney said another thing to me that I think about a lot. I was pointing out that some store (which had just opened) wasn’t doing well. He said, “Run rates always start at zero.” The point there was: Don’t be discouraged at the outset. It takes time to build up from nothing.
22. There is a story about an exchange between Jerry Seinfeld and a young comedian. The comedian approaches Seinfeld in a club one night and asks him for advice about marketing and getting exposure. Exposure? Marketing? Seinfeld asks. Just work on your act. ​Your work is the only thing that matters​.
23. Talking about what you’re going to do makes you a lot less likely to actually do it. Keep your plans to yourself.
24. The distinction between amateur and professional is an essential piece of advice I have gotten, first from ​Steven Pressfield’s writings​ and then by ​getting to know him​ over the years. There are professional habits and amateur ones. Which are you practicing? Is this a pro or an amateur move? Ask yourself that. Constantly.
25. Peter Thiel: ​“Competition is for losers.”​ I loved this the second I heard it. When people compete, somebody loses. So go where you’re the only one. Do what only you can do. Run a race with yourself.
26. The idea of “Fuck Yes…or No” is far too simple and has caused me quite a lot of grief. Dropping out of college, I was maybe 51/49 on it. Leaving my corporate job to become a writer, maybe 60/40. Right now I’m about to do something big that I am both excited and terrified about. The point is: The certainty comes later. The truly life-changing decisions are never simple. If I had only ever done things I was absolutely certain about, I’d have missed out on experiences I love. Conversely, I regret a good chunk of my “Fuck yes’s” because I was ​caught up in a fit of passion​ or bias. The whole point of risk is that you don’t know.
27. There is a story about the manager of Iron Maiden, one of the greatest metal bands of all time. At a dinner honoring the band, a young agent comes up to him and says how much he admires his skillful work in the music business. The manager looks at him and says, “HA! You think I am in the music business? No. I’m in the Iron fucking Maiden business.” The idea being that you want to be in the business of YOU. Not of your respective industry. Not of the critics. Not of the fads and trends and what everyone else is doing.
28. If you can afford to, delegate it. If you can’t yet afford to, automate it. Time is the most precious resource.
29. The best coaches and CEOs aren’t the ones who succeed just on the field or in the boardroom. The true greats are measured by their coaching tree—what the people who worked for them, who they mentored, who they inspired go on to do.
30. The thing I’ve learned about leveling up in your career, or breaking through different ceilings, is that you really only realize that it happened in retrospect. Just like you don’t notice your hair growing or your face aging, you can’t really feel it as it’s happening. Be patient—evaluate later. Don’t kick yourself now because you think you’re stuck. You might be the opposite of stuck and just not know it.
31. Be able to adapt and make use of new tools. I have no idea what the long term implications of artificial technology will be, all I know is that the best approach as an individual is to find a way to use it to get better at what you do.
32. Having now been in pro locker rooms and boardrooms and briefing rooms with special forces operators and the Senate dining room—all very different worlds—I have come to believe that elite performance is elite performance is elite performance. While these folks all do very different jobs at very different levels of fame or fortune, they’re all basically thinking about the same handful of things, accessing the same core mental skills: Resilience. Creativity. Focus. Collaboration.
33. The best decision I ever made was taking a pay cut to write ​The Obstacle is The Way​ (less than half what I got for my first book). I knew it was what I wanted to write. I thought it could sell. I had my day job. It still seemed like a TON of money to me. Sometimes you have to take a step back to go forward.
34. But if I am content with what I have, won’t I stop getting better? No. We play better with house money. Feel better too.
35. If you never hear no from clients, if the other side in a negotiation has never balked to something you’ve asked for, then you are not pricing yourself high enough, you are not being aggressive enough.
36. If it makes you a worse person (parent, neighbor, writer, whatever), it’s not success. If starting a business stresses you out, if it tears your relationships apart, if it makes you bitter or frustrated with people—then it doesn’t matter how much money it makes or external praise it receives. It’s not successful.
37. A friend of mine just left a very important job that a lot of people would kill for. When he left I said, “If you can’t walk away, then you don’t have the job…the job has you.”

One of my favorite quotes—enough that I have it inscribed on the wall across the back of my bookstore—comes from the novelist Walter Mosley. “I’m not saying that you have to be a reader to save your soul in the modern world,” he said. “I’m saying it helps.”

2024 promises us nothing but the same craziness as last year and every year before it. Maybe even new and worse ones. Almost half the world is going to vote for new leaders this year. Who will they choose? Conflicts simmer, which ones will explode? The only certainty about this upcoming year is uncertainty. Good things will happen. Bad things will happen. Things will happen.

What are you going to do about it? Will you be ready? Can you handle it?

Books are an investment in yourself—investments that come in many forms: novels, nonfiction, how-to, poetry, classics, biographies. They are a way to learn about what’s happened in the past. They’re a way for you to learn about people and human nature. They help you think more clearly, be kinder, see the bigger picture, and improve at the things that matter to you. Books are a tradition that stretches back thousands of years and stretches forward to today, where people are still publishing distillations of countless hours of hard thinking on hard topics. Why wouldn’t you avail yourself of this wisdom?

With that in mind, here are a bunch of books—some new, some old—that will help you meet the goals that matter for 2024, that will help you live better and be better. You can also get this collection at my bookstore, The Painted Porch.

​The Greek Way by Edith Hamilton

Marcus Aurelius’ life was changed by a single book. In book 1 of Meditations, Marcus thanks his philosophy teacher Rusticus “for introducing me to Epictetus’s lectures—and loaning me his own copy.” In Rusticus handing Marcus a book and Marcus reading that book—the arc of history was changed. The Greek Way is another in the category of loaned books that changed the arc of history. On a ski vacation in 1964, Robert Kennedy was loaned a copy of The Greek Way and ended up spending most of the trip in his room reading it. It’s a wonderful little discussion of what made the Greeks so special, what they can teach us, and how they thought about life. Anyone who has a gift for communicating ancient ideas in a modern context is a hero in my eyes—and in this case, Edith Hamilton proved why. By writing about the Greeks in such an accessible and inspiring way she ended up changing the political trajectory of the entire Kennedy family.

​Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

For this piece two years ago, I recommended this new annotated edition by Robin Waterfield. I’m a champion of the Gregory Hays translation, but reading a new translation of a book you’ve read (or love) is a great way to see the same ideas from a new angle…or find new ideas you missed on the previous go-arounds. Marcus, like Heraclitus, believed we never step in the same river twice. More recently, I had a similar experience. Since my 16-year-old (nearly) completely marked-up copy was starting to get a little worse for wear, I created a premium edition designed to stand the test of time, just like the content inside. That’s the amazing thing about reading Marcus—whichever translation you go with—year after year, he feels both incredibly timely and incredibly timeless. There’s a reason this book has endured for almost twenty centuries (here are some lessons from me having read Meditations more than 100 times). If you haven’t read Marcus Aurelius or if you have…you should read this book and then read it again.

​The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene

There are some awful people and awful movements on the march around the world. This feels new, but of course it’s not–these people have always existed. The problem is they are just not well understood. Worse, good people are not often armed with the tools (or the cunning) to defeat or to effectuate change. If you want to live life on your terms, climb as high as you know you’re capable, and avoid being controlled by others—you need to read this book. You’ll leave not just with actionable lessons, but an indelible sense of what to do in many trying and confusing situations. You also have to check out the 25th anniversary edition. It’s one of the coolest designed books I’ve ever seen (and the 48 Laws of Power was already beautifully designed). If you flip the gold pages one direction, you see Machiavelli’s hidden face…and if you flip them the other direction, Robert’s face appears. It’s an amazing version of an amazing book which I continue to think everyone needs to read. Is there a darkness to this book? Yes. But there is a darkness to life, too. You have to understand it and be able to defend against it. If you don’t want to read it because you think it’s ‘immoral,’ well then you definitely need to read it, as I explain in this video.

​The Choice: Embrace the Possible by Dr. Edith Eva Eger

​I told Dr. Edith Eger I felt guilty about someone I had lost touch with and only recently reconnected with. She cut me off and told me she could give me a gift that would solve that guilt right now. “I give you a sentence,” she said, “One sentence—if I knew then what I know now, I would have done things differently.” That’s the end of that, she said. “Guilt is in the past, and the one thing you cannot change is the past.” Dr. Eger is a complete hero of mine. At 16-years-old, she’s sent to Auschwitz. And how does this not break a person? How do they survive? How do they endure the unendurable? And how do they emerge from this, not just not broken, but cheerful and happy and of service to other people? The last thing Dr. Eger’s mother said to her before she was sent to the gas chambers was that very Stoic idea: even when we find ourselves in horrendous situations, we can always choose how we respond to them, who we’re going to be inside of them, what we’re going to hold onto inside of them. Dr. Eger quotes Frankl, who she later studied under, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” It was this idea that allowed Dr. Eger to not only endure unimaginable suffering, but to find meaning in it. She went on to become a psychologist and survives to this day, still seeing patients and helping people overcome trauma. I’ve had the incredible honor of interviewing Dr. Eger twice (here and here) and the joy and energy of this woman, this 95-year-old Holocaust survivor, is just incredible.

​Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life by Arnold Schwarzenegger

Arnold’s life is the American dream, and his book, to me, is an important corollary to that dream–you have to pay back the gift by being of service, being useful to others. I really enjoyed this book and was lucky enough to interview him twice for it, once in Los Angeles in his Bavarian-themed office (listen to the episode here or watch it on YouTube) and then again on stage at the 92nd Street Y in New York City (listen here). He’s had an incredible life. Seriously, it’s a great book. We could use more useful people this year.

​Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be by Dr. Becky Kennedy

My wife recommended Dr. Becky’s work. I should know by now to put such books at the very top of my to-read pile, but this one took a while to get to. I regret that because WOW this book is good! I could only make it a couple pages at a time before I had to just stop and think. And then to go back through it for my notecard system took equally long, there was just so much stuff I had to get down. I’ve already written close to a dozen Daily Dad emails about lessons from the book—from parenting anxieties and frustrations to being present and asking tough questions. But as much as this is a parenting book, it’s also just classic Stoic principles—because what is parenting but stress, situations you don’t control, worry, anxiety, fear, fatigue and frustration? I took so much out of this book. I interviewed Dr. Becky, too but you just HAVE to read this book.

​The Storm Before The Storm by Mike Duncan

One of my reading rules is: If you want to understand current events, don’t rely on breaking news. Find a book about a similar event in the past. To understand the things we must be so careful about in our own politics today, why norms must be respected, why problems can’t be kicked down the road, why populism is so dangerous—read this book. The overthrow of the Roman Republic didn’t just happen. It wasn’t just Julius Caesar, it wasn’t just one man’s ambition that undid some 450 years worth of work. As Duncan writes (and talks about in our podcast episode together), many events in the decades prior contributed to the republic’s fall. And we must understand those events so that we don’t repeat them.

​It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis

Like I said, we understand what’s happening now by understanding what has happened in the past. It’s also true that fiction helps us understand the human heart and the events of history more than nonfiction can. This book is one that will make you so uncomfortable you’ll probably pick it up and put it down several times. It almost shocks you that this exists, that it’s not some work of fiction pretending to be 80 years old. But no. In fact, one of America’s most famous writers wrote a bestselling novel about an appalling populist demagogue who won the presidency of the United States. Life imitates art. Change the dates, places and names and it’s no longer fiction, it’s real. Fiction is best when it puts a mirror up to us. This book does that. If you don’t read the book, at least please read about it. Because you need to know. It can happen here.

​Leadership: In Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin

This is an absolutely incredible book. I think I marked up nearly every page. The book is a study of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, FDR and Lyndon Johnson. It is so clearly the culmination of a lifetime of research… and yet somehow not overwhelming or boring. Distillation at its best! I have read extensively on each of those figures and I got a ton out of it. Even stuff I already knew, I benefited from Goodwin’s perspective. This is the perfect book to read right now—a timely reminder that leadership matters. Or, as the Stoics say: character is fate. Or, as I wrote about in this piece about leadership during the plague in ancient Rome: when things break down, good leaders have to stand up.

​The Creative Act by Rick Rubin

There is perhaps no one better qualified than Rick Rubin to help people tap into their creativity. I think it will quickly become one of those The War of Art type of books—one that artists keep close by and return to routinely. I wrote quite a bit about Rubin in Perennial Seller and no doubt would have sourced from this book if it had existed back then. But my basic summary of this book is: Instead of trying to be creative, try to get an environment/a mindset/a practice that is conducive to creativity and let things happen. It’s like Zen in the Art of Archery. You let the arrow fall like ripe fruit. I interviewed Rick Rubin on The Daily Stoic Podcast, listen here.

​The Daily Pressfield by Steven Pressfield

I’ve always loved the “daily read” format. I’ve recommended some of my favorites here before, I’ve been lucky enough to publish two of my own (here and here), and now I feel even luckier to have this new collection by one of my writing heroes, Steven Pressfield. No matter what you’re trying to do this year, you’ll almost certainly battle The Resistance in pursuit of it. This is a great book to help you in that battle. Even though I’ve read and reread all of Steven’s books, this book has not left my desk since I got my copy (which adds to my regular practice of re-reading The War of Art before every project I start). I was very glad to have him out to interview him about the book, too. You can listen to our conversation here (or watch on YouTube).

​Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier by Kevin Kelly

​This book of advice is a great one for any professional, parent, or person. Kevin Kelly always thinks about things in a unique way and manages to distill a lot of experience down into a memorable, actionable bit of wisdom. I enjoyed this…and I wish more smart people wrote books like this. It was a real treat to get to interview him in person in the new Daily Stoic podcast studio (here’s a clip of him and I talking about why reading is so important).

​The Expanding Circle by Peter Singer

Even though Stoicism is a ruggedly individual philosophy, at the core of it is this idea of “the circles of concern.” Our first concern, the Stoics said, is ourselves. Then our family, our community, our country, our world, all living things. The work of philosophy is to draw these concerns inward—to learn to care about as many people as possible, to do as much good as possible. When I had Peter Singer on the podcast, he mentioned this book. He chanced on a similar metaphor, not knowing its Stoic origins. I ended up getting The Expanding Circle, about expanding our focus on the welfare of family and friends to include, ultimately, all of humanity—animals, the environment, all of it.

​Atomic Habits by James Clear

It’s when things are chaotic and crazy, when the world feels like it’s falling apart, that we most need to develop good habits. I think about James Clear’s concept of atomic habits on a regular basis. To me, this is a sign of a great book—that even just thinking about the title has an impact on you. I love the double meaning of the word atomic—not just meaning explosive habits, but also focusing on the smallest possible size of habit, the tiniest step you can take to start the chain reaction that can in fact lead to explosive results.

​Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel and The Way of Baseball: Finding Stillness at 95 mph by Shawn Green

These are ultimately not books about archery or baseball, but about zen and the mastery of the soul. Both are great, accessible books about peace and peak performance that don’t hit you over the head with Buddhism, yoga, meditation, or any of that. The Way of Baseball is about how Shawn Green struggled as a major league baseball player and through repetitive, simple practice turned himself into one of the best home run hitters in the game. Even if you don’t like sports, I promise you will get a lot out of them.

​Gift From The Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

I always associated Charles Lindbergh with Hawaii because when I was a kid, I visited his grave at the end of the road to Hana in Maui. I was totally surprised to find this book at one of my favorite bookstores, Sundog Books, in one of my favorite places in the world, 30A in Florida. It’s a beautiful philosophical book about rest and relaxation. For each chapter, Lindbergh takes a shell from the beach as the starting point for a meditation on topics like solitude, love, happiness, contentment, and so on. For a 67-year-old book, it feels surprisingly modern—especially, I would think, for women. The only thing I didn’t like about this book is that I didn’t read it when I was writing Stillness is the Key as I almost certainly would have quoted it many times. In any case, pair Lindbergh’s book with Stillness. Because the future belongs to those with the ability to focus, be creative, and think at a high level. And that’s what stillness is—that quiet moment when inspiration hits you, that ability to step back and reflect, that ability to make room for gratitude and happiness regardless of what’s going on around you. It’s one of the most powerful forces on earth. We will all need stillness in 2024 and beyond.

As I have published different versions of this piece over the last couple of years (2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023), I made one final recommendation worth repeating: Pick 3-4 titles that have had a big impact on you in the past and commit to reading them again. Seneca talked about how you need to “linger among a limited number of master thinkers, and digest their works, if you would derive ideas which shall win firm hold in your mind.”

We never read the same book twice. Because we’ve changed. The perceptions about the book have changed. What we’re going through in this very moment is new and different. So this year, go reread The Great Gatsby. Give The Odyssey another chance. Sit with a few chapters from The 48 Laws of Power. See how these books have stood the test of time and see how you’ve changed since you’ve read them last.

It can be some of the best time you spend with a book this year. Happy reading!

View a complete list of my favorite books from 2023 at The Painted Porch

It was a great year of reading once again. Not because the titles published this year were particularly great–as always, my reading is usually rooted in stuff that’s older, in a more serendipitous process than catching titles as they come out. It was great because I found so many books that were new to me and in their own way, helped form a new me. I learned about perspectives I didn’t have before, learned things I didn’t know, and even connected with people I otherwise wouldn’t have known. It was wonderful and I feel so lucky to have so many more books I still want to read.

At the end of every year, I try to narrow down all the books I read and recommended in this email list to just a handful of the best. The kind of books where if they were the only books I’d read that year, I’d still feel like it was an awesome year of reading. You can check out the best of lists from 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012 and 2011… I can’t believe it’s been 13 years of these roundups!

My reading list is now ~270,000 people, which means I hear pretty quickly when a recommendation has landed well. I promise you—you can’t go wrong with any of these.

​The Son by Philipp Meyer

You never know why a book is going to jump out at you or why it will speak to you. I found this one at a Barnes and Noble on the Gulf Coast of Florida on vacation with my family. How could I have known that this epic Western–one of the greatest I’ve ever read–was largely based in Bastrop, where I live and where my bookstore, The Painted Porch, is? How cool is that? As it happens, Philipp came out and was the first in-person episode of The Daily Stoic Podcast–recorded in a building that dates roughly to the period of the book. And then just a few weeks ago, I was at a small rural grocery store in Red Rock, Texas and in a bin of used books, I found a pristine 1st edition hardcover of The Son (which I am going to have him sign for me when we go deer hunting later this month). Again, the magic of books! Anyway, on the little sign I put next to the book in the bookstore, I say that The Son is on par with the show Yellowstone, but better. If you’re looking to read more fiction this year, start here. It’s an epic book that spans multiple generations, from the Comanche raids of the 1800s to the border raids of the early 1900s and the oil booms of the 20th century. I also recommend Philipp’s other novel, American Rust,which reminded me of one of my absolute favorite books last year, Jessica Bruder’s Nomadland. Meyer is so in tune with the themes that we see ruminating in our country every day–the dignity of work, the despair of not being able to get ahead, the terrible cost of so many shortsighted economic decisions by American industry. But all of that is subsumed here in a great novel with great characters. It pairs nicely with Cormac McCarthy’s border trilogy as well (All The Pretty Horses is an all-time favor for me). But back to the topic of Texas, two amazing Texas books are Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne and Comanches: The History of a People by T.R. Fehrenbach.

​Pontius Pilate by Ann Wroe

How did I find this book? No recollection–but I feel so much gratitude for having found it. Ann Wroe’s biography of Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judaea–the man who sentenced Jesus to his gruesome death–was so overwhelmingly good that I could only read a couple pages at a time. How on earth did Wroe manage to produce such a rich and fascinating, 432-page book about a guy for which the historical record is not more than a couple artifacts and inscriptions? I don’t know… but it makes it a masterwork. Fitzgerald said genius was the ability to hit a target no one else could see…that’s what happened here. What so captivated me about this book is that although it is of course about the most seminal moment of the Christian world, it is happening inside the Roman world–the world of Seneca, literally. Seneca’s brother is in this book (he adjudicates a case involving St. Paul). Lucilius, who Seneca is writing his famous letters to, has the same job in a different province as Pontius. And by the way, that’s the most radical thing about this book: That you get to look at Pontius Pilate, the man who sentenced Christ to death, as a guy with a job. Did he do it well? How did it go so sideways? He said several times that he did not think Christ was guilty…he tried several times to get out of sentencing him to be crucified…yet in the end, he relented and did what he knew was wrong. What can that teach us? This was one of the most interesting and creative books I’ve read in a very long time. I also had Ann Wroe on The Daily Stoic Podcast earlier this year (listen here).

​Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be by Dr. Becky Kennedy

I know how I found Dr. Becky’s work–my wife recommended it. I should know by now to put such books at the very top of my to-read pile, but this one took a while to get to. I regret that because WOW this book is good! It’s another that I could make it a couple pages at a time before I had to just stop and think. And then to go back through it for my notecard system took equally long, there was just so much stuff I had to get down. I’ve already written close to a dozen Daily Dad emails about lessons from the book–from parenting anxieties and frustrations to being present and asking tough questions. But as much as this is a parenting book, it’s also just classic Stoic principles applied toward being a person–because what is parenting but stress, situations you don’t control, worry, anxiety, fear, fatigue and frustration? I took so much out of this book. I just interviewed Dr. Becky too but I don’t think it will come out until January. Stay tuned and in the meantime, you just HAVE to read this book.

More…

As much as I tried, I really can’t leave it at just three books. As you’ve seen in the list this year, I published a book myself in May, The Daily Dad. I quite enjoyed The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old Man by David Von Drehle. It’s a short, great read. I even got to talk to David about Charlie on The Daily Stoic Podcast (listen here). The Past That Would Not Die by Walter Lord is a riveting, must read narrative nonfiction thriller about James Meredith’s brave and bold campaign to integrate Ole Miss in 1962. An equally moving and related book was Three Lives for Mississippi by William Bradford Huie. I’m not sure you can fully understand America or the darkness that humanity is capable of without reading these books. I found Jan Morris’ Conundrum to be an honest, eye-opening, and just very human memoir from someone who is trans (and also an amazing historian, veteran and fascinating person). The world would be a better place if more people read this book. I loved Joan Didion’s Blue Nights even more than I loved The Year of Magical Thinking as it is much more about parenting and one’s own mortality. If you’re a Joan Didion fan, check out The Daily Stoic Podcast on Youtube, the table we sit at is hers. Deliver Me From Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska by Warren Zanes is a great insight into not just the creative process but also the business and branding and career process. It’s fantastic and almost unbelievable. Edith Hamilton’s The Greek Way is a wonderful discussion of what made the Greeks so special, what they can teach us and how they thought about life. I was lucky enough to interview Arnold Schwarzenegger twice for his new book, Be Useful. We met once in Los Angeles in his Bavarian-themed office (listen here) and then again on stage in NYC. And finally, Robert Greene released a 25th anniversary edition of ​The 48 Laws of Power. It’s one of the coolest designed books I’ve ever seen. If you flip the gold pages in one direction, you see Machiavelli’s hidden face…and if you flip them in the other direction, Robert’s face appears. It’s an amazing version of an amazing book which I continue to think everyone needs to read. And if you don’t want to read it because you think it’s ‘immoral,’ well then you definitely need to read it.

Children’s Books

My oldest is obsessed with Minecraft and so we were very excited when we found out that Max Brooks wrote a novel about Minecraft called The Island (the audiobook is narrated by Jack Black). It’s so funny to see him absorb and get excited by what are effectively Stoic lessons but be open to them because it’s fictionalized through a video game. If I were to say any of the same things, he’d roll his eyes. I missed out on Harry Potter as a kid (just a tad old when they came out) and I never saw the movies so having kids was my first time interacting with the stories at all. We’ve loved making our way through the Illustrated Editions of Harry Potter this year. It’s a great way to read them and they’re beautiful books (if only JK Rowling could go read Jan Morris’ memoir and shut up). For my youngest, who is obsessed with bunnies, I read The Velveteen Rabbit for the first time and we both fell in love with the story. It inspired two Daily Dad emails that you can read here and here. If you haven’t read either The Boy Who Would Be King or The Girl Who Would Be Free, I would love for you to check them out. Stoicism is a philosophy I wish I had found earlier…and I wrote these books to help kids do exactly that.

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As always, I appreciate you supporting my bookstore, The Painted Porch. Please note that because a lot of the books we sell are backlist titles, there can sometimes be delays in stocking/sourcing. And with that, I hope that you’ll get around to reading whichever of these books catch your eye and that you’ll learn as much as I did. Whether you buy them at The Painted Porch or on Amazon today, or at your nearest independent bookstore six months from now makes no difference to me. I just hope you read!

You’re welcome to email me questions or raise issues for discussion. Better yet, if you know of a good book on a related topic, please pass it along. And as always, if one of these books comes to mean something to you, recommend it to someone else.

I promised myself a long time ago that if I saw a book that interested me I’d never let time or money or anything else prevent me from having it. This means that I treat reading with a certain amount of respect. All I ask, if you decide to email me back, is that you’re not just thinking aloud.

Enjoy these books, treat your education like the job that it is, and let me know if you ever need anything.

All the best,

Ryan