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Hey everyone,
Hope you’re enjoying the September swing. It’s been a wild month of traveling for me and I managed to get a few books in beyond the distractions of airport magazine racks and incessantly blaring TVs. I also wrote a piece for HBR this month on mandatory vacation and a piece for Fast Company on the family contract I have with my wife.
Here are this month’s recommendations,
Neil
1. The Diving Bell and the Butterflyby Jean-Dominique Bauby. This is a first-person memoir written by the French Editor of Elle after he had a stroke and woke up twenty days later with locked-in syndrome. He had no way to communicate with the outside world … except through blinking one eye. Blinking one eye! He wrote this entire book with that single blinking eye (and a helpful nurse who held up an alphabet card for him) and then died two days after the book came out. I had seen the fantastic movie version years ago but when I came across this book in a bookstore I realized I … didn’t even realize it was a book. Vivid, heartbreaking, life-affirming notes on par with books like Mortality by Christopher Hitchens or The Reason I Jump by Naoki Higashida.
2.Did You Ever Have A Familyby Bill Clegg. Do you remember The Babysitter’s Club books? Uh, of course I personally do not! I mean, okay. You got me. I used to read them off my sister’s bookshelf when I was a kid. And maybe I even looked forward to The Super Specials. Those were the ones where Kristy, Mary-Anne, and the gang went on a beach trip and each chapter was written from a different perspective. Kristy on Chapter 1. Mary-Anne on Chapter 2. Claudia on Chapter 3. Why am I taking this trip down memory lane? Because that’s the same format followed by this slow, thrilling, mysterious novel by Bill Clegg. A house containing a bride-to-be, groom-to-be, and members of their family blows up before Chapter 1 begins and the rest of the book is a tense, slow unpeeling of the onion leading to that event. This is a “slow me down” book if you’re feeling too pumped up or fast-paced. A thoughtful, quiet, relaxing read.
3.A Million Little Piecesby James Frey. What have you heard about this book? For me it was vague cloudy puzzle-pieces of a deceitful memoir about drug abuse capped by a televised Oprah smackdown. Then I picked up the book from a Little Free Library in my neighborhood. And I couldn’t stop reading. It was the fastest 430 pages I have ever read. The fastest paced book I have ever read. The fastest paced writing I can even imagine with all punctuation, line breaks, and visual resting spots completely stripped out. A gripping and gory story of six weeks recovering from drug abuse in a rehab clinic. This book wins the Best Escapism prize this month.
4. The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoirby Thi Bui. I’ve been using the term “graphic novel” for a long time. But novel implies fiction. So it doesn't really work for a lot of my faves like Maus or Persepolis. That’s why I like the description on the front of this book so much. “Illustrated memoir.” Yes, that’s totally it. A real life story told in vivid pictures. Thi Bui’s parents are Vietnamese refugees to America and she shares their story and her own in with unflinching honesty that illuminates the history of Vietnam, the Vietnam war, and the immigrant experience. A bit of a zig-zagging plot but a truly beautiful work.
5. Side Hustle: From Idea to Income in 27 Daysby Chris Guillebeau. One day when I was just starting at Walmart, I noticed a car parked in the employee lot with big stickers pasted down the side advertising wedding DJ services. I met the wedding DJ in a meeting a few weeks later. He was a middle manager who played Rump Shaker in the Toronto suburbs on Friday nights for extra cash. At the time I remember thinking this guy was gonna get fired. Cheating on his job! Then my blog and books took off and I became the side hustle guy at work … for seven years. I wish I had a book like this back then. Chris Guillebeau is a good friend and a fantastic writer who shares a clear, tactical approach to getting those idle wantrepreneur thoughts we all have actually up and off the ground.
6. The Four Tendenciesby Gretchen Rubin. This book is Gretchen Rubin’s latest and I think it’s her best book in my view. I got an advanced copy a week before it came out and I opened it up and couldn’t put it down. She’s created a fascinating 2x2 matrix of four tendencies based on how well we follow obligations – to ourselves and others. Follow neither? You’re a rebel. Follow both? You’re an obliger. Follow yourself but question others? You’re a questioner. (That’s me!) Follow others but not yourself? You’re an upholder. Here’s a video from Gretchen’s Instagram that I made for her describing me reading the book.
7. How Civilization Started: Was It Ever A Good Idea? I loved this New Yorker article which is sort of a summarizing review of a few new dense, insightful, academic books about … spoiler alert… how civilization started. Builds off ideas I’d first heard in Sapiens about how settling down into communities was actually a raw deal for our happy nomad predecessors.
8. Animals of a Bygone Era: An Illustrated Compendium by Maja Safstrom. I have a new entry in our “Enlightened Toilet Reading” series. This book. It’s just page after page of gorgeous pen-and-ink drawings and descriptions of animals that are extinct and, importantly, are not dinosaurs! I knew a few of them like wooly mammoths and giant moas but the book is a fascinating glimpse into a ton of extinct animals who aren’t featured as three-inch rubber figurines in your kid’s bathtub. We miss you, walrus whale, horned gopher, and giant Siberian unicorn. My only qualm is I wanted way more details than I was getting here. It’s a fun flipper and a great little gifty book.
