The Daily Stoic - BONUS | Ryan Holiday's Best Book Recommendations for Dr. Becky Kennedy

Episode Date: July 14, 2026

After recording their episode at The Daily Stoic Podcast studio, Ryan and Dr. Becky headed next door to The Painted Porch, where Ryan shared a few must-read book recommendations.Listen to the full podcast episode with Dr. Becky Kennedy 👉 Apple Podcasts | Spotify🎥 Watch this episode on Ryan's YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au6lJyfrGlo📚 You can grab a copy of all the books mentioned in this video at Ryan's bookstore, The Painted Porch: https://www.thepaintedporch.com/📕 Grab signed copies of Dr. Becky’s books Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be and Leave Me Alone!: A Good Inside Story About Deeply Feeling Kids at The Painted Porch | https://www.thepaintedporch.com/Dr. Becky Kennedy is a clinical psychologist, bestselling author, and the founder and CEO of Good Inside, a parenting platform that gives parents practical tools for raising emotionally healthy kids. Named “The Millennial Parenting Whisperer” by TIME, Dr. Becky is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be and host of the chart-topping podcast Good Inside with Dr. Becky. 👉 Follow Dr. Becky | Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify   💡 Check out Dr. Becky’s community and platform for parents: Good Inside ✉️ Sign up for Ryan’s free monthly reading list newsletter: https://ryanholiday.net/reading-list/See 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. Other than yours, do you have any favorite parents? Oh, my goodness. I mean, I'm looking at these. I love Emily Astor. I love adult children of emotionally immature parent. She's coming out for new books soon.

That's such a crazy book because it was like basically self-published and just became this sort of word of mouth enormous thing. E. Brodsky is a friend. and I love her work. I love siblings without rivalry and how to talk to your, you know, how to talk to your kids will listen to your,

listen say 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, he never got along. Towards the end of his life, he writes this letter that where he sort of lays it out.

I sort of compare it to like family day at rehab where you finally talk about all the shit that you weren't, there are the secrets, and he writes this letter. and that he gives it to his mom and she of course doesn't give it to the dad which it gives you an insight into the family

dynamic but it's like 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 it's beautiful

oh great thank you it's I love Lisa too oh she's been here I think about like what are parenting books that like people don't think of it, if you read the road? No. You've never read the road?

No, I'm embarrassed now. This, this, 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, 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 he's. 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. It's beautiful. Okay, I think you'll like that. I love this. I give this book a lot of people too. I don't know if you read that. I haven't. Because that's what I think we're trying to,

we're trying to raise outdoor kids. Definitely. All right, so that's parenting. I really like everything is chermaculous. Oh, my gosh. John Green's. Incredible book. 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're 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, Samantha, who told me about your books. She's looking for a fiction fiction recommendation. Yeah. Oh, so nice to meet you. What kind of fiction? I know. You know the last book I put down that was fiction? It was the wedding people.

Oh, 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 was really surprised me. I read the whole thing on a flight. Yeah.

Like where'd you go Bernadette? Is that what's called like back? Yeah. It's like that was like a, it reminds you of back. I just didn't want to put it. Wait, have you read her new book? I actually haven't. Oh, you have it.

Is it great? Yes. She was just here. Here's a sign. Yeah. So the main character is a Stoic philosopher. Oh, yeah. Okay.

She, yeah, she, 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 you. So she just sort of blew my life up, which is very cool. You love it. It's very good. Did you give her raising hair? Oh yeah. Have you ever raising hair?

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's very beautiful okay we actually have a copy of reason here, here. This is, so during the pandemic, she moves to this country house in London, and she finds like a baby rabbit, a wild hair.

And she, yes, it's a wild hair. You're not allowed to do it. But I can't pronounce the word. What is, is it leveret? Is it a leveret? It's a baby, she raises it, and it's all about doing, it's very good. Amazing, thank you.

What do you have, Samantha? I have small things like these, and I want to do well. Have you read Claire Geegan? No. Very good. I gave her the road. It has a similar scene in it to the road, but it's very good.

A nice little short one. Incredible. Thank you. So, thank you anything else? Toto Chon. No. Okay. We have to do Toto Chon.

No. I have a lot of nose. I have a lot of nose. I have a lot of color. No. Very, really poorly red. I don't know you read. Oh, right here. 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, it'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, How would you describe it?

Did I get it right? I think it's a school that just beats her where she is. Yes. So 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 make it her feel. I mean, it's like literally a very, very good book, I think on the 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. Yes. And somehow miraculously does that. It's like it captures what it does. is to be that kind of kid who 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 no I don't think a lot of people have read very many of the books that were we try to find books like like the ones where like oh you would love this and you've

not heard of it oh great great but you were like I think because I'm familiar with material yeah it's easier for my books do oh yeah and there's things that like I think that I'm if I've read and digested your book when I'm reading other books if I know that there's a tie between the two or for me something to do. 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. Okay. It is fiction. It's really much about, um, this like single dad's experience with his kids in a weird situation. I love, I love books like that. Like what is the book with the kid who like dies and the ice and do you know what you mean?

In that pond and it's like a whole family story. I think about it. It's by an author who wrote some other books too. But yes, anything where there's like family dynamics, like so. Is that the same author? It is. It's, it's. By Wilder Shores?

No. I don't think so. But it's like family dynamic books. You've like seen the family dynamic. Yes. If I couldn't get somebody to read a parenting book, this is the book that we have that might have. Exactly.

But I also, and I was like high school, but that's just, I'll see if I can find this. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. We also really like recommending us to people. 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. 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 like all-American cross-country. cross-country athlete commits suicide and it's what happens why what did

everyone miss what and it's like you can see you can start to connect it you can start to connect it and then and yeah it's a it's a it's a it's a very haunting but powerful thought I think you like my 14 year old is it cool and my 11 year old but a big big reader so I feel like he and he reads a lot of he actually gave me everything super sure really yeah okay then he would like Does he play sports? Yes. Okay, this is.

Oh, amazing. Chris Bosch's book, Letters to a young athlete. He's a 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 criss-cross of his life, he's on the, he's working security in March in Washington. And as Martin Luther King Jr. walks down the 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. And then if that, so if that was the only part of his life, he'd be like, what an incredible life. 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 yourself would like those too. Great. Thank you. If you want more book recommendations, 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 slash reading list.