If you’re like me, your reading list seems insurmountable. Our home bookcases contain books covering all topics: gardening, cookbooks, biographies, autobiographies, history, sports, business and marketing, spiritual, entrepreneurship, parenting, how-to’s, sci-fi, reference books, and on and on and on.
So, below are 6 books I’m focusing on this Spring. My goal is pretty simple: read for 30 minutes each day. Sometimes, a book is so engrossing that I’ll read for a couple hours on a weekend morning (definitely with American Kingpin and Michael Connelly books!)
Stillness is the Key by Ryan Holiday
Ryan Holiday is a writer and media strategist. At 19 years old, Holiday dropped out of college to apprentice under Robert Greene, author of The 48 Laws of Power. He also had a successful marketing career at American Apparel and went on to found a creative agency called Brass Check, which has advised clients like Google, TASER, and Complex, as well as many prominent bestselling authors, including Neil Strauss, Tony Robbins and Tim Ferriss.
Holiday has written ten books, including The Obstacle Is the Way, Ego Is the Enemy, The Daily Stoic, Conspiracy and Stillness is the Key which have sold more than 2 million copies in thirty languages and have a following among NFL coaches, world-class athletes, TV personalities, political leaders, and others around the world.
From the Publisher: All great leaders, thinkers, artists, athletes, and visionaries share one indelible quality. It enables them to conquer their tempers. To avoid distraction and discover great insights. To achieve happiness and do the right thing. Ryan Holiday calls it stillness–to be steady while the world spins around you.
In this book, he outlines a path for achieving this ancient, but urgently necessary way of living. Drawing on a wide range of history’s greatest thinkers, from Confucius to Seneca, Marcus Aurelius to Thich Nhat Hanh, John Stuart Mill to Nietzsche, he argues that stillness is not mere inactivity, but the doorway to self-mastery, discipline, and focus.
Holiday also examines figures who exemplified the power of stillness: baseball player Sadaharu Oh, whose study of Zen made him the greatest home run hitter of all time; Winston Churchill, who in balancing his busy public life with time spent laying bricks and painting at his Chartwell estate managed to save the world from annihilation in the process; Fred Rogers, who taught generations of children to see what was invisible to the eye; Anne Frank, whose journaling and love of nature guided her through unimaginable adversity.
More than ever, people are overwhelmed. They face obstacles and egos and competition. Stillness Is the Key offers a simple but inspiring antidote to the stress of 24/7 news and social media. The stillness that we all seek is the path to meaning, contentment, and excellence in a world that needs more of it than ever.
American Kingpin by Nick Bilton
Loving this book right now! It reads much like fiction with many moving parts, real characters, and converging timelines.
From the Publisher: In 2011, a twenty-six-year-old libertarian programmer named Ross Ulbricht launched the ultimate free market: the Silk Road, a clandestine Web site hosted on the Dark Web where anyone could trade anything—drugs, hacking software, forged passports, counterfeit cash, poisons—free of the government’s watchful eye.
It wasn’t long before the media got wind of the new Web site where anyone—not just teenagers and weed dealers but terrorists and black hat hackers—could buy and sell contraband detection-free. Spurred by a public outcry, the federal government launched an epic two-year manhunt for the site’s elusive proprietor, with no leads, no witnesses, and no clear jurisdiction. All the investigators knew was that whoever was running the site called himself the Dread Pirate Roberts.
The Silk Road quickly ballooned into $1.2 billion enterprise, and Ross embraced his new role as kingpin. He enlisted a loyal crew of allies in high and low places, all as addicted to the danger and thrill of running an illegal marketplace as their customers were to the heroin they sold. Through his network he got wind of the target on his back and took drastic steps to protect himself—including ordering a hit on a former employee. As Ross made plans to disappear forever, the Feds raced against the clock to catch a man they weren’t sure even existed, searching for a needle in the haystack of the global Internet.
Drawing on exclusive access to key players and two billion digital words and images Ross left behind, Vanity Fair correspondent and New York Times bestselling author Nick Bilton offers a tale filled with twists and turns, lucky breaks and unbelievable close calls. It’s a story of the boy next door’s ambition gone criminal, spurred on by the clash between the new world of libertarian-leaning, anonymous, decentralized Web advocates and the old world of government control, order, and the rule of law. Filled with unforgettable characters and capped by an astonishing climax, American Kingpin might be dismissed as too outrageous for fiction. But it’s all too real.
Fair Warning by Michael Connelly
If you like the Mickey Haller or Harry Bosch series, you’ll enjoy this character from Michael Connelly.
From the Publisher: Veteran reporter Jack McEvoy has taken down killers before, but when a woman he had a one-night stand with is murdered in a particularly brutal way, McEvoy realizes he might be facing a criminal mind unlike any he’s ever encountered.
Jack investigates—against the warnings of the police and his own editor—and makes a shocking discovery that connects the crime to other mysterious deaths across the country. Undetected by law enforcement, a vicious killer has been hunting women, using genetic data to select and stalk his targets.
Uncovering the murkiest corners of the dark web, Jack races to find and protect the last source who can lead him to his quarry. But the killer has already chosen his next target, and he’s ready to strike.
Terrifying and unputdownable, Fair Warning shows once again why “Michael Connelly has earned his place in the pantheon of great crime fiction writers” (Chicago Sun-Times).
Unstoppable by Ben Angel
Ben Angel, bestselling author of Unstoppable (Entrepreneur Press® 2018), CLICK, Sleeping Your Way to The Top in Business, and Flee 9-5, is Australia’s leading marketing authority. Founder of benangel.co, a site dedicated to providing entrepreneurs advanced online marketing courses and education, Ben provides easy-to-apply and even easier-to-understand strategies for reaching new customers with ease.
From the Publisher:
Unable to overcome debilitating fatigue and depression, bestselling author and personal devel-opment expert Ben Angel set out on a 90-day mission to find and conquer the root of his rut.
The result of his journey is Unstoppable, a highly revealing book where Ben gives you a look into the world of nootropics, wearable devices, and nutrition and delivers a guide to help you reduce stress, increase focus, improve physical performance, and eliminate your fears. You’ll hear from world-leading biohackers, neuroscientists, doctors, and New York Times bestselling author Dave Asprey as Ben helps you:
- Identify the seven triggers causing your brain fog
- Discover the key to better health, more energy, and a better mood
- Optimize your mental performance and feel more alert with six nootropics
- Form new behaviors and break old patterns (the real secret to your success)
- Interrupt your stress response through breathing
- Align your biochemistry with your soul’s purpose in three easy steps
- Use progressive overload to become an upgraded version of yourself
Plus, gain access to the Unstoppable Assessment to discover your identity type, pinpoint your energy levels, and create a plan to break through your own limits and become unstoppable.When we look at the most successful people, we usually look at their habits—their behaviors, their day-to-day rituals, their dedication. But what about the mind? Ben Angel hits this idea head-on in Unstoppable, tackling peak performance with biohacking strategies that will blow your mind.
Payoff by Dan Ariel
Dan Ariely conducts research in behavioral economics and tries to describe it in plain language. He is the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University and a founding member of the Center for Advanced Hindsight. Ariely’s immersive introduction to irrationality took place many years ago while overcoming injuries sustained in an explosion. The range of treatments in the burn department, and particularly the daily “bath” made him face a variety of irrational behaviors that were immensely painful and persistent. Upon leaving the hospital, he wanted to understand how to better deliver painful and unavoidable treatments to patients, so he began conducting research in this area.
Ariely became engrossed with the idea that we repeatedly and predictably make the wrong decisions in many aspects of our lives and that research could help change some of these patterns. Irrationally Yours, Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality, The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty, the movie Dishonesty and the card game Irrational Game are his attempt to take his research findings and describe them in non academic terms, so that more people will learn about this type of research, discover the excitement of behavioral economics, and possibly use some of the insights to enrich their own lives.
From the Publisher:
Bestselling author Dan Ariely reveals fascinating new insights into motivation—showing that the subject is far more complex than we ever imagined.
Every day we work hard to motivate ourselves, the people we live with, the people who work for and do business with us. In this way, much of what we do can be defined as being “motivators.” From the boardroom to the living room, our role as motivators is complex, and the more we try to motivate partners and children, friends and coworkers, the clearer it becomes that the story of motivation is far more intricate and fascinating than we’ve assumed.
Payoff investigates the true nature of motivation, our partial blindness to the way it works, and how we can bridge this gap. With studies that range from Intel to a kindergarten classroom, Ariely digs deep to find the root of motivation—how it works and how we can use this knowledge to approach important choices in our own lives. Along the way, he explores intriguing questions such as: Can giving employees bonuses harm productivity? Why is trust so crucial for successful motivation? What are our misconceptions about how to value our work? How does your sense of your mortality impact your motivation?
Wise as F*ck by Gary John Bishop
Gary John Bishop began his life journey in Glasgow, Scotland. The grit and wit of his early life have contributed to his tough-love, in-your-face approach to coaching. Coupled with world-class training and development, Gary has created a potent brew of effectiveness and the ability to reach through the crust of people’s lives and root out the deeper issues that consume them and tie them to their hurdles.
His ability to elevate and expand people’s greatness makes the kind of life-altering impact that is so rare in the industry. Gary’s hyper-awareness and years of elite training allow him to assess each client and guide them to the path that best expresses their lives; with micro precision, he cuts straight to the heart of what is going to make a difference.
Gary’s experience and quick ascent to becoming a senior program director for one of the world’s leading personal development organizations is proof that he is dedicated and committed to what is possible for every client and person he encounters. He doesn’t claim perfection. He’s been through life and doesn’t sugar coat his folly. He uses his experience as both a human and a world class coach to mentor and coach people to raise the bar higher for what they once thought would be their greatest self.
Gary John Bishop is the author of Unfu*k Yourself: Get Out of Your Head and Into Your Life and Stop Doing That Sh*t: End Self-Sabotage and Demand Your Life Back.
From the Publisher:
In Unfu*k Yourself, Gary John Bishop taught millions of readers how to silence the negative, self-sabotaging voice in their head to thrive. In Wise As Fu*k he expands on his ideas, redefining what it means to be wise and showing how to tackle problems and improve our lives and those of others.
When the shit storms of life hit us, many of us don’t know what to do—whether it’s losing a job, suffering a broken heart, or just feeling a lack of purpose. We need wisdom to help us navigate forward. While the internet is full of seemingly good advice, it isn’t helping us actually change our lives. Wise As Fu*k breaks through the bullshit, providing insight to inspire us in the four areas we need it most: love, loss, fear, and success.
Written with his widely admired no-nonsense style, Wise As Fu*k provides a welcome fresh perspective to help us transform how we approach a variety of life’s problems. But Bishop makes clear, the work doesn’t stop there. Now that you’ve unfu*ked yourself and and are wise as fu*k about these touchy areas, you can apply the lessons to make a positive impact on the world.
