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Hey everyone,
Do you feel overwhelmed these days? I do. I can’t tell if it’s a June thing, a weather thing, an end of school year thing, or just, like, an everything thing.
When I’m feeling overwhelmed I try and go back to basics. Back to Things That Work. What’s on your Things That Work list? Mine include going to the gym, getting enough sleep, and, of course, reading good books.
Here are my recommendations this month,
Neil
1. The Spy Who Came In From The Coldby John Le Carre. Do you like those movies with the permanently eerie, pulsing soundtrack on top of a super tightly twisted plot that you have to mentally unravel, string by string by string, over the course of two hours? Like, say, Sicario or Arrival. I do and I don’t. I do because the unraveling can be such a fantastic high. But I don’t because they feel like such a workout and when I watch a movie I’m usually lying on the couch trying to, you know, not work out. Plus, half the time I have no idea what’s going on. Anyway, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold is like that. It’s a workout. It delivers a great unraveling. And half the time I had no idea what was going on. For this one I did what my friend Ryan Holiday suggests and just read the Wikipedia plotline first. Spies, agents, double agents, and endless quiet powerful scenes all add up to what many call the greatest spy novel of all time.
2. The Coaching Habitby Michael Bungay-Stanier. If you’re responsible for managing others there’s a good chance you are responsible for coaching them and also a good chance you are terrible at coaching them. Coaching? You mean actually talking to people right to their face about how they’re doing and helping them along? Who has time for that? That sounds hard. Enter this book. Michael demystifies coaching with a series of seven simple questions to actually, amazingly, astoundingly learn how to coach others in ten minutes or less. I think of many of the seven questions all the time. This is a great book to go to again and again.
3. I Hear She’s A Real Bitchby Jen Agg. I heard Jen Agg say on a podcast that restaurant lights should be manually dimmed about ten times over the course of a night. Manually dimmed? Ten times? Yeah, you know, so they darken at the same rate as the light out the windows, so customers never notice, so customers never get that shocking “suddenly light to suddenly dark” drop when they’re dining. What did I think when I heard that? I thought: that’s amazing. Because I love that level of fussy, perfectionistic detail. From anyone! On anything! Anthony Bourdain says on the cover of this book that “Whatever Jen Agg says is worth listening to.” He’s right. You can tell by the title that this brash, fists-up, take-no-prisoners memoir is definitely worth listening to. Her voice is direct, honest, sharp. I remember visiting her restaurant The Black Hoof in Toronto ten years ago and my friend Drew ordering the Spicy Raw Horse Sandwich. It was exactly what it sounds like. Direct, honest, sharp. Since then Jen’s opened a series of restaurants including the Haitian Rhum Corner, Grey Gardens, Le Swan (yum!), and Agrikol in Montreal with Arcade Fire. I think of this book as a piece of art more than a book because it’s all over the place (hiring! love! feminism!) … but life is all over the place and so we get this fascinating and honest portrait of a fascinating and honest mind.
4. The Person and the Situation: Perspectives of Social Psychologyby Lee Ross and Richard E. Nisbitt. Years ago I was watching an NFL playoff game when they flashed a graphic onscreen that stuck with me. They showed two quarterbacks, drafted the same year, with the same type of college cred. One of them had one head coach on one team over his entire career and had been a huge success and won a handful of Superbowls. (I’ll let you guess who.) The other had the pleasure of playing under something like a dozen coaches across half a dozen teams. And guess what? Pretty much zero success. And we all hail the first guy as a hero! Best quarterback of all time! But is he? Is it really the person that we can objectively see here? Or is it the situation? Malcolm Gladwell writes in the Introduction to this book that “social psychology stands at the intersection between our eyes and the world.” That’s such a great thought. Because what is social psychology? I tried reading this Wikipedia entry on it and came out more confused. But Malcolm (as he does) nails it. The intersection between your eyes and the world. What if I told you that when you perceive the actions and intentions of others you are pretty much mostly wrong? You do what we all do! You overvalue the person. And you undervalue the situation. This is a Big Idea book that will reorder how you look at the world. It will lay out the fallacies, assumptions, and leaps of logic you are constantly making. And it will do so in a kind, warm-hearted, empathetic, grizzled old professor type of way. Academic reading but highly recommended.
5. Why I Writeby George Orwell. After Animal Farm came out in 1945 and before 1984 came out in 1949, George Orwell published a short 10-page essay called “Why I Write” in the British magazine Gangrel. I had never read it until this month and found it really inspiring. If you’re a writer, or want to be one, read this short essay. (Comes in a Penguin Great Ideas book with a few of his other non-fiction essays.)
6. Look For Me By Moonlightby Mary Downing Hahn. I highlighted a book in this book club recently called How Mamas Love Their Babies which is the first ever children’s book featuring a sex working parent. I was handed the book by my favorite bookseller Sarah Ramsey and reached out to the author Juniper Fitzgerald to come on my podcast 3 Books. She agreed and this vampire young adult romance was one of her three most formative books. I am somewhat embarrassed to admit I found the book gripping and was completely sucked in by it. But then, would I include it here if I was that embarrassed? There’s a reason one of our values on 3 Books is “No book guilt, no book shame.” Reading over everything! Reading over whatever you’re reading! No judgment here. Btw, I found the conversation with Juniper eye-opening (to say the least) and you can check it out here.
7. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood: The Poetry of Mister Rogersby Fred Rogers. Hawk-eyed readers of this monthly book club will recall that last year after I saw the fantastic Mister Rogers documentary I tried buying some of his books and came out sorely disappointed. (I bought this one.) But now! There’s this. A brand new book collecting seventy-five songs from the show. All that’s missing is the sheet music.
8. Cloud Atlasby David Mitchell. A big YouTube channel recently asked me to sit down and do this in-depth masterclass type video on how to sell a million books. I didn’t want to do it at first. Who am I to tell people how to do that? I just got lucky! But then I did what I often do when I don’t want to do something. Realize I’m just afraid of doing it, see that fear below the surface, push myself to sign up, and then sweat about it for weeks until I eventually have to do it. (That’s exactly how my new SXSW speech came about.) So, what’s my first tip on selling a million books? Sharpen your voice. Because when people buy a book they’re really buying a voice in their head for ten hours, right? So it needs to be a voice they enjoy, a voice that challenges them, a voice that helps them grow. And how do you sharpen your voice? Lots of ways! Dictate and transcribe to help “write like you sound.” Journal, journal, journal. And, of course, the big one, read fiction every day. First order of homework? Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. I have been revisiting this book recently and am still completely jaw-dropped over the voice. Why? Well, because the book is six interconnected nested stories lying within each other like Russian Dolls and whenever it jumps scenes the voice jarringly jumps, too. David Mitchell pulls off a ridiculous feat and it’s worth reading and re-reading this book just to watch the acrobatics and (I think) sharpen your voice. (PS. I watched the movie before reading the book the first time. Worth doing!)
9. Mom Truths: Embarrassing Stories and Brutally Honest Advice on the Extremely Real Struggle of Motherhoodby Catherine Belknap and Natalie Telfer. A couple months ago I was nearly trampled by a thousand women in tight pants holding white wine glasses as they rampaged over to a Cat and Nat show in a casino. Cat? Nat? Show? What was going on? Turns out it was Ladies Night Out and these two sassy, potty-mouthed moms of seven children in total were ready to rock the casino like it had never been rocked before. I watched some of the show and was blown away. Cat and Nat have created a global movement all in the name of ridding the world of mom shame and mom guilt. They have put their finger on something big by humanizing motherhood in such an honest and refreshing way. (Where are the dad guilt and dad shame people???) Anyway, I bought this book for Leslie, read it myself, and then we went to interview them together for 3 Books. Look for Chapter 32 with Cat and Nat when the new moon hits on July 2nd at 3:16pm EST. (Down with Gregorian! Up with Lunar!)
