15 Incredible Books to Read in 2025

• The impact of books on personal and professional growth.
• Recommendations for a diverse selection of 15 books from various genres.
• Insights on self-help, creativity, wealth, and philosophy.
• Personal reflections on the journey of reading and learning from each book.
• Encouragement for viewers to explore these recommendations and share their own.

So I read around 50 to 100 books each year, and books have been the single biggest factor in helping me start and grow my business to seven figures, in being able to quit my day job as a doctor, and in my own personal development.

In this video, we're going to go over the 15 best books I read this year across a range of genres, so hopefully, you'll get some recommendations for books that you can read too.

All righty, so book number one is The Pathless Path by Paul Millard. Imagining a new story for work and life, this is great if, for example, you are struggling with trying to figure out what to do with your career. Maybe you're not sure if the default path of like working a corporate job or going into a very traditional field like medicine or law or banking or consulting is really for you, and you want to explore what life means when you're kind of somewhat decorrelated from what you do with your career.

This is a super interesting book—it's probably the one I have most gifted to people this year. We've got like 10 copies of it that I always keep on me, so that whenever anyone comes to visit me who has a dilemma about hey, I'm not sure if I enjoy my job, or I'm a student and I'm not really sure what to do, I say, you know what, just have a look, have a read of this book.

It's very quick to read, and the nice thing about it is that it basically questions the idea that's so prevalent in society that who we are is what we do. It's like when someone asks you, "What do you do?" you tend to respond with your job title, and that's a bit weird. When did that happen? Is that really how you want to be?

I struggled with this a lot last year when I left medicine, and being attached to the identity of being a doctor was such a cool part of me that it was hard to let that go. But reading this book genuinely helped, and it helped me approach a different way of thinking about my career and my life.

Second on the list, we have Someday Is Today: 22 Simple Actionable Ways to Propel Your Creative Life by Matthew Dicks. This is a great book to read if, for example, you have kind of dreams of creative things that you might want to do, like maybe writing a book or starting a podcast or a YouTube channel or a business or anything like that where you feel like the timing is not quite right.

I just love the way Matthew kind of tells stories in the book and the way he approaches, I guess, time management. It's a productivity book, but whenever I read Matthew's stuff—he's got another amazing book, Storyworthy, which was my favorite book of 2022—all about how to tell better stories.

On the surface, these are productivity books or self-help books, but actually within them, you get just such fantastic stories and really great general life stuff. I consider Matthew like a bit of a mentor. I've actually done a few coaching sessions with him, where he's kind of helped me out with my book and stuff. He's like a dude in his 50s, he's done a lot of stuff, published a lot of books, and it's nice to learn from someone who has gone through life and has kids and things like that, where it's just a completely different perspective to the bros in their 20s that I normally speak to.

Fantastic book Someday Is Today—realize your creative dreams. It's just sick; would 100% recommend!

All right, at number three on the list, we have Beyond Wealth by Alexander Green: The Road Map to a Rich Life. This is interesting because this guy, Alexander Green, has been—he's again some old dude—he's worked in the field of investment advice and financial writing, and his whole career has been in the world of money.

This book is about basically happiness beyond money. Like, he doesn't talk about money very much, and he starts the book with this. "Beyond wealth," a friend asked with a strange look when she heard the title of my new book. "Why Beyond Wealth?" "I'd be happy to settle for wealth." No, she wouldn't; you can't wear your stock portfolio, ride on your bank account, or eat gold and silver coins. Money is never an end, only a means to an end.

Even if you have plenty of money and the things it can buy, your life won't mean much if you don't have decent health, someone to love, close friendships, and personal interests, and something to get you out of bed in the morning.

It's just like a collection of life lessons that this dude, who has spent a lifetime working with people who are just insanely rich, and probably being insanely rich himself, has kind of realized that this is the thing that brings true happiness and joy.

Like, it's not a normal self-help book. I picked it up on the recommendation of someone who works with Tim Ferris; he said that this was actually a great book to read. I was like, okay cool, I'll check it out. I thought it was going to say invest in relationships and have experiences rather than things, but it's a lot deeper than that.

He talks about appreciating jazz music, and classic literature, art, music, and theater. It's just a different approach to, I guess, a self-help book of how to be happy. Reading this has genuinely made me try and develop more of an appreciation of arts and culture and history and philosophy and politics.

Appreciating those things does actually have the potential to make me happier, level up my life—it's about more than that. He talks about love, health, friendships, philosophy, history, science, and spirituality. There's just so much good stuff.

Every chapter, I found myself highlighting stuff and just appreciating the perspective here. So, if you are interested in, for example, a book that will lead you to a rich life, but you've thought that the obsession we have in society with chasing more money feels maybe not quite right, then this is interesting.

I think you'll find a lot of value from this book Beyond Wealth by Alexander Green.

Oh, and by the way, if you're enjoying this list of books so far and you might have got some good recommendations, I would love it if you can just hit the like button. Apparently, it’s useful for the YouTube algorithm, but if you can do a cheeky smash with the like button, I'd be enormously grateful!

All right, next on the list, we have The Three Alarms: A Simple System to Transform Your Health, Wealth, and Relationships Forever by Eric Partaker. This is another self-help book, so sorry if you're not into that genre, but I mean, there are timestamps below so you can check out other non-self-help books if you would like.

I liked this because it has given me three pieces of tangible practical advice that I still use to this day.

Number one is the concept of the three alarms, where basically I have three alarms on my phone: 9:00, 5:00, and 6:30 that remind me what kind of identity I want to hold on to at those particular times.

Number two is the idea of the ideal week. This is something that I did a few months ago when I first read this, and it's been super helpful. I now have in my calendar an idealized representation of what I want my week to look like, and this helps me be more intentional towards life.

Thirdly, is the idea of a weekly review, where basically every week, or most weeks—some weeks, I kind of review my week and I use the method that he talks about in the book.

Super quick, super easy to read. Again, the thing I like about this is that even though he's like a CEO coach, and it's technically a business book, he talks about health, wealth, and relationships as being the three key areas of life.

A lot of us can over-index on the wealth part, the career part, and the success part, and neglect our health and relationships. So the thing I liked about this was that it really encourages you to take an almost busy approach to things like health and relationships. Sounds weird, but it's not—it's just about being intentional with it in the same way that you'd be intentional about your stocks portfolio or your business planning.

So yeah, if that sounds up your street, check it out. The Three Alarms by Eric Partaker.

Next, we have The Art and Business of Online Writing by Cole. While I have recommended mostly The Pathless Path for people struggling to figure out what they want to do in life, The Art and Business of Online Writing is the book that I've most often recommended to people who have decided that for whatever reason they want to make a career or money through some kind of Internet Creator type thing, whether that’s writing, podcasting, or videoing.

I think this book, even though it's about online writing, has really good lessons on how to do this—even outside of writing. Nicholas Cole's story is amazing. I actually met him yesterday; he featured on my podcast, Deep Dive—link down below. We met in real life for the first time, and it was great talking to him.

He talks about, in the book, his background as being a pro World of Warcraft gamer when he was 17, and how that ended up not being able to make him a living, and how he discovered writing on the internet. Now he makes like seven figures plus every year through online writing, which feels a bit rogue.

Everyone I've recommended this to has said that this has just been a game-changing book for them in the world of online creator type stuff. So if you're in that world or interested in potentially being in that world, check this out. The Art and Business of Online Writing by Nicholas Cole—100% would recommend!

Next, we have an absolute classic which I'd never read before this year: The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

It almost feels weird to be recommending this book because this has been around for like decades—over 40 million copies sold—that's insane. That's absolutely ridiculous for a non-fiction book, in fact for any kind of book.

I've just seen this so often. It's just such a staple in the productivity, self-help genre that I thought, “It’s almost like the 4-Hour Work Week; it’s been recommended so often that surely there's nothing new here. Surely everyone has already figured all this stuff out.”

But I started reading it and was blown away by how incredible this book is. In a way, this is probably the best self-help book I've ever read, which is probably why it’s possibly the world’s most successful and famous self-help book, possibly other than How to Win Friends and Influence People.

It’s incredible; if you look at the table of contents, if you read a summary of the book—I’d seen summaries of The Seven Habits—I was like, okay, whatever; there’s nothing interesting here, fine, be proactive, fine, begin with the end in mind.

But these seven habits are just—when you actually read the stories in the book and appreciate where Stephen Covey is coming from (he’s also a dad), he uses loads of parenting examples and examples from real life.

This is not someone who is like a bro in their 20s trying to give someone life advice. This guy has lived life and coached a ton of people and has distilled basically everything around success into these seven habits.

A remarkably large part of this is about emotional intelligence and appreciating the emotional ingredients to success and living a good life—emotional and empathetic communication and stuff. That’s just absolutely not what I was expecting when I picked this up; I thought it was going to be a standard self-help book that just talks about how to be more productive.

So if you have also been putting this off like I did for years because it seems too mainstream, I’d say it’s just really good—probably the single best self-help book I've ever read in my life. So if you like the genre, you’ve got to read this book—100% would recommend.

Oh, and by the way, if you’re enjoying this so far and you too have read something enjoyable this year, I would love it if you could leave a comment down below. What would you recommend for me to read? I’d love to see it, and it would be nice to crowdsource some of these comments and get some book recommendations.

Okay, next on the list we have a very short, very tactical book by Daniel Priestley called Scorecard Marketing: The Four-Step Playbook for Getting Better Leads and Bigger Profits. This is relevant if you have a business or if you want to start a business. It’s not relevant beyond that point, so if you don’t want to start a business, you can completely skip this one, or if you don’t have a business, don’t worry about it.

But if you do have a business or you want to start one, this book basically talks about how everything is downstream of lead generation, and essentially how you can understand why people buy stuff and then how to sell people stuff by solving problems for them through this idea of scorecard marketing.

He also has a software called Score App, which we’ve started using in the business. We’ll put a link down below. I think we’re going to invest in it as well, or we have already invested in it. It’s just good, so you can check out the software.

Even if you don’t want to check out the software, the book is really good for marketing in particular. Now that I’ve read Scorecard Marketing, I feel like I’m a bit more leveled up in that field, and I’m actively reading more in that field to just improve my general business chops, ‘cause sales and marketing is super important stuff.

Moving on, I've just been told it’s 22 laws rather than 12 laws. Anyway, next on the list we have What We Owe the Future by Will MacAskill: A Million-Year View.

I’ve done a book club episode about this; it’ll be linked up there. It basically argues the position of long-termism—that we should care about the lives of people who are not yet alive today.

It’s interesting, like I wouldn’t say that I 100% agree with everything in the book, and this book is particularly interesting in light of the whole Sam Bankman-Fried FTX stuff.

A lot of people view long-termism as being too utilitarian—apparently, someone described this book as a cross between a philosophy academic textbook and a pamphlet for activists, and I think that’s a reasonable summary.

I feel like reading this leveled up my understanding of philosophy and stuff moral philosophers think about, the ideas of stagnation, the idea of moral change, and I also feel it gave me a little bit more appreciation for things like the risks of AI, nuclear war, bioterrorism, and moral value lock-in, and these other things that he talks about.

I have an interview with Will on my podcast, Deep Dive, that’ll be linked down below as well if you’d like to check that out. If you would prefer to listen to it, I think we did that interview before I read the book, so it’s like me being a total noob and him explaining some of these key ideas to me, and then I read the book when it came out.

So, if you are interested in philosophy, if you’re interested in potentially having an impact with your life or with your career or with your money or with your time, this is interesting. I’m not necessarily saying it’s going to completely change the way you look at the world.

It kind of did for me in that I didn’t know about this long-termism stuff until I read the book, and now I do, so I feel like I’ve got this firmware update in my mind. But yeah, What We Owe the Future—good stuff.

Stephen Fry says it’s a book of great daring, so realistic, so optimistic, so damn readable—a miracle! I wouldn’t entirely agree with the readable part; it can get a little bit dense in places. The audiobook in particular is good because you can get through the density, but there are graphs and stuff, and it's just good. This leveled up my understanding of the world—yeah, would recommend!

All right, next we have another interesting, very, very short self-help book: The Go-Giver: A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea. I love these sorts of business books that are fables. This is a fable. It’s just like—it’s a story that a seven-year-old could read, but it’s so good.

I listened to this on Audible. This was a gift from Tintin, one of our team members. I listened to it on Audible after someone else recommended it on a podcast, and I was like, “Oh my God, this is so good.”

In terms of bang for buck, the value you get, it’s entertaining to read because it’s a story; it’s not like telling you to do stuff, it’s just like a story—a fable—and it’s very short. I think it just changed the way that I think about business, life, and relationships with people.

It’s not just a business book; it also bleeds into other areas of life. Adam Grant apparently said The Go-Giver is the most important parable about business and life of our time—global bestseller—all this stuff; it’s just so good.

Basically, the key model is that you should be more giving in your approach to stuff and give without an expectation of something in return. A lot of us have more of a transactional approach to life, especially in the modern capitalistic society that we live in.

The Go-Giver—would recommend! Very nice and easy read as well.

All right, continuing, we have The Luck Factor by Richard Wiseman. I'm going to make a confession here: half of these books are from people who I either know on the internet or have interviewed on my podcast.

A lot of the time, if I like someone's book, we will then reach out to them for the podcast interview. Now, I think for this one, The Luck Factor, I first read this when I was about 16 years old. This was when I was first getting into close-up magic and also personal development, reading blogs like Lifehacker and stuff.

I came across this book, which is basically about how to get luckier in life. It’s by Richard Wiseman, who is a psychology professor. When we were figuring out who we wanted to interview for the podcast, I thought, “Oh, Richard Wiseman—he's a magician, he’s a psychologist, he’s cool!”

So we reached out to him and got an interview with him on the podcast, which is now live. You can check it out on any podcast app or on the YouTube channel, where we talked about this idea of luck.

I remember reading this book and it having a big impact on my life because basically, what he argues in the book is that some people in the world consider themselves lucky, and others consider themselves unlucky—but actually, the people who consider themselves lucky seem to just have better lives and seem to be happier, less stressed, more resilient, and more productive.

He’s exploring initially, is luck just a function of success? Like, if you’re just really smart, or you just do really well, do you start to consider yourself a lucky person, or is it more than that? Can we change our mindset so that we become luckier?

He basically argues yes—he's done tons of research about this. It’s very evidence-based but also very readable, it’s got some super interesting and nice stories, and it’s about the four principles that will change your luck and your life.

We are going to do a book club episode about this soon, and that will summarize the book for you. But it’s very readable, kind of short, you can get it on Audible; I listened to it this time around. I read it on Kindle back when I was 16.

It’s great because it gives some practical, actionable advice on how to become the sort of person that would consider themselves lucky. So if you, for example, currently consider yourself unlucky, consider reading the book. If you’re the sort of person who considers yourself lucky or neutral, you can check it out anyway—good actionable tips for increasing serendipity in your life!

All right, next—this one's controversial—The Way of the Superior Man: A Spiritual Guide to Mastering the Challenges of Women, Work, and Sexual Desire by David Deida.

I got recommended this from watching Hamza, a fellow YouTuber that some of you guys might be familiar with. He kept banging on about The Way of the Superior Man, and I was like, “Come on, this is going to be one of those pickup artisty type books.” I’ve read a few of those in my time—purely for science! So I had fairly low expectations going into it.

But I thought, hey, Hamza really recommends this; he raves about it all the time, why don’t I read the book? I started reading, and I was like, oh my God, it’s interesting!

I don’t want to talk about it too loudly because I don’t want to get canceled, but this is somewhat controversial.

I’m going to read out this quote from Tony Robbins—he's fairly cancel-proof: “The Way of the Superior Man lays out a challenge before all men to fulfill their true purpose and to be authentically masculine. It will guide you on your journey to a successful and spiritually complete way of life. Step up to the plate with this book in your hand.”

This is what David Deida says on the back: “When a man's value is no longer measured by what he does, by his finances or his social standing, how does he determine his worth in our new world? A man's presence, his depth of awareness, is his most valuable asset.”

Yeah, check it out; I think you will find it interesting regardless of your particular demographics.

So, a lot of the books in this list have been self-help books, and as you guys know if you follow this channel for any amount of time, I'm all about doing whatever it takes to level up my thinking, level up my life, and become happier and more productive and healthier—all that kind of fun stuff.

But one of the key things that I don’t take care of enough is my nutrition, and that's why I signed up to Heights, who are very kindly sponsoring this video. Now, Heights is a brain care smart supplement that I’ve been taking since November 2021.

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The great thing about Heights is that they’re very evidence-based in everything they do. They have a whole section on their website that has enormous evidence for every single ingredient in the capsule.

Ideally, in an ideal world, you would get all the nutrients you need from your actual diet, but if you look at the stats, 99% of us in the Western world don’t have the perfect Mediterranean gold standard diet. I certainly don’t—I live off takeaways quite a lot; it’s not very good despite all the self-help books I read!

The nice thing about Heights is that it lets me cover my bases when it comes to micronutrients without having to do annoying stuff like drinking green sludge or anything like that.

It’s super easy to sign up; if you want to try Heights out, just go to yourheights.com, and you can sign up for the monthly or the quarterly subscription. It just comes through your letterbox; it’s nice and easy.

I pay for the quarterly subscription because it’s fewer deliveries, and I get like 3 months’ worth of it in one go. This is what I have every morning with water, along with my finasteride—which is a tablet I take for my hair loss.

Anyway, if that sounds good, head over to yourheights.com, and if you use the coupon code ALI5 at checkout, that will give you an additional 15% off the already discounted price of the quarterly subscription.

So, thank you so much Heights for sponsoring the video, and let’s get on with the list.

All right, next we have $100 Million Offers by Alex Hormozi: How to Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No. Again, if you are starting a business or if you run a business, I think this is required reading.

I’ve kind of been following Alex Hormozi’s journey. He’s absolutely blown up on YouTube and TikTok and Instagram and stuff in the last year or two, and I knew he had a book, and I was like, “Whatever.”

Then dozens of people—like 5 to 10 people—all independently recommended, “Oh my God, you’ve got to read $100 Million Offers.” So I listened to the audiobook, and we got the physical book, and it’s bloody incredible.

As soon as I started listening to it, I sent it to everyone in my team, saying, “Guys, we all have to listen to this right now,” and we need to follow it step by step for all the products that we make from now on because it’s just an incredible distillation of how to craft an offer, how to create a pitch when it comes to selling something, how to make offers so good that people feel stupid saying no.

It’s just sick—100% would recommend it if you run a business or if you're thinking of starting a business someday.

Okay, two more non-fiction recommendations before we go on. Sadly, I don’t have the physical versions of them; we’ve ordered them from Amazon, but they came late in arriving. These are both audiobooks that I listened to.

The first one is Sapiens. Yes, I finally listened to Sapiens this year, even though people have been banging on about it for the last, like, God knows how long.

It seems like everyone I know owns a copy of Sapiens; very few people I know have actually read Sapiens. But it’s one of those things, like The Seven Habits, where it was almost too mainstream; I was like, “Oh, what’s this book even going to be like? Everyone's talking about Sapiens; it can’t be that good.”

Then I started listening to it, and I was like, okay, I can see what everyone’s talking about—this is really, really, really good.

The reason I got into Sapiens is because I decided this year, partly after reading Beyond Wealth, that I wanted to get more into history and care more about the history of the world—understanding historical context to what’s going on.

When I go to places, I go to museums and think, “These are a waste of time.” But the reason I think they’re a waste of time is that I don’t have the historical context to appreciate what is going on in the museums and what’s interesting about archaeological sites.

Sapiens is a brief history of humankind, and it genuinely is a brief history of humankind. I feel, again, like listening to it left me just blown away by how good the book is to read. Just the writing—it’s kind of funny, made me laugh out loud in parts as well—and it also just levels up my understanding of the world in a nice way, in a very readable way.

So if you’re interested in getting into history or you haven’t yet read Sapiens and you've been putting it off like I did because everyone seems to be talking about it, I know about 50 people who started reading Sapiens but couldn’t finish it because it feels a bit dense.

This is why the audiobook is particularly good; you can passively listen to it, and it’s really, really, really good.

Then one more non-fiction book before we turn to some fiction book recommendations, and that is The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer. This is super interesting—this is in the realm of spirituality.

It’s about this dude who discovered at the age of 21 that, you know, he asked this question, “What is that voice in my head?” Just trying to answer this question about what that voice in my head led him down this whole path in yoga and meditation and Zen Buddhism. He ended up opening his own monastery and becoming the CEO of this billion-dollar medical tech company.

It’s called The Surrender Experiment because he decides at some point in his 20s he’s just going to surrender to the flow of life—he’s just going to say yes to things that come his way, and he’s just going to surrender and see what happens.

This journey takes him to absolutely insane places. I was actively going for walks around the block because I wanted to listen to more of this rather than actually doing work or filming videos—it’s just so gripping, especially the first half.

So yeah, The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer—if you’ve ever been interested in the idea of spirituality, yoga, meditation, or anything along those lines.

All right, two more, and now we have fiction books. The first one I want to talk about is The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. This is a book that was recommended to me by Grace Beverly when I had her on the podcast, and apparently it went viral on TikTok.

It’s sick—I listened to it on audiobook. Great book, very nice read. Everyone I’ve recommended it to since has said this was a really good book.

It’s about this actress, Evelyn Hugo, who was famous in the 40s or 50s or something like that, and it talks about her journey through being in Hollywood and the things she has to do to get ahead, and how the film industry treats women and their sexuality and all of the weird stuff that goes on there.

How she navigates it all with various husbands along the way—it’s so good. I cried at the end, not going to lie! If you’re looking for a fairly easy read that’s super interesting as well, I would recommend The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.

And then finally, I have not read very much new fiction this year, other than The Seven Husbands and a few others because I actually spent the year rereading the first three books of The Stormlight Archive series by Brandon Sanderson.

So we have The Way of Kings—this is paperback so it comes in two parts, part one and part two—then we have book number two of The Stormlight Archive, Words of Radiance, and book number three of The Stormlight Archive, Oathbringer, which also comes in two parts.

I’m in the process of rereading Rhythm of War, which is book number four. These are really long and take absolutely ages to get through, which is why this is basically the only fiction, other than The Seven Husbands, that I’ve actually read this year—just rereading The Stormlight Archive.

Actually rereading—I’ve been reading some of it on Kindle, listening to some of it on Audible. It’s just so good!

It’s probably my favorite book series of all time, maybe after Harry Potter. Yeah, it’s got to be after Harry Potter! Okay, other than Harry Potter, this is my favorite fiction series of all time.

If you have not yet read any Brandon Sanderson, I actually wouldn’t recommend starting with this; I’d recommend starting with The Final Empire, which is the first book in the Mistborn series. The fourth book, The Alloy of Law, came out last week, and I still need to read it.

But I want to reread some of the books four, five, and six before reading book seven. Anyway, that’s very exciting, but the Mistborn series is incredible and a great starting point into the Cosmere—the universe that Brandon Sanderson has created.

It’s just so good! Once you’ve read the first three books of Mistborn, maybe four, five, and six if you want, but the first three in particular—then I would say read The Stormlight Archive, starting from The Way of Kings, and it’s just incredible!

Everyone I’ve ever recommended this to has absolutely fallen in love with it. Brandon Sanderson is famous for his climaxes—in a non-weird way! It’s like at the end of each book, there is just an insane climax, and it’s just like all of the [ __ ] goes down—everything happens, and it brings tears to my eyes—it’s so good!

Do I feel bad that I didn’t read more fiction this year? Not really, ‘cause I spent all of it rereading The Stormlight Archive, so in my book, that was totally worth it.

Anyway, thank you very much for watching! If you enjoyed this video and want some more book recommendations of stuff that I read last year, then check out that video over there, which is 15 Books That I Read in 2021 That I Would Recommend.

Check that out—thank you so much for watching, and see you in the next video. Bye-bye!