Neil Pasricha's Monthly Book Club - August 2017

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Hey everyone,

It’s finally here! Two-Minute Mornings is available everywhere this week. It’s gone from an exercise written on a blank cue card kept in my front pants pocket for years into an actual hardcover journal. Essentially it’s a simple tool to prime your brain for positivity by filling out three science-backed prompts each morning:

  1. I will let go of…

  2. I am grateful for…

  3. I will focus on…

If it interests you, I hope you’ll check it out.

And now onto the books!

Neil

1. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. Do you remember the feeling of playing Super Mario 3 for the first time? Running through levels feeling overwhelmed and delighted by the smorgasbord of enemies, power-ups, and challenges endlessly scrolling onto the screen. This book gave me that exact feeling and the cover blurb says it best: “Willy Wonka meets The Matrix.” Wild, totally gripping page-turner about a dystopian future with everyone racing through an online treasure hunt packed with 80’s references. I loved it. Sidenote: Steven Spielberg is directing the movie version but don’t send me any trailers! I’m seeing how long I can last without seeing a single image from it. May be tough. Stop reading my emails, Google Ads. (Btw, shoutout to the person I saw on the street the other day wearing an “I liked the book better” T-shirt.)

2. American Pastoral by Philip Roth. If Ready Player One is all plot then this one is all character. What would you do if your straight-laced teenage daughter suddenly killed someone with a homemade bomb and then took off? That setup is made incredibly realistic and explored into almost extreme depths of psychological tension in this Pulitzer Prize winner. Dark, eerie, addictive from start to finish. I felt like my brain gained a new level of awareness as I was reading this book. 

3. We Are All Weird: The Rise of Tribes and the End of Normal by Seth Godin. I love Seth Godin and trumpeted What To Do When It’s Your Turn and The Dip over the past few months. But I got less out of this one. The thesis is there is no more mass market and everything is fragmenting into ever more granular sub-cultures. If you already buy that, then this book colors that in. But, I feel like books like The Long Tail hit the nail on the head harder.

4. Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations With Today’s Top Comedy Writers by Mike Sacks. This is the ugly cousin to Judd Apatow’s Sick in the Head. Apatow’s book features can’t miss interviews from people like Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, and Steve Martin. This book goes the other way and interviews hilarious people you’ve never heard of who write for late-night sketch shows and sitcoms. Felt like it was written only for other people breaking into those industries. He includes great pieces like advice from all-star literary agent Byrd Leavell on getting your work noticed and Conan writer Todd Levin sharing the writing package that got him hired. A bit too micro-focused for me but there are gems like an inspiring essay by Juno writer Diablo Cody. I wanted to be a comedy writer in my early 20s and wish I’d had resources like this around. 

5. Wonder by R.J. Palacio. I love books that take place over one school year. Book opens in September, big climax around Christmas, and nicely finishes up just before summer break. I love reliving that roller coaster school calendar feeling from when I was a kid. This book follows that pattern and didn’t disappoint. Auggie is a ten-year-old with a rare facial abnormality who is entering school for the first time. The author pulls a Jaws-like stunt by never quite revealing what he looks like until much later. Sure, bit saccharine, bit over-the-top, but unpredictable enough, with unique storytelling angles, to create a beautiful and funny read I’m already excited to share with my kids in a few years. I may or may not have cried at the end. 

6. Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon. I mentioned a couple times that Austin Kleon’s weekly email served as an inspiration behind this newsletter. He’s one of my favorite people to follow online and this book is a classic that liberates your inner creative while blasting away mental traps we fall into like “I’m stealing this idea.” Austin shows how all art steals and remixes and follows that tip up with nine other suggestions like: Don’t wait to know who you are to get started, Write the book you want to read, and Creativity is subtraction. I had the book before off people’s bookshelves and while cruising the Urban Outfitters table but I finally got my own copy and this time read it slowly while making notes. I ingested it fully. Breathed it in and out. A fantastic book.

7. Emerald City (and other stories) by Jennifer Egan. Hi, my name is Neil Pasricha, and I’m an early-bibliography-aholic. I did it again this month. I loved Jennifer Egan’s Pulitzer Prize-winning A Visit From The Goon Squad so much I picked up her early short stories. Sure, there were a couple gems, but most of it was a slow exploration of mood or just a pile of beautiful sentences stacked on top of each other like a crispy onion ring tower at Outback. Delicious, gluttonous, little nutritional content. I have to stop always trying to chase authors I love back into their early short stories. It’s a world of pain.

8. Where The Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. My wife Leslie’s tattered old copy of this book of poems and drawings has Plinko-d down to my son’s bookshelf complete with calligraphic Christmas, 1989 inscription in the front cover and a little note beside the poem she read at her cousin’s baby ceremony. We’ve been reading it on repeat with my three-year old and it feels like a real gift to the world. A really beautiful work of art. Let me close this month with the poem she read from the book called LISTEN TO THE MUSTN’TS: 

Listen to the MUSTN’TS, child

Listen to the DON’TS

Listen to the SHOULDN’TS

The IMPOSSIBLES, the WON’TS

Listen to the NEVER HAVES

Then listen close to me---

Anything can happen, child,

ANYTHING can be.

Interested in more of my reviews? Read my monthly book clubs or visit my Goodreads page.

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