Neil Pasricha's Monthly Book Club - September 2019

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Hey everyone,

My new book You Are Awesome: How to Navigate Change, Wrestle With Failure, and Live an Intentional Life is available to preorder now. Click here to learn more.

And now ... onto the books,

Neil

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1. Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng. Last year I flew down to Key West, Florida to visit Judy Blume in her bookstore for 3 Books. Life highlight! And when I was there she shook this book in her hand and said, “Oh, we love Celeste Ng here.” I had never heard of Celeste Ng. But now I love Celeste Ng here. Because this book is a screamer. I know it was just last month when I said Less was probably the best novel I’d read this year but Little Fires Everywhere is suddenly knocking on that same door. A picture-perfect family in Shaker Heights, Ohio is slowly peeled back to reveal all sorts of spaghetti-noodle machinations on the inside. You will feel love, you will feel pain, and (best of all) you will feel yourself rubbing up against bigger ethical questions that will make you stop and wonder “What would I do in that situation?” This book will bubble in your blood. Highly, highly recommended! (PS. I hear Reese Witherspoon is making the mini-series so grab it before they ruin the cover!)

2. Flying Creatures Paper Airplane Book: 69 Mini Planes to Fold and Fly by Jeff Lammers. Have you ever folded a paper airplane specifically so it would barrel roll or do a loop-de-loop? I never had until my son begged me to buy this book for him. (Life Rule: Whenever a kid begs for a book, say yes.) There’s a little bit of preamble on paper airplanes and then the rest of this book is an incredibly detailed pile of perforated paper plane perfection. (I always allow alliteration.) You rip one out, follow the instructions, and suddenly the Dragon or Stingray you just built is zooming around the room. Hours of entertainment.

3. Moth Smoke by Mohsin Hamid. Do you ever feel like you owe an artist your money? I feel this a lot. Like, you love their debut album so you buy their next one before hearing a single song. You’ve been watching their TV show for years so you race out to buy their new book. Or maybe you did what I did with Mohsin Hamid which was read all his other novels over the past few years – The Reluctant Fundamentalist, How To Get Filthy Rich In Rising Asia, and Exit West – and then, slowly, finally, steady my gaze on this one. I didn’t want to read it! I kept thinking two conflicting thoughts: 1) If I read it I will have no more Mohsin Hamid novels to read. Sad emoji with tear. And 2) I knew it was his first book and seemed less popular so I was worried I wouldn't love it and he'd slip a few notches from the pedestal I’d placed him on. But I got over those fears! Because I owed him. His others novels were incredible. And now that I’ve read it? It is very good, too. I mean, I see why it’s not as popular! It is super layered (demanding), told from a slew of different viewpoints (confusing), and the protagonist is a Pakistani banker who slowly falls into a painful ruin (sad). Yet we get incredible class and cultural tensions mixed together with the sort of human and business insight I love from Mohsin Hamid. A solid read for Hamid completists. If you are new to him I would recommend The Reluctant Fundamentalist first and How To Get Filthy Rich second.

4. Talking To Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell. Malcolm Gladwell has stated that his career goal is “to be left alone.” When I went down to the West Village to interview him for 3 Books his lovely assistant Camille mentioned in passing that he sometimes sits and reads all day. (Jelly!) Our interview took place in a room with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on all walls. “These are a fraction of my books, I should say,” he said. And when I asked him why hardcovers, why only hardcovers, he said paperbacks seem so … “impermanent.” I am crazy about this crazy man. He is a huge nerd hero! And in his lifestyle design I see a pattern emerging in the most successful people I know. What is it? Gigantic patches of silence. Huge unplugs. Lots of Untouchable Days. And, since he’s had a bit of success (*cough* The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers) he doesn’t need to rush. Indeed he told me that the best advice for writers is to “let it germinate.” So after six years of germination comes his brand new book Talking To Strangers. He got interested in the fact that tons of people are wrongly prosecuted and convicted because of our biases and poor judgement and, him being him, he dug deeper and deeper into the data until he pulled out big themes that help us understand how we make sense of the unfamiliar and why we're bad at judging people.

5. Stillness Is The Key by Ryan Holiday. Speaking of patches of silence, here comes Ryan Holiday with a book about stillness. This book is the completion of his Stoic philosophy trilogy that begins with The Obstacle Is the Way and middles with Ego Is The Enemy. Ryan defines stillness as “Kennedy in the Cuban Missile Crisis, it’s Marcus Aurelius with his journals, it’s Tom Brady down 28-3 in the Super Bowl, it’s Martin Luther under interrogation...” and he, as always, leverages lessons from history and philosophy to make his case. You feel smarter after reading Ryan’s books because he’s put in the thousands of hours of research to give you so many never-heard-em-before nuggets of wisdom. I flew down to Austin to interview Ryan for 3 Books and he’ll be my next guest on September 28th at 2:26pm EST, the exact minute of the new Super Moon. (As an aside, for anyone who wants to be a bestselling author, and I get lots of people asking me how to do it, I'll tell you straight up: follow Ryan’s model. It goes like this: give, give, give, give, give, give, ask. Here it is with links to some of the things he's giving: give, give, give, give, give, give, ask.)

6. Howard Stern Comes Again by Howard Stern. I love TED Talks but don’t watch many. Why? Because I always read the transcript instead. So instead of an 18-minute talk I get like a 2-minute read and when my brain is in whale-sucking-up-plankton mode I can learn from nine TED Talks in the time it takes to watch one. I know, I know, life isn’t a race, but it’s so tempting because we read so much faster than we watch or listen. And that’s partly the beauty of this book which was recommended to me by Mel Robbins. (Do I get to say TV sensation Mel Robbins yet??) Howard Stern has essentially taken his forty years of hosting a daily morning show, chiseled away 99.99% of his interviews, and shaped the remaining few dozen into this exquisitely beautiful carving. Jerry Seinfeld, Amy Poehler, Ellen DeGeneres, Jon Stewart, Chris Rock, and so many others let their guard down, ditch all talking points, and let the conversation bloom into vulnerable, revealing, and hugely insightful discussions offering an endless platter of illuminating insights on motivation, artistry, habits, and relationships. And, I’ll just add, if you’re interested in learning how to be a better interviewer (as a leader, presenter, podcast host, whatever) then you’ll gain a ton here, too. Howard sounds like a guy chilling with you at a bar but in this book he reveals his incredible preparation method and you get to watch it in action. This book blew me away. I believe it's easily worth many, many times what it costs.

7. Bust Magazine. Did you know that Bust is the largest feminist magazine in the world? Or that it’s one of the few magazines that boasts a stable circulation in this era of declining print everything? I know the mag is purportedly for “women with something to get off their chests” but when I see it on newsstands I often grab one because I find it an incredibly clear-voiced glimpse at the world from a beautiful angle. (And maybe because it reminds me of flipping through my sisters's YMs when I was a kid. Who remembers "Say Anything"? Okay, I am saying too much.) I was lucky to sit down with Debbie Stoller, founder and editor, and she gave me a hard and fast lesson on all things feminist. While most magazines have been watered down into Wikipedia style writing this one retains a fresh and fist-forward voice that’s always a great breather from the patriarchy.

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