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Hey everyone,
Reading books is an act of resistance!
Screens sexier, algorithms grabbier, and the dreamy escape of falling into a book becomes a little more difficult. As always, I’m talking to myself here, as I have noticed that I’m trying to read more than I used to. One thing that helps? This book club. “Make a public commitment” is one of eight things I suggest to 10x your reading rate. If those eight resonate, then here’s a follow-up I wrote with eight more.
Enjoy the last few days of August and I’m excited to keep reading beside you in September.
And now … to the pages!
Neil
1. Finite and Infinite Gamesby James Carse. (L/I/A) This book is 101 very short essays that slowly and iteratively build 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 an NYU history and religion professor who died in 2020 and somehow sprung this 149-page magic trick onto the world way back in 1986. I recommend it for anyone struggling with overwhelm or what I’ll call ‘life prioritization.’ The illumination is that most of what’s worth living for can be called an infinite game. Parenting, learning, loving your close friends well. Nice pairs 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 came in the early pages and, actually, the metaphor felt like it might collapse like a wet chocolate cake in the middle. But what I’m saying is: the first 50 pages of this book are worth way more than the ticket price. That’s all you need to read! Highly recommended.
2. The Rights of the Readerby Daniel Pennac. (L/I/A) One issue with infinite games? They’re a lot harder to play. In chapter two of The Happiness Equation I wrote about getting addicted to blog stats and bestseller lists in my late 20s and early 30s. I shared research on how extrinsic motivators actually hide intrinsic motivators from our brain and result in ultimately lower quality results. But they’re so much more visible, tempting, and, yes, finite. I started 3 Books in my late 30s – almost five years ago – and I really wanted to steer myself away from these temptations. I made sure I couldn’t access my own podcast stats. I decided to publish on the (at least) 30,000 year old lunar calendar instead of the 500 year old Pope Gregory calendar. I don’t accept guest pitches and stay focused on inviting people on who are interesting – whether or not they can offer big swirls of traffic from their own ‘platform’. And, lastly, I never spend or receive a dollar on advertising. (“Gratis being the only currency in art,” writes Daniel Pennac.) So I was hoping 3 Books would become a ‘word of mouth’ show – growing from reader to reader, teacher to teacher, friend to friend. Now, the extrinsic stuff always shows up – the show won Apple’s “Best Of” Award and I get pitches from people who point at stats showing it’s one of the top 0.5% podcasts in the world -- but just by focusing away from extrinsic allows intrinsic to bubble up. Then I feel more priceless (and measureless) bits of love get more visible on the surface. Like this book. I got it with a handwritten postcard from 3 Booker Jen Penn of Sandwich, Illinois, who wrote “Neil, you’re so generous in sending books to your 3 Books listeners – I thought it might be nice for you to receive a book! Thanks for enriching my reading life.” I had never heard of Daniel Pennac before! Or this book! It was written in French in 1992 and translated to English in 2006 and it features wonderful drawings throughout from (Sir!) Quentin Blake. Swervy, conversational, engaging, poppy, and, ultimately ending with a wonderful 30-page pronouncement called “The Rights Of The Reader.” What are the rights? (1) The Right Not To Read, (2) The Right To Skip, (3) The Right Not To Finish A Book, (4), The Right To Read It Again, (5) The Right To Read Anything, (6) The Right To Mistake A Book For Real Life, (7) The Right To Read Anywhere, (8) The Right To Dip In, (9) The Right To Read Out Loud, (10) The Right To Be Quiet. A lot overlap with the 3 BooksValues! And, more than anything, the book serves as an accessible and non-judgemental invitation to further deepen your (so very obvious) love of books.
3. Spoiler Alert: The Hero Diesby Michael Ausiello. (L/I/A) I mentioned a couple months ago that Book Clubber Casey Coleman replied to my May Book Club suggesting I read more queer literature. I asked for suggestions, he sent a huge list, and then I started with Lot by Bryan Washington. I loved it and featured it in my June Book Club. Now we’re in August. And my wife Leslie got to another book from Casey’s pile. So here she is: “After finishing Scarborough I had that ‘I will never love a book again’ feeling and was reluctant to read the first page of this when I saw it in one of Neil’s (many) piles looking for something to read before bed. And, honestly, I fell right into it. Maybe it’s just a Rebound Book, cause there’s something about it that feels a bit trashy or gossipy but, at the same time, that’s why I love it. Some nights I read maybe one page. Some nights I read a lot more. And Michael Ausiello gets me laughing minutes before I’m tearing up with his descriptions of awkward situations and vivid details that describe the mixed, dimensional, complicated emotions that unite us as humans. From around age 30 to age 43, Michael was in a long-term relationship with photographer Kit Cowan. This memoir chronicles their relationship including the sad and final last year of Kit’s life (which is also the first year of their marriage) after he was diagnosed with a rare and brutal type of cancer. Get the Kleenex ready.” (PS. Dan Savage helped write the screenplay and the movie is coming out from Focus Features in December.)
4.Keep Goingby Austin Kleon. (L/I/A) Austin Kleon has +100 Internet Karma points. Opening his weekly newsletter feels like flipping open a barnacle-covered treasure chest. His website AustinKleon.com offers deep swims through pools of wisdom. Now, if you know Austin’s books, I’m guessing you know Steal Like An Artist. Biggest, most popular, the one you see everywhere. But this one, published seven years later in 2019, is the one I find myself picking up lately. Full of Austin’s endlessly pithy and often counterintuitive advice it’s a War Of Art-like kick in the pants to creatively keep on keeping on. “Forget the noun, do the verb,” he writes on Page 62, a great reminder to eschew labels in favor of focusing on the practice while allowing for natural creative sidesteps. What does he mean? “If you only aspire to be a ‘creative,’ you might simply spend your time signaling that you are one: wearing designer eyeglasses, typing on your Macbook Pro, and Instagramming photos of yourself in your sun-drenched studio.” On the difficulty of changing our minds today? “Social media has turned us all into politicians. And brands. Everyone’s supposed to be a brand now, and the worst thing in the world is to be off-brand.” On focusing on intrinsic instead of trying to monetize everything? “Let the low-hanging fruit fall off and rot.” Part of the magic of Austin’s work is that you can see his process. He uses social media as public journals, he shares what he’s thinking in a glue-in-a-scrapbook kind of way. And he’s always creating! He told me how Henry David Thoreau and David Sedaris taught him the magic of constant creation. I flew down to Texas and had lunch with Austin at Mi Madre’s in East Austin recently so, yes, look up to the sky! When our coming Harvest Moon is fully plumpy – September 10th, 5:59am! – my chat with Austin will drop as Chapter 111 of 3 Books. (Need a creativity jolt before then? Check out Brad Montague or IN-Q!)
5.The Inevitableby Kevin Kelly. (L/I/A) Remainder bins are full of five year old books written by ‘futurists’. Kind of a lose-lose scenario, writing those. Either you got it right … and now there’s no reason to read your book. Or you got it wrong … and now there’s no reason to read your book. Plus Faith Popcorn kicks you off her Christmas card list. Well, Kevin Kelly is not a futurist. (“We’re living in a long now,” he says.) But he does tell you what’s going to happen. In his 2010 book What Technology Wants he posited a fascinating tech-determinism theory that is equal parts brilliant and (depending on your seat in the theater) scary. In this 2016 book he shares 12 thirty-year trends. And the best part is reading this book today, six years post-pub, you really can just feel them all happening. Like Flowing ("depending on unstoppable streams in real time for everything"), Cognifying ("Making everything much smarter using cheap powerful AI from the cloud"), and Tracking ("employing total surveillance for the benefit of citizens and consumers"). It makes sense why the David Pogue blurb inside says “Anyone can claim to be a prophet, a fortune teller, or a futurist, and plenty of people do. What makes Kevin Kelly different is that he’s right.” A Boggle-like brain shake from the septuagenarian former editor of WIRED and The Whole Earth Catalog. The book tilts very optimistic as Kevin “…celebrates the never-ending discontent that technology brings because this discontent is the trigger for our ingenuity and growth.” I was very lucky to sit down with Kevin Kelly for 3 Books. Our chat dropped at 4:17am this morning, which was the exact minute of the new moon. You can listen on Apple or Spotify. (Or check it out on YouTube - I experimented with filming this one.)
6. Lullabies for Little Criminalsby 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. (Like A Little Life maybe? Though I haven’t read that.) 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. Not as fifth-gear as A Million Little Pieces by James Frey, but if you loved that (and I did), then I think you’ll love this, too.
7. The Monocle Book of Gentle Living. (L/I/A) Back in 2015 I was at a lunch with a graphic designer and web developer and they were both toting copies of Monocle magazine. “Monocle magazine?” I asked. “Isn’t that the $25 magazine full of Rolex ads for rich people in airports?” Well, they said, sure, but it’s also a real pinnacle of design. I learned Monocle is a globally based brand run by Tyler Brûlé, a Torontonian living in Zurich. I started reading and the voice was powerful – like some kind of enlightened, pithy, smartass? They call themselves a ‘briefing on global affairs, business, culture, design and more’ for a globally minded audience. They have 24,000 magazine subscribers and (unlike almost every magazine in the world) it’s growing. Plus their own little shops in Zürich, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Toronto, and Tokyo. This is a side-project coffee table book series and it’s well worth buying to flip through. Captivating photos, literary captions, and an air of authority. Feels like having a leisurely lunch at the Four Seasons rooftop with your jet-setting pal. The advice is solid, though, with suggestions on everything from simple gardening gear to get back into nature (and how to pull off an incredible garden on an apartment balcony) to spotlights on local bakeries and bookstores. Fun!
8. Everybodyby Elise Gravel. (L/I/A) “EVERYBODY is unique and different. But we are more similar than we think. EVERYBODY has fears. EVERYBODY makes mistakes … Ow! … and everybody can learn from them.” These are the opening lines of this wonderfully rendered 40-page picture book about empathy and emotional self-acceptance. Elise Gravel’s illustrations are what I’d describe as a wonderful bright-pastelly, psychedelic, bizarro McDonaldland-type aesthetic. Pairs well with Bodies Are Cool by Tyler Feder.
9.The Hobbitby 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. I hadn’t read it until this summer. My oldest son has 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 lots!) You probably don’t need me to tell you it’s a wonderfully rollicking quest with a soft glowing magic emanating off the pages from its endless voices, wordplay, and twists. This beautiful clothbound version was published in 2013 and features new illustrations by Jemima Catlin who was asked by Christopher Tolkien via Harper Collins to add her flair to the book. (Here are some samples.) My son’s life has changed a lot in the past couple months. He changed his name. He’s going to a new school. He's made new friends and lost old ones. He’s felt in place and out of place. And he’s navigating his own personality as it quickly congeals. I feel, I hope, like 10 pages a night of The Hobbit offered a consistent grounding force. I know it did for me. Highly recommended. (PS. If you want to see inside, here’s a YT video.)
10. There is no ten! But you made it all the way to the end so here are a few stocking stuffers. Kevin Kelly's TED Talk "The future will be shaped by optimists", Bangkok-and-Singaporean-based design agency Anonymous created a wonderful little resource called Books Read By, a whale shark having a bite to eat, half a million swallows set off weather alerts, Ryan Holiday's "11 ways to be happy and productive", and Oliver Burkeman offers a cure for those struggling with "personal knowledge management."
