I didn’t do great in school when I was younger.
I didn’t learn like most other kids learned. I was a more experiential learner, so I failed in classrooms where teachers lectured for 50-minute periods and then assigned homework.
I couldn’t stay tuned into their droning voices as they explained shit I don’t think they even cared about.
This made me feel dumb. And once I felt dumb, I just started skipping school as much as I could without getting expelled.
It would be several years before I learned that I was not dumb just because I couldn’t pay attention in those classrooms and that there was such a thing as different styles of learning.
So, it’s not surprising that I didn’t read much as a kid.
My whole family is full of readers, but I associated reading with school and, therefore, boring.
Then, when I was 17, my buddy Mark Smith loaned me his copy of On The Road by Jack Kerouac. Mark was a good friend, and I respected his taste in music enough to trust his recommendations for books.
I fell in love with Kerouac and the other beat artists of that generation. And more importantly, I started reading…even when it wasn’t assigned to me.
Then, when I was 22, my uncle Joe (who is a voracious reader) gave me copies of Larry Brown’s Joe, Walker Percy’s The Last Gentleman, and Faulkner’s The Bear for Christmas.
Those 3 books were so good that not only was I hooked on reading for life, but I was also certain that I wanted to write books like Larry Brown wrote books.
I read everything of his I could get my hands on up until his death. To this day, I still want to have the same effect on readers that Larry has on me.
There are few tools in this world that can have the same profound impact on a persons life like a book can.
Books and reading are the ultimate lever from which to move the world.
Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Ryan Holiday, Tim Ferris, Naval Ravikant, Barrack Obama, etc. All incredibly successful people who credit reading as the superpower that rocketed them to success.
Lastly, books and reading are for everyone. They cost almost nothing, and there are libraries dying to lend you copies of anything you want to read. Books level the playing field. Almost everyone has equal access to books, unlike a college education.
My friend Mark and my uncle Joe loaning or gifting me books has radically changed my life in ways that nothing else could.
If you want to profoundly impact someone’s life, give them a great book.