Boom! Welcome to Books & Biceps, the only newsletter for sophisticated meatheads where I share weekly book recs, author interviews, workout motivation, random sports stuff and more. Forwarded this email? Join 30,000+ other readers here.

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I’m going to let you in on a secret. I’d say that 90% of the time a writer starts a column or newsletter with something like, “The #1 thing I get asked about is….”

They’re lying. They’re rarely, if ever, asked about that thing. Maybe a few people here and there, but it’s not like they’re inundated with that one thing day-in and day-out like the phrase implies…

But, they want to sell you something (which is fine!), and they want a cool lead-in that sounds organic. Basically, they want to say, “You demanded this product! And I’m delivering it to you. Now, buy it! Buy it, please!”

I have nothing against this. I’ve done it in the past. It’s effective. It works. And I guess if “one” person asked for something, “you, the reader” did demand it.

And the reason I’m explaining all of this is because in this case, I get to say the following words with ABSOLUTE TRUTH:

The #1 thing Books & Biceps readers have asked from me over the years is a list or PDF of every single book I’ve recommended in this newsletter over 400 issues.

It’s true. I swear. Sophisticated Meatheads write me all the time with book recs (awesome and I share many), cool workouts, movie reviews, their personal fitness wins (love these) and often comments on one of my books (my favorite!)…

But the most common is, “Do you have an archive of all your book recs somewhere?”

And now, finally, I can say I do! This took a while. At first, I wanted to organize it by genres: Fiction / Non-Fiction, and then the big ones: history, sci-fi, biography, thriller, etc…

But other than fiction/non-fiction, too many books fell across a couple categories and it would take way too much time to sort them individually. Also, the best way to do it would be to pull the title by BISAC codes for each book, but again, that is a tedious thing to take on and if you don’t know what a BISAC code is, good for you. You don’t need to know unless you’re a publisher or author…

So, I settled on organizing books in chronological order from when I recommended them in Books & Biceps, all the way back to 2018.

Each entry includes the title, the byline and what I wrote at the time.

NOTE: I didn’t update any of the 300 recs haha. They’re all written in the present tense from when I wrote them (the past). They’re dated. They refer to things that happened around that time and other things in the issue that may not be referenced in the recommendation. Occasionally, I recommended books a second time because of a timely thing in the news or media. For instance, the week Project Hail Mary came out in the theaters, I shared my original recommendation for the book from years ago.

Other than that, this is it. I put it in a PDF form that you can download.

If any of you are super clever with Claude or GPT or whatever, and you want to take this data and break it down by genre or put it in a sortable style document for all of us, you have my blessing and I’ll share it next week.

My goal was to just finally put down every book I’ve ever recommended in one place.

And, the best part, it’s FREE!

Just the full archive from me to you as a sincere THANK YOU for reading every single week.

Well, if you really want to thank me, like you can’t help yourself, just pre-order Bear Brawl here or below!

And now… here’s the FREE DOWNLOAD OF THE FULL BOOKS & BICEPS ARCHIVE:

Do you want to dunk a basketball, even if you never have? Even if you think you’re too old? I know it sounds crazy to all my fellow ground dwellers, but this dude Geoff has done it. I came across his program through Knees Over Toes and it’s surprisingly doable, even if you’re past your prime.

I think dunking in general depends a lot on your natural athletic ability, how tall you are and your level of intensity/commitment to training.

BUT, if you’re thinking about giving it a go, this is your program:

Fellas! If you’re a guy over 40 and you’ve been looking for a new digital magazine that’s written for midlife men, by midlife men, on the topics that actually matter to us: family, fitness, fashion, finance, food & fun, then join us at Midlife Male.

I’m the Editor-in-Chief and I write a column every Tuesday called The Manologue. This week, I wrote about how people on the internet keep making up dumb names and terms for guys who like to hang out (and I tie it into one of my favorite scenes from Office Space). Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. These phrases are everywhere and they’re all made up. Mostly by dorks.

This has to be one of the coolest author posts ever from John Grisham. Click and read the caption. It’s great:

Check it out below. FACT: Just looking at it will increase your bench press by 30 pounds and grow your biceps by 4 inches. It’s science:

Jon Finkel is the award-winning author of Macho Man: The Untamed, Unbelievable Life of Randy Savage, 1996: A Biography, Hoops Heist, The Life of Dad, Jocks In Chief, The Athlete, Heart Over Height, “Mean” Joe Greene and more. His books have been endorsed by everyone from Mark Cuban, John Cena and Tony Dungy to Spike Lee, Kevin Durant and Chef Robert Irvine. He has written for GQ, Men’s Health, Yahoo! Sports, The New York Times and has appeared on CBS: This Morning, Good Morning Texas, Good Morning Chicago, and hundreds of radio shows, podcasts and streams. Jon was recently profiled in The New Yorker about the awesome community he’s built around his Books & Biceps newsletter. They describe him as “a gym rat’s Reese Witherspoon”. Reply to this email for any media requests.

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