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Hey everyone,
How was your April?
I’ve been sort of wobbling between our accelerating world of techno-enabled everything while also carving deep unplugs with the family – and with nature.
As always, books aren’t just an escape, but time-travel machines, sense-making devices, and entire other places to fully inhabit and live inside for a while.
These were some of my favorite places to live this month,
Neil
1. What’s Our Problem: A Self-Help Book For Societiesby Tim Urban. I first met Tim Urban at a conference in LA six years ago (where he did three different talks). In a simple black T-shirt on a small stage in a stuffy ballroom, he shared an early incantation of this book to a couple hundred tightly packed people. I remember the energy of that standing O afterwards. The kind of energy a room only gets after a speaker touches on something deep and shared. Speaking a million miles a minute it was like Tim became some kind of vessel for the energy of a thousand blinding ideas. Well ... he kept those ideas vesseling for six years and now comes his dizzying, vertiginous, brain-expanding “self-help book for societies” that combines Tim’s ability to compress and distill wisdom (“Human nature plus environment equals behavior”, or his older much-loved “Happiness equals reality minus expectations”) with a lonnng gaze into the soul of our current divisive culture. In Chapter 1 Tim explains the 1000-page book of human history – where each page represents 250 years of our existence. “The Agricultural Revolution starts around page 950 or 960, recorded history gets going at about page 976, and Christianity isn’t born until page 993. Page 1000, which goes from the early 1770s to the early 2020s, contains all of US history.” (Check out this graphic and this astonishing table he created to accompany the idea – two of hundreds in the book that provide constant context and bearings. I agree with Sam Harris who said to Tim on a recent podcast, “You have a way of visually representing information that makes it truly arresting.”) So, if you’re interested in a fresh zoom-out on what’s happening in culture and politics, told in a rare “I-am-well-aware-I’m-walking-on-a-skinny-tightrope” style of objectivity, plus Tim’s sideways-absurd Stinky-Cheese Man-inspired sense of humor, well, this, my friends -- this is the book for you. In Chapter 5 on social justice, Tim asks “What lies at the heart of our rifts? Are they based on fundamental differences or deep misunderstandings? Are people disagreeing about what should be or about what is?” Huge questions! Massive questions! And then he goes and colors them in with images like this one or this one. He wades bravely into prickly pools of cancel culture and social justice fundamentalism and shares what’s happening – and why – from macro-cultural and primitive brain perspectives. And then gets into what happens to societies when people cancel themselves. (Remember Tarantino’s final advice to us: “Don’t censor yourself.”) Tim shows how we’re ideologically training children instead of teaching them critical thinking skills and shows data about how media warps perspectives – forcing us all to think the same. He talks about how “idea supremacy makes society’s big brain dumb” and how “awareness is the gateway to humility.” The book veers more political as it goes on and he goes deep into a graphic he calls The Illiberal Staircase. And, like, I’m summarizing less than two percent of what’s in here. The book is so strong, so nutrient-dense, that it was challenging for me to fit it in my mouth and chew. I printed it out and carried it with me for a couple months – it’s only available in ebook and audio (I know, for shame!) – and I simultaneously listened to entire chapters on Libro.FM … in 0.9x. Yeah, slower than normal speed. No book shame, no book guilt. Plus, it was worth it. Even if you only read half the book, it’s worth it. Even if you only read a chapter or two, it’s worth it. Dizzying, challenging, with lots of small words – and many absolutely massive ideas. This book confirms Tim’s status as the Richard Feynman of our time.
2. The Home Place: Memoir of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Natureby J. Drew Lanham. This book club is such a great community. I got an email from Rumble D. after a recent book club which said “Neil, I have a 3 Booksguest suggestion for you. J Drew Lanham is a 2022 MacArthur fellow and an American ornithologist. I loved his book and would love to hear you interview him (maybe while you guys go birding?)” Intrigued, I looked him up and discovered I sort of already knew him – or knew of him, I should say. J. Drew Lanham is an Alumni Distinguished Professor of Wildlife Ecology at Clemson University, he wrote a wonderfully thoughtful and nuanced essay I read last year called "What Do We Do About John James Audubon?", and he starred in a YouTube clip someone sent a while back called "Rules for the Black Birdwatcher". I bought the book immediately and it proceeded to entrance me every night for a week. Sounds like a simple autobiographical-type memoir broken into three parts -- wonderfully named Flock, Fledgling, and Flight -- but the writing, wow, the writing, it's just so vivid, transportive, and meditative. Lanham’s "love affair" with nature is contagious and this book will awaken your inner forest-dweller. Just listen to this paragraph in the opening paragraphs as Drew (J. Drew? Professor Lanham?) describes his home county of Edgefield, South Carolina: “Droughty sands hold onto remnant stands of longleaf pine and stunted turkey oaks in the southern and eastern extremes where the upper coastal plain peters out. In the soggy bottoms of many of the rivers and creeks, rich alluvial soils grow splotchy-barked sycamores and warty hackberries to girths so big that two large men joined hand to hand couldn’t reach around them. A few buttressed bald cypresses draped in Spanish moss sit in tea-stained sloughs. Between the extremes of wet and dry, high and low, even the sticky clay nourishes a surprising variety of hardwoods; slow-growing upland oaks and tight-grained tough-as-nails hickories grow alongside fast-rising tulip poplars and opportunistic sweetgums.” See what I mean? He takes us into his fantastical upbringing on "the home place" with the unforgettable Mamatha, weaves natural lessons into gentle reflections on race and the state of America, and, more than anything, stirs up the rich alluvial soils in the soggy bottoms of our hearts. A masterpiece.
3. Goodnight, Little Bookstoreby Ami Cherrixx, with Illustrations by E.B. Goodale. I remember reading a Monocle ranking of the "Most Liveable Cities" a few years ago and noticing that one of their selection criteria was the number of independent bookstores per person. I love that! And it’s true. Independent bookstores are some kind of ground moss revealing something about the healthy of the local culture and community. And: There aren't enough books recognizing and celebrating this fact. So, for anybody who loves indie bookstores, here's a wonderful visual romp through closing time. I loved all the little things in the drawings -- from the ubiquitous bookstore carts to the ubiquitous bookstore cats. Plus, this sounds weird, but I just love every book I own that in this tall and sturdy "trim size." (I Am A Bunnyfans, you know what I'm saying.)
4. The Big Leapby Gay Hendricks. I flew down to Dallas, Texas recently and sat down with Suzy Batiz for 3 Books. She’s the founder of billion-dollar-valued Poo~Pourri and supernatural, but the endless topline superlatives surrounding her — EY Entrepreneur of the Year! ranked on Forbes Richest Woman list just above Serena Williams! — actually mask the more startling, complex, and inspiring story underneath. Our conversation, which comes out on the exact minute of the next full moon, shares how Suzy navigated a lifetime of poverty, abuse, depression, bankruptcy, and suicide attempts in order to — bit by bit, step by step — manifest a life full of exploration, transformation, and abundance. Books provided key stepping stones on her path. And one of those books was The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks. An extremely strong-voiced motivational manifesto to help you – as the cover depicts in the pic above – jump out of the small fishbowl you’re swimming in and into a bigger one. If you’re ready for this book, if you want to make a leap, I have no doubt this book will help. It’s captivating as a magic trick. On the other hand, if you’re content where you are, if you’re feeling good, well, then it might cause some deep itchiness. It did for me. I kept thinking “Yes, yes, I’m ready – time to make the leap!” I became aware of my “upper limit problem” and ready to step into my “zone of genius.” But then, when I’d put the book down, I was like “Wait, no, wait, stop – I’m … good. I’m good. I like my life. I’m happy with the way things are. I don’t want to leap right now. And you can't make me, Gay!" So then I was left to just sort and sift through all those feelings while consciously reflecting and deciding if I am good with where I am. Deeply valuable process. We can all benefit from it. And I’m sure our answers will change many times. I think if you are ready for this voice, for a big leap in your life, well, here it is. Might be consider a cousin book to The War Of Art -- for a slightly more mystical set. Here’s a quick five-minute TV interview with Gay talking about the book to see if it lights you up.
5. This Is Not Miamiby Fernanda Melchor. Translated by Sophie Hughes. Do you remember a couple years ago when we sat down with award-winning children’s book author Yuyi Morales? She told us about her hometown of Veracruz, Mexico. The culture, the weather, the beaches – I wanted to buy a ticket there the next day. So, uh, good news and bad news? Bad news is after reading this book, you might want to go to Veracruz, uh, much less. But the good news is that Fernanda Melchor’s breathtaking entanglement of true-sounding stories, all taking place in and around Veracruz, is completely captivating. She writes in the Author’s Note “More than ever in these image- and recording-obsessed times we distrust words, which seem at once too loud to echo the silence and too muted to express tumultuous existence.” Wow. These aren’t classic short stories – more like shards of true stories fuzzed-up just enough that they can’t be called non-fiction exactly. But if you’re a fan of short stories, I know you’ll love them. (And if you’re not and want to be maybe listen to David Sedaris tell us about Tobias Wolff, Raymond Carver, and Joy Williams.) These tales lead us deep into the Veracruz underbelly – black markets, drug scenes, and wet docks with suddenly appearing groups of “nine men, nine black men, soaked to the bone with their arms and legs covered in welts that look like whip marks” who say, in thick Dominican accents, with their arms in the air, in one of the more heartbreaking scenes of the book “Please, tell us we’re in Miami…” In a piece of dangerous investigative journalism, she takes us into a very small town in the Veracruz outskirts where a lynching took place in the 2000s. The piece is complemented by a song locals sing about it, together with her troubles trying to piece what happened from people who didn't want her asking. In a short story that out-Stephen-Kings Stephen King, she takes us into the first date with her first husband who asked her that night at a party, “What’s the most fucked up thing that’s ever happened to you?” and then proceeds to share his answer in a freaky tale of drunk high school friends breaking into a local abandoned house. Put it this way: It was late when I was reading this and I had to drop the book to the floor until morning. If you’re up for an exquisitely written soup of high-wire suspense scenes under a scorching Veracruz sun you can feel on your neck, I highly recommend this book. I’m now going to work backwards through her impressive Bibliography which includes two International Booker Prize-nominations for her first two full-length books. Time to add Hurricane Season and Paradais to the pile.
6. Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinaryby Ozan Varol. A broad, sweeping, accessible put-in-your-pocket self-help book that pairs Ozan’s whale-like ability to suck up wisdom plankton from our endless sea of overwhelm together with his rocket-scientist brain’s powerful distillation and organization skills. For those feeling sort of dazed, confused, and meandering, this is a helpful kick in the pants. I loved his “Detox” chapter which opens with the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote, “There are many things of which a wise man may wish to be ignorant” and then brings us into the obvious-not-obvious wisdom-punishing effects of our social media-addled brains: “The average person spent 145 minutes per day on social media in 2021. The average adult reads 200 to 260 words per minute. The average book is roughly 90,000 words. So if the average adult read books instead of using social media, they would read anywhere from 118 to 153 books a year.” Aspirational, sure, but Ozan is a humble, earnest, and helpful guide who just keeps pulling you forward. In Chapter 4 about becoming “spectacularly you” he asks “What is something that feels like play to you – but work to others?” In Chapter 5 on “discovering your mission” he asks “In your ideal life, what does a Tuesday look like?” and then shares 3 questions to ask when trying life experiments – “What am I testing?”, “What does failure and success look like?”, and “When will the experiment end?” In Chapter 7 he talks about the “power of play” and shares how writers for The Office would work themselves out of ruts by writing plotlines for other popular shows. He weaves all the advice through a field of business nuggety stories and the result is a fun, fast-paced, helpful read. If you liked The Happiness Equation, you’ll like this book. With Ozan’s permission, I’m going to publish the Epilogue from this book in my next Neil.blog email. (If you don’t get that email and want to, sign up here.)
7. On Browsingby Jason Guriel. My friend Doug Miller has trailers full of books. Train trailers. He owns over 300,000 books. He puts a rotating assortment of five to ten thousand of them in his curated mix-mashed brainjam bookstore – Doug Miller Books! -- that everybody in (or visiting!) Toronto should pop in to enjoy. I was browsing Doug’s shop last January when he let me pull out my recorder. What resulted is a real escape-to-the-bookstore chapter of 3 Books that remains one of my favorites. (Join us here.) We talked about how Amazon lets you find what you’re looking for but bookstores help you find what you aren’t looking for. And I think that spirit is why this (very) short pocketbook by Jason Guriel jumped off the shelves to me at Type Books on Queen West (where we had the book launch for Our Book of Awesome.) I had no idea Jason was from Toronto but his detailed portraits of iconic (and iconically dead) stores like Sam the Record Man and Soundscapes brought tears to my eyes. The book was worth it for that alone. A collection of little essays that veer maybe a bit too much into drippy nostalgia-for-cassette-tapes type land but which also articulately brings together reasons for why we love – and should seek to celebrate and maintain – browsing.
8. Brave Ireneby William Steig. William Steig is the best children’s book writer most people have never heard of. Children’s literature, really. The man was truly gifted. Yes, he’s probably most famous for writing Shrek! (which the movie was based on) but I think his real gems include Pete’s A Pizza (a quickie must-have for families with kids), Abel’s Island (as good as James and the Giant Peach – and maybe more impressive as Steig does all the drawings himself), and, yes, Brave Irene. You won’t be surprised to hear I was introduced to the book by Doug Miller, 'true-children’s-literature-Jedi', and I can see why he was so proud to sell me this hardcover copy. It’s that good. What's the book about? Well, Irene, 10-or-so-year-old daughter of the duchess's personal dressmaker, braves a winter snowstorm to scramble the duchess's new dress over to her just in time for the swanky par-tay. But the scramble is where the story is -- winds, obstacles, completely submerging herself in snow, wild tobogganing on the dress box, and even losing the dress for a good portion of the story. William Steig wrote books from 1932 - 2003 (not a bad run!) and Brave Irene was his hit of 1986. A classic.
9. New Indian Basics: 100 Traditional and Modern Recipes from Arvinda’s Family Kitchenby Arvinda Chauhan and Preena Chauhan. I didn’t grow up with Butter Chicken. Surprising to some! Green daal, yellow daal, aloo gobi, these were the go-to’s from my mom’s kitchen. Special occasions meant rajma chawal, chicken biryani, or maybe aloo roti with homemade chutney on a sunny Sunday morning. Years ago for Christmas, I asked my mom for a cookbook of recipes and the duotanged 8-page book remains one of my most valuable possessions. But, yeah, no Butter Chicken. So that’s where Arvinda and Preena Chauhan come in. The Butter Chicken recipe in here is incredible. And now I'm eager to try more.
