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Eddie Hood
Today, I'm going over every book that I read in 2024. There are 28 of them here, everything from poetry to classic to short story. And I'm going to share with you my thoughts on them. So hopefully you can find something you'd like to read in 2025. All right, let's dig into it. Welcome to this week's episode of the Read well Podcast. My name is Eddie Hood, and I'm your host, where I believe it's more important to read well than to be well read. So grab your favorite book, open up your notes, and let's get ready to learn something fascinating. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Read well podcast. My name is Eddie Hood, and at the end of the year, I like to look at each of the books that I read and really figure out if they worked for me or if they didn't. Luckily, this year, all of these books are fantastic. There are 28 of them here, and I want to start by pointing out that the number of books doesn't matter. I never set a book goal to try and hit 50 books a year or 100 books a year. I just try to read slowly. Now. For me, 28 books is actually quite a lot. But I do read a lot each day. On average about three hours, because, well, it's part of my job now. I talk about books on podcasts, so I had to make up some space, and I'm so grateful that I did. What I'm going to do today is go through each one. I'm going to do them in type. So we're going to start with poetry. Then we're going to go to philosophy. My favorite. We'll look at memoir, nonfiction, short stories, fiction, and classical literature. All right, let's go. This year, I read Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. He is my favorite poet, hands down. If you want to get into a poet that makes you feel more about life and living and sort of embracing the moment. If you've ever watched Dead Poet Society, where Robin Williams gets down and he talks about sort of sucking the marrow out of life, you know, he really has a lot of references to Whitman. And I'll read just one line to you from Song of Myself. He says, all forces have been steadily employed to complete and delight me. Now on this spot, I stand with my robust soul. That is the language of Walt Whitman, having and living with a robust soul. So if you want to get in some really juicy poetry, check out Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. You will absolutely love it. Foreign. This is where I Try to spend a fair amount of my time in book club. This year we read. Actually, no, this was not in book club. I just read this for fun. This is Walden by Henry David Thoreau and I did a video on it. I'll post it right up here somewhere if you want to follow along. I reread this book because I was going back to Boston for a work trip and so I rented a little car, drove off into the wilderness, found Walden Pond and got to read the book on the side of the shores. I've got that whole video documenting that. This is one of my favorite books on just sort of living well and purposely. So I reread it again this year. Very happy. I did check out Walden Pond by Henry David Thoreau. The next book that I read. I. I didn't know this book existed. She's one of my favorite authors now. Her name is Sarah Bakewell. She does a really great job of digging into complicated topics or ideas by sor. Of examining the lives that people lived. So she'll look at somebody. So for example, this book is called at the Existentialist Cafe and it's a look at the existentialist philosophers in Paris in the 1920s-1950s. So we're talking about Jean Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, and then of course, she's got some German influence in here as well, Martin Heidegger and so on. They have some really complicated ideas and existentialism can be overwhelming. So what she's done is make it very easy and comfortable for people to read, read. And also sprinkled in a bunch of anecdotal stories and biographical notes. And she's, she's just a great writer and makes this philosophy very accessible in this book. So if you've ever wondered what existentialism is, I would check out this book at the Existentialist Cafe by Sarah Bakewell. The next book I read this year took a chunk of time and I will probably read it a hundred more times. This is a book that will stick with me for the rest of my life. This is Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Now this is a challenging book to read. Not just because it's Aristotle, but he had really great ideas. But if you're asking me, and you are, because you're watching this video, he wasn't the most eloquent of writers. In fact, most of his notes in this are often thought of not as well polished notes. They're more like lecture notes that he was putting together before he was going to go teach his students the concepts of his philosophy. And so this book was put together for his son. That's why it's called Nicomachean ethics. And it's the. It's the concept of living well, how do you live a purposeful life? That was one of his major goals of his philosophy. He had a concept called eudaimonia. And eudaimonia simply means to be fulfilled. It's not about getting pleasure, full living, or to. To acquire money or to even just be happy, because sometimes you can be happy when life is really hard. And so he wanted to analyze that. He wanted to figure out, how do we achieve state of eudaimonia or fulfillment. So just a quick story there. I have found that this community, in this podcast brings me eudaimonia. It's really hard work. The. The YouTube videos I create every week, the podcasts I create every week, the book club that I lead every week. It takes a lot of time, and there are weeks where I'm like, whew, I'm. I'm exhausted. But it brings me so much joy and fulfillment. And I. I was asked yesterday on an interview if it ever wears me out, if I ever want to quit. And so far, no. I'm just so excited to talk about books. So that, for me, is what Aristotle's talking about. Eudaimonia. Now, I also had a sort of crash course in my religious faith this year and trying to figure out who I am, if you know my story. I left the Mormon church with my family, and now we've sort of strayed away and are not a member of any church. But we've been in that for the majority of my life, and my wife grew up in that religion, and of course, we raised our kids in that. So by sort of stepping away from that, I started to ask other questions, critical questions about who I am, the purpose of life. That led me into modern thinkers like Sam Harris and his book. The end of faith is a book that I read. If you're grappling with the concept of whether there's a God or not, or where you fit into Christianity, Judaism, whatever it might be, and you want to sort of look outside the typical texts, the end of faith is really, really good. I really appreciate Sam Harris for having the courage to speak in this way. The next book that I read in the philosophical category was hiking with Nietzsche on becoming who you are. This is by Professor John Cag. I love this book very much because, again, like Sarah Bakewell's book, this makes A complicated philosopher, easy to understand. So if you've ever wanted to learn about Nietzsche, Friedrich Nietzsche was this philosopher who came in with just grand ideas, huge ideas. And if you dig into his philosophical works, you can kind of get lost pretty quickly. It can be overwhelming. So I appreciate this book because it's a great introduction to Nietzsche's ideas. And really what happens here is CAG takes you on a trip with him. As a young man, he was commissioned by his school to go to the place where Nietzsche lived and did his work and sort of to live in the same, same area, you know, go on the same hikes and walks and what have you. And so this is a metaphorical example of what it's like to live in Nietzsche's footsteps, to do hard things and to become who you are. Really good book. Now, the final philosophical work that I read this year, we read in my book club. This is Marcus Aurelius's Meditations. If you're ever going to read this book, I highly suggest you get the Robin Waterfield version. It's the annotated edition. He's just done such a beautiful job of going through and adding footnotes at the bottom of each page, which can be really helpful because if you think about what Meditations is, this is essentially the Roman Emperor's journal. He was not expecting this to be published. He gets quite personal in it at times. He reveals his soul on paper, but there are lots of different references in there that we might not pick up on as contemporary readers. And the footnotes explain it in perfect English and, and really make it a joy to read. Okay, next category. I hope this speed is okay with you, but there's just a lot of books here and I don't want this to be a two hour video. The next book I read in the next category were memoirs. And I never used to read memoirs. I always thought if I'm going to read a book, why do I want to read about somebody else's life? I want to go learn about something complicated. But then it hit me this year that memoirs are actually one of the best ways to learn about something complicated. Because I get to in a couple hundred pages watch and learn from somebody who's gone through something hard or challenging. And that is just a fantastic way to one, get to know more about humanity and appreciate other people. But two, learn about something hard. Case in point, for my book club we read Corrie 10 boom's the hiding place. This is a book about a Dutch family who is a very faith based Christian family who is trying to avoid Nazi suspicion as they are protecting Jewish people and trying to get them out of the country or to safe locations. And they actually create a hiding place in their little watch shop to keep Jewish people safe. It's like a fake wall that they build in their house. And it's sort of a heartbreaking story because you see what happens to them as they go through. It's not a spoiler to say that they do get caught and captured and it's their experience in the concentration camps and so on. So if you've ever wanted to get a really rich understanding of Dutch life and the experience of the Nazi occupation, it's a great way to do it. Next is Unveiled How Western Liberals Empower Radical Islam. This is written by a wonderful woman named Yasmine Mohammed. I had a wonderful chance to interview her on my podcast. I'll post that video right up here. And the thing with that is that Yasmine grew up in a very fundamentalist, sort of strict Islamic family. And in that instance, there are some really rigid rules that take place. And if especially women step outside of those rules, some severe consequences can take place. We're not going to get into the bloody works of it, but it is really heartbreaking. And this is her experience of growing up in that religion, in that sort of hyper focused morality that was really destructive for her and how she had to secretly work to escape that and escape her husband and. And all of the horrors that that existed there. So if you've wanted to learn more about what women are really going through in this Islamic faith, this is one account of that. It's a quite a fascinating account. You can read her book, Unveiled How Western Liberals Empower Radical Islam. And if you want to watch the video of it, you can of course, watch it on my YouTube channel. All right, let's march on to the nonfiction. Nonfiction is some of my favorite stuff to read. I love getting a book that's about a very specific topic and digging deep into that and sort of letting myself get lost in the concept of what the author is teaching. So I have some really great books here. The first one, this is the Denial of Death by Ernest Becker. I've talked about this book a few times on my show. Now this is the second time I've read it. It is a very complicated book. You will read it slowly if you choose to tackle this. The Denial of Death is a book ultimately about how we deal with the anxiety our end. Right. We are all going to die. He argues that that creates a deep seated anxiety in Us mostly in our subconscious. And we deal with that anxiety in a multitude of different ways. Sometimes that anxiety is expressed in sort of a mentally unstable way, causing us to break down and have chaotic moments. Other times he talks about how the majority of people know that they're going to die secretly, and so they feel like they need to create a. What he calls like a hero project, or another word in this book is your kaza sui project. All he means by that is that you, you want to do something to say that you have lived. You want to, to sort of reach the status of the gods. You want to build your pyramid on Earth before you leave. You want to have a legacy. But the conflict, the paradox, and this is what makes the book fascinating, is that by having, by going out and building that pyramid or by writing your novel and putting yourself out there, you're actually putting yourself at risk, right? You are concerned with your safety, either mentally, emotionally, or quite physically. And in doing so, you might die. That's the very real truth of it. Now that's kind of an exaggerated claim, but if you wanted to write a novel, for example, let's say you've always wanted to write a book and you sat down and you started typing and then you think to yourself, this isn't very good. Nobody's going to like this. Why would I do this? And you already start to sabotage yourself. It's because you're afraid of putting yourself out there, of really trying your best. And so the paradox is you want to leave your legacy, but you're scared to leave your legacy. And that creates anxiety. And that puts you in a state of denial that you're gonna die. And his fear is that you live your entire life in that middle spot having done nothing, and then when you die, realize that you sort of missed out on life itself. So this is a really good book if you're interested in psychology and philosophy and. Yeah, just the, the weird things we get up to as human beings. One of my favorite books I read this year, non fiction, was William Zinsser's On Writing. Well, if you've ever wanted to be a writer, that was a great segue. Actually, we were just talking about writing books. Now we're on to On Writing. Well, the subtitle here is the classic guide to writing Non Fiction. So if you've wanted to be a person who can clarify thoughts on paper, either in a good blog post, or maybe you want to write an essay, or perhaps you want to write a non fiction book, this is an absolute must read. This is like, no arguments here. You have to read this book. It's that good. Zinsser does such a great job at breaking down the English language and the. The process of thinking so that you can realize what it takes to be a good writer. I think often we just sort of spew our thoughts on paper and then publish it on the Internet and hope that it's good. This book will absolutely help you to get your thoughts straight. The next book I read this year is called Reader Come Home. The subtitle is the Digital Brain in a Reading World by Marianne Wolf. Now, she was also on the podcast. I'll post that video up here somewhere if you want to watch that interview. So Dr. Wolff's focus is figuring out how the digital age is really messing with our brains and how we can combat that. So if you are tired of sort of brain rot, which is a very real term where you're just scrolling on your phone and you can feel yourself sort of atrophying in your brain, you can feel yourself unable to focus as much as you used to be able to, right? You, you. You are just constantly distracted. Well, she's trying to tackle that. And my favorite part of the interview is when she talked about how deep reading, not, not casual skimming, right. But how to read a book deeply and slow down with it and really pay attention and take notes what that does to the physical connections in your brain. She's found that our brains are not wired to read. In fact, we were born to visually see things, to, to. To speak and to communicate that way. But we invented the human language roughly 4,000 years ago. And so our brains have had to learn how to deal with that new invention and process that information in a way that makes sense to us. So if you don't practice that sort of power, you lose that ability because it's not native to you. Really great book. Read or come home by Dr. Marianne Wolf. Okay. In my book club as well, reread Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Let's see, the subtitle here is the Psychology of Optimal Experience. Important. Illuminates the ways to happiness. Flow is the book that talks about the state of flow. So if you've ever had a day where you just can't be stopped, everything is just working for you and you're cranking and you're knocking down all of the objects and you're getting great work done. You're in a state of flow. And the question that book answers is, how do you purposefully get into A state of flow. It's a good one. Check it out. Okay, last in the non fiction world is 4000 time management for mortals by Oliver Berkman. I love, love, love this book so much so I sell it@edgewaterbookstore.com I love it because it's one of the few productivity books that you'll ever read that sort of flips the table on productivity. All of those other books are talking about how to get faster and more efficient, right? They will teach you ways to sort of manage your calendar and get more and more done and sort of organize your emails and such. He makes the argument that if you get better at answering emails, the only thing that will come of that is people will send you more emails because they know that you're going to answer them and you're going to get things done. Instead, what you should do is recognize that you're only going to live for roughly 4,000 weeks. The average lifespan is 4,000 weeks. Meaning you're mortal, meaning you're going to die. And once you accept that, he. He wants you to also accept the fact that you cannot get everything done that's handed to you in a day. You need to acknowledge that first and then begin to choose purposefully what you will get done during the day. Then let the rest burn. You just, you have to let the rest burn because there's no other way to live life in a stable format. Now the beautiful part of this is that what you choose to work on, you choose to work on purposefully and give it your very best. So the goal here is for you to be focusing on things that truly bring you joy, as Aristotle would suggest, things that bring you eudaimonia or fulfillment. Okay, the coffee is very good this morning, y'all. The Complete stories of Flannery O'Connor. We're now into short story work here or short essay. So I did not read this entire book yet. I. In fact, I only read one story out of it and now I need to read all of them. But the one story completely rocked my world. And Flannery O'Connor is this person that just, she just blows my mind. Her writing style is very, very eerie and thoughtful and provoking. So I read a short story called A Good Man Is Hard to Find. It is probably her most famous short story. So if you don't read the entire book, at least go check out the story. A Good man is Hard to Find. It is Southern gothic and creepy as all get out and it is a fun read and it will give you a good introduction to Flannery O'Connor. Okay. I also read this year Michel de Montaigne's essays. These are the essays written by the first gentleman who was ever considered to write the personal essay. He's credited with this form of writing. So if you hated writing essays in high school or college, you can thank Michel de Montaigne now. In fact, I am very grateful to him because I love essays. I think essays are a compact form of thought. They have a very specific thing they're trying to accomplish. And in 4, 5, 10 pages, somewhere in there, the author has to really get clear and concise and make a compelling argument for something. I love that because I think I'm sort of tired of living in a world where people just jabber for hours. I'm starting to feel like this video is me jabbering for hours, but I have a point. But the essay, if written well, forces the author to cut out all of the fluff, get rid of all of the unnecessary words, and make it something that when people read it, they will at least consider changing their minds about an important subject. So yes, I love essays and I love to write them. And one of my favorite essays in here is called On Friendship. And the reason why I love this essay is because I feel more and more connected to the world because of the Internet. I have connections to hundreds or thousands of people all around the world. But if I'm being honest, I also feel more lonely. There is less person to person time in my life and I have to work very hard to sort of go out to lunch with a friend nowadays or what have you. And that depresses me a little bit. And so Michel de Montaigne's essay on friendship inspired me this year to build better friends and connections and has really made a difference in my life into the fiction world. I don't read as much fiction, but I did pretty good this year actually. It's about even, I think. Let's get into this. Many of you have read this book already. This is no surprise to you. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Tolles. This book is just lovely. It's a book that really sort of, if you like the idea of sort of going into a grand hotel and all of the mysterious, the mystery and the crazy characters that sort of exist as they come and go through a hotel. And you want to see that through the eyes of just a. A sophisticated, beautiful, kind, all knowing character. This book, A Gentleman in Moscow, is a way to do that. I liked reading this book at night in bed because it's it's that sort of comforting, cozy book that just makes you feel like you're on. You know, you're away from home and you're in a beautiful place. It's a really great way to sort of wind down the day. A Gentleman in Moscow. The next book I read that was fiction was Flowers for Algernon. I've made lots of comments about this book, so I'll keep it short, but this is a book that made me feel all of the feels. I jumped up and screamed, I cried, I laughed, I did all of this stuff. Ultimately, the question this book is asking is, is it ethical to experiment on human beings? And you'll read this book and it will do all sorts of things to you. It's really, really great. I also got a chance this year to read the Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wilde by Junot Diaz. Wow. This book, so fair warning. This book is gritty, it's got some strong language in it, and it is sort of will slap you in the face, but I loved it. This book won the Pulitzer Prize, and Juno was kind enough to come on my podcast. I'll post that video here if you want to watch that interview. He was so kind and generous with his time. And the reason why the Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wilde is so great is because it looks at the narrative of a family as they live under the dictatorship of this man named Trujillo, who's this horrible, awful guy. But it looks at that experience. It goes over multiple generations, before and after the dictator has died. And it shows you sort of how the evil influence of a person can really rain down its effects on people for many years before and after. It's. It's an interesting, interesting book. And Oscar Wilde is one of the main characters in the book, but there are several, all revolving around his family, his sister, his mother. It's. It's just a really crazy read, and I think you're gonna love it. The next three I'm going to do in combination. This was suggested to me in the book club. Steve, if you're listening, thank you for this one. This is, we call it Beartown in the book club. These are three books written by Frederick Bachmann. It's ultimately the story of a small town that is obsessed with hockey and experiences a sexual assault and how that sexual assault sort of ravages everything. And it is one of the, the best pieces of modern fiction I've read that has really kept me in it for the long haul. I. I never got bored in these Books. I loved every character in these books. Bachmann does a really good job at sort of exposing humanity. He does not shy away from any topic, and he's just a really beautiful writer. So if you're looking for something a little thicker that will take you on an adventure, I would suggest Bear Town. Now, again, there's three. The first one is called Bear Town. The next one is called Us against you. And the third one is the winners. All of these books were fantastic. Okay, we have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 left. If you're still here with me, thank you. Thank you for hanging out. Okay, we're now into classic literature. Some of this you might define as classic or not. I don't know. I'm just sticking them all in this category. I read Sophocles, the three Theban plays. This has got Antigone, Oedipus, the King, and Oedipus at Colonus. My favorite here is Antigone. This is the story of a young lady who is very idealistic in her ways, and her values clash with the king in a monumental way. It is mind blowing. This book was written roughly 440 BCE, so you might think, I don't want to read something that old. It's going to be hard to read. Look, you can. You can actually download Antigone right now online that I'm gonna buy this book. Just read that. And I guarantee you, if you read it slowly and give it a chance, it will be one of the best things you have read this year. It will rock your world. But it's a great book because it looks at our ethics and how two groups can have different ethics and how those ethics can clash, and what happens in the aftermath of that when we. When we are so dead set on being right, how that sort of stubbornness can aff the other people in our lives and cause sheer chaos. It's really great. I had never read Frankenstein. Frankenstein was read this year, and oh, my gosh, I loved it. There's a reason why this book still exists. There's a reason why we keep making movies about it. And I will say I don't feel like any of the versions I've seen on the. The theater have at all lived up to what Mary Shelley put on paper here. This book's incredible. One of my favorite parts of Frankenstein is the fact that Mary Shelley didn't make the monster 100% evil. She gave the monster a conscience. She gave him a heart. She gave him intelligence. And you can sort of side with the monster in many of his Arguments. It's a very philosophical work, which is why I like it, because it's asking you the question, are we all bad as people or are we all good as people? When we make mistakes, should we be forgiven for those mistakes? When are we justified for committing wrong action? When are we justified for sort of punishing for actions? And so on? It is a fantastic read. Go check out Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Okay, next is Uncle Tom's Cabin or Life among the Lowly. This is Harriet Beecher Stowe's book. She published this in 1852. And I. This book has been on my to be read list for years. I never read it because I thought. I don't know. I just. I don't. I'm not really interested in reading a historical book right now. This is now probably one of my top. Definitely one of my top 10 books and I've ever read. It's really, really good. Quickly, here's the concept. So Harry Beecher Stowe wrote this book in the 1850s to combat the evils of slavery. She was a very pious woman and she. She felt that people supposedly Christian were not living up to their Christian ideals because they were out buying and selling humans and beating them in the shadows. I know, Shocker. And so she wrote this book, her ultimate goal being that she wanted to convince these slaveholders that the people that they were buying and selling were not property, but they were in fact, human beings with real passion and fear and pain and concern. Just like the white safe holders. Right. A lot of people felt that because I bought this human, I can do whatever I want with this human. And she exposed that. She exposed slavery for another version of sex trafficking. I mean, it was. It's an insane book. And if you read it, I promise you'll be. You'll be happy that you did. In my book club. Well, we do a lot of reading in my book club. It's awesome. You should join the book club. Okay. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. We read that this year and I'm so glad I did. This was actually the first time I read it, and I would like to read it again. Great Expectations is Chuck full of characters that will stay with you for the rest of your life. If you've ever heard of Ms. Havisham. She is this crazy lady who essentially got stood up on her wedding day, and now she will not leave her house. And she sort of preserved everything in her house as it was the day she was stood up. So she's still in her wedding dress, like, 20 years later. The cake is rotting on the table and she is just bat crap crazy. And we're confronted with her and a whole bunch of other very colorful characters. The main protagonist, of course, is Pip. Pip is a young boy who is born into poverty and just hardship in every fashion. And we get to watch what happens to Pip as he sort of climbs the ladder of success and, and finds himself kind of higher up in society and what he does with that wealth and that popularity. It's a really great philosophical look at how wealth changes people and whether wealth is a good thing or not. Okay, but God, we read these last two books in book club as well. Well, we have read some great stuff. Fyodor Dostoevsky's the Idiots. Now if you've ever wanted to get into Fyodor Dostoevsky, I would suggest the Idiot is probably one of the better books to start with. It's, it's very accessible. The characters mostly make sense. You end up following a gentleman named Prince Mishkin. And Dostoevsky was a very orthodox Christian, so he, he is trying to write fiction that shows whether there's a God or not and what your position in this earth is. Now, now this is a fascinating conversation because whether you're a believer or you're not a believer, these books are still great to read because we're all asking the question, how did we get here? Is this world pointless or is there a bigger reason for it? And his books are designed to attack both sides of that argument equally and fairly so that you can make the decision for yourself. That's what I love about Dostoevsky. He's not coming and sort of bashing you over the head with a religious hammer. He actually really shows some weaknesses in religion and some strengths in religion. And I think that's a valuable way to look at any hot topic. And we fail to do that often in life. Now we just sort of pick a topic and say everybody else is wrong. This is right. Dostoevsky did a great job of saying there's two sides to every story, and I'm going to expose both. So in the Idiot, you're going to follow Prince Michigan and you're going to follow him through his coming back to his hometown. And he is a very poor person. He is symbolic of the Christ figure and he is thrown into a world of very selfish, very wicked, very evil people. And we're, we're wondering if he's going to be able to keep his purity for one and two. We're wondering if his good actions and influence will in any way Shape or form improve the world around him? Does his light and his kindness actually make the world a better place? We'll find out. It's a good book for people who want something hopeful to read and who feel like life is kind of heavy. And if you're looking for a character like Prince Michigan to sort of, you know, give you hope, it's a good book. Last but not least, Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Read this again this year. I'll probably read this book once every couple years. I do love Crime and Punishment. It is my favorite work of fiction for so many reasons. The major philosophical question Dostoevsky is asking you here is, is there ever a justification for committing an act of evil? In Cause for the Greater Good? Is one question, and then two Are some people allowed to commit acts of evil in order to move society forward, even though they're bad? See, there's a theory being proposed here. The main protagonist, his name is Raskolnikov, he has this idea. He's a student in St. Petersburg. He's very poor, but he. He believes there are two kinds of people. Most people are what he would call ordinary people. They're just the run of the mill people. They have to obey the law. They have to do what they're told. In fact, they like doing what they're told. But then there are the select few, the extraordinary, or the extraordinary people who. He uses Napoleon as an example. People who are above the law. And for them it's okay to do heinous acts like taking a life, because doing so moves society forward. It opens doors for everybody else. It. It sort of gets us out of the rig. Thinking incorrectly, per se. And he believes himself to be one of those extraordinary people. And this book is about his experiment to see if he can actually commit a heinous crime and not only get away with it, but step above it, rise above it. Can you do something evil and rise above it? And that's what Crime and Punishment is about. It's an interesting book. Okay. Hey, that was a lot to think about this week. I want to do two last things for you here really quickly. I want to really quickly share a review I got on the podcast, which means a lot to me. So if you're listening to this show and if you haven't done so yet on the podcast, please take a moment to leave a review. It really helps. Or if you're watching on YouTube, I would really appreciate it if you would subscribe to the channel and like the video, of course, and leave me a comment that all helps the algorithm. I'm really trying to grow this channel and for those of you who are doing that, thank you. The newest review I got came in on November 16th from Catherine underscore 616. She says, I absolutely love this podcast. So many wonderful strategies and insights. I didn't know about reading before. Eddie is very good at breaking topics down and giving explanations. The information given will definitely take your reading to the next level. Catherine, thank you for sharing that. Now many of you are interested not only in getting good book recommendations. All of these are good selections. By the way. Don't feel like you need to read all of them. Pick one or two that really stand out to you that are ringing for you and add those to be read list 2025. But if you want to take this to the next level and you want to begin taking notes on these books so that you retain what's in them, I've made a video for you right here. Go check that out now. And as always, until next time, remember to read slowly, take notes, and apply the ideas. Thanks everybody. If you'd like to take your reading to the next level, then head on over to thereadwellpodcast.com the there you'll find daily posts on how to read well. You'll also get access to all of my book notes and tools for becoming a better reader. And as always, don't forget to read slowly, take notes and apply the ideas. Thank you for listening to the Read well podcast.