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Hey everyone,
I'm not going to start by saying "Spring, spring, it's a wonderful thing" like I did last month as I triggered a wave of Australians pointing out my hemispherical bigotry. Sorry, Aussies.
I will say a big thanks to those who’ve taken a risk to check out my podcast 3 Books (Apple, Android, Spotify). It's so hard to start listening to podcasts. The apps aren't great. That purple "Podcasts" button on the iPhone is almost always hidden in some random folder. But some upcoming guests include David Sedaris, Mitch Albom, and possibly the world’s greatest Uber driver with a 4.99 rating and 5000 rides. I'm loving it -- and feels so relieving doing something without ads in this screaming-from-screens world. So far the most popular show is Chapter 3 with Seth Godin if you want a starting point!
And now onto the books,
Neil
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Behold The Dreamers: A Novelby Imbolo Mbue. A fast-paced gritty story of Cameroonian immigrants trying to make it in New York during the financial crisis. Wealth disparity, global migration, and our flattening world of bumps and bruises are all peeled open and parsed through in sweaty detail. I sometimes wanted a bit more from the characters but it’s really an impressive page-turner (and debut novel!) that fits together without easy answers. Jende gets a job as a chauffeur for a Lehman Brothers exec and gets slowly swirled into the whirlpool of tension and drama of his family life – which affects everything. Even Oprah gave her stamp of approval to this one.
Atlas of Remote Islands: Fifty Islands I Have Never Set Foot On And Never Willby Judith Schalansky. Do you ever want to run away from it all? Forget living on Mars with Elon Musk. Why not visit Christmas Island or the Scattered Islands way off the coast of Madagascar? I love this book because it tells stories of all those tiny remote islands I've rubbed fingers over on globes while briefly wondering … what is going on there? Every island has a beautiful map, a timeline of civilization, and a story related to our connection to it. Add to our Enlightened Bathroom Reading series. And special props for best sub-headline I've seen in a while.
This Is A Bookby Demetri Martin. Do you remember my love affair with Demetri Martin from earlier this year? It’s still going. But now I’ve sadly finished all his books. I meant to savor this one but couldn’t stop. It’s such a bummer hitting the end of someone’s career output and then just sort of spinning your thumbs waiting for more. Does this happen to you? Who are you waiting for more from? I talk about this exact feeling on an upcoming chapter of 3 Books when Dave Barry tells me that his favorite novelist Charles Portis only wrote five books so he’s stuck rereading them again and again. Well, this book is absurdist essay comedy at its best. There’s an essay titled “Honors and Awards (for Which I Would Qualify)” that includes “Top 40 People Under 40 Who Live In My Apartment Building” and “Best Screenplay That Is Still Just In Someone’s Head.” I like the essay called “Frustrating Uses of Etc.” which opens with the line “I’m looking forward to our date. Why don’t you pick me up at my parents’ house. Here’s how you get there: Take Route 95 North, after you go through the second toll, get into the left lane, etc.”
Tao Te Chingby Lao Tzu. James Frey finds solace in the Tao Te Ching in his incredible memoir A Million Little Pieces. A lot of the little poems or words of wisdom resonated with me from that book so I looked for a copy. What’s the biggest problem finding a “book” written over 2500 years ago? Picking a translation. The used bookstore near my house had about a dozen. I kept opening and looking for one where I could make sense of what I was reading and finally settled on a translation by David Hinton. I love reading a few of these before bed at night. Sometimes they rattle around my brain, sometimes I feel like I’m lost in a zen koan (shoutout to end-of-podcasters), and sometimes I feel like I pull something beautiful from them. Here’s a sample: “7. There’s a reason heaven and earth go on enduring forever / their life isn’t their own / so their life goes on forever. / Hence, in putting himself last / the sage puts himself first, / and in giving himself up / he preserves himself. / If you aren’t free of yourself / how will you ever become yourself?”
Will you please be quiet, please? Storiesby Raymond Carver. If the world feels too full of words for you and you crave short stories that get right to it – try this one. Efficiency. Economy! Saying more with less. Have you heard that famous quote attributed to everyone from Blaise Pascal to Mark Twain: “Sorry my letter was so long. I didn’t have time to make it short.” (Actual history of the quote here.) If you’ve ever slaved away at a tweet – reading and re-reading, writing and re-writing – just to get it to fit into the tiny little box, then you know what I’m talking about. Why do I mention all this? Because this group of short stories has to be the most efficient writing I’ve ever read. Hemingway is an airbag next to this guy. Some of the stories are two or three pages and yet pack deep emotional intensity.
Enlightenment Now: The Case For Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker. I have never read a Steven Pinker book before and the man intimidates the hell out of me. His Wikipedia profile almost sounds fake in its endless list of accolades and accomplishments. And check out the hair: dude’s bringing back the Ludwig van for real! So far this year no book kept me up later at night than Enlightenment Now. A few nights in a row I watched the clock click past 3:00am as the optimistic part of my brain couldn’t stop chewing on the endlessly delicious nuggets of comfort the book kept delivering in its piece-by-piece deconstruction of how, you know what? Life is actually really damn good. We’re living longer, we’re healthier, we’re safer. And the stories and research underpinning these truths are told in a beautifully readable way. The guy is tap-dancing on a stage just daring you to poke a hole in his arguments. Now, when you take on a topic this big (“The whole world is great!”) you’re bound to get buried in criticism, too. There’s a lot out there. But I think that means it’s touching a deep and real nerve. (Heck, The Book of Awesome was blamed for destroying language in my home country’s largest paper!) I trust the Bill Gates blurb on the cover more: “My new favorite book of all time”, he says. I’m with Bill. This one is a gem.
