The Very Best Books I Read in 2023

Hey everyone,
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The weather outside is frightful and, my dear – it's time to read.
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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.
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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.”)
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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.
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And now: here are the very best books I read in 2023.
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Thanks, as always, for reading,
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Neil

P.S. Interested in more of my reviews? Click here to join the Book Club email list.

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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.
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​Perfect for: gamers and grown-up gamers, corporate team leaders, and anyone looking to learn more about business strategy without reading cases or textbooks…
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​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.)
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​Perfect for: people saying "I want to read more but just don't have the time", book clubbers, and anyone who enjoys classics…
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​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.
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​Perfect for: coming-of-age fans, graphic novel aficionados, people who have struggled to fit in or find their way…
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​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.
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​Perfect for: Biography fans, environmentalists, and anyone wanting to run away and live up in a tree for a while…
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​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!
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​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')…
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​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.
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​Perfect for: nature lovers, world travelers, and, of course, the bird-loving or bird-curious…
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​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.
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​Perfect for: community builders and leaders, people who liked Sapiens, history buffs…
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​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."
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​Perfect for: Midwesterners, fans of children's poetry like Shel Silverstein or Dennis Lee, anyone looking to learn more about black history…
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​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.
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​Perfect for: library lovers, true crime fans, and anyone whose brain enjoys jumping from one deep-dive nerdy geek-out to another…
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​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.
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​Perfect for: experimental fiction fans, anyone who liked Brokeback Mountain, poetry buffs…
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​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.
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​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…
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​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.”
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​Perfect for: bathroom readers, wisdom junkies, and people craving deeper directional lines for living in this world full of pop-up-and-yelling heads…
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​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.
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​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)
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​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."
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​Perfect for: cultural history buffs, anybody who works with really big groups, fans of joy…
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​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.
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​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…
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​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.
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​Perfect for: Tarantino fans, people unafraid by "gritty and raw", and anyone who could use a good short book…
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​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.
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​Perfect for: Southerners, memoir lovers, and, once again, birders…
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​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.
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​Perfect for: five-year-olds, pirates, and anyone who needs a reminder to embrace their sensitive side…
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​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.
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​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.
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​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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7 quotes on the power of reading from Charlie Munger

Hey everyone,
​
Charlie Munger died last Tuesday at age 99. If you don't know him, I recommend this New York Times obituary or (to go deeper) the book Poor Charlie's Almanack which was one of my top books of 2020. I was texting my friend Shane the day his death was announced and he told me had a meeting scheduled with Charlie. That day! They were going to discuss Charlie coming on Shane's podcast. He got a cancellation from Charlie's assistant a few hours before the news. But think about that: At age 99 the man was ... still working. I love that. You know my views on retirement​ which I expand on heavily in The Happiness Equation.​
​
One quote I love which I got from this 2005 "Never Retire" NYT Op-Ed by Bill Safire is: "When you're through changing, you're through." Maybe that's the real pearl of wisdom. Not to keep gunning till you die but to simply always strive to change — to grow — to learn. Curiosity! Staying connected! Being tapped in! I hope when I'm 99 I have a meeting scheduled with some plucky Canadian podcaster 50 years younger than me. Why? Because I know I'll learn something from that. And I hope that after the call I pick up a book.
​
Charlie Munger's wisdom is captured in many places — including this great repository Shane created on his blog — but today I want to just share a few of my favorite quotes about reading. He was a reading evangelist! And I love him for it. Because sometimes, when I'm on, you know, the tenth hour of writing up my monthly book club or twenty hours into prepping to interview somebody about their formative books I stop and think "Wait, does anybody even read anymore? Who's reading books? Why am I focusing all my time and energy on something potentially shrinking when I should really be learning how to use The Tik Tok?"
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Ah, but then I read quotes like these and remember. Wisdom, learning, growing, changing — really living, that's what I'm after. I think that's something we share. And I know I have found nothing offering more compressed wisdom nor a wider range of experienced emotions than reading books.
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Thank you, Charlie. Rest in peace. And may we all enjoy a lifetime of reading. A few of my favorite "Charlie on reading" quotes below!
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Neil

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​1. “In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time – none, zero.”
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2. “As long as I have a book in my hand, I don’t feel like I’m wasting time.”
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3. “We read a lot. I don’t know anyone who’s wise who doesn’t read a lot. But that’s not enough: You have to have a temperament to grab ideas and do sensible things. Most people don’t grab the right ideas or don’t know what to do with them.”
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4. “Warren (Buffett) and I do more reading and thinking and less doing than most people in business. We do that because we like that kind of a life. But we’ve turned that quirk into a positive outcome for ourselves. We both insist on a lot of time being available almost every day to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. We read and think.”
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5. "Develop into a lifelong self-learner through voracious reading; cultivate curiosity and strive to become a little wiser every day.”
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6. "It's been my experience in life if you just keep thinking and reading you don't have to work."
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7. “If it’s wisdom you are after, you are going to spend a lot of time sitting on your ass and reading.”

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7 books to calm your mind before bed (instead of watching the news!)

Hey everyone,
​
Time for my Black Friday door-crashing special! Just kidding. I'm not doing that. I just want to talk about reading books. Why? Well, do you fall into late-night doomscrolling rabbit holes like I do? Makes sense! Billions of dollars of research have fine-tuned the hijacking machine that pulls us forever deeper into news and social media funnels. Especially when we're tired and unable to mentally pull away. I've started locking my phone in a Kitchen Safe every night -- I bought the Mini version from this website (no affiliation and not an ad!) -- and then head up to read.
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Here are 7 books to help calm your mind before bed,
​
Neil

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​Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Let's start with some children's literature! Hypnotic autobiographical description of growing up in rural Wisconsin in the late 1800s. 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. And one that's far, far away from this one. Masterful escapism and the first book in the famous “Little House” series. Originally written in 1937 and still perfect today.
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​How To Calm Your Mind: Finding Presence and Productivity in Anxious Times by Chris Bailey. Little more head on but a great book Chris wrote post-burnout and post-anxiety attack as a simple guide to calming his / your mind. So how do we calm your mind? Get off phones, get outside, lower dopamine, increase analog -- and Chris leads us there with a great dose of left-brain-scratching research and a, yes, calm tone that makes this a perfect read for right now. Great offering for the overwhelmed.
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​When You Are Engulfed In Flames by David Sedaris. Really anything by David Sedaris could go here. A long time ago my friend Shiv told me she read a Sedaris essay every night before bed. Something sounded off about that. But then I tried it. And she’s right! There’s something so soothing about his slow, peaceful pace. The rhythm feels like hanging with a friend. And the laughs wash away stress, too. Here’s “It’s Catching” by Sedaris in The New Yorker if you want a sample from this collection. I still love Naked and Me Talk Pretty One Day, too.
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​

​Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. Set in a small Iowa town named (yes) Gilead in the 1950s the book is a letter from a septuagenarian pastor to his first and only child, a young boy, with everything he wishes he’d be around to tell him when he got older. Sound tearjerking already? Just wait. There are layers beyond layers here and yet they’re all baked into a pastry that somehow feels light. I already feel like I need to read it again. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize.
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​Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles. I wrote a lot about ikigai in The Happiness Equation which is perhaps why Hector Garcia mailed me a copy of this book when it first came out. It has gone on to become a massive international bestseller. And for good reason: The book triangulates and expands elements of Dan Buettner’s famous Blue Zones studies and TED Talk into a well-researched, wide-ranging, well-organized handbook with everything from sharing Okinawan antioxidant-rich food to lessons on practicing qigong. Helps us pull away from the stress of today.
​
​

​The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and The Art of Living by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman. A wonderful collection of excerpts from the Stoic greats -- Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Seneca, and their pals -- with a contemporary expansion from Ryan. Nothing beats getting out of the moment like reading something over 1000 years old. (That's one of my seven ideas for sleeping better.) This is Ryan Holiday's bestselling book for good reason.
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​Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu. James Frey told me he finds solace in the Tao Te Ching -- one of his three most formative books. A lot of little poems or words of wisdom resonated with me from that book so I looked for a copy. What’s the biggest problem finding a “book” written over 2500 years ago? Picking a translation. The used bookstore near my house had about a dozen. I kept opening and looking for one where I could make sense of what I was reading and finally settled on a translation by David Hinton. You can find some good options to pick from here. Wonderful to read a few pages before bed. Sometimes they rattle around my brain, sometimes I feel like I’m lost in a zen koan, and sometimes I feel like I pull something beautiful from them. Here’s a sample: “7. There’s a reason heaven and earth go on enduring forever / their life isn’t their own / so their life goes on forever. / Hence, in putting himself last / the sage puts himself first, / and in giving himself up / he preserves himself. / If you aren’t free of yourself / how will you ever become yourself?”
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We live in overwhelming times! I hope one of these books helps you pull yourself back from the overwhelm. As always, just reply and let me know which ones you resonated with or any others you recommend. Hang in there, everybody.

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How to Tell Yourself a Different Story with Seth Godin

Hey everyone,

A few moons ago I began testing a new short-and-sweet style release on my 3 Books podcast feed. I’m thinking of the entire show as one big book! And, as you know, every full moon I drop a new Chapter. The goal is 333 Chapters total for 1000 formative books all the way up to 2040.

Well, now I’m trying out Pages. A Page is a 333-second (or less) excerpt from a Chapter dropped at 3:33am between Chapters. Bite-sized! Meant to drop a little morsel of wisdom — or a book recommendation or an interesting viewpoint — into your feed. For short commutes, little walks, or just a podcast palette cleanser between longer listens.

Today I’m pasting the transcript of the most popular Page so far: Page 31 from Seth Godin called “How to Tell Yourself a Different Story.” You can download all Pages by subscribing to the show on Apple or Spotify. 100% free and 100% ad-free — as always.

Have a great week,

Neil

 

Page 31: How to Tell Yourself a Different Story with Seth Godin

Page 31 here | Full chat with Seth here

Seth: I think almost all help is self-help. If you were drowning, it's really unlikely that someone will pick you up and take you out of the water. It is way more likely that someone will throw you a life buoy. Or, reach out with a long stick. Or, try to help you swim to shore. But if you don't want to do it, you're probably not going to get saved. And that, what we seek to do when we want to do better, when we want to feel better, or when we want to make a better difference, is help ourselves, is commit to moving forward. And that's all a self-help book does, if it's doing a good job, is open the door for you to fix yourself. The author can't fix you. The diet book can't make you skinny. A book on goal setting can't make you successful. What it can do is open the door.

And so, if you say, 'I don't like self-help books, they're always trying to do this and this and this.' You might be saying, 'Well actually I don't want to help myself get out of this spot I'm in because I'm comfortable being unhappy. I'm comfortable being stuck.' And that the problem with reading a book like this is that it might work. And if it works, then I'll have to change. And if I change, that might be uncomfortable.

My story is that I was unsuccessful and unhappy. I had a narrative in my head that things weren't working and every time something didn't work I would go 'Ah, there it goes again!' But the door was open and I said, you know what, your problem is not the outside world. Your problem is the story you're telling yourself about the outside world, and that story is a choice. And if you're not happy with the story, tell yourself another story. Period. That simple. And most people will hear what I just said and not change anything. Because I'd been telling myself a story that made me unhappy. And if I wasn't happy with that story I should tell myself a different story. The outside world wasn't the problem. I mean I won the birthday lottery. I grew up with great parents, upper-middle class, with privilege, going to a famous college, and I was healthy. So every story I was telling myself was this made-up story that I didn't have to tell myself. I could've told myself a different story. And that choice is at the heart of almost every self-help book. And it's at the heart of what a non-fiction author has the chance to do. Now notice, when you read a book, the voice is your voice -- not true when you listen to an audiobook. Your voice, in your head, saying something that you didn't believe until you read it. And maybe, just maybe, the author can use the tension and the leverage and the moment to create a little bit of magic that gets you to open the door you could've opened all along. All of us could tell ourselves a better story.

Neil: What happened after that? You said everything changed?

Seth: My life completely changed. I stopped whining. I stopped looking for reasons to whine. Shortly thereafter I applied for an on-campus job and became co-founder of the largest student run business in the country. We started a travel agency and a ticket bureau and a concert agency and a coffee shop and a laundry service and a birthday cake service, every week or two we started a new business and -- so many things happened because I chose to tell myself a different story. Shortly after that I met the woman who became my wife, which was a great decision on my part, and so all of those factors happened, not because the outside world got better, but because I chose to tell myself a different story.

Neil: That is so beautiful.

 

Listen to all Pages on Apple or Spotify. Full chat with Seth here.

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The Nature of the Fun by David Foster Wallace

Hey everyone,

'The Nature of the Fun' by David Foster Wallace (DFW) is one of my favorite essays.

It's purportedly about writing fiction—and wrestling through the fears and emotions around the process—but I think it applies to a lot more. Like how to find, and especially re-find, the fun at the heart of whatever challenging thing you're doing. Especially after you've had some success. Beware market winds or they may blow you senseless!

This essay originally appeared in 'Fiction Writer' in 1998 and is available today as part of the absolutely phenomenal DFW essay collection 'Both Flesh and Not' (Library, Goodreads, Amazon). The copyright is held by the David Foster Wallace Literary Trust. (DFW very sadly died by suicide in 2008.) I have bought 'Both Flesh and Not' (Library, Goodreads, Amazon) as a gift for people many times and highly recommend it. This essay is worth owning in print and the title track on Roger Federer is likely the best essay on tennis ever written. Many, many gems in there.

On a personal note I talked about 'The Nature of the Fun' back in Chapter 1 of 3 Books as it was a big part of my inspiration to start the podcast. I reread it often and use it as a helpful artistic centering force.

I hope you like it too,

Neil

 

The Nature of the Fun

Written by David Foster Wallace | (Library, Goodreads, Amazon)
 

The best metaphor I know of for being a fiction writer is in Don DeLillo's Mao II, where he describes a book-in-progress as a kind of hideously damaged infant that follows the writer around, forever crawling after the writer (i.e., dragging itself across the floor of restaurants where the writer's trying to eat, appearing at the foot of the bed first thing in the morning, etc.), hideously defective, hydrocephalic and noseless and flipper-armed and incontinent and retarded and dribbling cerebrospinal fluid out of its mouth as it mewls and blurbles and cries out to the writer, wanting love, wanting the very thing its hideousness guarantees it'll get: the writer's complete attention.

     The damaged-infant trope is perfect because it captures the mix of repulsion and love the fiction writer feels for something he's working on. The fiction always comes out so horrifically defective, so hideous a betrayal of all your hopes for it—a cruel and repellent caricature of the perfection of its conception—yes, understand: grotesque because imperfect. And yet it's yours, the infant is, it's you, and you love it and dandle it and wipe the cerebrospinal fluid off its slack chin with the cuff of the only clean shirt you have left because you haven't done laundry in like three weeks because finally this one chapter or character seems like it's finally trembling on the edge of coming together and working and you're terrified to spend any time on anything other than working on it because if you look away for a second you'll lose it, dooming the whole infant to continued hideousness. And but so you love the damaged infant and pity it and care for it; but also you hate it—hate it—because it's deformed, repellent, because something grotesque has happened to it in the parturition from head to page; hate it because its deformity is your deformity (since if you were a better fiction writer your infant would of course look like one of those babies in catalogue ads for infantwear, perfect and pink and cerebrospinally continent) and its every hideous incontinent breath is a devastating indictment of you, on all levels... and so you want it dead, even as you dote and love and wipe it and dandle it and sometimes even apply CPR when it seems like its own grotesqueness has blocked its breath and it might die altogether.

     The whole thing's all very messed up and sad, but simultaneously it's also tender and moving and noble and cool—it's a genuine relationship, of a sort—and even at the height of its hideousness the damaged infant somehow touches and awakens what you suspect are some of the very best parts of you: maternal parts, dark ones. You love your infant very much. And you want others to love it, too, when the time finally comes for the damaged infant to go out and face the world.

     So you're in a bit of a dicey position: you love the infant and want others to love it, but that means you hope others won't see it correctly. You want to sort of fool people: you want them to see as perfect what you in your heart know is a betrayal of all perfection.

     Or else you don't want to fool these people; what you want is you want them to see and love a lovely, miraculous, perfect, ad-ready infant and to be right, correct, in what they see and feel. You want to be terribly wrong: you want the damaged infant's hideousness to turn out to have been nothing but your own weird delusion or hallucination. But that'd mean you were crazy: you have seen, been stalked by, and recoiled from hideous deformities that in fact (others persuade you) aren't there at all. Meaning you're at least a couple fries short of a Happy Meal, surely. But worse: it'd also mean you see and despise hideousness in a thing you made (and love), in your spawn, in in certain ways you. And this last, best hope—this'd represent something way worse than just very bad parenting; it'd be a terrible kind of self-assault, almost self-torture. But that's still what you most want: to be completely, insanely, suicidally wrong. 

     But it's still all a lot of fun. Don't get me wrong. As to the nature of that fun, I keep remembering this strange little story I heard in Sunday school when I was about the size of a fire hydrant. It takes place in China or Korea or someplace like that. It seems there was this old farmer outside a village in the hill country who worked his farm with only his son and his beloved horse. One day the horse, who was not only beloved but vital to the labor-intensive work on the farm, picked the lock on his corral or whatever and ran off into the hills. All the old farmer's friends came around to exclaim what bad luck this was. The farmer only shrugged and said, "Good luck, bad luck, who knows?" A couple days later the beloved horse returned from the hills in the company of a whole priceless herd of wild horses, and the farmer's friends all come around to congratulate him on what good luck the horse's escape turned out to be. "Good luck, bad luck, who knows?" is all the farmer says in reply, shrugging. The farmer now strikes me as a bit Yiddish-sounding for an old Chinese farmer, but this is how I remember it. But so the farmer and his son set about breaking the wild horses, and one of the horses bucks the son off his back with such wild force that the son breaks his leg. And here come the friends to commiserate with the farmer and curse the bad luck that had ever brought these accursed wild horses onto his farm. The old farmer just shrugs and says, "Good luck, bad luck, who knows?" A few days later the Imperial Sino-Korean Army or something like that comes marching through the village, conscripting every able-bodied male between like ten and sixty for cannon-fodder for some hideously bloody conflict that's apparently brewing, but when they see the son's broken leg, they let him off on some sort of feudal 4-F, and instead of getting shanghaied the son stays on the farm with the old farmer. Good luck? Bad luck?

     This is the sort of parabolic straw you cling to as you struggle with the issue of fun, as a writer. In the beginning, when you first start out trying to write fiction, the whole endeavor's about fun. You don't expect anybody else to read it. You're writing almost wholly to get yourself off. To enable your own fantasies and deviant logics and to escape or transform parts of yourself you don't like. And it works—and it's terrific fun. Then, if you have good luck and people seem to like what you do, and you actually get to get paid for it, and get to see your stuff professionally typeset and bound and blurbed and reviewed and even (once) being read on the AM subway by a pretty girl you don't even know, it seems to make it even more fun. For a while. Then things start to get complicated and confusing, not to mention scary. Now you feel like you're writing for other people, or at least you hope so. You're no longer writing just to get yourself off, which—since any kind of masturbation is lonely and hollow—is probably good. But what replaces the onanistic motive? You've found you very much enjoy having your writing liked by people, and you find you're extremely keen to have people like the new stuff you're doing. The motive of pure personal fun starts to get supplanted by the motive of being liked, of having pretty people you don't know like you and admire you and think you're a good writer. Onanism gives way to attempted seduction, as a motive. Now, attempted seduction is hard work, and its fun is offset by a terrible fear of rejection. Whatever "ego" means, your ego has now gotten into the game. Or maybe "vanity" is a better word. Because you notice that a good deal of your writing has now become basically showing off, trying to get people to think you're good. This is understandable. You have a great deal of yourself on the line, now, writing—your vanity is at stake. You discover a tricky thing about fiction writing: a certain amount of vanity is necessary to be able to do it at all, but any vanity above that certain amount is lethal. At this point 90+ percent of the stuff you're writing is motivated and informed by an overwhelming need to be liked. This results in shitty fiction. And the shitty work must get fed to the wastebasket, less because of any sort of artistic integrity than simply because shitty work will make you disliked. At this point in the evolution of writerly fun, the very thing that's always motivated you to write is now also what's motivating you to feed your writing to the wastebasket. This is a paradox and a kind of double bind, and it can keep you stuck inside yourself for months or even years, during which you wail and gnash and rue your bad luck and wonder bitterly where all the fun of the thing could have gone.

     The smart thing to say, I think, is that the way out of this bind is to work your way somehow back to your original motivation: fun. And, if you can find your way back to the fun, you will find that the hideously unfortunate double bind of the late vain period turns out really to have been good luck for you. Because the fun you work back to has been transfigured by the unpleasantness of vanity and fear, an unpleasantness you're now so anxious to avoid that the fun you rediscover is a way fuller and more large-hearted kind of fun. It has something to do with Work as Play. Or with the discovery that disciplined fun is more fun than impulsive or hedonistic fun. Or with figuring out that not all paradoxes have to be paralyzing. Under fun's new administration, writing fiction becomes a way to go deep inside yourself and illuminate precisely the stuff you don't want to see or let anyone else see, and this stuff usually turns out (paradoxically) to be precisely the stuff all writers and readers share and respond to, feel. Fiction becomes a weird way to countenance yourself and to tell the truth instead of being a way to escape yourself or present yourself in a way you figure you will be maximally likable. This process is complicated and confusing and scary, and also hard work, but it turns out to be the best fun there is.

     The fact that you can now sustain the fun of writing only by confronting the very same unfun parts of yourself you'd first used writing to avoid or disguise is another paradox, but this one isn't any kind of bind at all. What it is is a gift, a kind of miracle, and compared to it the reward of strangers' affection is as dust, lint. 

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44 Things I've (Almost) Learned As I Turn 44

Hey everyone,

Today is my birthday!

Last year I shared a list of birthday advice. Now it's time for this years! Two in a row makes it a tradition, I think. For the list just scroll down!

Btw some background if you're still reading the top part: I've been wisdom-collecting for years. In my 20s I took hundreds of flights and always made it my goal to ask the person I was sitting beside for a piece of life advice before getting off the plane. (It helps that my 20s were before airplane internet and giant headphone cocoons.) I'm sure a lot of these come from those chats. And then, after last year's list, I made a little file on my phone called "44" and have been planting, snipping, and pruning it all year -- treating this list like some kind of little plant I'm ready to finally put on my porch.

And remember: Lists like these are preachy by nature! Take what you like and chuck the rest in the bin.

Here we go:

1. The best sunblock is the one you use.

2. If you don't know if it goes in the dryer, it doesn't. 

3. Let your kids catch you reading books. Don't let them watch you scrolling social media.

4. 3 E's of a great speech: Entertain, Educate, Empower.

5. Dating tip: You meet interesting people in interesting places.

6. Add a silent mental "...yet" to any sentence you catch yourself starting with "I can't", "I'm not", or "I don't." "I can't speak Hindi ...yet", "I'm not a runner ...yet", "I don't eat oysters ...yet."

7. Mood follows action.

8. Time you spend with your kids when they're young correlates with time they spend with you when you're old.

9. Stock tip: Buy the haystack, not the needle.

10. Never buy a couch before taking a nap on it.

11. Remember the 'End Of History Illusion': We all know our pasts were bumpy -- yet never expect our futures to be.

12. Ideas are the easy part. Doing it is the hard part.

13. No cell phones in the bedroom. If you need waking up, buy an alarm clock. If you get emergency calls, get a landline.

14. There's nothing wrong with ending a sentence with of.

15. Easy way to entertain toddlers: Lie face down in the middle of the floor.

16. Grapefruits that look best often taste worst and grapefruits that look worst often taste best.

17. Wrap floss around middle fingers not pointer fingers.

18. Most people read zero books last year. 2 pages of fiction a day helps build back the habit. 'Foster', 'Animal Farm', 'A Christmas Carol', 'The Little Prince', and 'The Old Man and The Sea' are all <100 pages.

19. You can't make new old friends.

20. Addiction is when something that takes you from normal to good starts taking you from bad to normal.

21. Beware the 5 greatest regrets of the dying: i) I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself ii) I wish I hadn't worked so hard iii) I wish I had the courage to express my feelings, iv) I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends, and v) I wish I had let myself be happier

22. Don't post your kids faces online. They might sue you.

23. Divorce is not a death sentence.

24. Strapping things to your body to measure things in your body makes you less connected to your body.

25. Between jobs remember: The longer you hold your breath underwater the more interesting place you come up.

26. On making decisions: Low time, low importance? Automate. High time, low importance? Regulate. Low time, high importance? Effectuate. (Just do it!) High time, high importance? Debate.

27. If you don't deal with your shit, your shit deals with you.

28. When sending meeting options in multiple time zones put their time zone first.

29. Stitches vs Bandaids Test: Aim to say yes to kids trying things that cause bandaids and no to things that cause stitches.

30. You don't have to finish the book.

31. Ikigai: A reason to get out of bed in the morning. Write one down on a folded index card and leave it on your bedside table.

32. To pay more attention in video meetings: Hide Self View.

33. Blender breakfast I've used for 15 years: water, cinnamon, turmeric, protein, frozen banana, frozen greens, powdered greens, nut milk, nut butter, yogurt, avocado.

34. Guaranteed way to get good: Do it for free for ten years.

35. You don't rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.

36. Funeral Rule: If you're not sure if you should go, go.

37. The Lindy Effect: Longer something's been popular, longer it'll stay popular. Helpful for finding books, restaurants, ideas.

38. Cut the cord between guilt and pleasure.

39. Social Media Paradox: More you're posting about it less you're doing it.

40. There is a relationship between how much you buy local and how nice the flowers are in your park.

41. Changing your mind is a sign of strength not weakness.

42. There is a tiny arrow on your gas gauge that tells you which way to park your car at the pumps.

43. Quickest happiness hack? Lower expectations.

44. You only earned what you spent and enjoyed.

 -

I'm sure I stole all of these but some specific credits: Rich Roll (7), Daniel Gilbert, Jordi Quoidbach, and Timothy Wilson (11), Paul Graham (20), Bronnie Ware (21), Sarah Silverman (27), Joey Coleman (29), James Clear (35), and my dad (44). Bad paraphrases all mine, of course. Click here to read last year's list.

Read more of my birthday advice:

45 Things I’ve (Almost) Learned As I Turn 45

43 Things I've (Almost) Learned As I Turn 43

Sign Up for a Dose of Inspiration:

Every other week, I send an email out with an article I’ve written, or one of my favorite speeches, essays or poems. No ads, no sponsors, no spam, and nothing for sale. Just a dose of inspiration or beauty!

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Watching the Wheels by John Lennon

Written by John Lennon | Music Video here

Hey everyone,

March break up in Canada this week. Schools closed, snow falling, kids bouncing off the walls. I've taken this week off work for nine years straight now -- and despite one kid asking me to "pick up meeeee!" as I write this and another trying to show me a picture of a man with a crowbar through his chest that he found in a world records book, well, I wouldn't trade it for anything. This is hitting your inboxes in a few minutes at 7:30am EST and so far today I've had a great three hours of pee-filled pyjamas, a workout with thirty-pound kids rolling off my back, doing watercolors, and slow-mo-making five different breakfasts.

For me, raising kids is simultaneously exhausting and exquisite. Emotions shaken into the pot from every bottle in the cupboard.

One tiny place I find myself drawing inspiration from as a dad is Watching the Wheels by John Lennon. The song is John answering critics asking why he left music in 1975 to lean into life with Yoko and raise their son Sean for five years -- up until his still-so-horrible-to-think-about assassination in 1980. For me, the song represents a rare jewel in the Lennon Canon -- the only song I can think of where he talks about 'househusbanding' (as he called it) and some of the simple, deeper pleasures of leaning into fatherhood and raising kids. "I sort of half-consciously wanted to spend the first five years of Sean's life actually giving him all the time I possibly could," he said. "I look after the baby and I made bread and I was a househusband and I am proud of it."

I love the song's message of leaning into a slower and more intentional way of living. But our capitalism and algorithm-fueled fame machine asks louder than ever: "Surely you're not happy now? -- you no longer play the ga-aaaaaaaame."

Maybe I aspire to that myself. Or maybe I have it and need to remind myself to prioritize this when I'm asked why I like being, you know, just me. Why I don't hire ten people and really make a go of this thing! Hire more social media managers, ghostwriters, research assistants, people to follow me around with cameras, and, you know -- pump it up! amplify! grow the platform! take the message to the worrrrrrrrrrrlllllllllld!

Well ... because I love watching the wheels go by. That's why. I love being with my wife and my kids. I don't want to be working so hard telling people not to miss this that I end up missing it myself. Here I am stealing fifteen minutes of my morning to write this and even now ... I feel like I'm missing it.

Enjoy your day, squeeze your loved ones, and, when it comes to pulling away from the machine a little to enjoy watching the wheels, well, don't feel bad. Enjoy it. As John sings: "I just had to.... let it go-ooooooooOOOOOooooooooo."

Now just try watching the music video without crying.

Thank you so much for being part of this community.

Have a great week everybody and love you lots,

Neil

Lyrics:

People say I'm crazy doing what I'm doing

Well they give me all kinds of warnings to save me from ruin

When I say that I'm okay, well, they look at me kind of strange

"Surely you're not happy now you no longer play the game?"

People say I'm lazy ... dreaming my life away

Well they give me all kinds of advice designed to enlighten me

When I tell that I'm doing fine watching shadows on the wall

"Don't you miss the big time boy? You're no longer on the ball...."

I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round

I really love to watch them roll

No longer riding on the merry-go-ro-ounnnnnd

I just had to let it go

People asking questions ... lost in confusion

Well I tell them there's no problem... only solutions

Well they shake their heads and they look at me as if I've lost my mind

I tell them there's no hurry... I'm just sitting here doing time

I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round

I really love to watch them roll

No longer riding on the merry-go-round

I just had to.... let it go-ooooooooOOOOOooooooooo.

10 things I (try to) do every day to get more done

Do you feel like it’s getting harder to get stuff done?

It’s not just you. The distraction machine is cranked to 10. Endless apps and feeds and algorithms fight for our attention. They’re good at getting it, too! No wonder Reed Hastings, founder of Netflix, says their greatest competitor of all is sleep.

I find myself revisiting simple practices to help make sure I actually get anything done.

Here are ten habits I (try to) do to get more done each day:

1. Wake up and look at my ikigai

An ikigai is the ‘reason you get out of bed in the morning.’

Leslie and I take simple blank index cards, fold them in half, and set them up like tent cards on our bedside table.

I think of the ikigai I write on the card as “my morning message to myself” and find it helps provide a quick north star to my day.

I change what I write on the cards. Sometimes I’ll get lofty and purposeful (“Helping people live happy lives”), sometimes I’ll get focused (“Finish writing the next book”), and sometimes I’ll just use the card as a way to neutralize anxiety (“You have enough.”)

I write more about ikigais in The Happiness Equation and, if you want to go deeper, I recommend Héctor Garcia’s book Ikigai.
 
2. Two-Minute Mornings

I spend half a second staring at my ikigai card. Now what?

The next thing I do is grab my Two-Minute Mornings journal (or just any other index card is fine) and write my response to three prompts:

• I will let go of…

• I am grateful for…

• I will focus on…

Research titled “Don’t look back in anger!” by Brassen, Gamer, Peters, Gluth, and Bluch in Science shows that minimizing regrets as we age creates greater contentment and happiness. I think there’s a big reason why confession and repentance show up across major world religions. Writing down and letting go of something feels like wiping a wet shammy across the blackboard of our minds. (I will let go of…)

Research by Emmons and McCullough shows if you write down five gratitudes a week you’re measurably happier over a ten-week period. The more specific the better! Don’t write “my dog” ten days in a row. Try “When the rescue puppy we got during the pandemic finally stopped peeing on my husband’s pillow,” etc. (I am grateful for…)

Finally, all kinds of small aggravating things hang out in my brain when I sleep. I'm not talking dreams. I mean the middle of the night "Oh yeah, I need to do that" things. Take the van in for the oil change! Ask the pharmacist about that rash! Overnight brain burbles need to be processed so the last prompt helps me aim to get one done. I'm carving a “will do” from my endless “could do" and "should do” lists. (I will focus on…)

Two-minute mornings help prime your brain for positivity.

3. Lift something heavy  

Every day I lift heavy weights I seem to buy myself the rest of the day without feeling stress. It’s like a magic pill. I don’t like lifting weights! I hate lifting weights! But it’s worth it for that stress-free feeling for the next 24 hours.

Workouts such as Push/Pull/Legs or 5x5 are great -- and, honestly, just Google Image-searching them plus "workout" works for me -- but if you need a cajoling of some kind I suggest using Trainiac. I started in the pandemic and I got a real human coach (hi Geoff!) who sets my routines, using the equipment I have or will have (i.e., at a hotel gym), and then sends me notes, prompts, messages, and videos to keep me going. I don’t know how to do an exercise? I send him a video, he critiques my form. I have a question? He responds the next day.

To be clear: I’m not being sponsored by this app — I have no ads on any of my stuff and I accept zero payments or credits, etc, etc — but I’ve just been using it since the pandemic and enjoy it. I did personal training (like in person, at a gym) years ago but found it time and cost prohibitive.

I personally set my goal for four workouts a week and then if I “fail” and only get three in I still feel good. What about no workout days? I throw my kids in the air for a few minutes. I’m winded after! And we both feel great.

4. Walk 5km a day

Guess what the average human walking speed is?

5km/hour.

So just moving one phone meeting to a “walk and talk” helps get that 5km of walking in. I personally find that I’m actually more focused on the phone call when I’m walking because I’m not surrounded by the endless distractions of screens. Plus, it’s good for your health, good for community connection (you actually talk to your neighbors!), and walking tends to stoke your creativity, too. And, side benefit, it brings out your inner birder.

For more on walking I recommend “Walking” by Henry David Thoreau (free out of copyright full version) or “Why I Do All This Walking” by Nassim Taleb (Scribd link, with full essay in The Black Swan.)

5. Schedule one UNTOUCHABLE day a week

Okay, this isn’t a daily habit but a weekly one. I’m sneaking it in anyway because it’s so powerful.

A New Yorker feature by Alexandra Schwartz calls our focus on productivity and hustle “improving ourselves to death.” She writes, “It’s no longer enough to imagine our way to a better state of body or mind. We must now chart our progress, count our steps, log our sleep rhythms, tweak our diets, record our negative thoughts — then analyze the data, recalibrate, and repeat.”

What’s one solution? Untouchable Days. These are days where I am literally unreachable, by anyone, in any way — all day. My productivity is about 10 times higher on these days.

I know on the surface this idea sounds completely impractical and I mostly get scoffing and head shakes when I start talking about it. But, I also get more emails from people successfully using this concept across a vast array of ages and careers. If it sounds too hard, there’s nothing wrong with starting with an Untouchable Lunch. Leave your phone at your desk and get outside for an hour where nobody can reach you.

I go deeper on this concept in this viral HBR article and in my book on resilience.

6. Read 20 (or even 2!) pages of fiction a day

The Annual Review of Psychology published a report that says books are medicine.

Books create empathy, intimacy, compassion, and understanding. Why? Our brain’s mirror neurons fire when we read about experiences we haven’t lived — when we’re another gender, in another country, in another time … our minds think we’re there.

It’s like that Game of Thrones quote: “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies … the man who never reads lives only one.”

Now, the troubling stat is that the American Time Use Survey says that 57% of Americans read zero books last year. Zero! Meanwhile, we’re spending over 5 hours a day on our phones.

But Science magazine published a formative study in 2013 which showed that reading literary fiction improved test results measuring social perception and empathy. So if we can channel a few minutes of phone time each day to reading fiction, we’ll have a natural way to zoom out of our problems and feel more connected to the wider world.
Everything feels easier after that.

7. “Wear one suit.”

It’s a principle.

I wear a blue suit jacket, white dress shirt, dark blue jeans, Nike running shoes, and my yellow watch … to every single speech and media interview I do. So I never think about what to wear for any of them. I just buy multiples of the same running shoes, shirts, socks, etc.

Same thing with my breakfast. “Drink one shake.” I’ve been drinking the same shake for fifteen years. Water, turmeric, cinnamon, half a frozen banana, powdered greens, frozen greens, protein, nut butter, nut milk, yogurt, and avocado. Sure, maybe I change the protein flavor once in a while, but the point is that I can make it on auto-pilot.

What can you systemize to free up more brain space for everything else?

8. Write a “3 things” cue card

Every night before I go up to bed I write an index card with tomorrow’s day up top — THURSDAY — and a (maximum) 3-item checklist below. Beside each item, I draw a square box to be checked off. 

Why? Well, a laundry list of 20 things feels overwhelming and oppressive. (That can go on a weekly or monthly checklist.) But the nighttime forced prioritization helps me go to bed knowing I have my track set for the next day. And by making it only 3 I’ve done some of the hard work of simply choosing what not to do.

Also, one principle within the last? “Write first.” What I mean is that writing takes more of my energy than anything else I do, so if the day includes writing I’ll put that first. (You may have heard a similar principle for going to the gym: “Squat first.” Just start with the hardest thing.)

9. Lock the phone up around sunset

University of Bologna professors published a report in Sloan Management Review which showed that anxiety spikes when students don’t have their cellphones for even a single day.

Everyone talks about intermittent fasting … with food. We should be talking about intermittent fasting … with phones.

When I interviewed Johann Hari (author of Stolen Focus) he told me he drops his phone in a K-Safe every night. That’s a big square plastic box with a timer on the outside. Set the timer to 3 hours? It doesn’t open for 3 hours.

Now: Why do I say “around sunset”? Well, because I’m trying (trying!) to get my body more in line with natural light. When the sun dips down I want my brain to dip down, too. Dimmer lights. Candles at dinner. Fewer screens. More books.

Easing my body and mind into a darker, deeper sleep.

Also, if you don’t have a K-Safe or timed lockbox you can try my strategy of asking your partner to “Please hide my phone until tomorrow and don’t tell me where it is even if I ask.”

10. Have a “wind down” routine.

Research from Australia shows that exposing our brains to bright screens before bed reduces melatonin production — the sleep hormone.

So screens mess up our sleep. Great! Now what do we do? Well, we’ve already talked about reading. But what I mean here is you need a nighttime ritual. Maybe it’s playing Rose Rose Thorn Bud with your boyfriend. Maybe it’s flossing and brushing your teeth with your wife. Maybe it’s reading books to your kids. Maybe it’s tidying up your dresser and setting out your clothes for the next morning. Maybe it’s having a warm shower and shaving. 

We need to plug our phones in the basement. (I recommend the furnace room — the darker and cobwebbier, the better!) And have a nighttime ritual that allows us the mental space to widen, reflect, and process the day in a slow and peaceful way.

Okay!

That’s it!

A long list, sure. And a lofty one! But, as always, as with anything I’m suggesting or trying myself, the goal is never to be perfect — it’s just to be a little better than before.

I hope even one or two of these resonate with you. And if you have something you suggest adding to my list — just drop me a line and let me know.

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Love for OUR BOOK OF AWESOME

Our Book of Awesome launched on December 6, 2022 and I feel like the personal beneficiary of more love from the awesome 🌊🌊🌊 around the world than I had ever expected. Most of it is in person, in bookstores, on my newsletters, and on my podcast, but I also wanted to throw a post up to gather it all in one place.

—

TV

Breakfast Television - Rogers (Dina Pugliese, Sid Seixeiro)

CityLine - Rogers (Tracy Moore)

The Morning Show - Global (Carolyn MacKenzie, Sangita Patel)

The Social - CTV (Jess Allen, Melissa Grelo, Traci Melchor)

Your Morning - CTV (Jess Smith)

Radio

Here and Now - NPR (Jane Clayson)

The Current - CBC (Matt Galloway)

Podcasts

Chase Jarvis Live x2 x3

Don’t Keep Your Day Job (Cathy Heller)

Good Life Project (Jonathan Fields)  x2 x3

Moms Don’t Have Time To Read Books (Zibby Owens) x2 x3

Sickboy (Jeremie Saunders, Brian Stever, Taylor MacGillivary) x2 x3

The Holderness Family Podcast (Kim and Penn Holderness) x2

The Joyous Health Podcast (Joy McCarthy)

The Knowledge Project (Shane Parrish) x2

The Light Watkins Show x2 x3

The Miracle Morning (Hal Elrod) x2

The One You Feed (Eric Zimmer)

The Psychology Podcast (Dr. Scott Barry Kauffman) x2 x3

The Warblers (Birds Canada) x2

Interviews

Heroic Luminary Coaching Session (Brian Johnson)

IG Live (Alie Ward)

IG Live (Evan Carmichael) x2

Interview (Brendan Carr)

Blogs / Newsletters / Articles

“3 Lessons on creativity by a bestselling author” - Fast Company (Herbert Liu)

5 Things Making me Happy Newsletter (Gretchen Rubin)

BookTrib Newsletter

Dr. Greg Wells Newsletter

Herbert Liu Best of Books Newsletter

“I’m grateful that I’ve never had to do a gratitude journal” - The Bloggess (Jenny Lawson)

Kindred Newsletter Q&A (Susan Cain)

Laura Vanderkam Newsletter

Marc and Angel Newsletter (Marc and Angel Chernoff)

Print Mag Q&A (Debbie Millman)

Simon & Schuster Newsletter

Simon & Schuster Global Newsletter

The Sunday Paper (Maria Shriver) x2

BookTok / Bookstagram

Alex and Books (Alex Wieckowski)

Becky Overbeck

Blurb Your Enthusiasm (Mary Webber OMalley)

Book Sparkled (Shivi Verna)

Brindle Book Lover

Catherine Price

Divyanshu Reads (Divyanshu Oberoi)

Humble the Poet

Indigo x2

Jay Yang Inspires

Jordan Tarver

Joy McCarthy

Lisa Ray

Matt Karamazov

Mindset Reading (Ravi Sarj)

Mindset Search (Mo Hasnai)

Nina Purewall

Productive Reading

Reader Mentality (Kamalpreet Singh)

Sarah Reads Fiction (Sarah Reid)

Simon & Schuster

The Bloggess (Jenny Lawson)

The Bo.ok Nerd (Laasya Mukkamalla)

The Happiness Library (Marianne Peter Nicoly)

The Maritime Reader (Heather Hines)

Two Percent Better (Cameron Boakye)

Vanessa Van Edwards

Werklife (Abha Chiyedan) x2

Well By Shania (Shania Bhopa)

 

Twitter Love

Alex and Books (Alex Wieckowski)

Ben O’Hara-Byrne

Beth Fish Reads (Dr. Beth Fish)

Elan Mastai

Hector Garcia

Jeremie Saunders

Jonathan Haidt

Lisa Ray

Loan Stars

Maria Shriver

Meesh Beer (Michele-Marie Beer)

Oliver Burkeman

PR by the Book (Kim Weiss)

Post Secret (Frank Warren) x2

Rich Aucoin

Rich Roll

Shawn Achor

Tal Bakker

Vanessa Van Edwards

 

 Bestseller Lists

Globe International Non-Fiction

Globe Canadian Non-Fiction

Vancouver Sun Indie Bookstores

Retail Council Indie Bookstore

Globe International Self Improvement

Porchlight

The Very Best Books I Read in 2022

That time of the year again!

Here are The Very Best Books I Read In 2022!

Interested in more of my reviews? Click here to join the Book Club email list.

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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43 Things I've (Almost) Learned As I Turn 43

I thought I’d celebrate my 43rd birthday by writing down 43 things I’ve (almost) learned. Lists like these are preachy by nature so, you know, just take what you like and leave the rest.

Here we go:

1. Life is too short for unsalted butter.

2. When arguing: Start sentences with ‘I’ not ‘You’.

3. Text friends, email coworkers.

4. Best gratitude game at dinner: Rose, Rose, Thorn, Bud.

5. Never start a speech by apologizing.

6. Clothing stores offer 2 of 3 of fashion, price, and quality. H&M? Fashion and price. Old Navy? Price and quality. Prada? Fashion and quality. Know what you’re buying, don’t expect what you’re not.

7. Five people who love you are worth a lot more than five million who like you.

8. Nothing is as expensive as a cheap pair of shoes.

9. You do make friends with salad. Master a great one.

10. Low opinion of others, low opinion of self? Cynical. High opinion of others, low opinion of self? Insecure. Low opinion of others, high opinion of self? Arrogant. High opinion of others, high opinion of self? Confidence. Aim for confidence.

11. To a large extent: If you can be happy with simple things it will be simple to be happy.

12. The three best home improvements are fresh paint, fresh flowers, and fresh air.

13. Never retire. Look for the 4 S’s instead: Social (friends), Structure (schedule), Stimulation (learning), and Story (purpose).

14. To be the favored client: Pay the bill as soon as you see it.

15. You’re the best judge of how good it is. You’re the worst judge of how well it will do.

16. Remember the 3 G’s in sex: Good, Giving, and Game.

17. Loosen the pickle jar lid but give it to a kid to pop.

18. To remember 2-digit numbers: Memorize 9 images and combine them. I use candle for 1, bicycle for 2, tripod for 3, table for 4, home plate for 5, soccer ball for 6, swan for 7, stop sign for 8, cat for 9, donut for 0. Friend’s birthday is 27th? Picture a swan on a bicycle. Movie comes out on the 16th? Picture a candle on soccer ball.

19. The best way to avoid a fight is to have a snack.

20. Before work trips: Hide a note under everyone’s pillow.

21. You always regret not doing more than you regret doing. Lean in.

22. Schedule one Untouchable Day each week.

23. The 7 for 7 Rule: 7 minutes of stretching for 7 hours better sleep.

24. If you have signed a contract with your work you need a signed contract with your family, too.

25. For perspective: Leave ten stones on your dresser, one for each decade of your life. Move one forward every ten years. Daily problems feel smaller with a zoom out.

26. It is easier to act yourself into a new way of thinking than to think yourself into a new way of acting. If in doubt? Start.

27. People remember who stayed till the end of the wedding. Stay till the end of the wedding.

28. Always cut grilled cheese into triangles.

29. For better skin: Bathe less.

30. Keep a lacrosse ball in your suitcase. Nothing improves a bad hotel room like a wall massage before bed.

31. You are not allowed to leave a bookstore without buying a book.

32. Practice 2 minute mornings: Before starting your day write and fill out: “I will let go of…”, “I am grateful for…”, “I will focus on…”

33. For better focus, attention, and privacy: Don’t take your phone.

34. 10 second mood lift: Hold the sides of your ribs and take a slow deep breath to inflate them outwards without raising your shoulders.

35. Put a gift note to yourself in the online order.

36. Woo the subconscious: Keep blank cue cards and a pen on your bedside table.

37. 3 best words for friends in tough times: “Tell me more…”

38. The only two ways to reply to any invite: No or Hell Yeah.

39. Swear words are the sharp knives in word kitchen. Teach kids how to use safely – not avoid.

40. Easiest way to love a park: Pick up one piece of trash every visit.

41. Leave the backup toilet paper where your guests can find it.

42. For assorted poisons you enjoy: Make it a treat.

43. Remember: If you have what you need it doesn’t matter what anyone else has.

I’m pretty sure I stole all of these but a few specific credits: Ryan Holiday (3), Mario Pilozzi (6), Kevin Kelly (7), Dan Savage (16), Derek Sivers (38), Sarah Silverman (42), and my dad (43).

Read more of my birthday advice:

45 Things I’ve (Almost) Learned As I Turn 45

44 Things I’ve (Almost) Learned As I Turn 44

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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...

'Think Like a Bronze Medalist, Not Silver' by Derek Sivers

Written by Derek Sivers (full article here)

I compare myself to others. A lot! I know it's human nature. I know we all do it. But "comparison is the thief of joy," as that old saying goes.

You may have heard of the ​famous study​ about bronze medalists being happier than silver medalists. I like to remind myself of that and ​this article​ from ​Derek Sivers​, which appeared in his 2020 book '​Hell Yeah or No​,' does a great job distilling it.

Ask yourself: What are you beating yourself up about today because you are "finishing second" instead of looking for joy or gratitude about "being on the podium" or, even better, "getting to run the race" at all?

Let's keep running the race.

Article:

Imagine the Olympics, where you have the three winners of a race standing on the podium: the gold, the silver, and the bronze.

Imagine what it’s like to be the silver medalist. If you’d been just one second faster, you could have won the gold! Damn! So close! Damn damn damn! Full of envy, you’d keep comparing yourself to the gold winner.

Now imagine what it’s like to be the bronze medalist. If you’d been just one second slower, you wouldn’t have won anything! Awesome! You’d be thrilled that you’re officially an Olympic medalist and get to stand on the winner’s podium.

Comparing up versus comparing down: Your happiness depends on where you’re focusing.

The metaphor is easy to understand, but hard to remember in regular life. If you catch yourself burning with envy or resentment, think like the bronze medalist, not the silver. Change your focus. Instead of comparing up to the next-higher situation, compare down to the next-lower one.

For example, if you aim to buy “the best” thing, you may feel like gold when you get it, but when the new “best” thing comes out next year, you’ll feel that silver envy. Instead, if you aim to buy the “good enough” thing, it will keep you in the bronze mindset. Since you’re not comparing to the best, you’ll feel no need to keep up.

I’ve met a lot of famous musicians. The miserable ones were upset that they weren’t more famous, because they’d bitterly compare themselves to the superstars. The happiest ones were thrilled to be able to make a living making music.

On the other hand, when you’re being ambitious, trying to be the best at a specific skill, it’s good to be dissatisfied, like that silver medalist focusing on the gold. You can use that drive to practice and improve.

But most of the time, you need to be more grateful for what you’ve got, for how much worse it could have been, and how nice it is to have anything at all. Ambition versus gratitude. Comparing up versus comparing down.

For funnier thoughts on this, search the web for Louis C.K.’s “everything is amazing and nobody is happy” and Jerry Seinfeld’s “silver medal” routines.

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How to Embrace the Most Embarrassing Parts of Your Resume

Everyone’s resume has a dud or two. Glaring gaps after getting fired. That new boss who reorganized your team–and maybe didn’t like you that much–and gave you a title demotion you’re still embarrassed about. And let’s not forget your short-lived stint as VP of operations at a hypergrowth startup, where your chief responsibility was packing boxes til midnight on Fridays until your partner cried foul.

I feel uncomfortable about parts of my career history, too. I went headfirst into marketing after college before realizing it was an Excel job and I expected a Powerpoint one. I started a restaurant that flopped. I made lateral moves, playing hot potato with my career for about a decade without ever cracking the ranks of leadership.

But what if duds like these aren’t duds? What if they’re simply the points on the zigzagging line that leads to the presently crystallized version of you? Someone with experience, know-how, and the crucial leadership traits of humility and empathy gleaned from working in the battlefields and the trenches–not just commanding the fleets?

Or hey, maybe not. Even so, the ability to take command of your resume–whatever it looks like–and tell a compelling narrative about your career couldn’t be more critical. Selling your experience is a vital skill, whether you’re on a job interview or wooing clients for your solo business. But to do that well, you first need to come to grips with the parts of your job history that you’re least interested in talking about. And that means working your way through these three phases:

1. Hide

2. Apologize

3. Accept

Here’s what that looks like.

PHASE 1: HIDING

For years I was embarrassed that I worked at Walmart. At parties or industry events, I answered the question the same way many of my coworkers did.

Them: So where do you work, anyway?
Me: Retail.
Them: Cool.

Eventually, I started to realize that masking is a form of self-judgment. I wasn’t confident about working at Walmart. I was afraid to mention the company because I was afraid of people’s perceptions: Main-Street-obliterating, fair-wage–damaging, soul-destroying behemoth corrupting society.

By acting awkwardly, I made things awkward for others.

That may not have been true, but whatever they were going to think, I wanted to avoid confronting it. Rather than acknowledge this part of my identity, I hid it. I didn’t mention it in my biography, my blog, any of my books, radio lead-ins, or newspaper interviews.

And I called this humility. But it was really fear. After a few years, I finally figured this out and decided that from then on, I would tell anybody exactly where I worked if they asked. Of course, I did this in a tentative, awkward way.

PHASE 2: APOLOGIZING

It went something like this:

Them: So where do you work, anyway?
Me: (grimacing) Uh . . . Walmart?
Them: Oh, uh, okay, haha . . . yeah, I heard of the place! Haha, uh . . .

By acting awkwardly, I made things awkward for others. By apologizing for myself, I forced others to apologize, too. Eventually, I realized that apologizing was a form of self-judgment in the way that hiding my job history was.

Arguably, it even made things worse. I was communicating a part of myself, then immediately sounding a Family Feud–style buzzer after my own response:

“We surveyed 100 people and the top five answers are on the board. Name a place you have worked.”

“Uh . . . Walmart?”

NNNNNNN!

Apologizing avoids ownership. It creates distance. It suggests a mistake–one that you then need to account for. Apologizing is what you do when your dog craps on the neighbor’s lawn and then you notice your neighbor watching from the window. (Sorry, Keith!)

Do this kind of thing on a job interview, even unwittingly, and a hiring manager will notice immediately. Eventually I clued in to this bad habit myself, and after a couple years of apologizing for my own resume, I finally moved on to the third and final step.

PHASE 3: ACCEPTANCE

Them: So where do you work, anyway?
Me: Walmart.
Them: Cool.

Sounds silly, but it really was that simple. Gone was the tendency to hide the truth from others that reflected my desire to hide it from myself. Gone was the tentativeness and questioning, telling others that I was questioning part of myself–and inviting them to question me, too.

Accepting yourself communicates confidence [and] insulates you from the tide of emotions that wells up whenever other people’s views intersect with your own.

Instead I gained a clear and simple truth, grounded in fact: This is where I’ve worked, and whatever others may think, I still gained some valuable experience from it–experience that helped me make better decisions about my career later on. Ask me about that, and I’d be glad to talk about it.

This way, I consciously remove myself from any possible judgment. And if I am judged negatively, that needs to be wholly owned by the other person–I won’t do their judging for them. The physicist Richard Feynman has said, “You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It’s their mistake, not my failing.”

Accepting yourself communicates confidence, which is a well-known career asset. More than that, it insulates you from the tide of emotions that wells up whenever other people’s views intersect with your own–sometimes muddling your thoughts and bending your beliefs.

What do you do with their views? How do you stop judging yourself? Laugh at it! At least to yourself. A big laugh helps you look deep, examine your self-judgments, and push through the steps to embracing the most (no-longer) cringeworthy parts of your work experience:

• H–Hide

• A–Apologize

• A–Accept

HAA!

Listen, we’re all full of self-judgments: We tell ourselves we’re fat, lazy, don’t exercise enough, aren’t worthy of a raise, aren’t worthy of love, wouldn’t find another job if we were fired or a new significant other if we’re dumped. Those can become dangerously self-fulfilling prophecies if you let them, especially in the job market. Sometimes we forget that we’re all trying our best–all of us–to do better.

It’s a process. And that’s nowhere truer than in our careers; tell yourself you’ve finally “arrived,” and your skills, curiosity, and potential will stagnate in short order.

Find what’s hidden, stop apologizing, and accept yourself. It’s the best thing you can do for your occasionally humiliating resume–and the career you’re rightly proud that it’s led to.

An earlier version of this article originally appeared in Fast Company.

The 3 S’s of Success

“How can I be successful?”

It’s a question many of us ask ourselves and have trouble answering. Because what is success, anyway? Is it writing a book and selling a million copies? Is it winning awards and gaining respect from your peers? Or is just feeling satisfied with your work?

We’re often told that success is in the eye of the beholder — that we need to define it for ourselves, on terms that are meaningful to us.

I believe that’s true but that advice doesn’t tell us how to do it. Try as we might, many of our achievements wind up fitting a mold that suits somebody else — employers, parents, societal expectations — at least as much as, if not more than, it suits us personally. And we still find ourselves left unsatisfied or unhappy, wishing we had something more or something else, no matter how ‘successful’ we’ve been.

I think one of the reasons why is because there roughly are three types of success. I call them the 3 S’s. The trick is to first decide that you can’t have all three of them at once and that you therefore must figure out which one you’re really aiming at.

Here’s how I draw the 3 S’s of success on a triangle:

1. Sales success is about getting people to buy something you’ve created. Your book is a commercial hit! Everybody’s reading it, everybody’s talking about it, you’re on TV. You sell hundreds and then thousands and then millions of copies. Dump trucks beep while backing into your driveway before pouring out endless shiny coins as royalty payments. Sales success is about money. How much did you sell?

2. Social success means you’re widely recognized among your peers and people you respect. Critical success. Industry renown! To extend the book example, let’s say the New York Times reviews your latest novel and some writers you respect send you letters saying they thought the book was great (whether or not it’s a commercial hit).

3. Self success is in your head. It’s invisible. Only you know if you have it, because it corresponds to internal measures you’ve established on your own. Self success means you’ve achieved what you wanted to achieve. For yourself. You’re proud and satisfied with your work.

These three categories are broad and approximate but I think that’s why they’re useful: Chances are good that any major achievement you reach will fall more clearly into one than another. They apply to pretty much all industries, professions, and aspects of life.

The point is that success is not one-dimensional.

In order to be truly happy with your successes, you first need to decide what kind of success you want.

Are you in marketing? Sales success means your product flew off the shelves and your numbers blew away forecasts. Social success means you were written up in prestigious magazines, nominated for an award, or shouted out by the CEO at the all-hands meeting. Self success? That’s the same: How do you feel about your accomplishments?

Are you a teacher? Sales success means you’re offered promotions based on your work in the classroom because the bosses want to magnify and implement your work more widely. You’re asked to become a Vice Principal or Principal. Social success means educators invite you to present at conferences, mentor new teachers, and the superintendent recognizes you for your work. Self success? Again: How do you feel about your accomplishments?

There is a catch, though.

I believe it’s impossible to experience all three successes at once.

Picture the triangle above like one of those wobbly exercise planks at an old-school gym. If you push down on two sides, the third side lifts into the air. In our lives and work, it’s rare that any given thing we do — any single success we achieve, no matter how great — can satisfy ourselves and others in equal measure. Aspiring to that, if you ask me, is a mistake.

Sales success, for instance, can block self success. That’s what happened to me as a writer when I got hooked on bestseller lists, blog stats, and brand extensions. Personal goals took a backseat to more tangible commercial ones. I started making things because I was asked to and not because I wanted to. Sure, the saying goes “make hay while the sun shines,” and I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with chasing commercial success, but I’m pointing out that if that’s your north star it can distract or block you from chasing deeply personal goals.

Look at it the other way.

Personal goals don’t necessarily have a marketable strategy so no sales or social success may follow. I’m talking about making that triple-decker chocolate birthday cake you bake for your daughter, the incredible twelfth grade chemistry lesson you put your heart into for weeks, the backyard deck you built with your bare hands. You wouldn’t expect royalty payments or critical reviews from those endeavors. You’re not trying to sell cakes, lesson plans, or decks. You could! But that wasn’t your goal.

And, finally, let’s peek at this from a final view. Critical darlings often sell poorly. You see this almost every year at the Oscars. Spotlight wins Best Picture — tense, dramatic, wonderful acting. How much did it gross at the domestic box office? $45 million. That same year Furious 7 made $353 million.

Which would you have rather made?

There is Sales, Social, and Self success.

Spend time thinking about which one you want and then go.

Good luck!

This Two-Minute Morning Practice Will Make Your Day Better

In the early 2010s, I wrote a self-help book that catapulted me into a strange universe. I went from working an office job in the suburbs to walking onto TV show sets where I was often introduced as “Captain Awesome” or “The Happy Guy!”

I was thrust into becoming a spokesperson for positivity, happiness, and intentional living.

But there was just one problem.

My life was a mess.

I originally wrote the book as a series of blog posts to cope with the pain of my marriage falling apart and the heartbreak of losing my best friend to suicide. I moved to a bachelor apartment downtown and lived alone for the first time in my life. I began experiencing deep loneliness, chronic sleeplessness, and endless anxiety.

My solution to these deep emotional issues was to become a workaholic.

I would work in the suburbs all day, pick up a burrito on my way downtown, and then set it on my desk while working until one or two in the morning before falling asleep exhausted and then waking up exhausted when my alarm buzzed the next morning at 6:00 a.m.

I started taking pills to help me fall asleep and pills to help me wake up. I lost 40 pounds due to stress. I had headaches and chest flutters and stomach bubbles all day. Black bags slowly expanded like puddles under my eyes. When coworkers began asking if I was getting enough sleep, I bought and started applying face makeup.

I didn’t have time to sleep more and I didn’t have time to be asked about it.

I knew I was spinning.

After reading the book Willpower by Roy Baumeister and John Tierney, I became convinced my issue was decision fatigue. My to-do list was a mile high! So in an act of desperation, I began writing down a couple things I would focus on each day on a blank 4×6 index card. “I will focus on…” helped me carve some ‘will dos’ out of the endless ‘could dos’ and ‘should dos.’

The practice began providing ballast to my days because it blew away the endless fog of ‘what should I do next?’ and helped break giant projects down into simple tasks. A looming book deadline became ‘write 500 words’, an all-hands meeting about a major redesign became ‘send invite to three execs for feedback,’ and my nonexistent exercise regime became ‘go for a 10-minute walk at lunch.’

I will focus on…

I started buying index cards in packs of 100 at the dollar store and felt a sense of pride whenever I finished another pack.

The practice was wonderful for reducing decision fatigue, but I was still much too focused on the negative throughout the rest of my life. Over the next few years, I came across research that convinced me it wasn’t my fault.

What do I mean?

It turns out our brains contain an almond-sized amygdala that secretes fight-or-flight hormones all day. A few hundred thousand years of evolutionary programming makes us want to stare at bad news, sad news, and controversial news — endlessly. This naturally ingrained tendency is why we rubberneck on the highway, scan for one-star reviews, and immediately find the one question we got wrong on the math test. Our amygdalas are fantastic at looking for problems, finding problems, and solving problems, but they’re also ripe for exploitation. News media and social media sites have perfected that perfect sour-sweet-sour combo that grabs the greatest amount of our attention possible.

MSNBC’s goal isn’t to give you the news — it’s to sell you Subarus. Instagram’s goal isn’t to make you new friends — it’s to sell you a juice cleanse.

I decided it wasn’t my fault I was negative. It was the world’s fault!

But, fortunately unfortunately, I live in the world.

So what did I do? A study comparing people who wrote down gratitudes to people who wrote down hassles or events taught me that if I write down things I’m grateful for every week over a 10-week period, I’ll not only be happier, but physically healthier.

Each day, I added this to the back of my index card:

I am grateful for…

Do you do bicep curls? Hamstring curls? I started thinking of gratitudes as brain curls. The key is that they really need to be specific. Writing down things like “my apartment, my mom, and my job” over and over doesn’t do anything. I had to write down things like, “the way the sunset looks over the purple hostel across the street,” or “when my mom dropped off leftover chicken biryani,” or “having egg salad sandwiches in the cafeteria today with Agostino.”

I was proud of my new morning index card habit, but I still found myself holding too much stress. Then I came across a study in Science magazine called “Don’t Look Back in Anger!” showing that minimizing regrets as we age increases contentment. In other words, the act of sharing what’s worrying you actually helps extricate it.

So I added one final line to my daily index card:

I will let go of…

I will let go of…the rude email I sent last night at 11 p.m. I will let go of…showing up late to the meeting with the boss. I will let go of …comparing myself to Tim Ferriss.

The difference this simple practice made in my life has been incredible.

Because the truth is we’re only awake for around 1000 minutes a day on average. If we can invest just two of them to prime our brains for positivity, then we’ll be helping ensure the other 998 minutes of our days are happier.

Over time, I switched the order around, turned it into a formal journal, and now leave it on my night table. When I wake up, it’s the first thing I see, and the fact that it’s so short helps me feel like I’m setting up my day for success before I even begin.

Am I completely cured? Am I always happy now? No! Of course not. But this two-minute, research-based morning practice has massively improved the quality of my days.

I will let go of…

I am grateful for…

I will focus on…

I hope you give it a try.

And I hope it does the same for you.

I originally wrote a slightly different version of this article for Harvard Business Review.

Take More Pictures: The counterintuitive way to build resilience

When I was researching my book on resilience, I discovered something so obvious it blew me away.

I think I was around nine years old when my dad bought me the Complete Major League Baseball Statistics, a frayed paperback with a green cover. I treasured it and kept it in my room for years. I flipped through it so many times.

As I paged through the numbers, I started noticing something interesting. Cy Young had the most wins of all time in baseball (511). He also had the most losses (316). Nolan Ryan had the most strikeouts (5714), and the most walks (2795).

Why would the guy with the most wins also have the most losses?

Why would the guy with the most strikeouts also have the most walks?

It’s simple—they just played the most.

They tried the most and moved through loss the most.

When everything rests on the numbers

Sometimes, achieving something really is about quantity over quality not the other way around. I’ve asked wedding photographers how they manage to capture such perfect moments. They all say the same type of thing: “I just take way more pictures. I’ll take a thousand pictures over a three-hour wedding. That’s a picture every 10 seconds. Of course I’m going to have 50 good ones. I’m throwing 950 pictures away to find them!”

Sometimes, when I’m doing Q&A after a speech, someone asks me a question along the lines of  “So, congratulations on the success of The Book of Awesome. My question is: How do I get paid millions to write about farting in elevators?”

To me, this is like asking, “So you won the lottery. How do I win the lottery, too?”

I always answer the same way, with a reply I stole from Todd Hanson, former head writer at The Onion. He said that whenever someone asks him the question “So how do I get a job writing jokes for money like you did?” he gives a straightforward answer:

“Do it for free for 10 years.”

We cannot hack our way to success

Today, we’re surrounded by tales of companies with million-dollar valuations that grow at lightning-fast rates. We hear about tiny startups that Google acquires for billions of dollars, just a few months after launch. We want to read about the fastest way to get a six-pack or accelerate our careers. But ultimately, what we want to find—quick fixes, easy answers, shortcuts—isn’t there.

Some things take time. They take time. They just take time. It’s not about the number of hits but rather the number of times you step up to the plate. The most important questions to ask yourself are:
 

1. Am I gaining experience?

2. Will these experiences help?

3. Can I afford to stay on this path for a while?

Sometimes? No. Other times? Yes. And either way you’ll help yourself see that you are learning, doing, and moving—even if that means lots of failure on the way.

“I’m a big fan of poof”

Seth Godin, bestselling author of over 20 books, offered similar advice in an interview with Tim Ferriss: “The number of failures I’ve had dramatically exceeds most people’s, and I’m super proud of that. I’m more proud of the failures than the successes because it’s about this mantra of ‘Is this generous? Is this going to connect? Is this going to change people for the better? Is it worth trying?’ If it meets those criteria and I can cajole myself into doing it, then I ought to.”

And in and interview with Jonathan Fields on Good Life Project, he said, “I’m a big fan of poof.” What’s poof? The idea that you try and if it’s not working—poof. You go try something else.

I’m writing this article as part of my research, lessons, and ideas on resilience in You Are Awesome. That book came out over a year ago now. Is it a hit? Is it a flop? Honestly, it almost doesn’t matter. Because, either way, the only choice I have is to move on to the next thing.

Sure, I want it to succeed. But I can’t determine that. All I get to do is take more pictures. All I get to do is keep going with my next book, next talk, next project, next whatever, whether this one is a hit or goes poof.

You need to do the same.

Success stories are not stories of success  

We need to stop looking at successful people with the lens that their lives contain a success that led to a success that led to another success. Because you know what we’re really looking at? Not success, not really. Just people who are just really good at moving through failures.

Moving through failures, swimming through failure, recovering and going forward from failure? That’s the real success. Successful people get to where they’re going because they are willing to try something when the possibility of failure is high … they know and accept that and don’t shy away from it.

So when it comes to long-term success, remember it’s not how many home runs you hit. It’s how many at-bats you take. The wins will only pile up if you keep stepping up to the plate.

This is an edited excerpt from You Are Awesome: How To Navigate Chance, Wrestle with Failure, and Live and Intentional Life

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.