April in Books

A page from The Comfort Book, Matt Haig, the whole of which I read on a 4-hour flight from Mykonos to London. I think it was the first time I read the entire book at once.

Life can be beautiful if you make it beautiful. It is up to you.

I had to start this month’s summary with a quote from the best book that I read this month because oh my, it was so good. If you are to read one book from all my recommendations (January, February, March) read “The Happiest Man on Earth”. Importantly, though, all the others that I include below are worthwhile too — I am sticking to the promise of including only books that I would reread here. Here we go :)

“The Happiest Man on Earth”, Eddie Jaku

I am not going to go long here because I really want you to read it. Eddie survived Auschwitz and much more. He survived more personal tragedies and pain that most of us would imagine survivable. Yet he persisted with such a great attitude to life that you cannot put this book down. His advice is very simple and very actionable (e.g. ‘hug your mother more often’). Please, read.

“The Comfort Book”, Matt Haig

Just like the book above, I bought it at an airport and felt it might be a book-clickbait, if you know what I mean. It certainly was not. It is a collection of 1–3 page reflections on various matters relating to life, emotions etc. Literally, while reading the book I have made 10+ photos of pages to have available later on. Also, I read the entirety during a 4-hour flight. I do recommend.

“The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness”, Eric Jorgenson

Naval Ravikant is an American entrepreneur and investor. He is the co-founder, chairman and former CEO of AngelList. He has invested early-stage in over 200 companies including Uber, FourSquare, Twitter, Opendoor, Clubhouse, with over 70 total exits and more than 10 Unicorn companies. Undeniably, this is a man to learn from in many respects. The problem is that such people often do not have time to write memoirs. Thankfully, Eric Jorgenson, a writer, has taken time to collect Naval’s pieces of wisdom from blog posts, tweets etc. and put it into a well-constructed book. Again, I won’t be summarising it here to increase the probability that you actually read it, but I can tell you that I certainly learnt a lot from the perspectives of Naval as an entrepreneur, an investor and simple life philosophy. Very short and insightful.