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Hey everyone, Happy end-of-October. Right now Toronto sidewalks are deliciously crunchy. We've got sheet-ghosts hanging from branches and Leslie and the kids wrapped almost everything on our porch in cobwebs. We have a ninja, werewolf, The Flash, and golden retriever going out this year. I missed the decorating because I was on the road last week. Recording a podcast and sharing our messages on living intentionally with good people in Orlando, Chicago, Catalina Island, Irvine, Dallas, and then Chicago again. You know the messages: delete social media, get the phone out of the bedroom, practice morning journaling, get outside, read a book, phone a friend, hug your family. Hypocritically, I was largely in airports and very far away from my family while saying this. Sure, Leslie and I still keep a family contract, and yes, video-calling helps—but nothing replaces time. The ultimate tension. The biggest countdown. We really do only get 30,000 days here. And that's if we're lucky, of course. I was thinking about time a lot this month while reading Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin and Friends: Understanding the Power of our Most Important Relationships by Robin Dunbar. I think you'll like both—and reviews are below, along with a few others. How we spend our time is how we spend our lives, of course. Thanks for a bit of time together this month, Neil PS. I just switched email servers so if anything looks different or this email landed somewhere strange—that's likely why. It's still me!
1. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrowby Gabrielle Zevin. This book had me at the jump. The very first sentence had a magnetic, pulling "WTF-I-want-to-know-more" effect. Pretty sure I actually moved my head closer to the page. 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—really holds us tightly. She describes scenes in high-def, folds characters in that shock and surprise, and keeps the plot jumping. The story pinballs between decades, characters deepen, and every door opened up is graciously closed. I think if you liked that opening scene of The Social Network—with Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) on a bad date and both characters fast-talking in a frenetic, snappy back and forth—then you'll probably like this book. Similar brainy-Cambridge core, lots of screen time, and characters who sidle up and occasionally chafe. (Page 257: "It was easy to dislike the man; it was harder to dislike the little boy who existed just below the surface…") So what's it about? 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 raw jealousy, and unrequited love, just to name a few. Fast-paced, warm-hearted, and a wonderful belly poke for your inner 90s gamer, too. A book to fall into. A joy to read. Highly recommended. 2. Friends: Understanding the Power of our Most Important Relationshipsby Robin Dunbar. First off, I was very confused by this book's cover. What are all these blue-black words? It took me a moment to realize the title and subtitle are down there at the bottom. But forget the cover! I'm sorry I brought it up. Let's move inside. Where there be gold! Solid gold. Robin Dunbar is such a cheery brain to hang out with. He starts off quickly: "Perhaps the most surprising finding to emerge from the medical literature over the past two decades has been the evidence that the more friends we have, the less likely we are to fall prey to diseases, and the longer we will live." Sound bunk? He thought you might say that so he casually dips you into the research covering, no big deal, 300,000 people across 148 studies. And it's not "fill out your mood on a scale of one to five" that these studies measure, either. It's lifespan. "Hard-nosed", Robin calls it. And so, okay, when you look at this giant body of research what does it ultimately all boil down to? In maybe the most powerful point in the book he writes "… it is not too much of an exaggeration to say that you can eat as much as you like, drink as much alcohol as you want, slob about as much as you fancy, fail to do your exercises and live in as polluted an atmosphere as you can find, and you will barely notice the difference. But having no friends or not being involved in community activities will dramatically affect how long you live." Heeeeeeeeeeeeads up. Time to reinvest in your connections with those close to you. Call your parents. Call your siblings. Be active and generous in your fantasy football group text. And sidenote: What is a 'friend'? They are relationships "all about a sense of obligation and the exchange of favors—the people you wouldn't feel embarrassed about asking for a favor and whom you wouldn't think twice about helping out." To color the definition in he also says "being on a Christmas card list is a marker." Is your list smaller than it used to be? Mine too. And it doesn't help that we spend more and more time alone as we get older. So what do we do? Unplug. Get offline. Meet in person. Sign up for live events. Plan holiday dinners. Laugh together. Cook together. Walk together. Exercise together. Go to concerts together. Be aware of the rising disconnection in our increasingly connected world and invest in two-way friendships that will pay massive dividends as we age. 3. Kokoroby Natsume Sōseki. How many Japanese novels over a hundred years old have you read? None? Me too! Until now, that is. I stumbled on this classic while wandering in a bookstore—the power of bookstores!—and was originally captivated on my flip-through by the format: 110 chapters all a page-and-a-half long. Turns out the book was serialized in the Asahi newspaper back in 1912. I imagine it like some kind of slow-moving textual soap opera that satisfies just by introducing you to characters that slowly grow to feel like people in your life. The novel tells the story of a boy's relationship with an old man he meets and calls Sensei. The story doesn't feel profound—although occasional bits of wisdom are sprinkled throughout—but I found the book a slow burn and easy mental wind down before bed. Slumber-inducing! I've been going on a lot of "two pages of fiction" rants lately and this book is seemingly written to satisfy that goal. Translator Meredith McKinney writes how the book is a true reflection of the time and read by every Japanese school child today with themes of "isolation, alienation, egotism, and profound dislocation from its cultural and moral inheritance." A transporting journey into Japanese life at the end of the Meiji Period—the 44-year-long "coming out" era beginning in the late 19th century that pulled Japan from the isolationist, feudal 250-year-long Shogunate onto the global stage. 4. Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Resultsby Shane Parrish. Somewhere near the first day of Shane Parrish's MBA program at the University of British Columbia a student he'd just met got into a loud argument with the professor. He became so incensed he quit! Like he actually stormed out of the classroom and drove off with tires screeching type thing. Shane told me he asked the storming-out guy why he was leaving and he yelled some parting words to Shane along the lines of "They aren't teaching us anything important here. You want to know what's important? Read Charlie Munger!" Then the guy literally drives right out of Shane's life. But he leaves behind … that clue! An impactful one. Shane looks up Charlie Munger and discovers he's co-head honcho, alongside Warren Buffet, of mega-conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway. And, like Buffett, Munger has left piles of essays, speeches, and wisdom on all things investing and life. (Much of it collected in Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit & Wisdom of Charles T. Munger [04/2020]) Shane begins parsing and distilling Charlie's wisdom onto a covert blog he titles with a series of numbers based on the zip code of Berkshire Hathaway's address in Omaha, Nebraska. He finishes his MBA, works for a time as a Canadian spy, and then makes his blog public. He calls it Farnam Street, one Berkshire-Hathaway-address-field less granular than the zip code, and the blog grows to fan and feed Shane's appetite for all things wisdom, knowledge, and penetrating truths. Alongside his popular The Knowledge Project podcast (I was a guest in 2019 and 2022) and his massive Sunday morning Brain Food email list, Shane has become an expert on all things "thinking about thinking." With the endlessly overwhelming nature of the world, I have long appreciated Shane's ability to "separate signal from noise", and now comes his first major book release since that ride began. It's different from the blog but a fun and easy read that combines anecdotes, personal stories, and research in short and (yes) clear chapters. He begins in a Talebesque way by sharing the "enemies of clear thinking": The Emotion Default, The Ego Default, The Social Default, The Inertia Default. Then he tells us how to build strength: Self-Accountability, Self-Knowledge, Self-Control, Self-Confidence, etc. And then he gets into "clear thinking in action" which includes defining the problem, exploring possible solutions, evaluating options, etc. A valuable and generous book I know I'll revisit again and again. 5. I'm Thinking Of Ending Thingsby Iain Reid. I remember when I got obsessed with Charlie Kauffman: sitting in the tiny art cinema The Screening Room in Kingston, Ontario twenty-five years ago with my first girlfriend. We were blown away by Being John Malkovich and while watching the credits roll I saw "Written by Charlie Kauffman" and was hooked. What does Kauffman represent? Some kind of gonzo-creative, elegantly-twisted type of writing. (His next two movies were Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). So when I saw Charlie's blurb on the cover of this book—"An ingeniously twisted nightmare road trip through the fragile psyches of two young lovers. My kind of fun!"—I was like, okay, I must read this. Am I glad I did? Yes and no. It's a psychological thriller with short chapters and sparse, flying prose, nearly all taking place as mental self-talk of a young, slightly disturbed woman riding shotgun on a dark drive to meet the parents of this new guy she just started dating. Bit of a Get Out vibe. But, of course, how well does she really know him? And why does her phone keep ringing? And what's up with these strange voicemails? If you liked books like The Girl on the Train or Dark Matter (12/2016), you'll probably like the book. It's a little less tied together and climactic than the opening suggests. But a fast, fun, and, yes, "twisted" read. 6 and 7. The Little Book of Woodland Bird Songs and The Little Book of Backyard Bird Songs. I started birding during the pandemic. How cliché! I remember my "spark bird" fondly—that Rose-Breated Grosbeak I saw sitting on a power wire out my window while setting up a makeshift virtual office. (This was back in the "Sure, go ahead and take a bedroom" phase of the pandemic—just a few months before the "Get your loud meetings to the basement" stage.) Why do I love birding? It helps me slow down. Take a pause. Gain some perspective. It helps me move, see, connect—with the land, the air, the water, this whole place we're living in. I love thinking about species beyond our species and life beyond our life. I love the majesty of birds, the trivia of birds, the painted plumages, the wild mating calls. I love bird podcasts. I love life lists. I love "What's This Bird?" and meeting new friends on the (ad-free and spam-free!) community on eBird. So say you're with me. You're bird-curious, at least. Now how do you get kids into it? First up, buy kids binoculars! (Adult binoculars are too heavy for my little ones.) Next, grab these two books. Both introduce kids to birds in a big, bright, simple way—with bird calls on the side for endless entertainment. (No, it's not easy to take the batteries out on long car rides but maybe you'll find yourself singing and hooting along.) The Little Book of Backyard Bird Songs features the House Wren, American Goldfinch, Red-Winged Blackbird, Killdeer, House Finch, Great-Horned Owl, Blue Jay, American Robin, Northern Cardinal, Mourning Dove, Song Sparrow, and American Crow. And The Little Book of Woodland Bird Songs has the Red Crossbill, Hermit Thrush, Black-Capped Chickadee, Common Loon, Red-Eyed Vireo, Sharp-Shinned Hawk, Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher, Purple Finch, Barred Owl, Wild Turkey, and Downy Woodpecker. Twenty birds—and bird calls!—to inspire all the birders or birders-to-be in your life. 8. There is no 8! Just a loot bag of links. First up, Leslie and I just wrote a new article for CNBC and it's been algorithmically declared successful. Also! The moon is full at precisely 4:24 PM EST this afternoon and that's when I'll be dropping a chat with Sahil Bloom on topics like Parkinson's Law, cold plunges, phone-free walks, 5am writing blocks, opportunity versus energy, and so much more. I flew to New York to interview Sahil and there's a pile of powerful prescriptions in this one. Join us on Apple or Spotify. I enjoyed the first 30-45 minutes of Sam Altman on Joe Rogan (got a bit rambly after that) and it's nice to see Sarah Silverman starting her podcast up again after many months. If you missed it I thought her conversation with Tim Ferriss last year was wonderful. Susan Cain wrote a really powerful piece for her wonderful Kindred Letters email list called "Some thoughts on the horrors we face". Tim Urban pointed me to this video of a snow leopard mom pretending to be scared to help teach her kids. I posted a little string on the biggest ingredient for long-term happiness as well as this fascinating billboard I walked by in LA. Thanks for reading all the way to the very, very end! Have a wonderful month and I'll talk to you soon. Oh, and if someone forwarded you this you can sign up to join us righhhhhhhhhhhhhhht here.
