The Daily Stoic - Bert Kreischer's Reading List (From Ryan Holiday)

Episode Date: February 8, 2026

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 FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. When Burke 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 he crack up. Pornography? Never mind, no. I have that book, 1999. Amazing.

Keep a serious. Oh, I didn't read it, but I have it. It's really good. Where is the crack? Okay, so this is about Scott Fitzgerald blowing up his life. I love that. One of my favorite lines in a book ever, Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway says, at the age of 30, I realized I had to stop lying to myself.

It's my favorite line. Okay, so let me give you this then. Yeah, I didn't define myself. What did you, Gatsby in school or something? I read it in, I read it when I moved to New York, and I was working at Barnes & Noble. There's a new edition of it that is like amazing. Really?

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 McAxby is actually the first line, which I'll lead to you. It's easier to find here. But I think this is like the greatest line. In my younger and 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 He's read about white privilege in 1929 No, okay, so this is me it's got all these like it's really cool. It's got all these like cool like facts and stuff on the Oh shit you like learn about like the making of the book and stuff. Oh, that's awesome So those two go go really you know the crazy Fitzgerald Henry story? No, okay, so Chishald is like the worst marriage of all times

Zelda Yeah where she tells Ska F.Capt to Cheryl that his dick is small. And he's like really broken up about it. Still works 100 years ago. 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. He shows him, he's like, dude, what are you talking about?

And then that's their famous exchange. So he's so in his head about the Apesad of Hemingway, check it out and tell him when they're I always say, the best titles for any books are Hemingway, and the best titles for any movies are the Grateful Dead. Oh, that's good. Grateful Dead has the best titles. People have stolen so many, like, so many Grateful Dead songs and used it as a title, that you're like, oh, man. 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, fees honored dead. We, you know, every phrase in it has become its own. I can, I will sit. Like one of my favorite things to do is sit and try to think of titles. Yeah. So, and that's how I got the TV show, Something's Burning, was just like, oh, that's great, something's burning. And then I build the show around it.

I have a shell I'm trying to do called Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen. It's where 47 people make one dish. We just, all, it was like, no, no, no. So the other having, there's actually a book called Henning Lake Verse Fitzgerald that's about their, like, enemy friendship. And in it he, the other one, the other famous exchanges, because Fitzgerald is obsessed with money and like rich people. And he goes, you know, like Ernest, like the rich, they're just like different than you and I. And Hemingway says like, yeah, they have more money. And then

Hemingway puts that exchange in one of his books. And Fitzgerald was like humiliated. Can I tell you what book I didn't understand and now I understand? I didn't understand in college and now I'm sorry and understand and I haven't not finished the whole book but I've read parts of it all over is the fountain head oh yeah I'm Rand is like you know because 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 lorg is the oh shit I some of these books you have to read you have to read over the course of your life Yes.

That's why I think you'll like that new one. Have you read a Confederacy of Dunces? Oh. The funniest book of all time? The book that's this thick? Yeah. No, I've never read it. No.

Would you read it? Yeah. It'll be a good odd. Let me find it. It's the funniest. It's one of those books that you like, I would love this to be a movie and they just had never managed to make it. That guy, that guy breaks my heart. Oh, yeah.

Well, that's a good example. I saw the Jason, Jason, what you call it? movie he did. Jason, kid from How I Met Your Mother, did a movie about the guy. Oh, about John Kennedy Tool? No. Oh, who am I thinking of? Uh, who am I thinking of Infinite Jets? I'm thinking of Individerty Jets. Okay, so, where is, I will get you Confederacy of Dundits. Okay, but John Kennedy, oh, here it is. Okay, here it is. Funniest book of all time. Are you serious? There's a statue of him on 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. It's really, it's amazing. But, okay, so the story of this book is, this guy writes this book. He sends it to his agent. And his agent 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. On a road outside, Biloxi drives his car off, takes a garden hose, puts him in the pipe, into the window, kills himself. His mother finds a confederacy of the law. Dunces in a desk drawer after his death, 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. The moviegoer. He's a professor there. He reads the book, thinks it's genius, gets it published by the Louisiana University Press. It wins the Pulitzer Prize that year. So it's just a reminder to go to our point about not 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. Holy shit. You can't write. Do you think it's good? Does it do what you want to do? Does that mean it's going to be a success? You don't know, but you can't.

It's the funniest book you will ever leave. I can't wait. I absolutely can't wait. Okay. What else want you like? I don't know. So you said you were reading two 600 pages books. What's the other one? Oh, something about, I used to be in history books. It was John Mullaney's book.

John Mullaney recommended it's about them sending the third first debtors down to Ireland or to Australia. Oh, the Fatal Shore? Fort of Shore, yeah. Incredible book. It's so hard to get into. Okay, can I ask you as a bookowner, a bookstore owner, do we have to read the preface? If you want to understand what's happening, I think so. God damn it.

Okay, this book is, here's a funnier Australia book. This is much better. The Fatal Shore I just read this year, because I did an Australia tour last year, and it was amazing, and it's a crazy good book. But I mean, the first like 200 pages of the Fatal Shore about how prisons in England work. Yeah, so it's like, it takes a while to get to even Australia.

I know. And they don't have it in the audiobook. Yeah, it's old. It won like the Pulitzer Prize in like the 60s or something. But read that one. It's very good. Okay. We're all going to experience pain and injuries and physical obstacles, right?

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lifetime warranty. Just go to helix.com slash stoic for 27% off. That's helix sleep.com slash stoic for 27% off. Make sure you enter our show name at checkout so they know we sent you at helixsleep.com slash stoic. Let's do. I read this book in college. Oh, yeah.

He was like my first, he was, my first book I ever sat and read for real, like where I was like, not like I had a read in five, if I sat and read a book was the firm. And then the next one was, uh,

uh, fear and loathing. And once I read fear and loathing, I then read Cahill Gibbons, the pro prophet yeah whatever and then I got into reading and then I read Hells Angels I started reading a lot in college and then and then been in and out but like you remember James Mishner yeah I was big in a Mishner yeah he he's buried in Texas I was really yeah yeah let's see um yeah would you read Hawaii or something I read why I read why

it's really racist now I read it but that's the thing was like I read that summer and the midnight sun or whatever. The Joe recommended. Empire of the Summer Moon? Yeah, and I was like, wow, the Indian sounds like dicks. And he's like, really, you've got to be careful who writes it. He lives here, he's been here. Anne Frank had a boyfriend.

That's a new joke I have. Did she? Yeah, and she lived in the, I go, are there any single ladies in the audience? And they go, yeah, I go, Anne Frank had the boyfriend. She lived in an addictor in the Holocaust, maybe it's you ladies. I bought Endurance. Endurance is very good. Do you know why?

Oh, you told me why. my bad what did I tell you yeah I was like I was about to quote you from your book about that by endurance we conquer yeah that was his family motto and so we named the boat the endurance and then they know have you read uh Papi Land no I have not right Thompson's maybe the greatest sports writer of all time oh I know this guy I haven't read this book but he was on on 30 for 30 yes I know this guy he's awesome yeah okay he has a sports book you'll like God, you got, sweet, this is, this is a, like, legit bookstore. Yeah, my office is upstairs.

It's a real, we needed office space, and I was like, do I want to rent a boring, like, Tom, like, you guys is studio and awesome. 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 world. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. So I was like, we were eating brunch at that, like, greases spoon across the street, and This was for sale and I would say,

what if we just did a bookstore and office? The Sliphani. That's brilliant. Hey, did you read Matthew McConaughey's Green Lights? Of course. Were you impressed by? I'm on the, I'm on the back. Were you impressed by how much catch,

how much he likes catch up? Isn't that crazy? I thought there was more wet dreams in the book than I needed. Oh, really? Yeah, he asked me to blur it, I'm on the back. So yeah, we have more. We just only have a one that's dressed up

Cost of these dreams. This is the great. What is this? This is his sportsbook. It's amazing. Oh, for real? Yeah, it's really good. Oh, I'm gonna, okay. I'm gonna get warm with this. Okay. And then I'm going straight to competitors. I think that's the right order. Yes. Then do the crack up. This is great. All right. There's your stack. This is perfect. Thank you. Oh, and then you said journal. I got a journal for you. Okay. All right. It's one line a day, but a parenting, question every day. For real. Yeah. So I do, that's what I do. One of the journals I do, I have, I made a version of it. That's great. That's the, that's the best, that's the best way to hold yourself accountable because it's so doable. Yeah. 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. You can't get back. Hey, do we have anything one line of day, general? But the idea is like, it's like, oh, on June 1st, last year, June 1st the year before, you kind of see the rhythms of your

like, oh, I'm gone too much, or whatever, or oh, this, yeah. One line a day, what's that? Yeah, that's yours. So this is this idea, but it's like a parenting version, and this is just a general one, so you're just like, you would just be like, what's the day today, the 23rd, you'd be like, July,

like for January 23rd, you'd be like, show came out, debuted number, shoot 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, you know, and then your fourth year, you're like, I forgot, you know, that.

Oh, can I, I want to get this to my daughter, Georgia. Yeah, I don't write, but Georgia will. This is perfect. Yeah. So that's like a parenting version of the same thing. Oh, wow. I'm going to be a better parent this year. here, considering my daughters watching my TV show about them come out, we're not in love with it.

Oh, they didn't like it? They don't like, it's weird when you're... And it uses their names, right? Uses their names, and it's, and it's, it's got to 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 like, they're like, it's really good and it's really well done. It's just very uncomfortable. Yeah, yeah. Well, and you're like, well, do you want to go to college?

I mean, if you want to finish college, then deal with that uncomfortable. comfortableness, go to a bar and get rid of it. We'll send you a one line a day, journal, George. Yeah. 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.