Summer is a great time to take a vacation, relax on the beach, and spend time with family and friends. It’s also a great time to catch up on reading, learn new things, and become a better you. Reading is one of the easiest and most powerful ways to educate and inspire yourself and can help you reach your goals sooner. Let’s look at the books that should be on your summer reading list and a few reasons why we think you’ll love them.
1. The Financial Diet: A Total Beginner’s Guide to Getting Good with Money, by Chelsea Fagan and Lauren Hage
Many personal finance books are practical, but few that are very readable (and enjoyable). The Financial Diet offers straightforward financial advice that keeps you engaged and interested. This is a book that reads more like a novel than a textbook. If you’re looking to brush up on your financial literacy and get tips and guidance for managing your money in the real world, you’ll want to check out The Financial Diet.
2. Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depends on It, by Christopher Voss and Tahl Raz
Whether you’re on the hunt for a new job, buying a new car or house, or trying to housetrain your puppy, you will find yourself in a situation where you will have to negotiate. And, let’s face it, most of us don’t enjoy negotiating, but you know that if you do it well, you stand to gain quite a bit.
Never Split the Difference is a book that teaches you how to become a better negotiator, including honing your negotiating skills and developing practical approaches to different situations. The book is written by Chris Voss, a former lead hostage negotiator for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
3. Self-help reading: How To Win Friends & Influence People, by Dale Carnegie
Dale Carnegie’s How To Win Friends & Influence People is one of the most enduring self-help books ever written. Since first being published in 1936, the book has sold over 30 million copies, and once you read it, you’ll understand why it continues to be so popular over 85 years after it was written. Carnegie’s advice to his readers is simple and applicable to just about anyone, both in their personal and professional lives. Despite the title, this book is about more than just making friends. It can teach you how to be more considerate, communicate more effectively, and gently persuade others to your way of thinking without creating any animosity.
4. Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It, by Ethan Kross
Published in 2021, Chatter takes a unique approach to the voices most of us have inside our heads. Rather than ignore, vilify, or quickly dismiss those little voices, Kross encourages us to examine this “chatter,” helping us decide when we should listen to ourselves and when it’s appropriate to disregard what that voice in our head is saying.
In Chatter, Kross first makes a convincing case for how and why our self-talk is so powerful, giving examples like a physically healthy athlete being suddenly incapable of performing. Fortunately, Kross is an able and willing guide committed to holding the reader’s hand as he leads us through lessons in taking control of our chatter and leveraging self-talk to our advantage.
5. The Courage to Be Disliked, by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga
The Courage to Be Disliked is a book that encourages you to find your true self and unlock your full potential. Using psychological concepts from renowned experts like Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, Kishimi and Koga focus on the power of free will and our ability to break free from the opinions and apprehension of others. The Courage to Be Disliked is filled with life lessons to help promote a happier life and ascend beyond both self-imposed limitations and the doubts of people around us.
6. Atomic Habits, by James Clear
The full title of James Clear’s acclaimed book is Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones. Well, that tells you just about everything you need to know about this book. Clear advocates for significant change by making small, consistent improvements, which is exactly how we build habits. He then advises readers on how to translate those habits into living a better business and personal life.
On his website, Clear highlights what the book teaches, including: how to create a stronger identity for yourself, carve out time for building new habits, get back on track after you’ve deviated from your course, and avoid some of the common traps people can fall into when trying to establish and maintain good habits.
7. Essential reading: 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, by Yuval Noah Harari
Yuval Noah Harari is an Oxford-educated historian and the world-renowned author of Sapiens, a book that made The New York Times’ best-seller list every week for nearly two consecutive years.
21 Lessons for the 21st Century is a book that will compel you to think about difficult questions and inquire about why things are the way they are. Few, if any, will claim that 21 Lessons for the 21st Century is an easy read, and at times, it may dull your outlook on the world and humankind as a whole.
However, this book forces us to confront our problems head-on, then take a step back to digest some of the contemporary challenges we (and the rest of humankind) face daily. If you feel a little guilty, though, don’t be surprised. Harari has never been one to shy away from criticizing people for many of the world’s shortcomings.
Summary of your summer reading list
And that’s it! Though there are tons of incredible books, these are the top seven we’ve chosen for our 2022 summer reading list. Hopefully, you’ll find them as enjoyable as we did. We trust you can use them to help grow on your path to personal and financial well-being.