Take a deep breath - Excerpt from from 'Breath' by James Nestor
Hey everyone,
I suddenly can't shut up about the book 'Breath' by James Nestor. I have so many dog-eared pages, so many highlights. Basically I've realized that me and maybe half of us are breathing completely wrong. I'll share my full review on Saturday, but for now I wanted to leave you with the book's Epigraph which is from a 2500-year-old stone inscription in China.
Take a deep breath, read it slowly, and ask yourself if you feel you can breathe better. Check out the book here and make sure you're on my book club mailing list here.
Neil
In transporting the breath, the inhalation must be full. When it is full, it has big capacity. When it has big capacity, it can be extended. When it is extended, it can penetrate downward. When it penetrates downward, it will be come calmly settled. When it is calmly settled, it will be strong and firm. When it is strong and firm, it will germinate. When it germinates, it will grow. When it grows, it will retreat upward. When it retreats upward, it will reach the top of the head. The secret power of Providence moves above. The secret power of the Earth moves below. He who follows this will live. He who acts against this will die.
—500 BCE Zhou Dynasty stone inscription
Want to harness your breathe to help you meditate but afraid of doing it wrong? Learn the three biggest myths about meditation here.
Did you know that trees release phytoncides, chemicals that can reduce adrenaline and cortisol in your body? Practice your deep breathing and take a walk in nature.
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A few pearls of wisdom from John Steinbeck ...
Hey everyone,
I am reading a most wonderful and wonderfully unusual book right now called 'The Log from the Sea of Cortez' by John Steinbeck. Pulitzer Prize-winning author of 'East of Eden,' 'Of Mice and Men,' and 'The Grapes of Wrath.' Did you know in 1940, after controversy erupted around 'The Grapes of Wrath' (“Communist! Labor-sympathizer! Socialist!”), Johnny decided to say eff y’all and ship out. Literally. He and his pal Ed hailed a sardine boat called the Western Flyer and went on a slightly bizarre, world-connecting, animal-collecting, pattern-seeing 4000 mile voyage around the Baja peninsula, into the Gulf of California aka The Sea of Cortez. You know that big long pinky finger of land hanging down the left side of Mexico? That! They sailed down and around that. Yes, I am embarrassed to say I didn’t know what it was called. But that's why we read! The book is arranged in a series of vivid diary entries through March and April 1940.
And it starts with little detailed observations like this on page 25:
A squadron of pelicans crossed our bow, flying low to the waves and acting like a train of pelicans tied together, activated by one nervous system. For they flapped their powerful wings in unison, coasted in unison. It seemed that they tipped a wavetop with their wings now and then, and certainly they flew in the troughs of the waves to save themselves from the wind. They did not look around or change direction. Pelicans seem always to know exactly where they are going.
Little observations. Rolling observations. Bits of philosophical insight between the observation and catalog of all the brightly colored things they’re pulling out of the water. Then it gets deeper and deeper:
The military mind must limit its thinking to be able to perform its function at all. Thus, in talking with a naval officer who had won a target competition with big naval guns, we asked, ‘Have you thought what happens in a little street when one of your shells explodes, of the families torn to pieces, a thousand generations influenced when you signal Fire?’ ‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘Those shells travel so far that you couldn’t possibly see where they land.’ And he was quite correct. If he could really see where they land and what they do, if he could really feel the power in his dropped hand and the waves radiating out from his gun, he would not be able to perform his function. He himself would be the weak point of his gun. But by not seeing, by insisting that it be a problem of ballistics and trajectory, he is a good gunnery officer. And he is too humble to take the responsibility for thinking. The whole structure of his world would be endangered if he permitted himself to think. The pieces must stick within their pattern or the whole thing collapses and the design is gone.
Damn! There’s a reason Maria Popova of the phenomenal The Marginalian says she considers this slender book of non-fiction Steinbeck's finest work.
This quote on Page 72 blew me away:
It was said earlier that hope is a diagnostic human trait, and this simple cortex symptom seems to be a primate factor in our inspection of our universe. For hope implies a change from present bad condition to a future better one. The slave hopes for freedom, the weary man for rest, the hungry for food. And the feeders of hope, economic and religious, have from these simple strivings of dissatisfaction managed to create a world picture which is very hard to escape. Man grows toward perfection; animals grow toward man; bad grows toward good; and down toward up, until our little mechanism, hope, achieve in ourselves probably to cushion the shock of thought, manages to warp our whole world. Probably when our species developed the trick of memory and with it the counterbalancing projection called ‘the future,’ this shock-absorber, hope, had to be included in the series, else the species would have destroyed itself in despair. For if ever any man were deeply and unconsciously sure that his future would be no better than his past, he might deeply wish to cease to live. And out of this therapeutic poultice we build our iron teleologies and twist the tide pools and the stars in to the pattern. To most men the most hateful statement possible is ‘A thing is because it is.’ Even those who have managed to drop the leading-strings of a Sunday-school deity are still led by the unconscious teleology of their developed trick.
And this one a few pages later scared me:
It is a rule in paleontology that ornamentation and complication precede extinction. And our mutation, of which the assembly line, the collective farm, the mechanized army, and the mass production of food are evidences or even symptoms, might well correspond to the thickening armor of the great reptiles—a tendency that can end only in extinction…
How about this doozy speaking about the cycles of time:
It is difficult, when watching the little beasts, not to trace human parallels. The greatest danger to a speculative biologist is analogy. It is a pitfall to be avoided—the industry of the bee, the economics of the ant, the villainy of the snake, all in human terms have given us profound misconceptions of the animals. But parallels are amusing if they are not taken too seriously as regards the animal in questions, and are downright valuable as regards humans. The routine of changing domination is a case in point. One can think of the attached and dominant human who has captured the place, the property, and the security. He dominates his area. To protect it, he has police who know him and who are dependent on him for a living. He is protected by good clothing, good houses, and good food. He is protected even against illness. One would say that he is safe, that he would have many children, and that his seed would in a short time litter the world. But in his fight for dominance he has pushed out others of his species who were not so fit to dominate, and perhaps these have became wanderers, improperly clothed, ill fed, having no security and no fixed base. These should really perish, but the reverse seems true. The dominant human, in his security, grows soft and fearful. He spends a great part of his time in protecting himself. Far from reproducing rapidly, he has fewer children, and the ones he does have are ill protected inside themselves because so thoroughly protected without. The lean and hungry grow strong, and the strongest of them are selected out. Having nothing to lose and all to gain, these selected hungry and rapacious ones develop attack rather than defense techniques, and become strong in them, so that one day the dominant man is eliminated and the strong and hungry wanderer takes his place.
These are just a few gems from 'The Log of the Sea of Cortez' by John Steinbeck. I'll publish a book review in my book club on Saturday and you can sign up here to get it:
The Very Best Books I Read in 2023
Hey everyone,
The weather outside is frightful and, my dear – it's time to read.
I've shared an annual "Best Of" reading list in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 so that suddenly makes this the 7th Annual.
I put these lists together to throw a log on our collective reading fire and, of course, to inspire gift-giving. All book titles link to "link-splitters" that offer a rotating list of indie bookstores to choose from – or, of course, the big guys. I get zero kickbacks from any of them but, as I said in my birthday advice, I feel like there is a relationship between how much you buy local and how nice the flowers are in your park. (Here's a helpful online "indie bookstore finder.”)
Also! Below each book I've given a "Perfect for" list of readers who may enjoy it. And, if you're looking for non-book gift suggestions, check out my unconventional holiday gift guide.
And now: here are the very best books I read in 2023.
Thanks, as always, for reading,
Neil
P.S. Interested in more of my reviews? Click here to join the Book Club email list.
20. Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation by Blake J. Harris. A torridly-paced high-flying business book that reads like an action movie – all told from a fascinating fly-on-the-wall perspective taking you deep into the trenches during the epic battle between Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo. But that’s just the battle. The book zooms out into the long-term war between these two relatively ancient companies and covers ground like Nintendo’s culture of consistency over 100 years, the story of Atari taking off and then flaming out, fascinating risky strategies like Sega opening their first and only Sega store – complete with huge billboards all over town – right outside Bentonville, Arkansas Walmart Home Office after Walmart said they wouldn’t carry the Genesis, and the history of the ‘Sega Scream’ at the end of those “Welcome To The Next Level” commercials. We follow along into Nintendo’s monopolistic >90% market share position with the NES (and hear the real Mario Brothers history) and then track Sega’s emergence through marketing, communication, and business strategies Nintendo would never touch. Over the course of the book, Sega goes from less than 5% market share to over 55% when Mortal Kombat comes out. Blake did over 200 interviews and the results are obvious – an unmissable case study on business, strategy, and life.
Perfect for: gamers and grown-up gamers, corporate team leaders, and anyone looking to learn more about business strategy without reading cases or textbooks…
19. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. A mesmerizing 158-page love letter to books and the surprisingly close-feeling dangers that mass echo chambers pose for society at large. Good reading for an era where the majority reads zero books per year. Quick plotline: A book-burning firefighter grows further apart from his Airpods-wearing wife and encounters a curious teenager on his street who jars something loose. Thus begins a frenetic story with our hero skirting the law in favor of finding out what life is like outside the algorithm. Heart-thumping, abstract, evocative, with a pulsing story that ends somewhere near where The Road begins. I read this 60th (!) anniversary edition featuring an Introduction from Neil Gaiman but, of course, this would make a great gift from any used bookstore, too. (See #6 on my holiday gift guide.)
Perfect for: people saying "I want to read more but just don't have the time", book clubbers, and anyone who enjoys classics…
18. Hot Comb by Ebony Flowers. When I was a little kid I read an interview with Bill Gates and he said something like “When I go to a magazine stand I always buy a magazine I’ve never read before. There’s more to learn in those ones.” The sentiment stuck with me. Algorithms push, cajole, and classify us into 1s and 0s but there’s nothing like browsing a local bookstore and stumbling upon things that would never have been recommended to you. Like, for example, earlier this year when I picked up this raw, scratchily-drawn, emotionally braided-together memoir of high-intensity essays telling the story of Ebony as she moves from a trailer park into a black neighborhood outside Baltimore. All somehow told through … hair. Well, not just hair! It’s really about life. And about messages and stories we hear growing up. Themes include ‘acting too white’, casual racism, motherhood, drug abuse, and, in a painful essay, boundaries and mental health – when, after her little sister’s hair becomes an object of interest to her softball team she begins twisting and pulling it all out. Doctors, psychiatrists, and pills are called in to help and the final page will just break your heart. Published by Drawn&Quarterly, which has to be the best comics and graphic novel publishing house in the world.
Perfect for: coming-of-age fans, graphic novel aficionados, people who have struggled to fit in or find their way…
17. The Legacy of Luna: The Story of a Tree, a Woman, and the Struggle to Save the Redwoods by Julia Butterfly Hill. A first-person true story of a woman who climbed into a thousand-year-old tree in the late 90s slated for logging … and lived there for two years until the logging company agreed not to chop it down. Despite the trumpet flourish at the end, this isn’t an inspiring story but a devastating one. A portrait of a century-old trust-based organization getting bought out by a stealthy junk bondsman who discovered it’s much more profitable to endlessly break laws – such as those against clear-cutting and replacing old-growth forests – and just pay the fines which add up to pennies on the dollar of profits. Limp laws, toothless politicians, and corporate intimidation add up to a crucible of growth for Julia – but at an enormous price. Her descriptions of climbing up and living in the tree are so vivid you’ll feel like you’re up there with her. A deep and intimate connection with nature – flying squirrels, black bears, lightning strikes, and more. A nice escape from “today” and a connection point into the larger, broader energies I think many of us need to tap into right now.
Perfect for: Biography fans, environmentalists, and anyone wanting to run away and live up in a tree for a while…
16. Foster by Claire Keegan. Economy! Tight, fast, shrink-wrapped writing that doesn't waste the reader's time. George Saunders talks a lot about this in A Swim in a Pond in the Rain (my favorite book on writing) (06/2021). You want economy? Here's a 92-page Irish epic sharing the story of a young girl moving in with foster parents for a year. And I do mean epic. Who says epics have to be long? Ben-Hur? No, they just have to be broad! Vast! Sweeping! Before a long flight, I stopped by to ask Kyle at Type Books if he could recommend some short books. Slip-in-that-tight-front-pocket-of-the-suitcase books. This was the first he grabbed. Check out the first page: "Early on a Sunday, after first Mass in Clonegal, my father, instead of taking me home, drives deep into Wexword towards the coast where my mother's people came from. It is a hot day, bright, with patches of shade and greenish, sudden light along the road. We pass through the village of Shillelagh where my father lost our red Shorthorn in a game of forty-five, and on past the mart in Carnew where the man who won the heifer sold her shortly afterwards. My father throws his hat on the passenger seat, winds down the window, and smokes. I shake -- " and then you just have to turn the page. Because who's talking? Where are they going? And that vivid detail painted with so few words continues throughout. Even the title's economical! Foster could easily have been, you know, That Wild and Magical Year I Spent With My Irish Foster Parents! I admire David Mitchell's economical cover blurb too: "As good as Chekhov." Indeed!
Perfect for: anyone who needs a non-intimidating kick back into reading, people who like slow and subtle films with substance (like, say, 'Past Lives', 'Win Win', or 'Away From Her')…
15. Around the World in 80 Birds by Mike Unwin. Illustrated by Ryuto Miyake. My wife's grandmother gave me this book last Christmas and passed away not long after so I am afraid that my personal emotional connection here slightly inflates my opinion of this book. And yet: There is something unmistakably captivating about it. It's not quite a coffee table book, not quite a thoroughly researched factoid book, but more of a poetic offering. Flits and swoops into birds you may have heard of around the world – quetzals, kiwis, flamingos, oh my! – together with behavioral or historical anecdotes that bring them to life. Mike Unwin's writing is a joy to read but the real offering here is the art. Buy it for the pictures! That stunning art graces every page and brings out the arresting visual beauty of some of our planetary co-habitants.
Perfect for: nature lovers, world travelers, and, of course, the bird-loving or bird-curious…
14. How Many Friends Does One Person Need?: Dunbar's Number and Other Evolutionary Quirks by Robin Dunbar. Have you heard of Dunbar's Number? It's 148, more casually rounded to 150, and is the "suggested cognitive limit for the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships." The number came up in Chapter 101 with Daniels, during our discussion of Sex at Dawn (04/2022) and afterwards I fell into a rabbit hole looking into Dunbar's Number which led me to this wonderful book. Robin Dunbar is Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at the University of Oxford and he has that rare Feynmanny gift of being smarter than everybody else but still speaking to you like he's sitting next to you on the train. "We share a history, you and I," he begins in Chapter 1. "A history in which our respective stories snake back through time, edging ever closer to each other until finally they meet up in a common ancestor. Perhaps our lineages meet up only a few generations back, or maybe it was a thousand years ago. Perhaps it was so long ago that it predates history -- though even that could not have been more than two hundred thousand years ago, a mere twinkle in earth time. For we modern humans all descended from a common ancestor who roamed the plains of Africa a mere ten thousand generations ago, ten thousand mothers giving birth to ten thousand daughters ... no more than would fit in a town of very modest size today." From this underpinning he goes on to discuss the 'expensiveness' of our giant brains, how they're unbelievably good at coordinating social relationships and connections – but only up to a point. Then we start talking about Dunbar's Number. Robin Dunbar says one good definition for Dunbar's Number is the number of people who would feel an obligation to you and would turn up for you. (He shares how it's no coincidence that data on wedding size shows that, for years and years, it's been 150.) But 150 is just one in a series of numbers. He uses a metaphor of a stone being thrown into a lake that causes a set of ripples -- as the ripples go out they get bigger but the amplitude gets gradually smaller. 15 are "shoulders to cry on" friends, 150 are friends, 500 are acquaintances (maybe coworkers, maybe people who send happy birthday messages on Facebook), and then, finally, there's a 5000-person layer which is the total number of faces you can recognize. Beyond 5000? Strangers. The book is full of endless anthropological trivia – why gossip is good for you, the benefits of nepotism as it relates to connection, how 200 million men alive today are direct descendants of Genghis Khan, and on and on. A particularly fascinating chapter near the end called "Be smart... live longer" shares lines like how there's "a direct link between IQ at age eleven and your chances of celebrating your eighty-fifth birthday" and how "beautiful people are, on average, more intelligent." I've just skimmed a few of the juicier arguments he puts forward in this fascinating book.
Perfect for: community builders and leaders, people who liked Sapiens, history buffs…
13. Bronzeville Boys and Girls by Gwendolyn Brooks. Illustrated by Faith Ringgold. Yet another reason to love independent bookstores? Their ability to arrow-point your attention into the dark-tunneled history of your local, or even hyper-local, community. We’re getting so much more global now. And, you know, there’s the risk of leaving behind where we came from in this forever-flattening … mélange. I was wandering around downtown Chicago when I stumbled on the after-words independent bookstore on East Illinois Street. Right on the front table was a massive display of this children’s book. “BRONZEVILLE!” It screamed. The whole table was just this one book. What’s Bronzeville? A Chicago neighborhood referred to in the early 1900s as the “Black Metropolis” as it became home to thousands fleeing oppression in the South. A massive amount of cultural history occurred here including the Pekin Theater, the first black-owned US theater built in 1905, and the Wabash YMCA, originator of Black History Month and built in 1911. What else? Well, a lot of boys and girls lived in Bronzeville, of course. And Gwendolyn Brooks – the first black Pulitzer Prize winner ever! – distills their pains and pleasures into a series of emotionally hard-punching little poems. Like one called Otto which reads: “It’s Christmas Day. I did not get / The presents that I hoped for. Yet, / It is not nice to frown or fret. / To frown or fret would not be fair. / My dad must never know I care / It’s hard enough for him to bear.” Or Rudolph Is Tired Of The City: “These buildings are too close to me. / I’d like to PUSH away. / I’d like to live in the country, / And spread my arms all day. / I’d like to spread my breath out, too -- / As farmers’ sons and daughters do. / I’d tend the cows and chickens. / I’d do the other chores. / Then, all the hours left I’d go / A-SPREADING out-of-doors."
Perfect for: Midwesterners, fans of children's poetry like Shel Silverstein or Dennis Lee, anyone looking to learn more about black history…
12. The Library Book by Susan Orlean. I got a reply to my book club email in June (06/2023) from longtime 3 Booker Bo Boswell. Bo said he was browsing r/suggestmeabook when he came across the enticingly-titled thread “What’s your field or study (hobbyist or professional) and what’s a cornerstone beginners book for that topic/field?" The 164-time-upvoted top reply by Caleb_Trask19 says: "Librarian here, Susan Orlean’s Library Book is at first glance a true crime book about tracking the arsonist who set fire and burned down the main library in Los Angeles, but it also gives a comprehensive glimpse into contemporary libraries and their issues, especially updating a view of them if you haven’t been inside one since you were a kid." Bo then added his recommendation – saying "the amount of research and bizarre detail Orlean puts into her work is so engrossing" – and this all gave me the push to finally crack it open this year. And now I am here today, at the end of the year, to say that, yes, The Library Book really is as good as everyone says. It’s some kind of breezy magic trick, too. Reading it really feels like wandering shelves of a library – falling down tunnels, following curiosity trails. Sure, the book kind of centers on that massive 1986 fire at the Los Angeles Public Library but it flares wildly from there. Every chapter feels exciting because you don’t know which way fiery Orlean will flicker. On Page 61 she writes about the library shipping department: “When I first learned that the library had a shipping department, I didn’t know quite what that meant, because I couldn’t think of anything a library needed to ship.” Fair enough. But then she goes on to explain that thirty-two thousand books are shipped around L.A. five days a week and then poetically slips in “It is as if the city has a bloodstream flowing through it, oxygenated by books.” There’s a simultaneously inspiring and comic chapter where she shadows the city’s head librarian as he tries to make landscaping decisions on distant, uh, branches. She interviews the family of the (deceased) man accused of the fire and paints a sun-starched portrait of his troubled life. There is an entire chapter on library fires through history (you may weep) and another on eccentric Charles Lummis, a guy who walked 3507 miles to Los Angeles from Cincinnati in 1884 to take over the library in a massive controversy after the previous head librarian was fired for not being a man. She shares the history of the US library system: how it used to be country clubbish – charging for library cards and appealing to elites – to the fresh challenges it faces today as pillars of progressiveness. (“Libraries?,” scoffs Haley Dunphy in an old episode of Modern Family, “I thought that was a bathroom for homeless people.”) A big, overstuffed jack-in-the-box of a book with multiple threadlines braided beautifully together with Susan’s own story – which’ll likely remind you of yours. (It did for me.) Guaranteed to deepen your reverence of books, libraries, and reading and increase your love for community, connection, and the way we have all shared and will need to share wisdom through the ages. Through the pages.
Perfect for: library lovers, true crime fans, and anyone whose brain enjoys jumping from one deep-dive nerdy geek-out to another…
11. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous: A Novel by Ocean Vuong. A first-person coming-of-age story of a gay Vietnamese boy in Hartford, Connecticut finding and losing love in fleeting glances. Maybe that’s what the one-line movie summary of this book will say in TV Guide. But if they make this into a movie – and it sure feels like they will – then it may lose its heart. Because this is a 240-page poem where “The room is silent as a photograph” and “The bus’s lights make it feel like a dentist’s office gliding through the wet streets” and where “… a handful of straggling stars were biting through the sky’s milky haze.” I mean, maybe if Terrance Mallick does it in some Tree Of Life way – maybe. But it’s a poem. I found it both a fast read – no giant halting words sort of thing – and a slow read – with at least one sentence per paragraph jumping out of the page to say "You need to read me again, immediately!" The novel is written as a long confessional letter by a now slightly older protagonist to his non-English-reading mother. Telling her everything. About beauty, overdoses, graphic sex, grief – everything. I’ll just add: The book opens very abstractly. Like I had no idea what was going on. But once you push through the first few chapters there is a more chronologically meaty middle. An absolutely exquisite tap-dancing-down-a-tightrope novel.
Perfect for: experimental fiction fans, anyone who liked Brokeback Mountain, poetry buffs…
10. Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life by Bryon Katie. I've been spending time this week making our 6th annual "Best Of" episode of 3 Books – which will drop on the exact minute of the December Solstice, as always! – and, while doing so, I got pulled back down the rabbit hole that was Chapter 123 with Suzy Batiz. Suzy grew from a horrifyingly abusive childhood up through the ayahuasca-laden jungles of Peru to become the founder of the billion-dollar brand Poo~Pourri. And, like every guest on the show, 3 crucial, formative books helped shape her. The very first book being this easy-to-read Byron Katie stage script describing a four-question process to help you see what’s bothering you and (hopefully) let it go. The four questions are: 1) Is it true?, 2) Can you absolutely know that it’s true?, 3) How do you react when you believe that thought?, and 4) Who would you be without the thought? It sounds lite – almost trivial – but the questions are brought to life with on-stage dialogues and, I think, when asked of yourself, slowly, with the guidance in the book, it really can be helpful and perspective-creating to separate what’s happening from your interpretation of what’s happening … and then seeing your interpretation as something you can release. Will it always work? Does it apply in every situation? No, of course not. But the model is still helpful.
Perfect for: people with strong negative self-talk, Eckart Tolle fans, and anyone open-minded enough to read a somewhat-cheesy-looking 20-year-old self-help book…
9. Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier by Kevin Kelly. You know how Spotify sends those end-of-year listening reports that everyone geeks out about for like 12 hours? Well, if I had a report like that for “links you’ve texted” I am pretty sure “1000 True Fans” would be in my top three. Kevin has an incredible ability to distill unwieldy and complex things into tiny sentences placing him on a high mantle with Seth Godin and Derek Sivers. That’s why I crushed on the KK.org blog post titled “68 Bits Of Advice” that he released on his birthday in 2020. (Even copying his format exactly for my birthday advice this year and last year.) He's since taken down the post but there's a video if you want the Old Man On A Rocking Chair version – and the top YouTube comment has them all listed. After you’ve read them, don’t you just want Kevin to be your dad? Well, he kind of … could be? He’s omnipresent. Like an apparating Obi-Wan. He just sort of appears and starts telling you what to do. He blogs constantly and posts constantly and emails constantly. He writes wonderful books and now he has compressed his birthday compressions into the kind of book every writer wishes they wrote. A few of my favorites: “Make others feel they are important; it will make their day and it will make your day.”, “Buy used books. They have the same words as new ones.”, “Most effective remedy for anger is delay.”, “For best results with your children, spend only half the money you think you should, but double the time with them.”, “Unhappiness comes from wanting what others have. Happiness comes from wanting what you have.”, “The rich have money. The wealthy have time. It is easier to become wealthy than rich.”
Perfect for: bathroom readers, wisdom junkies, and people craving deeper directional lines for living in this world full of pop-up-and-yelling heads…
8. Faith, Hope and Carnage by Nick Cave and Seán O’Hagan. “This is a book about Nick Cave’s inner life,” says the jacket and that’s about as understated as it could be given the book reads like the ultimately well-crafted podcast. A long, meaty, thoughtful Q&A conducted over many phone calls by expert British journalist Seán O’Hagan, along with Nick Cave, who just has one of the vastest, deepest, tidal-wave minds. I didn’t know much about Nick Cave before reading this book – beyond the fact that I loved “Into My Arms” years ago and occasionally had a “Red Hand File” email from him shared with me – so it was gratifying discovering this book was less memoir (they don’t talk about his upbringing, really) and much more 65-year-lived philosophy examining our relationship with, amongst other things, creativity, doubt, grief, religion, family, and resilience. Nick has had giant artistic success, deep personal tragedy (including his 15-year-old son falling to his death off a cliff), and a truly vast style of living (geographically, relationshippy, religionny, creatively, etc) and, yeah, the way he navigates them is almost … otherworldly? Sort of how George Saunders writes about writing. On the creative impulse: “You have to operate, at least some of the time, in the world of mystery, beneath that great and terrifying cloud of artistic unknowing. The creative impulse to me, is a form of bafflement, and often feels dissonant and unsettling. It chips away at your own cherished truths about things, pushes against your own sense of what is acceptable. It’s the guiding force that leads you to where it wants to go.” On certainty: “The more overtly unshakeable someone’s beliefs are, the more diminished they seem to become, because they have stopped questioning, and not-questioning can sometimes be accompanied by an attitude of moral superiority.” On skepticism: “I think of late I’ve grown increasingly impatient with my own skepticism; it feels obtuse and counter-productive, something that’s simply standing in the way of a better-lived life. I feel it would be good for me to get beyond it. I think I would be happier if I stopped window shopping and just stepped through the door.” And it goes on.
Perfect for: creative souls, people navigating their own relationships with spirituality or loss, and anyone who loved Cheryl Strayed’s Tiny, Beautiful Things (10/2020)
7. Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy by Barbara Ehrenreich. So, if Sex At Dawn (Best Book of 2022) is the long evolutionary history of sex then this book is the long evolutionary history of dancing – or, more generally, “collective effervescence”, as Émile Durkheim calls it, which Barbara Ehrenreich cites, in this thorough, iterative, pace-by-pace introspection of our human compulsion to moooooooooove. From "Dionysus to the Grateful Dead", as the cover blurb says. “Why should humans be rewarded so generously for moving their bodies together in time? We are also pleasurably rewarded for sexual activity, and it’s easy to figure out why", she says on Page 26. But ... dancing? Why do we feel the need to dance? To share in collective body-moving joy? In the “She Don’t Use Jelly” encore, in the drumbeats before the playoff game, or even in the galvanizing closing words of a speaker at the end of a supply chain conference. We’re up, we’re crying, we’re cheering, we’re moving, we’re doing all this – why? Well, back to Barbara, “to be ‘outdanced’ is to risk reproductive failure” for the simple reason that for much of our history “early humans probably faced off predatory animals collectively – banding together in a tight group, stamping their feet, shouting, and waving sticks or branches.” We still sort of do this. Bear swings by, we’re told to exaggerate our height – swing sticks, make ourselves big! "Predators might be tricked by synchronous behavior into thinking that it faced – not a group of individually weak and defenseless humans – but a single, very large animal.” Could today’s dancing be part of yesterday’s evolutionary success story? Yes, says Ehrenreich! And then for much of the book, she goes on to share how the higher-level we – structures we created around church, governments, and civil structure – sought to stamp out “collective effervescence”, because it’s hard to control and helps the masses accomplish massive things, only to have our endlessly "must keep dancing" ways blow back and back and back again. Ehrenreich shares how “ancient Greek elite did not abandon the old ecstatic rituals but simply took them underground” with sixth-century BCE groupings that “drew on social elites, whose members gathered periodically for secret rites apparently aimed, above all, at engendering collective ecstasy.” From there through the advent of the church to the “riots” of 50s rock-and-roll to the “carnivalization” of professional sports, this is a well-strung-together cultural portrait that feels something like walking down a long wall reading a thoughtful museum exhibit. For the rest of our days may we all seek to organize, participate, and join in-person "collective effervescence."
Perfect for: cultural history buffs, anybody who works with really big groups, fans of joy…
6. Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang by Mordecai Richler. Richler wrote this book in 1975 and it’s a real triumph of children’s literature and storytelling. It opens: “Once there was a boy called Jacob Two-Two. He was two plus two plus two years old. He had two ears and two eyes and two arms and two feet and two shoes.” Turns out he says everything twice because nobody listens to him the first time. After a run-in with a grocer down the street, he’s sentenced to a horrible prison run by the Hooded Fang. This book gets into the thorny parts of the typical nightmares of young kids and has such a unique “superkid superhero” tone.
Perfect for: anyone who wants to feel like they're back sitting on a pebble-filled green carpet in third grade with their eyes popped open while listening to their teacher read them a book from their rocking chair…
5. Paradais by Fernanda Melchor. The most well-paced, three-dimensional, raw emotional spasm of a book I have ever read. A 112-page novel with a jarring red cover of a ... blue apple? But it hits like a riptide. Surprising, pulling, tornado-twisting from-the-ground view as a half-serious-half-not plot slowly hatches by two desperate teen boys. Polo is the gardener at the luxury Mexican housing complex Paradais and an omniscient Polo-shadowing narrator tells the story of his relationship with Fatboy, with “eyes vacant and bloodshot from alcohol and fingers sticky with cheesy powder.” Fatboy’s parents are nowhere, his grandparents have their eye off the plot, and he’s in carnal-teen love with Señora Marián, a resident at the complex, who is married to a Mexican TV host. On the first page, Fatboy’s “gelatinous body wobbled in a crude pantomime of coitus” and the book’s endless twisting phrases are just beginning. (Read the entire first page here.) Yet this book, amazing given how short it is, doesn’t just dwell in the present. There are two deep backstory asides told with a suspenseful visual clarity that brings to mind the final episodes of Breaking Bad. 112 pages that will leave you feeling 112 emotions.
Perfect for: Tarantino fans, people unafraid by "gritty and raw", and anyone who could use a good short book…
4. The Home Place: Memoir of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature by J. Drew Lanham. This seems like a simple autobiographical-type memoir broken into three parts (Flock, Fledgling, and Flight), but the writing, wow, the writing – it’s 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 as the book opens when he’s describing 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? Just wait. 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.
Perfect for: Southerners, memoir lovers, and, once again, birders…
3. Tough Boris by Mem Fox. Yes, I'm going to throw a 30-year-old picture book in my bronze medal position this year. Doug Miller of Doug Miller Books rooted this out of tipsy piles on his counters and handed it to me saying it was his all-time favorite picture book. "Once upon a time, there lived a pirate named Boris von der Borch", it begins, with grizzled, beady-eyed, fierce-looking Boris looking at a treasure map on a sandy beach. "He was tough," it continues, with Boris leering over a group of pirates pulling a treasure chest out of the sand. "All pirates are tough." "He was massive," it continues with Boris laughing and holding his parrot onboard the ship deck. "All pirates are massive." Momentum builds: "He was greedy.", "All pirates are greedy.", "He was fearless", "All pirates are fearless", "He was scary", "All pirates are scary" – and then a screeching halt: "But when his parrot died, he cried and cried." A suddenly emotional scene of tough Boris crying over his dead bird before sadly placing it into a fiddle-case casket and throwing it into the ocean. Before closing with "All pirates cry." and then, finally … "And so do I." A surprisingly heart-stirring tale somehow told in only 71 words. Complete picture book mastery. A wonderful and simple book to help slowly-solidifying children keep cracking – and to value that.
Perfect for: five-year-olds, pirates, and anyone who needs a reminder to embrace their sensitive side…
2. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. The very first sentence of this book had a magnetic, pulling "WTF-I-want-to-know-more" effect. See if it does the same for you: "Before Mazer invented himself as Mazer, he was Samson Mazer, and before he was Samson Mazer, he was Samson Masur – a change of two letters that transformed him from a nice, ostensibly Jewish boy to a Professional Builder of Worlds – and for most of his youth, he was Sam, S.A.M. on the hall of fame of his grandfather's Donkey Kong machine, but mainly Sam." The curtain lifts! And suddenly we have identity and growth and change and ego and 80s video games and maybe that oh-the-camera-is-about-to-pull-back feeling. That's what I got, anyway. There is a lot to chew on here – a lot of movement, a lot happening – but Gabrielle Zevin, or her omniscient occasionally-clacky-tongued narrator, I should say – holds us tightly. She describes scenes in high-def, folds characters in that shock and surprise (like the unforgettable Dov), and keeps the plot jumping. The story pinballs between decades, characters deepen, and every door opened up is graciously closed. So, uh, what's it about? Well, it's a multi-decade back-and-forth story of Sam and Sadie, who evolve from childhood friends who meet playing Super Mario Bros on NES in a hospital common room in LA to eventual video-game-creating partners to … well, I'm not going to blow things. I will say I found myself surprise-crying at many emotions surfacing from the past … coming-of-age anxieties, social disconnections, self-judgment, and unrequited love, just to name a few! Fast-paced, warm-hearted, and a wonderful scratch for your inner 90s gamer, too. A book to fall into and a true joy to read.
Perfect for: John Green fans, people who liked The Social Network, and nerds…
1. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff. Okay, number one. I have to say this is the book I have thought about and thought back to more than any other this year. It starts as a massive indictment of Google and Facebook and the grotesque form of mutant capitalism they spawned. Surveillance capitalism is ‘a new economic order that claims human experience as free raw material for hidden commercial practices of extraction, prediction, and sales.’ Sound big? It is. The book is very wide-arms-around-everything – enticingly, wondrously, intoxicatingly so. As an example, that ‘new economic order’ line is one of eight definitions Zuboff offers in the opening pages – right between the arresting 14-line epigraph from W.H. Auden and the 2-page Table of Contents – which, btw, is not to be confused with the detailed six-page Table of Contents from Page 536-Page 541. Here’s the thing: You will want to read it all. All! You’ll want to eat it all. All of it. The whole thing! To soak this book in through every pore on your skin like some kind of healing cream. It’s that good. That entrancing opening is a slow-arcing bump for the ten-fingered set that follows. A captivating 18-page Introduction awaits where Zuboff lays out the starting grounds (‘The digital realm is overtaking and redefining everything familiar even before we have had a chance to ponder and decide’) and then outlines her premise: “… rights to privacy, knowledge, and application have been usurped by a bold market venture powered by unilateral claims to others’ experience and the knowledge that flows from it. What does this sea change mean for us, for our children, for our democracies, and for the very possibility of a human future in a digital world? This book aims to answer these questions.’ And then … it is on. She goes deep, fast, but with care, without ego, and all is revealed in a winking-socratic-professor style that leaves you feeling almost intoxicated by learning. She reminds us “until the last few minutes of human history, each life was foretold in blood and geography, sex and kin, rank, and religion. I am my mother’s daughter. I am my father’s son. The sense of the human being as an individual emerged gradually over centuries, clawed from this ancient vise” before pushing to say “The new harms we face entail challenges to the sanctity of the individual… including the right to the future tense and the right to sanctuary” and then concluding that “My aim here is to slow down the action in order to enlarge the space for such debate and unmask the tendencies of these new creations as they amplify inequality, intensify social hierarchy, exacerbate exclusion, usurp rights, and strip personal life of whatever it is that makes it personal for you or me. If the digital future is to be our home, then it is we who must make it so. We will need to know. We will need to decide. We will need to decide who decides. This is our fight for a human future.” Does it feel like you’ve just read the book? But that’s just the end of the Introduction! Now you’re on Page 62 and the book is about to go 20,000 leagues under the sea. Fear not! The treacherous and dark terrain is covered with a buoyant lightfootedness that is stunning. The number of doors Zuboff opens– pulling out long-kept-in-the-dark documents and tying together loosely-held news headlines over decades – are some kind of top-tier detective work. Most of the 18 chapters in this book make for long-podcast style listens, too, if you want to grab the audio version and listen simultaneously like I did. An absolutely wondrous book.
Perfect for: anyone who liked 'The Social Dilemma', people craving a more screen-free existence, and anyone who likes deep investigative journalism…
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The Very Best Books I Read in 2022
That time of the year again!
Here are The Very Best Books I Read In 2022!
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20. Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention – and How To Think Deeply Again by Johann Hari. (L/I/A) Like most of us, Johann (“Yo-han”) Hari noticed his attention fracturing but, unlike most of us, he decided to jettison to Provincetown, Massachusetts without his phone for six weeks to explore the issue. What emerges is a feast of a tale about many things happening at once: rises in speed and switching, increased algorithm manipulation, crippling flow states, and the death of free-range childhoods. The book offers optimism and specific practices we can do to win the vital battle for our attention.
Perfect for: that person who keeps saying they need to get off social media, cultural or political theory majors, anxious Tik-Tok addled teens…
19. Lot by Bryan Washington. (L/I/A) A debut collection of short stories all tangentially telling tales of down-and-out Houston through (mostly) the lens of a half-latino-half-black teen working at his family restaurant and navigating distant siblings and a disappearing dad all while coming to grips with being gay. Crackling prose with accessibility and zing that makes this a great book to study the art of writing. Came out in 2019 and won a slate of fancy awards plus made Barack Obama’s favorite books of the year.
Perfect for: aspiring writers, people who want to read more queer writing, fans of Junot Diaz books like A Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao …
18. Otto: A Palindrama by Jon Agee. (L/I/A) An Alice-on-an-acid-trip style story of a boy named Otto hypnotically falling into his soup. The book is told entirely in palindromes – I repeat: entirely in palindromes! -- and opens with Otto sitting in his room reading his comic book LOL beside a bookshelf of toys including Mr. Alarm. His mom and dad are downstairs tasting the soup they’re making (“Mmm”) and then start calling him. He starts down but begins playing catch with his dog Pip before his dad yells “Not now Otto – wonton!” Dad looks up from his bowl of soup to encourage Otto to “Nosh, son!” A beautiful example of what books can do.
Perfect for: precocious children, crossword puzzle fans, anyone who loved Raj Halder's masterpiece P is for Pterodactyl…
17. How To Get Filthy Rich In Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid. (L/I/A) Quick Mohsin bio: Born in Pakistan, emigrated to California at 3 so dad could do PhD at Stanford, back to Pakistan at 9 with a severing of all American friendships, then whips back to US at 18 to attend Princeton (where he takes a writing class with Toni Morrison!), and then graduates into a 20-year business trajectory which he does while writing three award-winning novels on the side: Moth Smoke (2000), The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007), and How To Get Filthy Rich Is Rising Asia (2013). That doesn't include Exit West (2017) which is perhaps his most popular. Or The Last White Man which came out this year. Back to this book: It's written in second person and tells a gripping tale of you – a poor boy from a poor family in a poor unnamed country – on your rise to riches. This is in my top ten novels of all time. Here’s Page 1. See if it hooks you like it did me: “Look, unless you’re writing one, a self-help book is an oxymoron. You read a self-help book so someone who isn’t yourself can help you, that someone being the author. This is true of the whole self-help genre. It’s true of how-to books, for example. And it’s true of personal improvement books, too. Some might even say it’s true of religion books. But some others might say that those who say that should be pinned to the ground and bled dry with the slow slice of a blade across their throats. So it’s wisest simply to note a divergence of views on that subcategory and move swiftly on. / None of the foregoing means self-help books are useless. On the contrary, they can be useful indeed. But it does mean that the idea of self in the land of self-help is a slippery one. And slippery can be good. Slippery can be pleasurable. Slippery can provide access to what would chafe if entered dry. / This book is a self-help book. Its objective, as it says on the cover, is to show you how to get filthy rich in rising Asia. And to do that it has to find you, huddled, shivering, on the packed earth under your mother’s cot one cold, dewy morning…” Annnnnd… that's just the first page. Continues powerfully from there.
Perfect for: anyone looking for a thinnish page-turner, grown-up fans of the second-person Choose Your Own Adventures, “business types” who want to read more fiction…
16. Carrying The Fire: An Astronaut’s Journey by Michael Collins. (L/I/A) Let’s say you were one of three people chosen to blast off on Apollo 11, the first ever mission to land on the moon, but just before you go they bring the three of you into a cramped kitchen at NASA and sit you down on a card table. “Neil, Buzz, you two will go down to the moon, walk around, plant a flag, give a speech to the world, talk to the President, and, uh, Michael? Yeahhhhhh. Well, we need someone to stay up on the ship. Sorry.” Michael takes the bummer in stride and seemingly absorbs every aspect of the experience and channels it into this poetic first-person account of the space program. Part of the beauty is that fifty years ago astronauts weren’t hyper-focused specialists. Michael Collins is a wide-ranging thinker who writes in a wise, literary style. The book came out in 1974 and is still in print today. Part of what's magical here are the seemingly endless forwards and prefaces. Get this: Charles Lindbergh, who flew the first ever solo transatlantic flight in 1927 (a harrowing 33-hour hour trip from New York to Paris!) writes a completely breathtaking introduction that captures the human spirit towards flight. Lindbergh died the year this book came out so the foreword feels like a baton from our attempted voyages into the air in the 1800s to the billionaire space flights today (which are discussed in the latest foreword.)
Perfect for: memoir fans, sciencey people, and anybody fascinated by space flight or the space program…
15. No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July. (L/I/A) Sixteen short stories in 200 pages mean these tales come in digestible Alice-Munro-sized nuggets. But while Alice Munro’s stories sail down twisting rivers these blast into different dimensions. Paragraphs leap between times and views, a sudden sexual turn surprises, and (if you’re like me) you’ll find yourself flipping back a lot to re-place yourself inside the story. Deep under each one are rich veins of nearly inarticulable emotions underneath. A unique stirring happens when you read about (for example) Deb’s sudden relationship with the child of old-college-friend parents (both openly cheating on each other) and how it then morphs into that of a three-parent family and then a three-parent-family-going-to-therapy. Does it end there? Not even close. I won’t ruin the surprises left including the shocking finish. And this all happens in a dozen pages! Surprises behind every corner! And sentences always fascinating! The opening line of the book is “It still counts, even though it happened when he was unconscious.” There is nothing “hard” about the writing – no big words, I mean -- but the emotional cliffs are jagged and steep.
Perfect for: people who enjoy George Saunders, twisted family dramas, or Everything, Everywhere All At Once …
14. Beyond the Gender Binary by Alok Vaid-Menon. (L/I/A) Alok ("A-loke") Vaid-Menon was born in College Station, Texas in 1991 to parents from India and Malaysia. When they were young they’d dress up in their mom and sister’s clothes and dance around the living room to Bollywood hits for all their extended family but when they performed a similar routine onstage at the school talent show at age six ... they got laughed at by the entire school. Thus began a shame-filled odyssey of pretending to live as a boy -- or, at least, male-presenting -- for many years. And it also began a deep conversation about gender which they're helping lead globally today. This book firms Alok's place as a dynamic, powerful, clairvoyant voice. I folded the corners of at least 20 of this slim 58-page book and found myself underlining quote after quote. (Here are some popular quotes from the book.) I grew up the son of Indian immigrant parents in Canada with male and female binaries and the accompanying blue and pink clothes in blue and pink nurseries. Gender divides only deepened with age and, looking back, I know they caused me to self-censor sides of myself. Painting toenails to hide them in my socks, buying The Babysitter Club books “for my sister”, and quitting figure skating once I became the only boy at the rink. This book helped me remember, see, and accept a bit more of myself. And: Bit more on Alok? They created the global #DeGenderFashion movement, headlined the 2021 New York Comedy Festival, graduated at the top of their class twice at Stanford, and have lectured and performed in over 40 countries around the world. A complete riptide of an essay.
Perfect for: anyone looking to better “see the water” we’re all swimming in around gender, social, and cultural norms…
13. Chirri & Chirra Under the Sea by Kaya Doi with translation by David Boyd. (L/I/A) Back in 2004 this whimsical picture book came out in Japan featuring a “Night Riders-esque” tale of two young Japanese girls on bicycles ringing their bells (“Dring-dring! Dring-dring!”) and riding through a tunnel before suddenly dropping into a mystical underwater journey where they pedal through coral and discover a secret lounge where they sit on conch couches and seashell sofas before enjoying "sea-spray parfait à la conch" and "marine soda jelly topped with pearl cream." Brought to them by a crimson octopus with long eyelashes, blue eyeshadow, and a hotel maid’s outfit on, of course. Now, almost two decades later, David Boyd, Assistant Professor of Japanese at University of North Carolina, partnered with Brooklyn-based indie children's book publisher Enchanted Lion Books (treasure trove backlist!) for a magical English translation.
Perfect for: that kid who has everything, fans of beautiful picture books, anyone looking for some imagination seeds…
12. The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking) by Katie Mack. (L/I/A) Were you one of those kids who felt just stunned when you first started to comprehend the size and vastness of the universe? I feel like the “Where are we? What are we doing here? What does it all mean?” questions hit a lot of us when we’re eight, nine, ten years old. Everyone responds differently, of course. (The 8-year-old Alvy Singer reaction from Annie Hall jumps out.) Maybe you sort of shove it away. Bury it! Ascribe to a belief system that calms or sets things down in a digestible order. Maybe you turn a bit nihilistic … fatalistic … optimistic? Or … maybe you just point your curiosity at these questions your whole life. Katie Mack did the last one. Growing up in California in the late 80s and early 90s she read A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking and then pursued an undergrad in Physics from CalTech followed by a PhD in astrophysics from Princeton … before starting even more fascinating work doing things like -- no big deal! -- building a dark matter detector. And then, yes, writing a truly mind-bending book about how the universe will eventually … end. Because there is a finish line. I warn you: There is a steep learning curve in this book and, if you’re like me, you’ll need to flip back often to digest it. A lot may fly over your head. Did mine! But Katie goes to great pains to make this accessible and I think she did a better job than Stephen Hawking. Every chapter pushed my mind farther and farther out. Much like ... the universe? The universe is lucky to have an engaging, generous, and funny teacher like Katie Mack. Even taking in a few chapters of this book is well, well worth it.
Perfect for: science nerds, daydreamers, anyone who wants to zoom out of our planet for a little bit...
11. Dinner At The Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler. (L/I/A) I have never read a novel quite like this before. Let’s see: It’s about … nothing. In that Seinfeld sense of endlessly twisting plotlines about the minutiae of four people’s lives nothing. Less jazz riffs, less laugh tracks, more melancholy, more heart-scratching. There is a deep sadness between the covers of this book which tells the story of a single mother in Baltimore 70 years ago who simply never tells her children their father left them. What happens to the family from there? Well, that’s the book. A deeply feeling book with vivid characters and incredible detail offered through a how-does-she-do-it style of almost shockingly accessible prose. The net result is a three-dimensional hologram of a family you feel like you’re living beside.
Perfect for: people who like Alice Munro, book clubs (my mom read this in hers!), and anyone who likes intergenerational family dramas…
10. Sex At Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá. (L/I/A) When film directors Daniels (creators of the masterpiece Everything, Everywhere All At Once which is picking up Oscar steam already) picked this book I hadn’t heard of it despite it being in its fortieth printing with over 30,000 reviews across Amazon and Goodreads. I opened the book and got punched in the nose by the Kahlil Gibran epigraph: “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself.” That line has stayed with me since The Prophet and it sort of did that epigraphy thing of piquing interest in some yet-to-be-determined way. From there the book takes off like a rocket with sharp, whip-smart prose zooming you through an astounding millions-of-years-evolutionary-history of human sexuality. Nothing is off limits! Like Daniels themselves, the book delights in tackling taboos and challenging topics head-on while presumably knowing they’ll make a few mistakes along the way but hey? Is there any other way to really live? You can almost hear the authors gleefully spiking volleyballs into Charles Darwin’s and Jane Goodall’s foreheads while bouncing between topics like the type of porn we watch to our species’ relative penis size and, of course, why those things matter. Sure, some chapters are skippable and sure, a multi-million year evolutionary history of anything is going to have piles of things wrong. But this isn’t the type of book to read with the brakes on. Go all-in, enjoy the ride, and then pause to stew, process, and discuss. Strew, process, and discuss you will.
Perfect for: fans of Esther Perel (pairs well with Mating in Captivity), fans of Dan Savage (there’s a Q&A with him in the back), or, you know, the person you’re sleeping with…
9. Scarborough: A Novel by Catherine Hernandez. (L/I/A) Toronto is the fourth largest city in North America after Mexico City, New York, and Los Angeles, and is made up of five boroughs. Scarborough is likely the most diverse of the five -- culturally, ethnically, racially – and this book folds every corner of the sprawling community into a raw and mesmerizing read. When Leslie and I first started dating she was a Kindergarten teacher in a low-income neighborhood in Scarborough and the book feels like it could have been written by a handful of kids from her class. Every chapter alternates viewpoints, Babysitters Club Super Special-style, and the result is a portrait of deep poverty, urban blight, and soaring and (often) sinking hearts in the Kingston-Galloway neighborhood of Scarborough (where 41% of residents live in subsidized housing and 29% live in poverty). The fine point detail in this book is stunning and if you're from Toronto or have visited you'll get a double-whammy. Stories are loosely held together by the narrative of Hina, a young woman who runs the local literary center, as she jousts with decision-makers far from the community she serves. A poetic masterpiece.
Perfect for: people who like braided-plot movies like Traffic or 21 Grams, Torontonians, anyone with a bent towards social work or social justice…
8. Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse. (L/I/A) 101 very short essays slowly and iteratively building on each other to ultimately pull off a wild thought experiment. What’s the first essay? It’s on the cover! “1. There are at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite; the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.” Simple, right? James Carse is just warming you up. Carse, btw, was a NYU history and religion professor who died in 2020 and somehow sprung this 149-page magic trick onto the world way back in 1986. The illumination is that most of what’s worth living for can be called an infinite game. Parenting, learning, loving your close friends well. Pairs well with Clay Christenson’s famous How Will You Measure Your Life (which started as a talk and article) For me, most of the value in this book comes in the early pages and, actually, the metaphor felt dangerously close to collapsing like a wet chocolate cake in the middle. But: the first 50 pages of this book are worth way more than the ticket price. That’s all you need to read!
Perfect for: anyone struggling with overwhelm or what I'll call ‘life prioritization’...
7. Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O'Neill. (L/I/A) This is the kind of book where if you’ve read it and you meet someone else whose read it I suspect you both just quietly nod and let out a long, slow deep breath. Immersive, piercing, troubling, shocking, Heather O’Neill says in an interview “I knew I was going to take readers to places they’d never been before.” So what’s it about? Baby was born to parents who were 15. Her mom died a year later and the story begins in a first-person sort-of-journal-entry style when she’s 12 and being raised by her dad Theo in downtown Montreal. Theo is addicted to heroin and she bounces between foster homes and apartments with him while mostly living on the street. Eventually the local pimp Alphonse takes interest in her and, well, it goes from there.
Perfect for: fans of A Million Little Pieces by James Frey, book clubs, fans of 'first person journal' style writing...
6. The Hobbit by J.R.Tolkien. (L/I/A) According to this slightly dubious table on Wikipedia, The Hobbit is one of only six books in the world that have sold over 100 million copies. (That is until Our Book of Awesome comes out in 3 days, am I right? Hello? 100 million people, are you with me?) Anyway, I hadn’t read it till this past summer. My oldest son had taken to flying through a few thin chapter books a night so The Hobbit served as a healthy form of reading quicksand. I read 10 pages to him a night and he sung all the songs in the text -- there are a lot! A wonderfully rollicking quest with a soft glowing magic emanating from deep within the page through the endless voices, wordplay, and twists.
Perfect for: People who like Harry Potter or The Chronicles of Narnia and anyone looking for a book to read with their kids...
5. How to Develop Self-Confidence and Influence People by Public Speaking by Dale Carnegie. (L/I/A) I’ll come right out and say that if you speak publicly in any way you need this 96-year-old classic. 96 years old! Warren Buffet was in the middle of his Masters at Columbia when he spotted an ad in the paper for the Dale Carnegie Public Speaking course. He paid a hundred bucks and to this day calls it the best investment he’s ever made. Pretty big claim from a guy who owns a $120 billion of Apple, right? It’s easy to see why. Carnegie's thoughts on public speaking are priceless. He wrote his first three books ever on this one topic and delivers timeless messages with folksy charm. On Page 54 Carnegie teaches you how to end with an appeal for action, on Page 76 he teaches you how to write your speech down as a series of pictures to memorize, on Page 90 he explains the importance of writing out a pre-speech ritual, on Page 119 he talks about the benefits of standing versus sitting. I take many elements from this book when I craft a speech and find myself revisiting this classic to see what I can improve. There's always a lot.
Perfect for: teachers, coaches, or anyone looking to improve their communication to teams or audiences...
4. My Side Of The Mountain by Jean Craighead George. (L/I/A) Jean Craighead George grew up in the 1920s and 1930s in a family of naturalists who spent a lot of time in the bush. Her first pet was a turkey vulture! Jean's dad taught her how to make fires and fish hooks and find edible plants and even climb trees to study owlets. Her brothers even ended up becoming two of North America’s first falconers but, thankfully for us here in the next century, Jean carved her own path and become a writer. She wrote over a hundred books! Alie Ward, host of #1 science-pod Ologies, tipped me off to this 1959 classic and I found myself entranced by it. It’s a bit clinical but you really will feel like a 12-year-old boy who has run away from home to live alone in the forest. He climbs a tree to snatch a Peregrine Falcon chick and trains it to hunt. He traps, gets attacked, and then befriends a weasel that he calls The Baron. He makes deerskin clothing and preserves grains and tubers. It goes on and on and on. But it's written for kids! So it's super complicated but... for kids! A great way to learn. I like this New York Times book review from Sunday, September 13, 1959 which calls it “a delightful flight from civilization, written with real feeling for the woods.” If you want a delightful flight from civilization, if you want to slice your carving knife through our sometimes-suffocating techno-wrap, well then I have just the book for you. Run away to the forest with this one.
Perfect for: people weary of living in the 2020s, budding naturalists, kids threatening to run away from home…
3. Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown. (L/I/A) I think this might be Brené Brown’s best book. I don’t say that lightly! It’s somehow rich as dense chocolate cake and light as the whipped cream on top. After a wonderful introduction the book opens up into essentially … a dictionary. Brené and her team catalogue 87 emotions you think you know … but would benefit from a little catchup on. On Anguish: “… powerlessness is what makes anguish traumatic. We are unable to change, reverse, or negotiate what has happened.” On Hope: "... We experience hope when we have the ability to set realistic goals ... we are able to figure out how to achieve those goals ... and we have agency..." Peppered with deep research, powerful quotes (“Boredom is your imagination calling to you.” Sherry Turkle) and Brené’s home-fried Texan wit, this atlas deserves a place on your shelf and in your, oh yes I’m going there, heart. (PS. Leslie and I sat down with Brené last year. Join us on the basement couch!)
Perfect for: teachers, boyfriends and girlfriends looking to color in their communication, anybody who just can’t get enough Brené Brown in their life…
2. The Collected Essex County by Jeff Lemire. (L/I/A) This is one of the most emotionally rich, textured, and satisfying graphic novels I’ve ever read and I put it up on the high mantle with Maus by Art Spiegelman or Berlin by Jason Lutes. On the surface it’s a simple story of a young boy sent to live with his mom’s brother at his small-town farm after she dies of cancer but it starts with that seedling and goes deeper and deeper and deeper into: the young boy’s relationship with his father, how we handle feelings of regret and loss, the history of generational trauma in a small town, and all kinds of twisting family tales that weave together across generations. A truly masterful storytelling feat. I found myself crying at two in the morning several times while reading it. An underrated epic.
Perfect for: hockey fans, people who like smalltown vibes, and anybody who enjoys family sagas like East of Eden or Anna Karenina …
1. Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson. (L/I/A) Just Mercy tells the incredible life story of Bryan Stevenson, the Harvard law school grad who began the difficult and sometimes dangerous work defending Death Row prisoners in Alabama. Often wrongfully convicted. Often children condemned to die in prison when they were just 13 or 14. The book’s structure is mesmerizing itself: Bryan’s story braided with shorter cases, longer cases, chapters on US racial and mental health history, and even poems from prisoners. It’s gripping, entrancing, hold-your-breath reading. Every chapter swerves a different way. This book will both deeply inform your understanding of US racial, legal, and criminal history while also move you to tears with edge-of-your-seat courtroom drama and a biography of a guy multiple blurbers on the inside cover call "America's Mandela."
Perfect for: fans of true crime podcasts, anyone interested in criminal and racial history and politics, anyone who resonates and believes in the Martin Luther King Jr quote "... the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
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The Very Best Books I Read in 2021
It’s that time of the year again!
Time to divvy up your holiday budget between books and everything else. What’s under the tree? Books! What’s in the Secret Santa pile? Books! What’s in the stockings? Books! And maybe an orange.
There are big piles of the newest, latest, and hottest at the front of the bookstores and top of the rankings but as always here we'll aim to discuss something a bit different. Some came out this year, some two hundred years ago, some two thousand years ago. Together here are The Very Best Books I Read In 2021.
Happy reading!
*. Fauja Singh Keeps Going: The True Story of the Oldest Person to Ever Run A Marathon by Simran Jeet Singh. (L/I/A) Let's start off with a picture book. I’ve always felt there was a weird gap somewhere between fiction and non-fiction picture books. On one hand: Fiction! So much fiction! Goodnight moon from the great green room and running with Thing One and Thing Two. But on the other hand? Non-fiction like The Milky Way or Ant or Mother Theresa or just blow-by-blow of how something works or a biography of someone famous. But where are the books about the everyperson – the Vishwas the Uber Drivers or Shirley the Nurses or Zafar the Hamburger Men of the world. Well, enter Fauja Singh to correct the balance! Fauja is alive and well today at 110 years old – 110 years old! -- and is the oldest person to ever run a marathon. Did he train all his life? No, he began running only a few decades ago ... in his 80s! A wonderful true story about a skinny boy growing up in Punjab with weak legs and a strong spirit. Doubles as a nice introduction to Sikhism which the book calls the fifth largest religion. (Wikipedia says ninth but who's counting?)
Perfect for: children looking for something beyond Dr. Seuss, anyone looking for a reminder it's never to late to start something new, folks looking to actively diversify their bookshelves...
*. Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better And How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal. (L/I/A) Before I read this book I was stuck thinking of gamers as slack-jawed teens sitting on stained couches in dark basements on piles of empty Cheetos bags. Play more video games? No! Get outside! Run around! That’s what I’m preaching. Well, this book gave me a splash of cold water and nudged my parenting philosophy from “No video games!” to “Let me help you pick a video game and play it with you!” Jane says some markers of healthy video game use include constantly picking new games (to invite challenge and the learned resilience involved in figuring it out), explaining how to play it to somebody else afterwards (to provoke learning and teaching and understanding), and, finally, inviting a discussion on what the game can help us do better in real life (to avoid replacing reality with games – but rather enhancing it). While I still think we all suffer from Nature Deficit Disorder, I felt my arguments against video games wilting in the face of this illuminating, well-researched tour-de-force. Jane sees games helping increase career satisfaction, helping elderly feel socially connected, and tackling global-scale problems like climate change and poverty. (Her TED Talk is a great overview.) She teaches us what a game is – they all have goals, rules, feedback systems, and voluntary participation – and then shares how they can lead to more satisfying lives.
Perfect for: Educators, parents of young children, anybody feeling guilty about playing too much fantasy football…
*. Team Human by Douglas Rushkoff. (L/I/A) Fiery, unblinking, culture-shifting manifesto imploring us – Team Human! – to come together in the face of autonomous technologies, runaway markets, and weaponized media. My mind was set ablaze reading this magnificent book organized into 100 short, powerful essays, each of which feels like it’s been simmered down into its most flavorful parts like a pot of all-day spaghetti sauce. Douglas Rushkoff is founder of the Laboratory for Digital Humanism at CUNY/Queens, where he is professor of media theory and digital economics and known for coining terms like ‘viral media’, ‘digital native’, and ‘social currency.’ I found it higher level, more informed, and a lot farther ahead on what’s happening than The Social Dilemma. All backed by well-sourced Notes that constantly sent me scurrying to look up some study or article. As the sub-headline says: “Our technologies, markets, and cultural institutions – once forces for human connection and expression – now isolate and repress us. It’s time to remake society together, not as individual players but as the team we actually are: TEAM HUMAN.”
Perfect for: people who watched The Social Dilemma, people who keep complaining about social media but also keep using social media, activists…
*. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. (L/I/A) This year I travelled down the Mississippi River two hundred years ago in the wonderful company of thirteen year old Huck Finn. The antebellum time period feels grotesque in many ways but the vividness of this rousing coming-of-age adventure featuring endless popping characters sits on a high mantel all its own. Ernest Hemingway said "All modern literature stems from this one book."
Perfect for: anybody who wasn’t assigned this book in school (guessing most people outside the US?), advanced young readers, anybody looking for a great introduction to Mark Twain…
*. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. (L/I/A) Okay, I guess I'm on a classics kick suddenly. But this really is a perfect book to read over the holidays. Do you know the story of A Christmas Carol? How did you learn it? Mickey Mouse on Disney? Alvin and the Chipmunks? I picked it up from a dozen cartoons as a kid and honestly, I wish I’d just read the original. It's so much better. There’s a reason this 178-year-old (and only 89 page!) story is so heavily mimicked, parodied, and referenced. It is gut-punchy, slapstick, and will leave you in tears. Opens with one of my favorite first sentences, too: “Marley was dead: to begin with.”
Perfect for: people who like short books, anyone need a reminder of the Christmas spirit, those looking to add more classics to their pile...
*. Notes by Eleanor Coppola. (L/I/A) Bit of an odd book to include but I really do feel like books are empathy training wheels. This book could be Exhibit A. A non-fiction book that reads like vivid fiction in its daily diary format. You are Eleanor, the artistic, wealthy, humble-yet-high-society wife of Francis Ford Coppola, as well as mother of three young children, and you are living for a few years in the jungles of the Philippines while your husband shoots a gigantic movie that is stressfully running over time and budget and which is both draining and growing your family in a thousand ways. What’s the movie? Apocalypse Now. A formative life experience with Eleanor’s diaries to read throughout. I loved this book. As a sidenote, this is one of Dave Eggers’ three most formative books.
Perfect for: anybody who wants to visit Southeast Asia, fans of Apocalypse Now or Francis Ford Coppola who want a behind-the-scenes look, busy moms of young children…
*. The Practice: Shipping Creative Work by Seth Godin. (L/I/A) Whether it’s through his popular altMBA, podcasting workshop, or daily emails, so many people receive counsel, guidance, and wisdom from Seth. (Here’s a big dollop of wisdom he gave me.) I have long made it a Life Rule to read any new Seth Godin book. The Practice is a wonderful contribution to his massive catalog. Read it if you need a little nudge, big nudge, or giant shove to do it. What it? Your it. That’s the deal: You choose your it and this book lights the path. It’s impossible to read The Practice and not shift your work into a higher gear.
Perfect for: anybody itching to start a business, people thinking about a career change, or anybody wondering if that hobby in the basement could really turn into something…
*. How To Do Nothing by Jenny Odell. (L/I/A) I would like to apologize to Jenny Odell for horribly judging her book by the cover. How to do nothing? On a pile of flowers? I thought the book would have the density of meringue. MY BAD! The book actually is the densest, richest dessert imaginable. “Nothing is harder to do these days than nothing,” it begins gently, before quickly pushing you down a steep mineshaft tunnel. You gain speed as you veer into dark, twisting arguments in favor of using your attention and, really, your entire personhood as a form of resistance against our fitter, happier, more productive society. A distant cousin to Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino. Here’s a tiny (out of context) taste from Page 137: “When the language of advertising and personal branding enjoins you to ‘be yourself’, what it really means is ‘be more yourself,’ where ‘yourself’ is a consistent and recognizable pattern of habits, desires, and drives that can be more easily advertised to and appropriated, like units of capital. In fact, I don’t know what a personal brand is other than a reliable, unchanging pattern of snap judgements…” A ‘why’ book more than a ‘how’ book, I would put it in Cultural Studies over Self-Improvement.
Perfect for: birders, people who want to turn their ambition down a bit, anybody feeling exhausted by the attention economy and looking to understand how they navigate from here…
*. Tenth of December: Stories by George Saunders. (L/I/A) The opening story in this book is called Victory Lap. (Here it is.) It’s only 26 pages yet somehow builds from a disorienting opening into a final emotional wallop that might plaster your head back into your pillow while you stare at the ceiling for half an hour. What’s the good version of haunting? That’s what it did to my brain. I have so rarely been this affected by writing. I agree with Junot Diaz (“Few people cut as hard or deep as Saunders does”) and Mary Karr (“For more than a decade, George Saunders has been the best short story writer in English -- not "one of," not "arguably," but the Best.”) In 2013 when this book came out The New York Times Magazine declared that “George Saunders Has Written The Best Book You’ll Read This Year”. The paperback features a wonderful interview between Saunders and David Sedaris which is a must read for all writers. Gorgeous, illuminating, emotionally shaking. And here is Chapter 75 of 3 Books with George.
Perfect for: aspiring writers, New Yorker subscribers, people who want to read more literary fiction but need something shorter and more accessible...
*. A Boy Called Bat by Elana K. Arnold. (L/I/A) This middle grade story about Bixby Alexander Tam (BAT) is an adult education in autism and neurodiversity, too. BAT lives with his sister and his mom and stays with his dad every other weekend. He doesn’t like to eat leftovers, sliced cheese, and most yogurt flavors. He has oversensitive hearing, flaps his hands, only takes things literally, and wants to call the police when his mom’s a few minutes late from her work as a veterinarian. One night she brings home a newborn skunk orphan. And so the rest of the book tells the story of BAT’s quest to raise, nurture, and keep the skunk against all odds. Short and simple on the surface but a lot floats below.
Perfect for: teachers, middle-grade readers from 10 and up, anyone looking to learn more about autism (while of course still remembering the adage that 'if you know one child with autism you know one child with autism') …
*. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: A Commemorative Pop-Up Book by L. Frank Baum and Robert Sabuda. (L/I/A) Hands down the best pop-up book I have ever seen. Whoever you get this book for will kiss you when they open it. Robert Sabuda is an ‘artist and paper engineer’ who created this absolutely stunning pop-up book of The Wizard Of Oz to commemorate the 100th anniversary. A deeply absorbing piece of art using text from the original book and all kinds of surprises including spinning cyclones and gigantic hot air balloons. Check out this YouTube video for the full effects. A pricey, special purchase for somebody who (ideally) won't tear it to shreds...
Perfect for: people who loved the movie The Wizard of Oz, anybody who needs more pop-up books on their shelf (who doesn't?) …
*. Letters from a Stoic by Seneca. (L/I/A) The fact that this book is still in print and Seneca lived two thousand years ago should give some indication to the quality. To give a little aperitif, here are three quotes I just pulled out from the first couple pages: 1) “Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well-ordered mind than a man’s ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.”, 2) “It is not the man who has too little who is poor, but the one who hankers after more.” and 3) “Similarly, people who never relax and people who are invariably in a relaxed state merit your disapproval – the former as much as the latter. For a delight in bustling about is not industry – it is only the restless energy of a hunted mind. And the state of mind that looks on all activity as tiresome is not true repose, but a spineless inertia … A balanced combination of the two attitudes is what we want; the active man should be able to take things easily, while the man who is inclined towards repose should be capable of action. Ask nature: she will tell you that she made both day and night.” Not bad, right?
Perfect for: anybody curious about Stoicism, anxious people looking for a nice zoom out, philosophical teens…
*. Tell Me About Sex, Grandma by Anastasia Higginbotham. (L/I/A) Gloria Steinem has a blurb on the back of this book which reads “I love that it’s Grandma giving advice. Some Native Americans say the very young and the very old understand each other best, because each is closest to the unknown.” I feel the truth in that. This non-fiction “sex ed” style book is written as an innocent, curious cut-and-paste conversation between a child (of presumably purposefully unclear age and gender) and their grandmother. Consent, sex positivity, and body curiosity are themes explored with the undercurrent motto that ‘each person’s sexuality is their very own to discover, explore, and share if they choose.” This book hit me in the gut and I think many adults will find the same. I agree with the Kirkus reviewer who wrote: “If I were independently wealthy, I’d buy a small plane, fly across the country, and drop off copies of this book to every elementary-school health and sex educator out there.” Good pairing book with C is for Consent by Eleanor Morrison or How Mamas Love Their Babies by Juniper Fitzgerald.
Perfect for: kids asking questions about their bodies, sex or health educators, people who have body confidence issues (most of us)…
*. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck. (L/I/A) “The growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts, your strategies, and help from others.” Want to develop one? Read this book. It'll help nudge you down the path from fixed to growth as it did for me. Here are a few of my favorite pages from inside this book to give you a taste.
Perfect for: people into self-improvement, parents looking to be better coaches to their children, anyone leading a team...
*. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. (L/I/A) It was David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas) who told us back in Chapter 58 that The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov is a wonderful stepping stone into the nineteenth century Russians. When I started reading the book I found the first two chapters … thorny. It opens with a provocative scene in a public park in 1930s Moscow but then skips back two thousand years earlier in Chapter 2 where you're suddenly privy to the judge deciding the fate of Jesus of Nazareth. I was thrown. But when the novel settles back into Moscow it gets into its groove and it starts flying. The simple plot summary is something like: “The devil shows up and all hell breaks loose.” No shame in reading the plot summary first.
Perfect for: anyone looking for an entry point into Russian literature, horror or thriller fans, people who want to add a classic to their shelves...
*. Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. (L/I/A) Outside magazine sent Jon Krakauer to climb Mount Everest and report on the growing commercialization of the mountain. He ended up being intimately close to one of the greatest Everest disasters of all time with eight people – including the leaders of both tour companies he was following – dying over a dramatic few hours at the summit. Jon wrote a massive 17,000 word article in the September, 1996 issue of Outside (check out the gripping cover) and then expanded it into this book in 1997. An extremely straight-faced thriller with twists and turns and questions around decision-making under stress and leadership in crisis.
Perfect for: action movie fans, mountaineers, corporate leaders looking to assign a book for book club...
*. Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay. (L/I/A) An incredible window into a young Haitian-American woman from an upstanding family coming of age in 70s and 80s Omaha, Nebraska ... and feeling many kinds of hunger throughout. In the beginning the book appears to be about food and weight. She opens Chapter 3 by saying "At my heaviest I weighed 577 pounds at six feet, three inches tall” but then we are taken deeply into abuses suffered as a child and many zig-zagging challenges that follow. She has an economical “Hemingway on Twitter” style of writing that reads very fast and addictive once you fall into it. I often talk about research showing that fiction completely absorbs us into another identity and helps grow empathy, compassion, and understanding. This book absolutely does the same.
Perfect for: memoir or biography fans, people struggling with weight or societal perceptions of weight...
*. Once Upon A Time in Hollywood by Quentin Tarantino. (L/I/A) This is a 400-page drugstore paperback movie novelization of an R-rated movie. So when I read it I felt like a teenager in the 70s reading something exciting and vulgar and thrilling and sultry in the wee hours before turning off the light. Also, the book offers no moralizing. These days we often see morals placed above story. Was the person good? Did they do the right thing? Or can they become good? Can they learn to do the right thing? We live in such a “you must do it like this” society that if you say the wrong thing you’re quickly cancelled. Well, there’s no moralizing here! And it’s so refreshing. Tarantino is a master storyteller writing in service of story alone. Characters say horrible things, characters do horrible things, and they don’t necessarily grow at all – or, at least, in ways you might expect. Some scenes may make you wince, others cause your heart to fly, but if you’re like me you’ll keep flipping because the story is so propulsive. The swerves and curves feel like a waterslide. Last thing: the book is a true geekfest. I always considered myself a movie fan but after reading this book I feel I can elevate that label a notch towards aficionado. Quentin shares a wobbly mirrored mix of factual and revisionist history of cinema and half the fun is trying to spot the difference. Feels like you’re reading Trivial Pursuit questions by Nabokov or something. For those who’ve seen the movie, the book is different. For those who haven’t, you don’t need to. And, for both, I think the book is better. A fun and wild read.
Perfect for: people into plot-based over character-based stories, non-readers looking for a way to get back into books, Tarantino fans…
*. Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. (L/I/A) For many years Oliver Burkeman wrote the wise and witty column for The Guardian called “This column will change your life” which examined the wide world of self-help. (He even wrote about me eleven years ago!) Well, he’s stopped the weekly columns now -- his final offering was masterful -- and now he's here, today, with us, offering a wonderfully deep and thoughtful examination of real time management. Not the Inbox Zero whack-more-moles-per-minute variety but the much more intentional month-by-month, year-by-year kind. Wisdom is seeping out of this book like a sponge you just pulled out of deep water. Spending time in Oliver's company made me feel less anxious and more calm. Pairs well with books like How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton or In Praise of Slow by Carl Honoré.
Perfect for: community leaders, self-help junkies, anybody exhausted by the cult of productivity …
*. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. (L/I/A) The story is well known: The well-educated Victor Frankenstein spends years away at college passionately building what becomes a monster who escapes and haunts him to his final days. Simple, right? But this book is broken into three and... that’s just book one and three, really. Book two hits something like The Empire Strikes Back with the entire book a 1700s gilded British gentry type monologue from ‘the daemon’ (who isn't named the entire book) to Victor himself when they meet in an incredibly vivid scene on any icy summit high up in the Alps. That flips all the overtrodden narratives about Frankenstein on its head and buries the final book under an infinitely complicated tapestry of emotionally wrenching scenes, moral questions, and scarring moments that hit deep. Heartbreaking. Heartmelting. Heartwrenching. And beautiful.
Perfect for: fans of Shirley Jackson, fans of Stephen King, anyone looking to briefly disappear from the modern world...
The Very Best Books I Read in 2020
As the year winds down, I am excited to share my “best of” reading list for 2020. Books are a great distraction right now so I hope you find something for you or a loved one in the titles below.
Happy reading!
20. In Praise of Slow: Challenging the Cult of Speed by Carl Honoré. I bought this book years ago and never found time to read it. Quelle surprise! Still the most common question I get on my reading lists is “How do you find time to read so many books?” My answer in HBR articles here and here. I believe this book is a mirror we all need right now. If you’re feeling pandemic sluggishness this book will smile at you warmly, pat you on the back, and help you settle deeper into your slower, wiser, more meandering self. And if you’re the opposite, if you feel like the treadmill you’re on is cranked to 10, then this book will force you to stop and reflect. Chock full of research and wonderfully narrated by the incredibly warm Carl Honoré in the same “sitting beside you on the bus” style of Quiet or So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, I felt like this was the book I have needed for years. It's time to slow down and read this wonderful book.
19. The Old Man by Sarah V & Claude K. Dubois. Homeless rates are spiking. The parks are full of tents and there are more people on the streets where we live. This simple but striking kids book with beautiful watercolor art explores homelessness with great compassion. A man wakes up wet and freezing in the morning. He rummages through trash cans looking for food. He sees a mail carrier and remembers he used to be one. He goes to a shelter but can’t remember his name when he’s asked so he leaves. He’s kicked out of a park. He’s offered a sandwich and a smile from a little girl. The book is marketed to 5-7 year olds but I think anybody would love it. Published by the independent Gecko Press based in Wellington, New Zealand. I linked to them above but it should be sold everywhere.
18. Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith & Art by Madeleine L’Engle. I admit whenever I hear a book described as “a meditation on…” I sort of hear it as “a bunch of loose, semi-coherent rambles on…” This book completely changed my view. It is indeed a meditation but it’s the furthest thing from loose and semi-coherent. With the powerful high beamed mind of Madeleine L’Engle (probably best known for A Wrinkle In Time) the book dives down into the deeper, colder, darker waters far below other well-structured or well-researched or well-organized books to explore, really meaningfully explore, the murky depths underpinning those massive overlapping circles of faith and art. As you read the book you’ll feel connected to a wise, patient, enlightened guide calmly and patiently showing you the meaning of all things. Mandatory reading for anyone creating art in any way. Most of us! Closest book I can compare it to would be The War of Art by Steven Pressfield but I liked this one more. (Note: This is one of creative wonder Brad Montague’s most formative books. I had a lovely chat with Brad here.)
17. The Body: A Guide For Occupants by Bill Bryson. “In a world deluged by irrelevant information, clarity is power,” says historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens. I was thinking about that quote while reading this incredible top to bottom look at our fleshy homes. The early chapters on “The Brain” and “The Head” alone are worth much more than the price of admission here. Short excerpt: “Don’t forget that your genes come from ancestors who most of the time weren’t even human. Some of them were fish. Lots more were tiny and furry and lived in burrows…. We would all be a lot better off if we could just start fresh and give ourselves bodies built for our particular Homo sapiens needs – to walk upright without wrecking our knees and backs, to swallow without heightened risk of choking, to dispense babies as if from a vending machine. But we weren’t built for that. We began our journey through history as unicellular blobs floating about in warm, shallow seas.” And it goes from there.
16. Walkable City: How downtown can save America, one step at a time by Jeff Speck. Who else has had a big walking year? Maybe the most walking you’ve ever done? I love five-hour walks and I try and spend a day or two a week going untouchable and bringing out my inner flâneur. I loved this book about walkability and its power to completely transform our health, our planet, our economies, and our communities. Jeff Speck presents The General Theory of Walkability which explains how, ‘to be favored, a walk has to satisfy four main conditions: it must be useful, safe, comfortable, and interesting’ and calls pedestrians ‘an extremely fragile species, the canary in the coal mine of urban liveability.’ I have no idea how urban living will change post-pandemic but we spread ourselves too far from one another at our peril. As Jane Jacobs said “By its nature, the metropolis provides what otherwise could be given only by traveling; namely, the strange.” Cheers to living in strange, dense, and surprising environments for decades to come. (PS. Anne Bogel tipped me off to this book in my last live 3 Books chapter before the pandemic. We recorded in Union Square and then inside The Strand in Manhattan. I was then lucky enough to get Jeff to come on the podcast to help push the pleasures of pedestrian propinquity.)
15. Bad Feminist: Essays by Roxane Gay. Roxane Gay’s writing flows like a river: calm, smooth, burbling, and then you hit the rocks. She offers accessible welcome mats into complex and thorny issues like her essay “What We Hunger For” on the emotional trauma of sexual abuse told through her love of The Hunger Games. (That full essay is online here.) The essays are short, easy to read, and have a huge range of topics as one moment you’re hearing what it feels like to be a typical first year professor and the next you’re discussing the issues with Sweet Valley High or Django Unchained. Playboy calls her 'the most important and most accessible feminist critic of our time' and she’s also the #2 ranked best reviewer on all of GoodReads. Check out my recent conversation with Roxane on lessons in love and the lethal lure of likeability.
14. The Invisible Pyramid by Loren Eiseley. Naturists, anthropologists, environmentalists, philosophers, teachers, lend me your ears. This is the book for you! Loren Eiseley lived from 1907 to 1977 and is listed as all of those things in his online biography. Those diverse backgrounds and experiences come together wonderfully in this powerful series of essays offering a sense of wild vertigo as Loren masterfully zooms us across spacetime to give us a sense of place in the cosmos. Did you ever read that “Pale Blue Dot” passage by Carl Sagan? I wrote about it in The Happiness Equation. If you liked that passage, you’ll love this this series of lectures Eiseley delivered at the University of Washington in 1969. It was just after the moon landing and these lectures tap right into the interstellar dreaming zeitgeist of the time. I feel like this is the book I was always hoping to find whenever I picked up A Brief History Of Time by Stephen Hawking which I could not work my way through. A great book for people who loved The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell.
13. Black Beauty by Anna Sewell. While lying in bed as an invalid in the 1870s, Anna Sewell wrote this book. She died five months later but was alive long enough to see the book take off en route to becoming the worldwide classic. A wonderful first-horse view of life from the mid-1800s which includes many simple and profound lessons about kindness, friendship, and animal rights. This is the book that first opened Temple Grandin’s eyes to animal rights issues before her many decades fighting for their quality of life. If you don’t know much about Temple Grandin, she's just incredible. I'd recommend starting with the award-winning film starring Claire Danes and then listen to my chat with her on mixing minds making magic.
12. The Boy & The Bindi by Vivek Shraya. I was listening to an interview with Vivek and the host asked which words she uses to identify herself. It was a long list! Artist, trans, queer, bi, person of color, brown. I first found Vivek when her book I’m Afraid of Men jumped out to me at a bookstore. I found it brave, challenging, and mind-expanding on a lot of levels. This children’s book is a rhyming story of a young boy who takes interest in his mom’s bindi. It’s an activist and gender creative book that doesn’t slip into the trappings of trying to argue gender norms but simply allows a young boy’s curiosity towards a traditionally female-sporting dot to grow into a natural love. Pairs well with I Love My Purse by Belle Demont. Listen to Vivek trashing traditional trans tropes here.
11. Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit & Wisdom of Charles T. Munger by Charles T. Munger. Shane Parrish of Farnam Street and The Knowledge Project told me to buy this book and I admit I groaned when I picked it up. Seriously? The multibillionaire longtime partner of Warren Buffet compiles a giant 500 page trophy to his accomplishments? But then I opened it and couldn’t stop flipping around. It’s chock full of wonderful commencement speeches, book recommendations, and his famous mental models. One of the densest compendiums of wisdom you’ll find. If you know very little about Charlie Munger (as I did) this article is a great place to start. If you’re intrigued from there, I’d highly recommend this book.
10. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie. I walked into The Mysterious Bookshop earlier this year and said “I don’t know any mysteries! What’s your best gateway drug?” and the bookseller passed me this book. “Really?,” I thought. “Agatha Christie?” Turns out she’s sold two billion books for a reason. (Tied with Shakepeare for #1 fiction sales of all-time. No biggie.) When the elegant Orient Express is stopped by snowfall a murder is discovered and Hercule Poirot’s trip home is interrupted to solve the crime. After a slow start out of the station with fifty pages of mood and landscape setting, this book took off like a bullet train. It kept me up reading night after night.
9. Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How To Stop Yelling and Start Connecting by Dr. Laura Markham. Do you yell at your kids? I do. And then I feel terrible afterwards. It’s embarrassing. What am I doing? How do I let my buttons get pushed by a three year old refusing to put on his shoes? Enter this book. Dr. Laura Markham’s work is deeply empathetic, connected, and loving. I can confidently say this book has turned me into a better father by offering a simple three-step approach to be a more peaceful parent. Step 1. Regulating Yourself, Step 2. Fostering Connection, and Step 3. Coaching not Controlling. She says that discipline never (never!) works and offers many solutions using games and connection to coach behavior instead. I also recommend Dr. Laura’s fantastic newsletter and I was lucky to sit down with her in her living room in Brooklyn to discuss prioritizing presence to parent peacefully.
8. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. I can’t recall a book this emotionally and racially charged since I read To Kill A Mockingbird when I was 15 years old. And I liked this one better. Toni Morrison died last summer at 88 years old after winning a Pulitzer Prize, Nobel Prize, and a slew of other awards. This is her very first book, published in 1970, and she didn’t become well known for years afterwards. I loved imagining that when I read it. Her first book! Released without fanfare! It all takes place in Northern Ohio after the Great Depression and tells the story of a young black girl in an abusive family told from the point of view of another girl in her class. Some reviewers say the book could be triggering for people who have suffered physical abuse so I’ll leave you with that warning. (It has been banned a lot.) But if you are up for an enchanting book that sets your mind firmly somewhere else while sharing a briskly paced story with an unbelievably poetic voice … I highly recommend this.
7. Berlin by Jason Lutes. I remember visiting my friend Chris Kim at his Boston apartment years ago when he passed me his copy of Maus by Art Spiegelman. That OG graphic novel about the holocaust completely blew me away. I sadly never had a chance to return it so it sits on my shelf and has since been joined by work by artists like Alison Bechdel, Adrian Tomine, and Chris Ware. However, I am almost positive I’ve never read a graphic novel with the level of emotional, character, and plot complexity of this nearly 600-page wonder. I am not surprised Jason Lutes spent 22 years writing and illustrating it. (22 years!) If you’re like me, the graphic novel will take 50-100 pages to get into as new people and storylines keep popping out of nowhere but once you get a loose grasp on the dozens of characters you will truly get lost in it. Berlin was the progressive center of Europe during the Weimar Republic of 1918-1933 where ‘creativity, political thought, and sexual liberty burned bright before being snuffed out under the boot heel of fascism.’ If you have a craving to walk onto the Holodeck right now, press a button, and live somewhere completely different for a while, this is the book for you. I am already excited to read it again.
6. Halfbreed by Maria Campbell. A coming of age memoir by playwright, filmmaker, and Métis Elder Maria Campbell on her experience growing up in the middle of Canada through the 1940s and 50s. Originally published in 1973 with “missing pages” detailing her rape at the hands of the RCMP, the 2019 edition (pictured) has been restored with full manuscript as well as a breathtaking Afterword written by Campbell last year. Much First Nations history shared through memorable exchanges with Maria’s 104-year-old (!) Cree great-grandmother Cheechum and braided with bleakness, horror, and revelation. A story I can’t stop thinking about.
5. Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on love and life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed. Cheryl Strayed was the victim of severe abuse as a child, lost her mother in her early 20s, became addicted to heroin, and then walked alone up the Pacific Crest Trail for three months over more than a thousand miles. Somewhere along the way she developed the incredible superpower to see inside people’s souls and conjure up potions to heal their rawest wounds. She wielded this superpower in the form of anonymously writing a column called “Dear Sugar” for an online literary magazine called The Rumpus about a decade ago. This book is a collection of those columns and they will completely shatter you as she somehow manages to solve the question people didn’t ask her every single time. Here’s an example to give you a taste.
4. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C O’Brien. Mrs Frisby is a mouse with problems. She’s a recent widow after her husband was eaten by the cat. Her son Timothy is bedridden with a nasty chest cold. And the farmer is going to plough the field she lives on in two days which will destroy her home. Cue an epic 48-hour adventure involving flying crows, wise owls, dangerous cats, and genius rats. Completely absorbing. Beautifully written. And can you recall any other book with a single mother of four as the star of the show? The back says it’s for ages 8-11 but I think we can safely stretch that up many more decades. This is one of poet Nikki Giovanni’s three most formative books.
3. Lie With Me by Philippe Besson. Translated from French by Molly Ringwald. “Yes, that Molly Ringwald,” read the handwritten cue card on the Staff Picks wall at Toronto indie bookstore Type Books. That’s where I was first introduced to this gem about a hidden love affair between two teenage boys in rural France in 1984 which time warps from the past to today told as a first-person memory by the author. That summary means nothing, though. This book will squeeze your heart in many ways and I think could have the most exquisite final page of any novel I’ve ever read. André Aciman, author of Call Me By Your Name, says “Two young men find each other, always fearing that life itself might be the villain standing in their way. A stunning and heart-gripping tale.” This book is a true masterpiece.
2. When More Is Not Better: Overcoming America’s Obsession with Economic Efficiency by Roger L. Martin. Do you feel like the whole system is rigged? Like there’s nothing you can do to really get ahead or help affect true change? This is the book to read. It masterfully zooms up into the stratosphere of the entire democratic capitalist system we live in and pulls back the curtain on all the junky, rusted-out parts inside. Roger Martin was Dean of the Rotman School of Management for a good decade and a half and named the world’s #1 management thinker by Thinkers50. I’ve followed his strategy books over the years (Playing To Win, The Opposable Mind) but I think this is his best book. This book calls shenanigans on, well, nearly everything, and then outlines refreshing approaches on how to fix it. Most business books spend 300 pages outlining the problem and 50 pages on the solution. This book is the opposite. All ideas are filed under go-dos for business execs, political leaders, educators, and citizens. As an example, educators should temper the inclination to teach certainty, stop teaching reductionism as if it’s a good thing, help students appreciate the power of directly observable data, and elevate the appreciation of qualities (over quantities). Citizens should ‘multihome’ by consciously spending money away from the monopolists to avoid the deep structural and customer abusive situations that follow. (Another great argument for supporting independent bookstores.) Each point is backed by numbers and tightly screwed into lean and logical prose.
1. Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell. I’m going to come right out and say I think David Mitchell is the greatest novelist alive. He’s probably most famous for Cloud Atlas which is six Russian-dolled novellas spanning centuries with a connected soul. An easier entry point may be Black Swan Green which is the wonderful coming-of-age tale of a 13-year-old stutterer growing up in 1980s England. Or you can walk in through A Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, a historical fiction masterpiece set in Japan in the late 1700s. If the range between books isn’t enough there’s also a broader multiverse at play connecting all his books through characters and their relatives taking on different identities and forms across centuries. Sounds overwhelming? Maybe in concept but not in execution. As David says: “Art should be an anti-snobbery force.” Every David Mitchell book sends you somewhere else in vivid and often vertiginous ways. (No wonder five of his books have been long- or short-listed for the Man Booker and TIME has called him one of the world’s 100 Most Influential People.) Utopia Avenue is his newest and it tells the story of a British psychedelic folk band formed in SoHo in 1967. The story twists, turns, and then hits hyperdrive in the final act. It’s all woven so deeply into history that it really feels like you can hear the band playing. I promise you won’t want the music to end.
25 of the best books to read during Coronavirus
Have you heard?
The world is ending.
Or at least it appears to be.
Stock markets crashing, countries locking down, and everything sold out at the grocery stores. Well, almost everything.
Who else has been slowly looking around their place thinking: “How long can I really last in here?”, “Why didn’t I build that bunker when I had the chance?”, or “What do you mean nobody can find the can opener?”
Well, I put together a list of 49 things to do during the Coronovirus and now I’d like to offer 25 of the best books to read during Coronavirus. (Clearly all my writing these days ends in “during the Coronavirus” so please do reply and send me suggestions or others you’d like to see.)
These 25 books are a place for you to open your head and carefully put your mind for a while if, like me, yours just can’t stop spinning right now.
Let’s get into it:
25. The Floor Is Lava: 99 More Games for Everyone, Everywhere by Ivan Brett. Do you have kids bouncing off the walls already? Then you need this book. Remember that game you played when you were a kid where you pretended the floor was lava and you had to jump between all the couches and coffee tables to avoid melting into the Earth’s molten core? Well, I never really thought about it but the most beautiful thing about that game was that you didn’t need … anything. Nothing! You didn’t need a thing. This book is a wonderful collection of games like that. Leave it beside the dinner table.
24. The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I know what you’re thinking. Dark, right? First three lines on the back: “A father and son walk alone through post-apocalyptic America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray.” Yes, you’re right, it’s dark. But it is also touching. Because even though this phenomenally tight and sparse classic doesn’t sound like the heartwarmer you need right now it will produce deeper feelings of appreciation, gratitude, and love for what you do have right now.
23. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Taleb. Coronavirus is a black swan event. What’s that? A highly improbably event that is a) unpredictable, b) carries massive impact, and c) results in, after the fact, everyone baking up explanations to make it appear less random and more predictable than it really is. This is the book I have thought about over the past few weeks more than any other. It is absolutely essential reading to make sense of these times and (more importantly) help yourself prepare for even more of them in the future. (Bonus: Nassim Taleb is very active on Twitter and offers a lot of insight / rage on what is happening on Coronavirus.)
22. Civil Disobedience and Other Essays by Henry David Thoreau. I am not a big fan of social media or politics but if you’ve been followingmy Twitter account lately you’ve seen a sudden change in my behavior on both counts. I believe Coronavirus is too big a topic to be publicly silent about. (Inspiration from Seth Godin here.) I flipped open this book on civil disobedience for some guidance and inspiration and I think you should, too. Especially if you have a platform or a voice or are a leader people turn to in your family and team. And then, after you’ve read it, stick around for the the fantastic essay “Walking” which is wedged in the back like a cone-shapped chocolate nugget at the bottom of a Drumstick. I love walking and that essay jostled my mind even more. Here’s a link to the full text online. Walking! Sexier than ever.
21. Before After by Matthias Arégui and Anne-Margot Ramstein. Does it feel like your life is cleaving into Before Coronavirus and After Coronavirus phases? This book has no words and offers a metaphorical reflection as you ponder personal changes. On the left side of a page is an acorn. On the right side is an oak tree. On the left side of a page is a bud on a branch. On the right side is a fresh peach. On the left side is a fresh peach. On the right side is a rotten bug-infested peach that was left unpicked. You get the idea. If you’re intrigued, scroll to the end of this YouTube video for a peek inside.
20. Meanwhile: Pick Any Path by Jason Shiga. Did you like Choose Your Own Adventure books when you were a kid? If so, you’ll love this post-modern graphic novel with 3856 story possibilities (3856! seriously!) all told through images and rampant flipping between pages. It’s head-twisting, it’s frenetic, it’s mad-scientist, but if you’re into puzzles or games (or your child is) then this is for you. Like any great game, it is absolutely absorbing, frustrating, and rewarding at the same time.
19. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell. Do you want to disappear? Do you want to go somewhere really far away for a while? How about Japan in the year 1799? I highly recommend this book. Whenever I start telling people about author David Mitchell I catch myself saying “Have you heard of Cloud Atlas? He wrote that!” and then they usually go “Oh! Oh yeah, that was that movie with Tom Hanks, right?” Yes, Cloud Atlas did turn into a movie with Tom Hanks and Halle Berry, and yes it’s wonderful and crazy escapist too, but I personally found it a lot less accessible than this one.
18. Solitude: In Pursuit of a Singular Life in a Crowded World by Michael Harris. Are you living in your head too much right now? Are you getting a bit lost in there sometimes? I am. And if you’re with me then we both need to work on our ability to be in solitude. If loneliness is “alone and sad” then solitude is “alone and happy.” Michael Harris peels back the layers of this incredibly subtle life skill to show us why it’s crucial to master, what gets in the way, and how we can reorient ourselves in the distraction machine we live in. (PS. This book made my Best Of 2018 list.)
17. Thinker Toys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques byMichael Michalko. Are you feeling the tectonic plates below your business, workplace, or livelihood groaning? Are you already feeling like it’s going to be a long road to recovery or something more like this changes everything? If you are chomping at what’s next then this handbook of ways to poke and prod your own thinking is a great book to flip through to jostle your own thoughts.
16. SeinLanguage by Jerry Seinfeld. Can you believe Jerry Seinfeld has only written one book ever? Yes, it’s true. He’s reported to have another one out this fall but, until then, this is all we got. Even though it’s 30 years old it completely holds up. If you need some laughs to distract you, why not call up the most successful comedian in the world to help?
15. Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Okay, you’ve hung out in the 1700s so now it’s time to hang out in the 1800s. A hypnotically vivid autobiographical description of growing up in rural Wisconsin from shooting panthers to smoking meat in hollow tree trunks to playing catch with pig bladders. There is no plot. There is no crisis. There’s just 238 pages in 18-point font of vivid memories weaved into a captivating tableau that makes you feel like you’re living another life. Another fantastic dose of escapism. Written in 1937 as the first book in the famous “Little House” series. According to the wonderful folks at Common Sense Media it’s perfect for anyone age 7 and up. Yes, I read it for the first time recently and loved it. (ThanksGretchen Rubin.)
14. Naked by David Sedaris. About ten years ago my friend Shiv told me she read a David Sedaris essay every night before bed to help clear her thoughts. I remember thinking that sounds weird! But then I tried it. Turns out she’s right! This is something so soothing about David’s slow and paceful writing. The laughs always feel like a surprise even though you know they’re coming every three sentences. I can’t think of an author who grows on you more over the years. Btw, since you asked, popping out of the book in the pic above is indeed the thank you postcard David Sedaris sent me (!?!?) after I interviewed him for 3 Books.
13. Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger. A friend said to me the other day “Despite the physical seclusion my parents are thrilled I’m suddenly calling them every day.” Who else is feeling a pull back to their tribe? When our tenuous global connection feels short-circuited many of us likely lean back into the tribes which we know for sure we belong. This short book combines history, psychology, and anthropology to share why our tribal connection has been largely lost in modern society and why regaining it may be the key to our psychological survival. In the words of a hockey movie trailer, or this movie trailer this book may matter now more than ever before…
12. Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step At A Time by Jeff Speck. Since I brought up Thoreau’s “Walking” earlier let’s tap that nail a little deeper here. Do you ache for simpler times? Walkable neighborhoods? Small town living? I just finished this book I’ll post a longer review in my monthly book club but, suffice to say, Jeff’s voice is fresh, funny, and whip smart, and he will leave you convinced that almost nothing is as important as creating a rich walking life.
11. Moby Dick by Herman Melville. I freely admit this is the only book on this list that I haven’t read. But I want to! I’ve read the first 100 pages a couple times. I like it! But I crumble under its weight. And that’s exactly why I threw it on here. It’s so I could ask you a general question: What is your personal white whale book? Moby Dick? Lord of the Rings? The Count of Monte Cristo? Infinite Jest? What gigantic tome can you finally grab from the basement, dramatically blow the dust off the cover, and place firmly on your bedside table? Because now is time for that book, everybody. Now is that time.
10. The Moth. Loneliness is up! It was already up before Coronavirus but hailing “social distancing” as the new norm for a while has certainly jacked loneliness stock even more. (Sidenote: We should be calling it physical distancing not social distancing. Can we start doing that? Sure, yes, absolutely, keep far apart from everyone. That’s how we stop the virus. But we need to call, text, and connect more than ever before.) If you miss the feeling of hanging out with friends at a bar over a sticky pile of chicken wings then I recommend grabbing The Moth (or the wonderful follow-up All These Wonders) and letting yourself feel like you’re back in the ripped plastic booth under the neon Amstel Light signs. These are stories told live and without notes to standing-room crowds around the world. They will sound like the best story you’ve heard all night when you’re out with friends.
9. Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH). Jason Fried and DHH run a famously 100% remote organization called Basecamp. They also are incredible writers who have treated their company as a management test kitchen. If you’re trying to figure out new ways of operating then this is a great thought-provoking primer on what’s possible. (They also wrote a follow-up more specifically about remote-working)
8. Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? By Seth Godin. Pairs well with Rework above (which features a blurb from Seth Godin on the cover). I debated whether to put this or The Dip on here but I think if your employment is feeling shaky then this is the better one to start with. No matter what happens, you own you. Challenges are coming. That’s for sure. But you own you. And this is a guidebook to jacking up your confidence, unlocking boxes you didn’t realize you were sitting inside, and seeing your strengths and opportunities with fresh eyes.
7. Hatchet by Gary Paulson. Do you feel like you just crash landed in the Canadian wilderness and you’re all alone right now? And you need to figure out how to collect your wits and sort yourself out to make it through this trying time? Well, that’s exactly what happens to 13-year-old Brian Robeson in this YA book about survival and determination.
6. The Book of Awesome by Neil Pasricha. My own book? What the hell? Well, I’ve actually been feeling a lot of deja vu over the past couple weeks. I began writing 1000 Awesome Things in 2008 during a very similar feeling period … crashing stock market, rising unemployment, a sort of “anxiety everywhere” cloud floating above us. (That was on top of my own inner world, of course.) The daily blog posts I wrote to cheer myself up and provide a getaway for the everyday eventually got stapled together into this book.
5. There Is No Good Card For This by Kelsey Crowe and Emily McDowell. Emily McDowell out-Hallmarks Hallmark. Her incredible cards over at Emily McDowell and Friends are wonderful, beautiful, and inspiring. (Get a dose on her Instagram, too.) Elizabeth Gilbert calls this book ‘a wonderful crash course in Humanity 101… shows you how to show up as the best possible version of yourself when it matters most.’ A great I find myself turning to again and again. (PS. Check out my conversation with Emily here.)
4. On The Shortness of Life by Seneca. If you’ve followed my stuff for a while you know I’ve talked about this little 2000-year-old essay many times. I keep a copy in my suitcase. In stressful times it seems to give me much needed comfort and grounding. Given that it’s 2000 years old the whole thing is out of copyright and available online here. (If you like this and want another dose of stoic philosophy I recommend The Art of Living by Epictetus.)
3. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. If you are looking for a book of ultimate redemption over struggle then here it is. Zora Neale was born in Alabama in 1891 and published this novel about a Southern black woman’s journey to independence in 1937. Born from a rape and raised by her grandmother who was a slave, it’s an incredibly epic tale of her life which (I promise) ultimately rewards at the end.
2. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck. A lot of what happens to us over the coming weeks and months is going to come down to mindset. How are you able to see what happens to you? A deeply researched book that will help you develop a growth mindset across all spectrums of life from business to parenting.
1. Somebody Loves You, Mr. Hatch by Eileen Spinelli. We got a letter in our mailbox last night from somebody on our street who’s offering to help anybody, with any errand, at any time. How beautiful is the tightened togetherness during tragedy? How are your neighbors doing and how can you help? And, a bit less discussed, what are the ripple effects of your help? This children’s book helps show that impact. It’s a tear-inducing story of a lonely old man who receives a giant box of chocolates from a secret admirer which helps him become a loving citizen, friend, and neighbor. When it turns out the box was delivered to the wrong address, he quickly returns to his glum and depressed state. But the people he began loving haven’t forgotten all that love and the book closes with them lifting him back up. For ages 5–8 or, you know, anyone who wants to cry while putting their kid to bed.
7 ways to read (a lot) more books this year
How many books do you read a year?
For most of my adult life I read maybe five books a year — if I was lucky. I called myself a reader! I told people I was a reader! But in reality I’d just read a couple on vacation and have a few slow burners sitting on the bedside table for months.
But then a few years ago I surprised myself by suddenly reading 50 books. And last year I read well over 100. I have never felt more creatively alive in all areas of my life. I feel more interesting, I feel like a better husband, I feel like a better father, and my writing output has dramatically increased.
Amplifying my reading rate has been the lead domino that’s tipped over a slew of others.
I’m disappointed I didn’t do it sooner.
Why did I wait 20 years?
Well, our world today is designed for shallow skimming rather than deep diving, so it took me some time to identify the specific changes that skyrocketed my reading rate. So how did I 10x my reading rate? Well, I did seven specific things that I think you can do, too.
Here they are:
1. Centralize reading in your home
Back in 1998, psychologist Roy Baumeister and his colleagues performed their famous “chocolate chip cookie and radish” experiment. They split test subjects into three groups and asked them not to eat anything for three hours before the experiment. Group 1 was given chocolate chip cookies and radishes, and were told they could eat only the radishes. Group 2 was given chocolate chip cookies and radishes, and were told they could eat anything they liked. Group 3 was given no food at all. Afterward, the researchers had all three groups attempt to solve an impossible puzzle, to see how long they would last. It’s not surprising that group 1, those who had spent all their willpower staying away from the cookies, caved the soonest.
What does this have to do with reading? I think of having a TV in your main living area as a plate of chocolate chip cookies. So many delicious TV shows tempt us, reducing our willpower to tackle the books.
Roald Dahl’s poem “Television” says it all: “So please, oh please, we beg, we pray / go throw your TV set away / and in its place, you can install / a lovely bookshelf on the wall.”
The first step to reading more is moving your TV to the basement. My wife Leslie and I did this and then installed a bookshelf on a wall near our front door. Now we see it, walk by it, and touch the bookshelf dozens of times a day. And the TV sits dormant unless the Raptors are in the playoffs.
2. Make a public commitment
In his groundbreaking book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert Cialdini shares a psychology study showing that once people place their bets at the racetrack, they are much more confident about their horse’s chances than they were just before laying down the bet. He goes on to explain how commitment is one of the big six weapons of social influence. So why can’t we think of ourselves as the racehorses? Make the bet on reading by opening an account at Goodreads, friending a few coworkers or friends, and then updating your profile every time you read a book. Or put together an email list to send out short reviews of the books you read. I do exactly that each month, with my Monthly Book Club Email. I stole the idea from bestselling author Ryan Holiday, who has a great reading list.
3. Find a few trusted, curated lists
Related to the above, the publishing industry puts out over 500,000 books a year in english alone. Do you have time to sift through 1000 new books a week? No, nobody does, so we use proxies like Amazon recommendations. But should we get our reading lists from retailers? If you’re like me, and you love the “staff picks” wall in independent bookstores, there’s nothing as nice as getting one person’s favorite books. Finding a few trusted, curated lists can be as simple as the email lists I mentioned, but with a bit of digging you can likely find the one that totally aligns with your tastes. Some good lists are from Bill Gates, Reese Witherspoon, Andrew Luck, and Derek Sivers.
4. Change your mindset about quitting
It’s one thing to quit reading a book and feel bad about it. It’s another to quit a book and feel proud of it. All you have to do is change your mindset. Just say, “Phew! Now I’ve finally ditched this brick to make room for that gem I’m about to read next.” An article that can help enable this mindset is “The Tail End,” by Tim Urban, which paints a striking picture of how many books you have left to read in your lifetime. Once you fully digest that number, you’ll want to hack the vines away to reveal the oases ahead.
I quit three or four books for every book I read to the end. I do the “first five pages test” before I buy any book (checking for tone, pace, and language) and then let myself off the hook if I need to stop halfway through.
5. Take a “news fast” and channel your reading dollars
I subscribed to the New York Times and five magazines for years. I rotated subscriptions to keep them fresh, and always loved getting a crisp new issue in the mail. After returning from a long vacation where I finally had some time to lose myself in books, I started realizing that this shorter, choppier nature of reading was preventing me from going deeper. So I canceled all my subscriptions.
Besides freeing up mindshare, what does canceling all news inputs do? For me, it saved more than $500 per year. That can pay for about 50 books per year. What would I rather have 10 or 20 years later — a prized book collection which I’ve read and learned from over the years…or a pile of old newspapers? And let’s not forget your local library. If you download Library Extension for your browser, you can see what books and e-books are available for free right around the corner.
6. Triple your churn rate
I realized that for years I’d thought of my bookshelf as a fixed and somewhat artistic object: There it is, sitting by the flower vases! Now I think of it as a dynamic organism. Always moving. Always changing. In a given week I probably add about five books to the shelf and get rid of three or four. Books come in through lending libraries in our neighborhood, a fantastic used bookstore, local indie and chain stores, and, of course, online outlets. Books go out when we pass them to friends, sell them to the used bookstore, or drop them off at the lending library. This dynamism means I’m always walking over to the shelf, never just walking by it. As a result, I read more.
7. Reapply the 10,000 steps rule
A good friend once told me a story that really stuck with me. He said Stephen King had told people to read something like five hours a day. My friend said, “That’s ridiculous. Who can do that?” But then, years later, he found himself in Maine on vacation. He was waiting in line outside a movie theater with his girlfriend, and guess who was waiting in front of him? Stephen King! His nose was in a book the whole time in line. When they got into the theater, Stephen King was still reading as the lights dimmed. When the lights came up, he pulled his book open right away. He even read as he was leaving. Now, I haven’t personally confirmed this story with The King himself but I think the message is an important one either way. Basically, you can read a lot more. There are minutes hidden in all the corners of the day, and they add up to a lot of minutes. In a way, it’s like the 10,000 steps rule. Walk around the grocery store, park at the back of the lot, chase your kids around the house, and bam — 10,000 steps.
It’s the same with reading.
When did I read those five books a year for most of my life? On holidays or during long flights. “Oh! A lot of downtime coming,” I’d think. “Better grab a few books.”
When do I read now? All the time. A few pages here. A few pages there. I have a book in my bag at all times. In general I read nonfiction in the mornings, when my mind is in active learning mode, and fiction at night before bed, when my mind needs an escape.
Slipping pages into all the cricks and corners of the day adds up.
So let me ask you some blunt questions: Are you really ready to 10x your reading rate? Are you prepared to make sacrificial lambs of your TV and newspapers? Are you ready to quit more to read more? Are you ready to publicly commit to the world?
I hope so and I hope some of these steps help.
Happy reading.
The Very Best Books I Read In 2019
Welcome to my third annual list of “The Very Best Books I Read This Year.” (Here are my 2017 and 2018 lists.)
Now, books make great gifts but if you want some other intentional living gift ideas check out my Unconventional Christmas Gift Guide.
These are my favorite books I read this year. I hope you find one or two you like.
Happy holidays,
Neil
—
19. The Common Good by Robert B. Reich. Think of a beautifully safe small town where nobody locks their doors. Now imagine the first person who comes through breaking and entering. Pretty easy pickings! Nobody locks their doors. Trust plummets. Arms race erupts. Locks. Security systems. Video cameras. This type of trust evaporation and arms racing has happened everywhere and Robert Reich gives an incredibly lucid portrait of exactly what happened when to get us where we are now. I call it trust, he calls it the common good, but either way, this is a vital read to help understand the world we live in. (Sidenote: One of my highlights of 2019 was giving a SXSW talk with Frank Warren called “Building Trust In Distrustful Times”. I used this book to develop some ideas in that talk.)
18. Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. I read this book as a child… and stopped. I didn’t like it. I read this book as a teen… and stopped. I didn’t like it. I read this book this year… and couldn’t stop. I loved it. Proof a book has to catch you at the right time. My whole life I thought Alice was a children’s book and … it’s not! The twisted references, complex mind games, and crazy absurdism are deliciously adult but baked into simplistic prose. But just because something looks like vanilla pudding doesn’t mean it’s not crème brûlée, you know what I mean? There is so much layered complexity here. Did you know Lewis Carroll was an Oxford-educated mathematician? Just read this section on Wikipedia about the style, themes, and allusions in this book. A hundred pages of bliss. Hope it catches you at the right time.
17. Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng. 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 feel yourself rubbing against bigger ethical questions that will make you wonder “What would I do in that situation?” A book that will bubble in your blood. (PS. Get it before they ruin the cover ... set to debut as a mini-series starring Reese Witherspoon in 2020!)
16. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor. Like Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder, this is an autobiographical scenescape book. It tells the story of a young black girl growing up in rural Mississippi in the 1930s and serves as a deeply immersive vitamin for growing empathy. Characters pop, dialogue crackles, and it reads like an action movie with the constant acceleration to the finish. I finished it in the middle of the night and then let out a huge deep breath. (Sidenote: This is one of The Hate U Give author Angie Thomas’s three most formative books.)
15. Savage Season by Joe R. Lansdale. This book felt like a Quentin Tarantino movie. Two loudmouth, straight-talking friends down in the Texas countryside get sucked into a bumbling plot to find some lost money and everything goes horribly wrong. Fast-paced action, snappy dialogue, and a constantly swerving plot. You’ll feel dizzy and satisfied at the end. And like a Quentin Tarantino movie, it’s definitely Rated R. A great book to escape into another world.
14. Birds Art Life: A Year of Observation by Kyo Maclear. A fragile, unique, small memoir of discovering urban bird watching while wrestling with middle age. On its surface, this book seems … strange. A memoir of urban bird watching? But there’s more here. Portlandia co-creator Carrie Brownstein says “We’re living on a million tiny stages. Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Facebook, YouTube. Dinner plates are showcases for our food, beds become venues for our slumber, selfies are curtain calls for our faces.” And as Kyo writes in this book “our economic growth model that assumes if you make something small (unless it is boutique and artisanal, and thus financially large or monumentally miniature), it is because you are somehow lacking and frail.” That is simply not true. We need to reject that idea as our world amplifies into 10x-ing everything, moonshots, and scale. This is a quiet, meditative book about life’s tiny beautiful things. A grounding perspective reset when the world feels too big.
13. P Is For Pteradactyl: The Worst Alphabet Book Ever by Lushlife aka Raj Haldar. A is for Aisle. E is for Ewe. T is for Tsunami. And below each beautifully illustrated drawing is a tricky, head-scratching sentence. Like for the letter T it says: “The charging tsunami washed away all of Tchaikovsky’s tchotchkes.” The world is never what it seems. This book pulls up that curtain nicely for children.
12. Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi. This is a non-fiction book that feels like a fairy-tale. Originally published in 1981 in Japan (where it sold nearly 5 million copies in its first year) it was finally translated to English thirty years later. Kuroyanagi was one of Japan’s most popular TV personalities for decades and this is a memoir of her childhood of joining a completely unconventional school near Tokyo during World War II. If you believe that trust and control are inversely related (like I do) you will love this book. You can read it as an innocent story of an unconventional childhood or a prickly indictment of the entire factory-style education system.
11. The Person and the Situation: Perspectives of Social Psychology by Lee Ross and Richard E. Nisbett. 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. 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? 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. It feels like you are sitting in a great college class. (Sidenote: This is one of Malcolm Gladwell’s three most formative books. Our 3 Books chat is right here.)
10. Meanwhile: Pick Any Path by Jason Shiga. Did you like Choose Your Own Adventure books when you were a kid? If so, you’ll love this post-modern graphic novel with 3856 story possibilities (seriously!) all told through images and rampant flipping between pages. It’s head-twisting, it’s frenetic, it’s mad-scientist, but if you’re into puzzles or games (or your child is) then this is for you.
9. Comedy Sex God by Pete Holmes. I try to read across as many genres as I can but one genre that’s been largely missing is the Celebrity Memoir. It’s not that I don’t like celebrities. It’s not that I don’t like memoirs. It’s just that I don’t like the celebrity memoir. Why? I guess I’m cynical about them. The book often feels part of a larger marketing plan cooked up in a Hollywood boardroom. Somebody’s having a moment! And so there’s movie billboards, an 8-episode podcast, a Vanity Fair feature, and, yes, a crappy book. Why do I go on this rant? Because Pete Holmes (Crashing, Dirty Clean, You Made It Weird) is a celebrity. And this is a memoir. But it’s not a celebrity memoir. It’s an incredibly well-written and hilarious coming-of-age story from a comedian at the top of his game. This book comes at you fast with a lot of uncomfortable moments and Pete’s unflinching honesty. The book talks about (yes) comedy, sex, and God because everything Pete does is underpinned by this gigantic gnawing “What is this?” feeling that we should really have about the whole universe. What is the universe? Why is it expanding? Expanding into what? Why are we here? How did we get here? What happens next? These are huge questions most of us put out of our mind to get through the day but Pete keeps touching and tapping up against them in this beautiful book.
8. Less by Andrew Sean Greer. When writer Arthur Less gets an invitation to his ex-boyfriend’s wedding he decides to accept a slew of half-baked authorly invitations around the world rather than shamefacedly attend as the awkward dateless former lover. What follows is an incredibly hilarious and woven tale through distant countries. First off, it feels like you are visiting everywhere he goes. How does he pull this off so well? You’re in Morocco, you’re in India, you’re in Japan. You’re traveling. You’re right there. You feel it. Second, it’s hilarious and laugh-out-loud maybe sorta like Barney’s Version or A Fraction of the Whole or Catch-22. And, finally, the finishing move: the entire book is written by an eloquent first-person-floating-over-the-scene narrator whose identity isn’t revealed until the final pages.
7. The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers. In the mid-80s, near the end of his life, famed professor and mythologist Joseph Campbell (Hero With A Thousand Faces) sat down at George Lucas’s Skywalker Ranch to record a six-hour PBS special exploring his ideas on religion, spirituality, symbolism, our connection to the planet, our connection to our past, and our existence in the universe in one super long conversation with journalist Bill Moyers. This book is a transcript of that conversation. Hugely mind-expanding with ideas about how we make sense of our world and what’s really below the surface of everything we see.
6. The Night Riders by Matt Furie. This children’s book has zero words in it … and is probably the book I read most often to my kids all year. What’s it about? Well, uh, okay, there are these two friends, a frog and a mouse, and they wake up in the middle of the night, eat some bug cereal for breakfast, and then walk out of their mushroom house, click open their garage door opener, and then hop on their bikes to go on a wild, fantastical, totally absurd late-night adventure featuring scary-not-scary dragons, a secret underground computer lab, and some dolphin surfing… all before finding a cliff to watch a beautiful sunrise at the end of their all-nighter. A wild night out without going out. Completely provokes the imagination because there are no words so your kids make up all the dialogue and plot details.
5. Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein. I think one of the ugliest things in the world today is the polished resume. Polished LinkedIn profiles! Polished everything! Too much polish. I like blemishes. Blemishes are interesting. Weird jobs, strange hobbies, gap years. Have you read Jordan Peterson’s bio? Regardless of what you think of the dude, talk about an interesting resume. When I interviewed candidates at Walmart I was most interested in those gaps and rough edges and the stuff painted outside the lines. Because that’s where the person had come from, how they grew, how they developed. Crucible moments where their character was forged. I think the increasing specialization of our world, at younger and younger ages, results in far too much fragility. Cognitive entrenchment! Being really great at one thing often means you’re pretty bad at lots of things. The jack of all trades is the next king of the world. A powerful book for those feeling wobbly in their career, wondering what’s next, or for anyone thinking all the tiny things they’ve done don’t amount to much. Actually, they amount to a lot. This book shows you why.
4. Howard Stern Comes Again by Howard Stern. 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 the 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 if you’re interested in learning how to be a better interviewer then you’ll gain a ton here, too. Howard sounds like a guy hanging on the barstool beside you but in this book he reveals his deep preparation method and you get to watch it in action.
3. Don’t Touch my Hair by Sharee Miller. How do you teach children about boundaries? Read them this book. A wonderful story about a girl named Aria who has big, bouncy, curly hair that everybody wants to touch. After she has a big scream one day (“Don’t touch my hair!”) she learns that people need to ask permission to touch her hair and that she can feel confident saying yes or saying no. Pairs well with C is for Consent by Eleanor Morrison, which I also loved.
2. Ernest Hemingway on Writing by Larry W. Phillips. I currently have this book in the gold medal spot on the writing book podium ahead On Writing by Stephen King (silver) or Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott (bronze). Ernest Hemingway thought it was bad luck to talk about writing. So he didn’t! Or he thought he didn’t. But twenty-five years after he died journalist Larry W. Phillips combed through Hemingway’s personal letters to friends, editors, fellow writers, and critics, as well as interviews he conducted over his career, and pulled out the many wise and remarkable thoughts Hemingway shared on writing over his life. He then sort of shaped and sculpted them together by theme (“Working Habits”, “The Writer’s Life”, “Characters”, etc.) to produce this slender 140-page volume of endless nuggets. I circled so many quotes and made so many notes in the margins that I just ended up leaving it on my bedside table when I was done in the hopes that it will slowly merge into my subconscious. A gem for anyone that writes and wants to write better.
1. Chasing The Scream: The First And Last Day of the War on Drugs by Johann Hari. I didn't put an official ranking beside my top books this year but if I was forced to then this would probably take top spot. An incredible book just stuffed to the brim with big ideas and big characters. Do you think drugs should be illegal? Which ones? Why? What happens when they’re not? What happened when they weren’t? Who made them illegal? Why? And what happened when they did? It turns out that precisely zero of the answers to these questions are obvious. This is a massively illuminating and mind expanding exploration of our relationship with drugs. Everyone should read it. It is at once a detailed history of the drug war, a buddy-beside-you-on-a-bus account of one man’s obsessive across-the-world dive into the abyss of the war on drugs, and a series of hopeful stories full of compassion and love that will honestly surprise you as you’re crying.
9 of the World's Best Email Newsletters (Actually Worth Clogging Your Inbox For)
Your attention is for sale.
Detergent jingles blare before YouTube videos, podcast hosts can’t stop yapping about sweat-whisking undies, and spammers are even weaselling their way into our text messages.
I feel like these days we need to make sure our personal email inboxes become even more of a safe haven. Bunkers! Last vestiges of quiet in this loud, loud, loud world. You open it up and you want substance. Value. Gold. And if you don’t get it? Vamoose!
So protect your digital home.
Dig a moat around it. Ready the archers. Fill the cauldrons with boiling oil. And then, just before you raise the drawbridge, make sure you invite only your most interesting friends — the fascinating, provocative, enlightening ones — to join you for a celebratory feast in The Great Hall.
Below are the nine people I’d invite to my Great Hall feast.
And all nine pass my 3 key principles of:
Real Human: The email must come from a real human with a real name and a real face who I can actually reply to and (ideally) get a response back. (Sidenote: If you want to see why I think “humans over algorithms” is crucial, check out my SXSW Speech “Building Trust In Distrustful Times”)
Super Value: Time is precious so the emails I’ve recommended need to offer a depth and richness that jars my brain with incongruent ideas I can thoughtfully apply to ultimately living a more intentional life.
No Ads: “I feel monetized” is the new “I need a shower.” I’m not recommending any clothing companies with pics of sexy people wearing $800 rainboots traipsing through orchid swamps. And if any real human delivering super value is insidiously dropping in ads (and tons of the big ones do), they’re out on my list. Man’s gotta have a code.
And now: onto the list!
9. Barking Up The Wrong Tree by Eric Barker
I’m not sure how he does it but Eric Barker seems to suck up business and self-help books like a vacuum cleaner. A turbo-powered vacuum cleaner. But then, unlike the rest of it, who sort of leave it at that, Eric Barker does not leave it at that. He pulls off a magic trick something akin to opening up the dusty vacuum cleaner bag, sneezing a ton while wading through dust balls and cat hair, and then pulling out three valuable things sucked up in there — a tiny doll’s comb, the back of an earring, a couple of coins — and then tells us all about those three valuable things in a warm and witty way. And the best part? We don’t have to vacuum!
Frequency: Sporadic (approx. 1–2x / month)
Perfect for: Business and self-help book lovers looking to inject more into their brain and anyone looking to stay on top of “thinking trends”
Number of subscribers: >320,000
Signup Form: https://www.bakadesuyo.com/ (Wait for the pop-up)
8. Austin Kleon’s Newsletter
I like the idea that success blocks future success. Are you killing it as a real estate agent? Great. But… what if you hadn’t quit ballet when you were twenty-two? Would you be on Broadway right now? Hard to know because you’re selling so many condos. Are you a great Vice President Of Something at your company? Fantastic. But what artistic itches remain inside you’re always thinking about scratching? Austin Kleon’s newsletter helps me scratch those itches. He’s a former reference librarian turned bestselling author (Steal Like An Artist, How To Keep Going) who points my brain at all kinds visual art, “ear candy,” quotes, and artistic ideas every Friday morning. A great way to keep challenging my own ideas and helps me explore lots of little “what if I dids.”
Frequency: Weekly (Fridays)
Perfect for: People who want to rock themselves out of stasis, those who like getting their brain poked with art, and those who feel a bit uncultured (like me) in big broad areas like music and painting and film
Number of Subscribers: > 60,000
Signup Form: https://austinkleon.com/newsletter/
7. Aha Parenting by Dr. Laura Markham
I am trying to be a better dad. Sometimes I yell at my kids and then feel a huge wave of shame. I get frustrated when it’s taking fifteen minutes to put on rainboots because we’re late and it’s not raining, even though my kids aren’t doing anything wrong. They’re kids. So often I find what I’m lacking are the words. The phrases. The child logic brain to know what to say and how to say it in a way that’s meaningful to them. And that’s exactly what Dr. Laura helps with. Her emails are simple, clear, and, I like to remind myself, aspirational. So, what do we do now to get ready? Make it a game. “You can’t put your boots on! No way, nooooooo wayy!” And my wife Leslie’s new technique of playing a song as a countdown to get going. (“Bust A Move” by Young MC works great. Yes, I put that link to their live 1989 Arsenio Hall performance, just because.) Plus, lots of other things. Some days are frustrating. But Dr. Laura’s email is helping me (slowly) become a better dad.
Frequency: You choose between weekly or weekly + two blog posts
Perfect for: Parents who want to be better parents, those fascinated by language and communication, and (for the same reason) managers and leaders of teams
Number of Subscribers: > 130,000
Signup Form: At the bottom of https://www.ahaparenting.com/
6. Granted by Adam Grant
Adam Grant is the nerd’s Superman. Youngest tenured faculty in history of Wharton. (I was still in school when he got tenure.) Writes a New York Times column. Gives TED Talks. Drops an award-winning podcast. And, you know, debates Malcolm Gladwell in his spare time. I think it’s safe to say he’s at the top of the social sciences Pyramid of Influence. Every month his Granted newsletter gives me a little peek at the world through his eyes. I always find at least one article to share with friends and family. (I really liked this profile on Adam from Philly Mag.)
Frequency: Monthly
Perfect for: Business book junkies, leaders looking to become better leaders, those looking for new ways of thinking about same old things …
Number of Subscribers: >100,000
Signup Form: https://www.adamgrant.net/newsletter
*** Ahhlife.com
This one isn’t a newsletter so I gave it three asterisks instead. But it’s gold. And it’s one of my faves. Let’s start with this: Do you journal? You should! It’s good for your brain. Good for your body. Research shows it makes you happy. I talk about journaling, I make YouTube videos about journaling, I even make actual physical journals, but guess what? I suck at journaling. That’s why I’m always preaching about it. I’m preaching to myself. Here’s what happens: I snap myself into the journaling habit! I get there! I’m there! I’m doing it, I’m journaling, for a day, a few days, for maybe a week. And then I fall off. Bam. Right to the ground. So now I’ve come up with a patchwork journaling system that has been working for a while. How does it work? Well, first, I surround myself with journals. Two-Minute Mornings in the morning. A longform journal of blank pages on my bedstand to squeeze out late-night anxieties. And… what else? This puppy. Ahhlife.com. What is it? A great little free email journaling subscription that helps me supplement my constantly floundering home journaling efforts. A little plug for the drug. They send me an email on the dates and time I picked and I just reply back with my entry … and I’m done. Super quick. Super easy.
Frequency: You pick your own date / time frequency. (I do Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays at 9pm.)
Perfect for: People who already know the benefits of journaling but are having trouble getting into the routine…
Number of Subscribers: (Not listed)
Signup Form: https://ahhlife.com/ (Click “Start your journal now”)
5. Seth Godin’s Blog Posts
Seth is best known as a marketing guru who’s written 19 (!) bestselling books. But I think of him as this deeply enlightened Yoda spouting pithy and almost coded bits of wisdom that sometimes fly way over my head and other times hit me with a ton of bricks and help me completely re-orient myself in the machine. I absolutely love listening to him.
Frequency: Daily (!?!?)
Perfect for: Anyone interested in human nature, entrepreneurs and those working without a safety net, and, of course, marketing folks…
Number of Subscribers: (Not listed)
Signup Form: https://seths.blog/subscribe/
4. The Ryan Holiday Reading Recommendation Email
Do you remember when you were a kid and your parents harped on you to read all the time? They got you a bookshelf. They read to you at night. Do you still live with them? If not, who harps on you to read now? Well, Ryan Holiday will. He’s happy to! Every month he sends out a list of the 5–10 books he’s consumed together with the not-so-subtle plotline to “Read more books, dummy!” He preaches about how it’s work, your job, your education. His tastes veer towards classics, Stoic philosophy, biographies, translations. “Smart books for smart people.” Yes, I feel really dumb reading his list sometimes. But it always, always gives me a good push. (By the way, I liked Ryan’s email list so much I completely copied it, with his permission, and started my own Monthly Reading Email)
Frequency: Monthly
Perfect for: Readers looking for the next great book, booksellers and librarians and book industry folks, anyone aspiring to be a better writer or reader…
Number of Subscribers: > 100,000
Signup Form: https://ryanholiday.net/reading-newsletter/
3. Brain Food by Shane Parrish
Shane Parrish is a former Canadian spy whose weekly Brain Food email aims to break through the “fast food noise” of the world with a grounded, thoughtful reflection of how we’re seeing the world right back to us. Super high level. Way above the fray. Thinking about thinking. A fantastic zoom-out and perfect way to start your week. He’s a kindred spirit on reading more books, too. (Note: Although Shane’s email is the only one on this list with a sponsor, I’ve chosen to include it because of the Ethics he shares on his About page.)
Frequency: Weekly (Sundays)
Number of Subscribers: > 200,000
Perfect for: Anyone who feels too micro wanting to get more macro, people looking for an edge, and I know this will sound like a contradiction, but those also looking to slow down their thinking and mentally chill more …
Signup Form: https://fs.blog/newsletter/
2. Take 5 with Mel Robbins
Whenever I open up Mel’s email I feel like I’m hanging out behind the scenes with an A-list celebrity who’s somehow radically self-aware, authentic, and even self-critical. Her weekly email sounds like a long email from a friend who shares the shame she felt visiting her grandmother after not visiting for years, the pain of her son being bullied at school, and even being a mom of three deciding she needed pelvic physio and encouraging everyone to look into it. I love Mel’s sharp, insightful, empathetic tone on how to build your best life. Makes sense she’s one of the world’s most booked female speakers, has sold more books on Audible’s self-publishing platform than anybody, and why one day last year every single recommended video on my YouTube sidebar featured Mel Robbins. YouTube knows something. And TV execs watch YouTube! Makes sense she’s hosting a national talk show debuting this fall. I’ve already heard people calling Mel the White Oprah. She is three big flame emojis.
Frequency: Weekly (Thursdays)
Number of Subscribers: > 350,000
Perfect for: Anyone looking for post-modern self-help, a no-BS kick in the pants, and a strong passionate friendly voice whispering in their ear once a week…
Signup Form: https://melrobbins.com/
1. Raptitude: Getting Better At Being Human by David Cain
Ten years ago David Cain wrote an article on Raptitude mentioning my blog 1000 Awesome Things and I noticed a traffic spike and hyperlinked over to say hello. I wrote that blog for four years. David’s been writing his for over ten (ten!) and has been constantly getting deeper and deeper into what it means to (yes) get better at being human. David is a fortysomething guy from Winnipeg and he’s one of the best street-level philosophers out there. He writes about The Elegant Art of Not Giving A Shit and how Everything You Own Is A Relationship You’re In and about The Simple Joy of “No Phones Allowed.” (I like his writing so much I got permission to quote him a bunch in The Happiness Equation.) My wife Leslie and I often swap Raptitude posts back and forth over email with our thoughts on top. Because I know so many “thought leaders” who read David’s writing I sometimes think of him as a bit of a thought leader’s thought leader. His writing is crisp and thoughtful and occasionally veers into challenging and cerebral waters. David Cain isn’t on the lecture circuit. His books aren’t front of the bookstore. He isn’t posting Insta-stories, sweating the size of his platform, or trying to “build his list” with piles of Facebook ads. Why? Because he’s chill. Because he’s beautiful. And because he’s living the life he preaches.
Frequency: Sporadic (approx. every 2–4 weeks)
Perfect for: People looking to live more pacefully, anyone feeling an itchiness about the world today, and people looking to lengthen their attention spans…
Number of subscribers: >30,000
Signup Form: https://www.raptitude.com/
And, yes, yes, of course: I also have my own email list which I didn’t put on the list above. I write and send an article every other Wednesday morning to over 30,000 people all about living intentionally (failure, trust, reading, resilience, etc.) Samples? This article you’re reading, “8 More Ways To Read A Lot More Books,” or “Why You Should Never, Ever Retire.” I’d love for you to check it out.
Now, those are my dinner guests!
Time is precious. Attention is precious. Thanks for reading.
A slightly modified version of this article originally appeared on Medium.
