Episode · The Tim Ferriss Show · 2024-02-06
Books mentioned on #720: Life Lessons from Taylor Swift, Conquering Anxiety, Coaching Teens, Career Reinvention, Supposedly Gay Bulls, Your Shadow Side, and More — Soman Chainani
Soman Chainani is the bestselling author of The School for Good & Evil book series, which has sold more than 4 million copies, been translated into 35 languages across six continents, and been adapted into a major motion picture from Netflix that debuted at #1 in more than 80 countries. Visit SomanChainani.
Soman Chainani recommended Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney, and discussed The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani, The School for Good and Evil #3: The Last Ever After by Soman Chainani, Ever After High: Briar Beauty's Story by Shannon Hale, The Secret History by Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt and others, and Life. Tim Ferriss discussed The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss and The 4-Hour Body by Timothy Ferriss.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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The School for Good and Evil
Discussed“It's what I felt with School for Good and Evil, which is I don't care who reads this, I don't care what happens to this. This is mine.”
Where to get it
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The School for Good and Evil #3: The Last Ever After
Discussed“It's what I felt with School for Good and Evil, which is I don't care who reads this, I don't care what happens to this. This is mine.”
Where to get it
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Ever After High: Briar Beauty's Story
Discussed“And Mattel was putting one out called Ever After High, which was, Ever After High, School for Good and Evil, they were so similar, and I was never worried because I'm like, mine is so weird.”
Where to get it
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The 4-Hour Workweek
The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss is a lifestyle design manual that challenges conventional career paths by advocating for time autonomy, remote work, automation, and outsourcing.
Discussed“But after The 4-Hour Workweek, every pressure, including a lot of internal pressure, but every expectation and pressure was that I was going to do something in the same category, something with the same brand”
Where to get it
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The 4-Hour Body
The 4-Hour Body by Timothy Ferriss is a comprehensive, data-driven guide to physical optimization, covering unconventional health experiments, fat loss, and muscle building.
Discussed“And that's when I went to The 4-Hour Body, totally different category. A lot of people assumed, within publishing, totally different readership.”
Where to get it
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The Secret History
The Secret History by Donna Tartt is a gripping psychological thriller following a tightly knit circle of eccentric classics students at an elite New England college whose intellectual arrogance leads to moral decay and murder.
Discussed“And Donna Tartt wrote Goldfinch, Secret History. She's only written three books. She writes one every 10 years, and she's due for exactly 10 years.”
Where to get it
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The Goldfinch
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt is a sprawling novel that follows a young boy whose life is upended by a museum bombing, eventually drawing him into the underworld of art forgery and antique trade.
Discussed“And Donna Tartt wrote Goldfinch, Secret History. She's only written three books. She writes one every 10 years, and she's due for exactly 10 years.”
Where to get it
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Life
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara is an emotionally devastating contemporary novel that traces the decades-long bond between four college classmates in New York City while deeply exploring trauma, friendship, and endurance.
Discussed“And then Hanya wrote A Little Life, which — Tim Ferriss: A Little Life. Soman Chainani: — yes. Which I read — Tim Ferriss: Yanagihara.”
Where to get it
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Conversations With Friends
Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney is a celebrated contemporary debut novel that explores complex interpersonal relationships, modern romance, and youthful identity among a circle of characters in Ireland.
Recommended“So there's this category of book that I can recommend to anybody who comes to me and says, "What book should I read?" I always tell them Secret History by Donna Tartt, A Little Life by Hanya, Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney.”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (7) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
“I wrote a series called The School for Good and Evil for 10 years. There's six books in the series, and Netflix made a movie out of it that came out last year.”
“I wrote a series called The School for Good and Evil for 10 years. There's six books in the series, and Netflix made a movie out of it that came out last year.”
“And then another book a little bit for older audiences is called Beats and Beauty, which is going to be a TV show sometime soon.”
“He's written a lot of great books. My favorite's probably The Year of Living Biblically, but he's written a lot of great books. And he, at one point, was really worried about something”
“The Andy Grove, Only the Paranoid Survive kind of thing. Only the paranoid stay up at night staring at the ceiling, too, but there is that.”
“The same thing when we did Beasts and Beauty. We were presenting it to the studios to get a buyer for the TV series. I said, "How do we present this?"”
“And then, during COVID, I read The Body Keeps the Score. And I had struggled with some things for my entire life in terms of anxiety and just getting stuck in kind of ruts of feeling.”