For as long as I can remember, I have been a voracious reader. Partly because of my parents’ own passion for books and learning, and partly because I was too clumsy for sports and too shy for socialising. And because I’m an older millennial and the quantified self was a thing when I was growing up, I’ve been tracking this on Goodreads for almost a decade (!).
This isn’t to brag that I read more than anybody else — it’s to share that I’ve become GOOD at picking what to read and getting the most out of books.
So allow me to share my eclectic, creative, curated and un-affiliated Summer 2026 reading list for entrepreneurs!
A non-fiction book about another industry
You own a fashion brand? Read a book about running a restaurant. You own a coffee roasting operation? Read a monograph on anchovies. I’ve gotten my best ideas and insights from reading books about gardening rather than digital marketing.
Also, books about gardening are awesome and way more interesting than any marketing book.
A few tried & tested monographs I really enjoyed:
- Salt
- Narconomics: how to run a drug cartel
- Everything Is Tuberculosis
- Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business
A book about psychology
Business is about people, and whether that’s your employees, customers, or family, I find that one of the key success factors of being an effective entrepreneur is knowing how to manage your own emotions and other people’s.
- How to Analyze People: The Little-Known Secrets to Speed Reading a Human, Analyzing Personality Types and Applying Behavioral Psychology
- The Coaching Habit
- How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain
A book about physical health and fitness
Because mens sana in corpore sano, and also because without good health and fitness it becomes impossible to manage anything else. Take a look around, and you’ll find that most successful entrepreneurs also have the time and the discipline to stay in great shape.
- The Well-Lived Life: A 102-Year-Old Doctor’s Six Secrets to Health and Happiness at Every Age
- The Mind-Gut Connection: How the Hidden Conversation Within Our Bodies Impacts Our Mood, Our Choices, and Our Overall Health
- Fast Like a Girl: A Woman’s Guide to Using the Healing Power of Fasting to Burn Fat, Boost Energy, and Balance Hormones
Recommendations from fellow entrepreneurs
Alessia Anniballo
Alessia and I tried and failed to buy a publishing house in 2023 — that’s how much we both love reading and the culture industry. When she’s not writing on The Ideas Lab Substack, she runs Explosive Brains, an Experience Design Studio in Rome, after living in Malta & Singapore for almost a decade.
Unreasonable Hospitality. Restaurants are known to be one of the worst businesses you can run, and this still stands after reading this book. But I loved the crazy obsession with customers and their needs. They went the extra mile to create a wow effect for each of them and build a unique experience. In a time when everything is digital, I loved thinking about how to create special relationships offline.
The Mountains Sing. It’s definitely not a book on entrepreneurship — it’s a three-generation saga across the worst years of Vietnamese history. But the grandmother was incredibly resilient, reinventing herself multiple times and bringing her ambition and relationship skills to whatever she did.
Lavinia Iosub
CEO of Liv.it, founder of Remote Skills Academy, and an internationally renowned future of work expert, she also somehow finds time to write on Substack. Her Goodreads feed is always inspiring, so I asked her to share her top 2 picks of the summer for entrepreneurs:
Obliquity: Why Our Goals Are Best Achieved Indirectly, by John Kay. A quietly subversive read for any founder who suspects the straight line stopped working: the most profitable companies are rarely the ones most obsessed with profit, and the best goals get reached sideways.
The Soul of Money, by Lynne Twist. Less about money than about the story of scarcity humming underneath most of our decisions.
