The 5 Best Books for Students in 2023

1. A Mind for Numbers by Barbara Oakley

"Students who are beginning to struggle in math and science often look at others who are intellectual racehorses and tell themselves they have to keep up. Then they don’t give themselves the extra time they need to truly master the material, and they fall still further behind."

— Barbara Oakley

2. Deep Work by Cal Newport

"To build your working life around the experience of flow produced by deep work is a proven path to deep satisfaction."

— Cal Newport

3. How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens

Read the full summary here

"Good students also look beyond the obvious. They peek over the fences of their own disciplines – and once you have done that, you cannot go back and do what everyone else is doing, even if you now must deal with heterogeneous ideas that come without a manual on how they might fit."

— Sönke Ahrens

4. Atomic Habits by James Clear

"Habits often appear to make no difference until you cross a critical threshold and unlock a new level of performance. In the early and middle stages of any quest, there is often a Valley of Disappointment. You expect to make progress in a linear fashion and it’s frustrating how ineffective changes can seem during the first days, weeks, and even months. It doesn’t feel like you are going anywhere. It’s a hallmark of any compounding process: the most powerful outcomes are delayed."

— James Clear

5. They Say I Say by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein

"the most creative forms of expression depend on established patterns and structures. Most songwriters, for instance, rely on a time-honored versechorus- verse pattern, and few people would call Shakespeare uncreative because he didn’t invent the sonnet or the dramatic forms that he used to such dazzling effect. Even the most avantgarde, cutting-edge artists (like improvisational jazz musicians) need to master the basic forms that their work improvises on, departs from, and goes beyond, or else their work will come across as uneducated child’s play. Ultimately, then, creativity and originality lie not in the avoidance of established forms but in the imaginative use of them."

— Gerald Graff & Cathy Birkenstein

👋 Thanks for making it to the end!