20. Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention – and How To Think Deeply Againby 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. Lotby 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 Palindramaby 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 Asiaby 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 includeExit 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 Journeyby 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 Youby 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.
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 Seaby 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 readA 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 Restaurantby 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 Relationshipsby 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 Novelby 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 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. 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.
6. 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. (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.
5. How to Develop Self-Confidence and Influence People by Public Speakingby 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 Mountainby 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 Heartby 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 Countyby 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 withMaus 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 orAnna Karenina …
1. Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemptionby Bryan Stevenson. (L/I/A) Just Mercy tells the incredible life story ofBryan 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.”