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Hey everyone,
Hope you’re having a great January.
The holiday hangover is over and if you’re looking to push yourself to read more books in 2018 start with this article I wrote last year. It’s been flying around online a lot this month which I take as a great sign a lot of folks are doubling down on reading. As George R.R. Martin wrote “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
Enjoy this month’s books!
Neil
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The Opposite of Spoiled: Raising Kids Who Are Grounded, Generous, and Smart About Moneyby Ron Lieber. Do you know how most kids get allowance after they do chores? That’s how it worked in my house growing up. Well, this book says bollocks to that. New York Times “Your Money” columnist Ron Lieber points out when we tie money with chores we’re attempting parenting jujitsu by teaching kids “hard work” and “money management” values at the same time. But he points out kids learn hard work lots of places -- school projects, team sports, summer jobs. And they learn money management -- pretty much nowhere. So he suggests giving children three big glass jars labeled “Save”, “Spend”, and “Give” and then simply giving them their age in dollars each week and letting them have free reign on where the money goes and how they spend it. There are “advanced settings” like paying interest on the Save jar, but that’s the general idea. We loved it and started it at our house. Sure enough, it’s provoking great conversations, teaching money skills early, and importantly, retaining the intrinsic motivation of doing jobs around the house. The book offers a lot more ideas but that was the big highlight. A great read.
Point Your Face At This by Demetri Martin. For people who loved the intelligent absurdity of The Far Sidecartoons … this is for you! Demetri Martin is a stand-up comedian and former correspondent for The Daily Show. It is really hard to explain the genius of this book so instead I’m going to give you one, two, three, four, five examples of the cartoons. I couldn't stop laughing.
Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan. I remember reading an interview with Diablo Cody after Juno, the first ever movie she wrote, was nominated for Best Picture. “How you gonna top that?” she was asked. And I loved her answer which I’m totally paraphrasing. “I’m not,” she said. “And that Best Picture nomination relieves me of the obligation of ever doing so. Now I can just write whatever I want.” I love the idea and I’ve held onto it whenever someone asks how I’m going to top The Book of Awesome. I think that’s partly why I was fascinated with Manhattan Beach. Jennifer Egan’s last book A Visit From the Goon Squadwon The Pulitzer Prize and a slew of other awards. I read it last year and loved it. So this is her encore! And taken from that lens it’s probably a disappointment. Less creative plotlines, less original style, a lot more paint-by-numbers historical fiction about a woman working in the Brooklyn Naval Yard becoming the first ever female deep sea diver while getting involved in a lot of relationships and temptations of the age. It’s good. But it’s no Goon Squad. But if you forget the last book and just take this as a little trip into a time and place most of us will never otherwise know… then it’s a journey still well worth looking out the windows for.
Hard Timesby Charles Dickens. The last Charles Dickens books I read were for high school projects so it felt good reading this one without making a presentation to a roomful of sixteen-year-olds at the end. Hard Timesis a deep rail against our left-brained desires for hard facts, science backing, and that itchy part of our brains that always wants to “see the numbers.” The book is getting close to 200 years old yet it felt fresh and timely. Maybe more so! What’s up with obsessing about facts? Fancy beats facts sometimes and when we think of our best moments… falling in love, holding our kids, getting a hug for going out of our way… well, those things don’t add up to anything in Excel. I loved this book but would rank it behind Great Expectationswhich I still feel resonating with me twenty years later.
Atlas Obscuraby Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras, and Ella Morten. When my friends Chris, Ty, and I went on our cross-country road-trip after graduation ten years ago, we took great delight in finding obscure little landmarks way off the beaten path. The tiny Eiffel Tower in Paris, Texas, for instance, a giant pair of fiberglass feet, or a pile of spray-painted Cadillacs buried “nose first” in a cow-field by some crazy helium tycoon. If Chris was alive and we could somehow do that road trip today, I know we’d stash Atlas Obscura in the glove compartment. My friend Frank Warren of PostSecret sent me this treasure trove and it's such a joy flipping through it. The only question I have about the book is that I wonder if it somehow reduces the sheer pleasure of finding one of these gems on your own. In a way, I feel like maybe we are cataloguing and indexing everything except the thrill and joy of discovery in the first place.
Little People, Big Dreams: Amelia Earheartby Ma Isabel Sanchez Vigara. Have you heard of this Children's Series Little People, Big Dreams? Beautiful picture books sharing the life story of an inspiring woman like Rosa Parks, Marie Curie, or Maya Angelou. I saw a great display of them at Type Books in Toronto and have been loving this story of Amelia Earheart
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson. Have you by chance heard of this book? I’m guessing yes given it’s been on top of bestseller lists for two years. I remember when it first came out booksellers I spoke to saying the f-bomb was attracting folks. Later I heard them say it was really tapping into the emerging counter-anxiety trend of not giving a f*ck. (Also popularized in the book and TED Talk by Sarah Knight called “The Magic of Not Giving a F*ck.) But now that I’ve read it I can say… no, it’s the book itself. Gold life advice shared in a disarming, accessible way by a new master. There’s less “new news” here but some pretty epic distillations of concepts like the value of failure and the importance of boundaries.
