BONUS | Ryan Holiday's Best Book Recommendations for Dr. Becky Kennedy

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2:41Ryan Holiday: Other than yours, do you have any favorite parenting books? Oh my goodness. I mean, I'm looking at these. I love Emily Oster. I love Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. She's coming out for a new book soon. That's such a crazy book because it was basically self-published and just became this sort of word of mouth, enormous thing. Evrodsky is a friend and I love her work. I love Siblings Without Rivalry and How to Talk to Your... How to Talk to Your Kids Will Listen, Listen to Your Kids Will Talk. Have you read this one? No. So Kafka had a difficult relationship with his father. He's an artistic kid, his father was this businessman, they never got along.

3:17Ryan Holiday: Towards the end of his life, he writes this letter where he sort of lays it out. I sort of compare it to Family Day at Rehab where you finally talk about all the shit that you weren't, the secrets, and he writes this letter and he gives it to his mom, and she of course doesn't give it to the dad. Which gives you an insight into the family dynamic. But it's a beautiful book, because he's such a great writer and he just really captures like that sort of when there isn't that parent-child fit like when the personalities don't line up and how tough that is for both parties um it's a it's beautiful oh great thank you it's it i love it too oh she's she's been here i think about like what are parenting books that like people don't think of as parenting books like the road have you read the road you've never read the road no I'm embarrassed now.

4:07Ryan Holiday: It's different once you have kids. But it's a father and a son at sort of the end of the world. And he's just trying, he's desperately trying to get his, you know, nine-year-old to the coast. Everything's falling apart. He doesn't know. He has no plan. He's just trying to get them away. And it's all this stuff along the way. It's heartbreaking and beautiful. And the famous image in the book is, and a kid repeats it to me. He's like, we're carrying the fire. and the fire is goodness. Like in this world where people are eating each other and killing each other, it's like the parent's job is to help them, that they're one of the good guys and they're carrying the fire.

4:45Ryan Holiday: It's beautiful. Okay, I think you'll like that. I love this. I give this book to a lot of people too. I don't know if you read that. I haven't yet. Because that's what I think we're trying to, we're trying to raise outdoor kids. Definitely. All right, so that's parenting.

5:03I really like everything in Camarculous. Oh my god, she - that - John Green's - incredible book.

5:09Ryan Holiday: So good, so interesting. It's like the per - like when somebody writes about something that like, you could tell their publisher didn't want them to write about and they didn't think it would have any - but they are just so obsessed with it and that only they could have written that book. He's amazing. I'm sure you've - So good. You've met him. He's so impressive. Actually, Savannah has to tell me about your books. Hi. She's looking for a fiction recommendation. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, so nice to meet you. What kind of fiction? I didn't know. You know the last book I put down that was fiction? It was The Wedding People.

5:40Oh, I love The Wedding People. I love the characters. I was sad to see them go at the end, you know? It's over. The main character's journey? That one really surprised me. I read the whole thing on a flight. Did you? Yeah. Like, Where'd You Go Bernadette? Is that what it's called? Yes. It reminds me of that. I just didn't want to put it in. Have you read her new book? I actually haven't. Oh, you haven't? I actually just know I haven't. Is it great?

6:01Ryan Holiday: So yes, very good. She was just here. We have a sign. A sign. So the main character is a stoic philosopher. Oh yeah, amazing. OK. Yeah, I got a call from Oprah's people to ask me to come. And I was like, how did you hear about my stuff? And they were like, well, we just did Maria's book. And she told us about it. So she just sort of blew my life up, which is very cool. It's very good. Did you give her Raising Hair? Oh yeah, have you read Raising Hair? No. All right, we'll do that in a second. this is another stoic but it's a novel this is memoirs of hadrian it's the fictional memoirs of hadrian preparing marcus aurelius to be emperor so and and he's he's adopted him as his son but it's beautiful by this french novelist uh it's one of those books that like was famous a long time ago and then people sort of lost it it's very beautiful okay we actually have a copy reason um this is uh so during the pandemic she moves to this country house in london and uh she finds like a baby rabbit a wild hair yes it's a wild hair you're not allowed to get it but i can't pronounce the word what is it is it a leveret i just it's is it a leveret um it's a bait she raises it it's all about doing it's it's very good amazing thank you um what do do well have you have you read claire keegan no very good i gave her the road it has a similar scene in it to the road but um it's very good a nice little short one incredible thank you anything else oh have you read tototron nope okay we have to do total yeah um i have a lot of no's

7:56really poorly read. Oh, right here.

7:59Ryan Holiday: Oh, okay. Oh, last one. Wow. Okay, so Toto-chan, she is basically the Oprah of Japan. Okay. Like, this book sold, like, 10 million copies in Japan, which is, like, an insane number. So, but she is, she's this little, sort of, precocious, uh, creative kid in, uh, World War II-era Japan, and it's about this untraditional school she goes to with this, kind of like amazing uh amazing to you how would you describe it did i get it right um i think it's a school that just beats her where she is yes they're kind of they i think she didn't feel like she fit in or found a place and she was miserable in the situation she was in and then she found a school that celebrated her for her and it didn't feel i mean it's like literally a very very good book i think on part with your message i think it's hard for an adult to write a book about what it was like to be them as a kid and somehow miraculously does that it's like it captures what it is to be that kind of kid it gives you a lot of sympathy for that what is my like hit rate compared to most people i feel like everything i'm like nope haven't read that no no we try to find books like like the ones we're like oh you would love this and you've not heard of it Oh, great.

9:17But you were, I think because I'm familiar with your material, it's very easier to write my books, too. Oh, yeah. And there's things that I think that if I've read and digested your book, when I'm reading other books, if I know that there's a tie between two or four to read something. Yeah. Like, I would say I didn't see it over the Wild Dark Shores. That was like, have you read that? That is like not, it's not a parenting book. It is fiction. It was very much about this single dad's experience with his kids in a weird situation. I love books like that. What is the book with the kid who dies in the ice?

9:53Do you know what I mean? In that pond. It's like a whole family story. They never talk about it. It's by an author who wrote some other books, too. But yes, anything where there's family dynamics. Is that the same author? It is. How Wilder Shores? No. I don't think so. But yes, family dynamic books. Seeing the family dynamic, there's so many parenting lessons. If I couldn't get somebody to read a parenting book, this is the book that I would have in my mind. Yes, exactly. But I also, and I would say high school, but that's just, I love high school. I'll see if I can find this. Okay, thank you.

10:28We also really like recommending this to people.

10:32Ryan Holiday: I mean, great. I will take all the recommendations. Now I know who to text. The idea of the bookstore is it's only our favorite books. So a typical bookstore of this size would have a lot more titles than we have. Yeah. So these are just ones that we really love. Have you read What Makes Maddie Run? No, but I love sports stuff. This is a tragic book, but I give it to all the coaches that come in. It's about this all-American cross-country athlete commits suicide. And it's what happens, why, what did everyone miss? and it's like you can see you can start to connect it and then yeah it's a very haunting but powerful my 14 year old is and my 11 year old is a big big reader so I feel like he and he reads a lot of he actually gave me everything super cool really?

11:24Ryan Holiday: okay then he would like does he play sports? yes oh amazing letters to a young athlete basketball player. Okay, there you go. Do that one. Do that one. And then this, he was my mentor. I worked on this book with him. Oh, there you go. He's the one that brought, so he brings Jordan to Nike. Okay. So the two sort of crisscrosses of his life, he's on the, he's working security, the march in Washington. And as Martin Luther King Jr. walks down the stairs, he goes, Dr. King, that was an amazing speech, and he hands him the speech. And so he owned the I Have a Dream speech. Wow. So if that was the only part of his life, he'd be like, what an incredible life.

12:09Ryan Holiday: He becomes a basketball coach, he works on the 84 Olympic team, and he's the one that goes, hey Michael, I think you should give Nike another look. And that's where that comes from. He's an incredible dude. So I think your son would like those too. Great, thank you. If you want more book recommendations, I send these out in my reading list newsletter, which I've sent out every month for 15 years. And you can sign up at ryanholiday.net reading list.