Bert Kreischer's Reading List (From Ryan Holiday)

After recording their episode, Ryan and Bert Kreischer stopped by The Painted Porch, where Ryan shared some must-read books with Bert. Watch this episode on Ryan Holiday's YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VH7tzlzRwY📚 Books mentioned: The Crack-Up The Annotated Great Gatsby: 100th Anniversary Deluxe EditionConfederacy of DuncesIn a Sunburned CountryPappylandThe Cost of These DreamsDaily Dad Five Year Reflection Journal👉 Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing to The Daily Stoic Premium - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content: https://dailystoic.supercast.com/🎥 Watch the video episodes on The Daily Stoic YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

• 0:14Ryan Holiday?

  When Bert Kreischer asks you for some book recommendations, you've really got to think about what he's going to like. And he came out to my bookstore here in Bastrop, Texas recently. And this is what I picked out for him. All right, so I said, I said the crack up.

• 0:28Speaker 01

  The pornography? Never mind. I have that book, 1929.

• 0:33Ryan Holiday?

  Amazing, he was here.

• 0:34Speaker 01

  Oh, I didn't read it, but I have it.

• 0:35Ryan Holiday?

  It's really good. Where's the crack up? Okay, so this is about Esq. Fitzgerald blowing up his life.

• 0:42Speaker 01

  I love it. One of my favorite lines in a book ever, Gray Gatsby, Nick Caraway says, "At the age of 30, I realized I had to stop lying to myself." It's my favorite line.

• 0:51Ryan Holiday?

  Okay, so let me give you this then.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I didn't find myself. I read it in, I read it when I moved to New York and I was working at Barnes & Noble.

• 1:04Ryan Holiday?

  There's a new edition of it that is like amazing.

• 1:08Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:08Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, okay, so it's 100 years old. It's now officially in the public domain. So this is a 100 year anniversary edition. And it's got all these like illustrations and stuff. My favorite line from the Gatsby is actually the first line, which I'll read to you. It's easier to find here, but I think this is like the greatest line. "In my younger, more vulnerable years, my father gave me some advice I've been turning over in my mind ever since. Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, he told me, just remember that all people in the world haven't had the advantages you've had."

• 1:37Speaker 01

  He's written about white privilege in 1929.

• 1:41Ryan Holiday?

  No, okay, so this is amazing. It's got all these like, it's really cool. It's got all these like cool like facts and stuff on the start.

• 1:45Speaker 01

  Oh shit.

• 1:46Ryan Holiday?

  So you like learn about like the making of the book and stuff.

• 1:48Speaker 01

  Oh, that's awesome.

• 1:49Ryan Holiday?

  So those two go really. Do you know the crazy Fitzgerald Hemingway story?

• 1:54Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:54Ryan Holiday?

  Okay, so Fitzgerald is in like the worst marriage of all time. Zelda's, uh, wherups. She tells Esq. Fitzgerald that his dick is small. And he's like, really, he's like really broken up about it.

• 2:06Speaker 01

  So it still works 100 years ago.

• 2:08Ryan Holiday?

  So he goes to Hemingway and he tells her, he tells him that she said this and whatever. And then Hemingway's like, let me see it.

• 2:19Ryan Holiday?

  He shows him, he's like, dude, what are you talking about? And then that's their, that's their famous exchange. So he, he's so in his head about the asset Hemingway, check it out and, and tell him whether.

• 2:29Speaker 01

  I always say, uh, the best titles for any book are Hemingway and the best titles for any movies are the Grateful Dead.

• 2:36Ryan Holiday?

  Ooh, that's good.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  Grateful Dead has the best titles. They, people have stolen so many titles, like so many Grateful Dead songs and use it as a title that you're like, oh.

• 2:45Ryan Holiday?

  Some, someone told me that like every word in the Gettysburg Address has become a book title. Like every phrase of the Gettysburg Address has become its own book title. Like, you know, these honor dead, uh, we, you know, um, uh, every phrase in it has become its own.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  I can, I will sit, like one of my favorite things to do is sit and try to think of titles.

• 3:04Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 3:05Speaker 01

  So, uh, and but that's how I got the TV show, Something's Burning was just like, oh, that's great. Something's burning. And then, and then I build the show around it. I have a show I'm trying to do called Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen. It's where forty seven people make one dish. We just, we was just like.

• 3:20Ryan Holiday?

  So the, the other Hemingway, there's, there's actually a book called Hemingway Verse Fitzgerald. It's about their like frenemy friendship. And, um, in it, he, um, the other one, the, the other famous exchange is because Fitzgerald is obsessed with money and like rich people. And he goes, you know, like, uh, Ernest, like the rich, they're just like different than you and I. And Hemingway, uh, says like, yeah, they have more money. And then Hemingway puts that exchange in one of his books and Fitzgerald was like humiliated.

• 3:48Speaker 01

  Can I tell you what book I didn't understand and now I understand? I didn't understand in college and now I'm starting to understand. And I have not finished the whole book, but I've read parts of it all over is The Fountainhead.

• 3:59Ryan Holiday?

  Oh yeah, I'm Rand is like, you know.

• 4:02Speaker 01

  Cause at first I go, the, the hero's Keating. He's doing the job. He's getting the job done. He's showing up and going to work. He's, yeah, he's slapping it together, man. That's what we do. And then I start going, oh, Lord. Is the, oh shit.

• 4:17Ryan Holiday?

  Some of these books you have to read, you have to read over the course of your life.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 4:21Ryan Holiday?

  That's why I think you'll like that new one. Have you read a, have you read a Confederacy of Dunces?

• 4:28Ryan Holiday?

  The funniest book of all time?

• 4:30Speaker 01

  Uh, the book that's this thin?

• 4:31Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  No, I've never read it.

• 4:33Ryan Holiday?

  You haven't?

• 4:33Speaker 01

  No.

• 4:34Ryan Holiday?

  Would you read it?

• 4:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:35Ryan Holiday?

  It would be a good, I'll, let me find it, but it's, it's the funniest. It's, it's one of those books that you're like, I would love this to be a movie and they just could never manage to make it.

• 4:43Speaker 01

  That guy, that guy breaks my heart.

• 4:45Ryan Holiday?

  Oh yeah, well that's a good example of what we're talking about.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  I saw the Jason, Jason, uh, what's it called, movie he did? Jason, Kid from How I Met Your Mother? Did a movie about the guy.

• 4:56Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, uh, about John Kennedy Tool?

• 4:58Speaker 01

  No, oh, who am I thinking of?

• 5:00Ryan Holiday?

  Uh, are you thinking of Infinite Jest?

• 5:02Speaker 01

  I'm thinking of Infinite Jest, no, Confederacy of Dunces I have not read.

• 5:05Ryan Holiday?

  Okay, so, uh, where is Confederacy of Dunces? Uh, I don't know why I'm so confused. I will get you Confederacy of Dunces, okay. But John Kennedy, oh, here it is, okay. Here it is. Funniest book of all time.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  Are you serious?

• 5:18Ryan Holiday?

  There's a statue of him on, uh, Canal Street in New Orleans. He's a hot dog, it's a book about a hot dog salesman and he just eats all the hot dogs. Uh, it's really, it's, it's, it's amazing, but, okay, so the story of this book is this guy writes this book. He sends it to his agent. And, uh, his agent, uh, is like, this is not a book, this sucks. She sends it to his editor, the guy's like, not a book, this sucks. So he kills himself, uh, on a road outside, Biloxi, drives his car off, takes a garden hose, puts it in the pipe, into the window, kills himself. His mother finds a Confederacy of Dunces in a death drawer after his death.

• 5:56Ryan Holiday?

  And she takes it to a professor in New Orleans at Tulane, a guy named Walker Percy, who wrote a famous book called The Movie Goer. This book, also amazing, uh, The Movie Goer, uh, he's a professor there, he reads the book, thinks it's, thinks it's genius. Gets it published by the Louisiana University Press, it wins.

• 6:20Ryan Holiday?

  The Pulitzer Prize that year. So it's just a reminder to go to our point about not like the same fucking book. He's dead. He has not changed it in any way. The one that his editor said wasn't a good book, the one that his agent said wasn't a good book, wins the Pulitzer Prize.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  Holy shit.

• 6:35Ryan Holiday?

  You can't, you can't, you can't write, you gotta. Do you think it's good? Does it do what you want to do? Does that mean it's gonna be a success? You don't know, but you can't. It's the funniest book you will ever read.

• 6:46Speaker 01

  I can't wait. I absolutely can't wait.

• 6:48Ryan Holiday?

  Okay, what else might you like?

• 6:49Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 6:50Ryan Holiday?

  So you said you're reading two 600 page books. What's the other one?

• 6:53Speaker 01

  Oh, uh, oh, something about, I, I was, used to be in history books. It was, uh, John Mulaney's book. It's, uh, John Mulaney recommended it. It's about the, uh, them sending the certain first, uh, debtors down to Ireland, or to Australia.

• 7:09Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, um, Fatal, The Fatal Shore?

• 7:12Speaker 01

  Fatal Shore, yeah.

• 7:12Ryan Holiday?

  Incredible book.

• 7:13Speaker 01

  It's so hard to get into. Okay, can I ask you as a book owner, a books owner, do we have to read the preface?

• 7:20Ryan Holiday?

  If you want to understand what's happening, I think so.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  God damn it.

• 7:22Ryan Holiday?

  Okay, this book is, here's a funnier Australian book.

• 7:24Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 7:25Ryan Holiday?

  This is better. This is much better. Uh, The Fatal Shore, I just read this year, because I did an Australia tour last year and it was amazing. And it's a, it's a crazy good book, but I mean, the first like 200 pages of The Fatal Shore are about like how prisons in England work.

• 7:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:39Ryan Holiday?

  It's like, it takes a while to get to even Australia. It's a lot.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  And they, and they don't have it in audiobook?

• 7:46Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, because it's old. It won like the Pulitzer Prize in like the 60s or something. It's very, but read, read that one. It's very good.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  Let's do. I read this book in college.

• 8:06Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, dude, amazing.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  He was like my first, he was, I was like my fir-, my first book I ever sat and read for real. Like where I was like, not like I had to read in class, but I sat and read a book was The Firm. Then the, and then the next one was, uh, uh, Fear and Loathing. And once I read Fear and Loathing, I then read Cahill Gibran's The Pro, Pro, Pro, Prophet, whatever. And then I got into reading and then I read Hell's Angels. I started reading a lot in college. And then, uh, and then been in and out. But like, you remember James Michener?

• 8:35Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, of course.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  I was big into Michener.

• 8:37Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, he, uh, he's buried in Texas.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  You really?

• 8:40Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, um. Yeah. Uh, let's see. Um, yeah, would you read Why or something?

• 8:48Speaker 01

  I read, well, I read Why. It's really racist now. But that's the thing. It was like, I read that Summer in the Midnight Sun or whatever that Joe recommended.

• 8:56Ryan Holiday?

  Uh, Empire of the Summer Moon?

• 8:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then I was like, wow, the Indian sounds like dicks. And he's like, well, you gotta be careful who writes it.

• 9:02Ryan Holiday?

  He, he lives, he lives here. He's been here. Uh.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  Anne Frank had a boyfriend. It's a new joke I have.

• 9:09Ryan Holiday?

  Did she?

• 9:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so I go, are there any single ladies in the audience? And they go, yeah. I go, Anne Frank had a boyfriend. She's been an addict during the Holocaust. Maybe it's you ladies. I bought Endurance.

• 9:18Ryan Holiday?

  Endurance is very good.

• 9:20Speaker 01

  Do you know why? It's called, oh, you told me why. My bad.

• 9:23Ryan Holiday?

  What? Did I tell you?

• 9:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was like, I was about to quote you from your book about that.

• 9:28Ryan Holiday?

  Uh, by endurance we conquer?

• 9:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was his family motto.

• 9:31Ryan Holiday?

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  And so he named the boat the Endurance.

• 9:33Ryan Holiday?

  And then they all. Do you know, have you read, uh, Papillons?

• 9:36Speaker 01

  No, I have not.

• 9:37Ryan Holiday?

  Wright Thompson's maybe the greatest sports writer of all time.

• 9:40Speaker 01

  Oh, I know this guy. I haven't read this book, but he was on, uh, on, um, Thirty for Thirty.

• 9:44Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  I know this guy. He's awesome.

• 9:46Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, okay, he has a sports book you'll like.

• 9:50Speaker 01

  God, you got, sweet. This is, this is a, like, legit bookstore.

• 9:54Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, my office is upstairs. It's a real, uh, we needed office space. And I was like, do I want to rent a boring, like, Tom, like, your guys' studio in Austin. It's like, I could rent something like that there. And then it would have zero, it would be cool and easier in a lot of ways, but it would have zero external impact on the work. Do you know what I mean?

• 10:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:13Ryan Holiday?

  So I was like, we were, we were eating, uh, brunch at that, like, Greece is moving across the street. And this was for sale. And I went and said, what if we just did a bookstore and office at the same time?

• 10:23Speaker 01

  Really? Hey, did you read Matthew McConaughey's Green Lights?

• 10:26Ryan Holiday?

  Of course.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  Were you impressed by?

• 10:27Ryan Holiday?

  I'm on the, I'm on the back.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  Were you, were you impressed by how much ketchup, how much he likes ketchup? Isn't that crazy?

• 10:35Ryan Holiday?

  I thought there was more wet dreams in the book than I needed.

• 10:38Speaker 01

  Really?

• 10:39Ryan Holiday?

  Uh, yeah, I, it's, he asked me to blur, but I'm on the back.

• 10:49Ryan Holiday?

  This is the great.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  What is this?

• 10:53Ryan Holiday?

  This is his sports book. It's amazing.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  Oh, for real?

• 10:56Ryan Holiday?

  Um, yeah, it's really good.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm gonna, okay. I'm gonna get warm with this.

• 11:02Ryan Holiday?

  Okay.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  And then I'm going straight to competitors.

• 11:04Ryan Holiday?

  I think that's the right order, yes. Then do the crack up.

• 11:08Speaker 01

  Wow, this is great.

• 11:09Ryan Holiday?

  Alright, there's your stack.

• 11:10Speaker 01

  This is perfect, thank you.

• 11:11Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, and then you said journal. I got a journal for you.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 11:14Ryan Holiday?

  Alright. It's one line a day, but a parenting question every day.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  For real?

• 11:20Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. That's what I do. One of the journals I do, I have, I made a version.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  That's great. That's the best. That's the best way to hold yourself accountable because it's so doable.

• 11:34Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I do this one and I just write one sentence a day. And it's, I've done it, I did it for five years on one and then I finish it and now I'm on the 10th year of the second one. So every day for 10 years I write one thing. So it's really cool because I can go through it.

• 11:49Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, do we ever do the one line a day journal? But the idea is like, it's like, oh, on June 1st last year, June 1st the year before. You gotta see the rhythms of your life and you're like, oh, I'm gone too much or whatever.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  One line a day, what's that?

• 12:04Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, that's, that's.

• 12:05Speaker 01

  Is that yours?

• 12:06Ryan Holiday?

  So this is the idea, but it's like a parenting version. And then this is just a general one. So you're just like, you would just be like, uh, what's the date today? The 23rd, you'd be like, July, like, or January 23rd, you'd be like, show came out, debuted number two on Netflix, like, feeling good. And then, so it'd be cool, like, next year, you're just doing some random shit. Oh, that was exactly a year ago. And then the third year, you're like, ah, you know. And then your fourth year, you're like, I forgot, you know.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  Oh, can I, I want to give this to my daughter, Georgia. Isla won't write, but Georgia will. This is perfect.

• 12:41Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. So that's like a parenting version of the same thing.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. I'm gonna be a better parent this year. Considering my daughter's watching my TV show about them come out, we're not in love with it.

• 12:52Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, they didn't like it?

• 12:52Speaker 01

  They don't like, it's weird when you're...

• 12:54Ryan Holiday?

  And it uses their names, right?

• 12:55Speaker 01

  Uses their names and it's, and it's... It's gotta be really weird to see someone playing you when it's not you and it's not your life and then you see a story that wasn't yours and then they liked it, like it's really good, it's really well done, it's just very uncomfortable. Yeah, yeah. And you're like, well, do you want to go to college? I mean, if you want to finish college, then deal with that uncomfortableness. Go to a bar and get rid of it. Or I'll send you a one-line-a-day journal, George. Yeah.

• 13:26Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode.