← The Read Well Podcast
Loading summary
Transcript16 lines
- [00:00]
A
So on the one hand, we have a hustle culture system for readers which tells us we should read two or three hundred books a year and then express our superpowers by remembering everything and having a photographic memory. And then there's the rest of everybody who says we should quietly quit and do nothing and just do the bare minimum. I feel like setting goals for 2026, but both of these systems have got me completely overwhelmed. And so today I'm going to share with you what I will be doing in 2026 as a reader and setting goals that work for me. I I will also share with you 10 of my favorite books from 2025 and why I love them. Let's Get into it.
- [00:38]
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.
- [00:58]
Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Readable Podcast. My name is Eddie Hood and I am really passionate right now about setting goals. It's the end of the year. I love this time, but I also get overwhelmed because when I jump on YouTube or any of the podcasts, people start talking about these big grand goals that they're going to set. And especially for readers, there's this sense that we need to read several hundred books a year if we're going to be worth anything. As a human, I think there's a lot of fault in that. There's a lot of damage that can be done when we measure our self worth by the number of books that we read. So instead I'm going to share with you what I'm doing. And there are three things I'm going to focus on. So number one, my goal this year as a reader is to be kind to myself and realize that I am not built to remember everything I read. I'm not built to like have perfect focus and attention. And on those days where I've had a hard day and the kids are going crazy and the house is a mess, if I'm not able to sit down and enjoy a book and read, I'm not going to feel bad about it. I'm not going to beat myself up. I'm not going to compare myself to other YouTubers or other readers. I'm just going to simply do my best in my point in life and in my space to enjoy the books in whatever way I can. Right? I'm going to be Working on being kind to myself. That's goal number one. Goal number two is that I'm only going to read books if I absolutely love them. No more spending time with books if they don't resonate with me. Now, I have shared in the past that I always give a book 50 pages, at which point I will shut it down if it is not working with me. Now, that has helped me in the past to stick with books that are working, and I'm going to absolutely keep doing that. But I'm also going to be more honest with myself because I know in my heart of hearts when I pick up a book that I'm really taking a risk. And there are a list of books I know I will love. For example, I have never read the Hunchback of Notre Dame. I really want to read that. I haven't read it yet. And I've been reading all these other books ahead of it, and they're books that I'm like, yeah, they could work. Maybe they're working for me, maybe they're not. And I had a realization today, like, why am I doing that? Why am I not reading the Hunchback of Notre Dame? I love Victor Hugo. I love Paris. I love classic literature. Why am I not reading that book? So that is what I should be doing now. Third, my third goal here is something that I hope will help you. So in my reading community, my mantra is to read slowly, take notes and apply the ideas that is really important to me. It is that last step, applying the ideas, that I think is the most important part of a reader and the experience of reading. So I'm going to commit this year to trying to pull one key idea out of every book that I can apply to my life. Now, if I can do more, great. Some books are just chock full of ideas, but my goal is that if I'm going to read a book, I'm going to actually take action. Boy, that is not how I plan that. But I'm going to actually take action on one idea in every book I read and try to make my life head in a better direction. So, okay, those are my reading goals for 2026. Notice I haven't set a book count or read 50 pages a day or I'm going to read for an hour a day. I'm just genuinely going to be kind to myself as a reader. I'm going to only spend time with books that I love and I'm going to apply at least one idea from every book. Now let's go back to goal Number two here, only reading books I love. You might be thinking, okay, but where do I start? Well, to get you started for 2026, I thought I would give you some of my favorite books that I read in 2025. And maybe these will get you started as well.
- [04:22]
Now, these are in no particular order. The first one is the Death of Ivan Ilyich. This is a great book. It's all of 53 pages. It's super tiny here, maybe it's a little longer than that, but not much. But it is a great little story by Leo Tolstoy about the death of a man and how he finds meaning in life. So if you're looking for a short, powerful, philosophical, meaningful read, check out the Death of Yvonne Ilyich. I loved it so much, I bought 100 copies in 2025, gave them to a bunch of family and friends, and I taught a course on deep reading using this book. This very, very book. So good.
- [04:58]
Second book I really loved, that I didn't know I would love was Henry V by Shakespeare. I mean, Shakespeare is. Is the king of kings, right? He continually surprises me, and the more I read him, the more I fall in love with this guy. But Henry V was a book. I. I thought, yeah, I mean, I'll give it a read. I actually had to read this last year. I took a course on Shakespeare, and we were assigned this, and I just loved it. I loved the. The purpose of the story. I loved the. The play of characters. It's just a good read. If you're looking for something that is not as spoken of as maybe Romeo and Juliet or Macbeth, check out Henry V. It is absolutely worth your time.
- [05:39]
Now, this year in my book club, we read Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman. We did not read the whole book. We did read a poem inside of it, though, called Song of Myself. And it is the poem of poems, in my opinion. And whether or not you read this whole book, if you want some sort of poetry in your life, I would point you no further than Walt Whitman's Song of Myself. You can download it on the Internet for free. Or. Or you can get your own copy. And I've marked the crud out of this thing. This poem changed the way I see life. It changed the way I see each and every moment of my life. It is beautifully written, and it reminds me of my favorite movie of all time, which is the Dead Poet Society. It's got Robin Williams in it where he talks about the barbaric yawp which is pulled straight from that poem. It's beautiful. Go watch the movie Dead Poet Society. Go read the poem Song of Myself, and you will be a different person.
- [06:38]
Book number four is Anna Karenina. We're on a Leo Tolstoy kick here. But this book was just. And read it. And this year I finally read it, and I'm really, really glad I did. It was amazing to me how drawn in I was to this story. I thought it was going to be this love story experience, and there was a lot of, like, romance in it, but it is way more than that. It is so intricate and there's a lot of, like, intrigue and people like playing games with each other and messing with each other's heads. And it's just a great book. It is one that will surprisingly keep you turning the pages. Go check out Anna Karenina.
- [07:16]
Book number five from 2025 that I loved, I absolutely loved it, was Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin. He has quickly become one of my top three favorite authors, and it's because of his courage as an author. You'll know when you read Baldwin what I'm talking about here. He has a sense of just forgetting about the world's judgment and just putting onto paper what needs to be put on paper. In this particular book, he's dealing with so many things, but it's a story that revolves around a young man and his sort of experience with the religion of his family and just how it tugs on him and pulls him in different directions. It is incredible. Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin.
- [08:01]
1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Book number six that I loved this year. I wasn't expecting this. This is one of those books that I found just wandering the halls of Barnes and Noble. And I loved the book jacket. I don't usually do this, but it's the Titanic Survivors Book Club by Timothy Shaffer. I don't usually buy books based on the artwork, but this book, it just was like, how do you not buy that? I went to Paris two years ago. I've been learning to speak French, and I thought, well, this is great. Has the Eiffel Tower on there and it's about book clubs. And so. So I bought it thinking I wouldn't read it. And then I read the first couple pages and I just was sucked into Paris. Like, completely sucked into Paris into, like, this little cozy bookshop and these people and their lives. And it's just this really cool book that if you want a nice, warm escape from, you know, crudiness of life and work and what have you, which sometimes hits this is a good one. And by the way, if you're in my book club, I'm extremely honored because in two nights I get to hang out with this man. Timothy Shaffert is coming to my book club and is going to be speaking to us about this book and his writing career and, and so on. So I'm quite honored for that and look forward to meeting with him. So there's that. The Titanic Survivors Book Club.
- [09:16]
Book number seven. I finally read the Myth of Sisyphus all the way through. And I had read sort of parts of this book all throughout my life. And I kind of like started and stopped because at the time it felt a little too heavy and I didn't fully understand Camus take on life. I didn't understand existentialism well enough. But if you know me, if you follow the channel, we're going to talk about philosophy. It is what I love. I love Albert Camus. So this, this year I sat down and I, and I studied it in depth. I did my note taking system and I also took a class on existentialism at my local college to help me understand this. And we read this book together as well. Oh, I didn't read it. It was kind of like supplemental reading. But I used that as an excuse to like dig in. And I got to write a few papers about it and so on. And I'm grateful because I, I learned more about the process that Camus went, the concept of Sisyphus itself. I will probably do a video on this book later, just this book, because the ideas are so fascinating. But that leads me to the picture behind me. If you can see here, I'm super proud of this. This is a picture I bought from an artist that I absolutely adore. She's in New York. Dana, if you're, if you're watching, thank you so much. I'm going to post a link to her website down below. But she posts or she, she makes these incredible art pieces that are philosophical in nature or they're somewhat striking. They're meant to make you question what you're looking at and feel something really provocative. This picture here, she did, which is a take on the Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus. But you'll notice that it is a picture of a young lady carrying a balled up version of herself, like a boulder in boulder form up the mountain. And I loved it because one, we're all sort of carrying a version of ourselves and it's heavy and it's hard, but we do the work right? But number Two. Dana's explanation here is that women especially have a view of themselves that they have to carry around. That can feel very heavy and weighty at times. That sort of society wants them to be a specific way. So she painted this. I had to have it. And I will put a link to her art gallery down below. You should go check out her work and find a way to support her. Pick up one of her pieces. I love it. So Dana, thank you so much for, for supporting me through the years and liking the videos and leaving comments on all my Facebook posts. You are the best.
- [11:32]
The next book that I really liked this year was Emerson the Mind on Fire. Now I don't read a ton of biographies or autobiographies of any kind just because they tend to be heavy and weighty and so on, but I don't think that's the reason why I don't read them. I don't know, I just find fiction and other forms of nonfiction more interesting. But I'm a huge fan of Emerson and Thoreau and the other transcendentalist philosophers and thinkers and so I dug in. I loved this book. I used this book this year to help me write a six part series for all of you titled how to Journal. Like Ralph Waldo EMERSON. He filled 263 journals with incredible ideas and notes he used to improve his public speaking, to write his essays, and to effectively help change the world. So if you want to understand him better the process that he went through, his ideas, this is a really cool book. Emerson the Mind on Fire by Robert D. Richardson Jr. Foreign.
- [12:30]
Eyre. Got to read Janaire this year again. Hadn't read that one. Fantastic book. Nothing new here, right guys? Well, some of these are new. Maybe you haven't heard of some of these, but a lot of these are classics that I just hadn't read. And this year I decided I was going to dig in and just read some of these great books. Jane Eyre is this really cool sort of Southern gothic classic story. It's got some crazy romantic ideas in there. It's got like a ghost story happening and a spooky old mansion is a fun book. I thought it was just going to be that traditional classical sort of romancy story. Nope. Jane Eyre is like doesn't matter who you are. I shouldn't say that, but this book really will have something for most people in it to keep you turning the pages. I think that's probably one of the reasons why it continues to sell.
- [13:19]
Okay, two more here that I had on my desk. I don't know how many I've got now? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. It looks like we're going to be showing 11 books with you this year, not 10. I loved the Language of Fanaticism. It's called Cultish by Amanda Montel. This is just a really cool book that helped me understand some of the changes I've had in my own life. As many of you know, I left a high demand religion a couple years ago, the Mormon Church. And I've been really sensitive to how other people's ideas influence me. I've kind of had my radar up, trying to protect myself a little bit because, you know, I felt like for the past 27 plus years of my life I have been given a way to live and I haven't really been thinking as much for myself. And so books like this have been fascinating for me this year to just study how humans use tools like language, ideology, religion, any kind of media to persuade other humans to do and behave in a certain or specific way. So if you're interested in that too, check out Amanda Montel's book Cultish.
- [14:26]
And then finally, I love Sarah Bakewell. I think she's just such a cool author. This is a book called at the Existentialist Cafe. And what it does is it gently educates the reader on all of the great existentialist philosophers who came around World War II and thereafter. Existentialism, it's often said, was born with Kierkegaard. He wouldn't have called himself that an existentialist, that that term came much later. But the idea of existentialism began with Kierkegaard but really found its footing after World War II, after sort of the decimation of human behavior. People like Jean Paul Sartre and, and Simone de Beauvoir and so many other people looked around and went, oh my gosh, like what is happening? What, what kind of world are we living in? And all of their philosophical tools that they had used up to that point failed them. Right? The tools that they had used to explain the meaning of life, the existence of a God or whatever it might be, all of those tools seemed to have failed when they saw the horror and terror around them. And so existentialism was born. And it's just a beautiful philosophy. Most people will find something in it that they can relate to the fear that you might feel with the unknown, the uncertainty of life, and it can help you come to terms with some of that. So if you're interested in questions like this, this is a fun sort of way to go to Paris, to sit in the cafes, to sit around the table with Albert Camus and Sartre and listen to them debate some of the coolest ideas ever.
- [15:54]
So hey, that is my video for you this week and my podcast again, just to remind you that when you're setting your goals for 2026, please please remember that it is not about how many books you read. At least in my humble opinion. I think your self worth has nothing to do with that. Your intelligence has nothing to do with that. Instead, if you're interested, I'm going to be working on trying to be kind to myself as a reader. I'm only going to spend time with books I love this year. I don't care if it's just one book this year or 20 books or whatever it might be, the number doesn't matter. I'm just going to spend time with these books as though they're my best friends and I'm going to absolutely pay attention to them. And from each book I'm going to try and find a lesson I can apply in my own personal life. So that's it for this year. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Readable Podcast. And until next time, as always, remember to read slowly, take notes, and apply the ideas. Thanks everybody.
- [16:45]
If you'd like to take your reading to the next level, then head on over to thereadwellpodcast.com 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.