Neil's Monthly Book Club is my oldest and most popular email newsletter. Click here to subscribe.
Hey everyone,
Happy new year!
Hope you had some downtime (and reading time) over the holidays. Here’s what I read and enjoyed this month.
Neil
1. The Little Princeby Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. When I was a kid my older cousin handed me this book and said “Read it now and when you’re older it’ll mean something completely different.” Well, I finally reread this book. There’s a reason it’s sold 80 million copies. Really profound commentary on the busyness of society, what love really means, and the value of friendship. Two insane facts I didn’t know: The book is a parable about a downed pilot lost in a desert stumbling upon a little Prince … and the author really did down his plane in a desert and wander around dehydrated and hallucinating until he was rescued. And then, a year after he wrote this book, he was piloting another plane that completely vanished! The wreckage was found fifty years later in the Mediterranean Sea. So he wrote a parable about a plane crash that became one of the bestselling books of all time… between two horrific plane crashes of his own.
2.Pretentiousness: Why It Mattersby Dan Fox. Title sounds like a turnoff. But that’s the point. An incredibly well-written essay on the history, purpose, and joy of the creative process. Pretentiousness – the testing and adding your art and ideas to the world – is where everything good comes from. My view of the word itself and what it means completely shifted. Book is only 100 pages but not “light” at all. Veers to the academic side. Chock full of nuggets. Voted one of the New York Times Notable Books of 2016, too.
3.Barney’s Versionby Mordecai Richler. I loved The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz when I was younger. That was the only other Mordecai Richler book I’d read until this… and this blows the roof off that one. It took me a couple tries to get in because the first person narration is so acidic and scorching. Very funny but almost too dark for me. But page by page Barney grows on you and this fictional “righting of wrongs” memoir reveals all kinds of hidden storylines, quiet love, and almost unbelievably beautiful writing as he shares his life story in three sections dedicated to his three wives. This is the only novel I can recall that just killed it across both Canada and US awards circuits (Giller / NYT Notable) and it’s easy to see why. A masterwork. Sad he wrote no novels a decade before this and no novels afterwards until his death so this gem stands on a lonely island. I’ll treasure it on my shelf always.
4. The Reason I Jumpby Naoki Higashida and translated by David Mitchell. According to the introduction, this is the only book ever written about autism … by someone with autism. Japanese teenager Naoki Higashida wrote this book with a Japanese alphabet pad and an assistant, one character at a time, and you can feel that slow tenderness and passion as he answers question after question. Why do people with autism talk so loudly and weirdly? Why don’t you make eye contact while talking? What’s the reason you jump? I said before I’ve loved David Mitchell since Cloud Atlas, so I originally found this book while searching for bibliographical scraps. I was in for a major surprise. In the introduction David Mitchell shares how his son has severe autism and he, like many, struggled to identify, relate, and support his child… until he read this book. He then worked with his wife to translate it at the request of friends and the book found a giant Western audience after Jon Stewart trumpeted it on The Daily Show and it hit The New York Times bestseller list. Completely expanded my perception of being human with an entirely new worldview. Must, must, must-read.
5. Hyperbole and a Halfby Allie Brosch. There are just too many books out there so I’m always looking for curated lists. That’s why I do this email. That’s why I love Ryan Holiday’s Monthly Email List. And that’s why I scanned Bill Gates’s GatesNotes and found this gem in the vein of David Sedaris or Jenny Lawson’s autobiographical hilarity. This feels like an evolution on those books with edge comedy scattered across Microsoft Paint-style cartoons. Despite the visual format the content is pretty meaty and even heavy. Emotionally I could only read one or two stories at a time. Amazing introspection on the human condition especially on topics such as mental illness, anxiety, and maybe the best essay I’ve ever read on depression. Unique and unexpected. PS Don’t judge this one by the cover!
6. Home Gameby Michael Lewis. I miss my family when I’m traveling. High up in some cold airplane I often find myself scrolling through home videos on my cell phone. Well, this book felt like I was home while traveling. An insightful take at being a modern father with its evolving mix of expectations and responsibilities. There is so much truth in this book that it’s hard not to feel both occasionally inferior and superior. (He has a great mini-essay on those feelings, too.) It’s divided into one section for each of his three kids with a final Epilogue detailing his vasectomy. Uh, yeah. I haven’t read a ton of Michael Lewis but I’m guessing that last chapter may be the funniest thing he’s written.
7. Boo Hoo Birdby Jeremy Tankard. Looks like your average ho-hum children’s picture book (and I thought it was) but has one of the most subtle messages about empathy hidden inside. When Bird gets bonked on the head playing catch all his animal friends take turns trying to help – offering a cookie, slapping on a Band-Aid, trying to play Hide-And-Seek. But nothing works until all the other animals start crying too. And then Bird finally feels better. There are no closing thoughts or morals hitting you with a hammer here. Just a nice message weaved in.
8. Love Is A Mix Tape by Rob Sheffield. Funny, sad, beautiful memoir about a guy who gets married young and becomes a widow soon after. (Not a spoiler as it’s revealed on the first page!) The story of indie music, mix tapes, and rock concerts is weaved through the book and it’ll appeal to anyone who’s ever been in a relationship where music was a big part of the story. Written by a contributing editor to Rolling Stone so it’s in that same light, jumpy, and funny style of writing.
9. The Fermi Paradoxby Tim Urban. I love going to the blog Wait But Why when my mind needs a complete zoom out. Tim Urban has a great writing style that completely reduces whatever you’re worrying about to interplanetary dust or maybe just shifts it to some giant fear you didn't know you had. Have you ever wondered why we’ve never seen or heard from aliens? Then this is for you.
10.Civil Disobedience and Other Essaysby Henry David Thoreau. You know those cardboard boxes of free books people leave in front of their house? I usually peek in expecting a pile of yellowed Harlequins but once in a while spot a gem like this thin volume of essays by Henry David Thoreau. The title essay is great but my favorite is Walking (link goes to full text) and it’s a fiery piece on the philosophical, meditative, and creative benefits of… walking. Leslie and I picked our house based on what we could walk to and I try and do most of my meetings walking. So this essay hit home. (Sidenote: Nassim Taleb also has a great essay on urban walking at the back of The Black Swan expanded paperback edition.) As Thoreau says: “We should treat our minds, that is, ourselves, as innocent and ingenuous children, whose guardians we are, and be careful what objects and what subjects we thrust on their attention. Read not the Times. Read the Eternities. Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven.”
11.Sad Animal Factsby Brooke Barker. Fun little bathroom book with weird animal facts combined with hilarious straight-faced line drawings and quips. Like “Koi fish can live 200 years” with a drawing of a Koi fish saying “72,500 more days of exploring this decorative pond.”
Neil's Monthly Book Club is my oldest and most popular email newsletter. Click here to subscribe.
Hey everyone,
Hope you’re having a good month and gearing up for the holidays.
Thanks so much for all the feedback after my Book Club email last month. Your notes pushed me into another batch of books this month which I’m excited to share below. Also, total aside, my brand new TED Talk “How Do You Maximize Your Tiny, Short Life?” is live!
Happy holidays and happy reading.
Neil
1. The Art of Livingby Epictetus. Last March I stayed in a hotel called The Taj in San Francisco during my book tour. Indian chain. So I shouldn’t have been surprised when I pulled open the top drawer of the bedside table and there was a copy of The Vedas lying there. But it was strangely jarring. I’ve been used to seeing Bibles in hotel rooms my whole life. And then suddenly there was something else. “Hmmm,” I thought, “It’s not the Bible, necessarily, it’s a thousands-of-years old guidebook of stories and lessons for people sleeping far from home.” That got me thinking. What book would I put in the bedside table of my own hotel chain? What would you put? I never answered the question until now. I think it has to be The Art of Livingby Epictetus. Marcus Aurelius and Seneca may hog the Stoic philosophy press, but I’ve found great joy paging through this two-thousand year old book of simple philosophical notes written by a slave born on the edges of the Roman Empire in 55 AD. It’s a perfect book to flip through before falling asleep or after waking up in the morning if you can spare a few minutes before getting out of bed. Part of the appeal is that , despite being written so long ago, the translation feels like an email you got this morning from a wise friend. Sample entry to share a taste: “It is better to do wrong seldom and to own it, and to act right for the most part, than seldom to admit that you have done wrong and to do wrong often.” (More sample entries here.)
2.Dark Matterby Blake Crouch. I was complaining to my friend Alec a while back about Lost. You know, twisting plotlines, endless branches, totally confusing TV show. “Yeah, but you’re thinking about it in terms of plot,” he said. “It’s a character show. It’s not about plot.” Since then I always thought this was a fun little scale to think about. Plot vs Character. Overly simplistic, for sure, but a kind mental model that lets a lot more art into my life. In fiction I’ve lately veered to more character based stuff so Dark Matter was a nice rubber band snap back. It’s all plot. Plot, plot, plot. I don’t even think we know what the characters look like. But the plot in Dark Matter sizzles like frying bacon. Hot, loud, fills the room, jumps up and bites your wrist here and there. This is the fastest paced book I’ve read this year. Reminded me of reading The Martian or old suspenseful Michael Crichton books. (Anyone else still thinking about the ending to Sphere?) I felt like it was a bit predictable at the beginning but he has enough twists and turns that the ending feels completely wild and results in an ultimately beautiful story about love and regret wrapped in a crispy sci-fi phyllo pastry crust. Fantastic fun.
3.How To Develop Self-Confidence & Influence People by Public Speakingby Dale Carnegie. If you’re like me you know and probably enjoyed How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. This book was written before that one and is a lot lesser known unless you went to a Carnegie course. (By the way, Warren Buffet calls the Dale Carnegie course he took his most important degree.) I think this book is gold, honestly. Timeless advice that shows how to make a speech about the listener. That’s the key. Favorite chapters were templates with examples on how to open and close speeches (i.e., Arouse curiosity, share a human interest story, use an exhibit, share a shocking quote or fact, etc.) Super easy read. Perfect for anyone shoulder-tapped for a toast at a wedding all the way up to the corporate honcho in the big hat.
4. Hereby Richard McGuire. We all think in pictures, right? That’s all babies have! And then they grow into picture books. When images become too complicated to draw – the nuance of emotions, the fast pace of a long plot, whatever – we move to chapter books, then YA, then whatever you’re reading now. Where are the pictures? Still there. Just in our heads. I think it’s because of this picture-brain mindset I’ve always been attracted to graphic novels like Killing and Dyingby Adrian Tomine or Ghost Worldby Daniel Clowes. Realistic characters, strong plotlines, major emotions of good fiction, all complemented with realistically beautiful images and no superhero tights. That’s what makes Here such an incredible graphic novel with a really strange hook: every page is a snapshot of the exact same location at a different time in history. Native Americans have sex in the forest, construction of a century home begins on another, a man keels over in the 1970s rec room after someone tells a joke. Little boxes on each page give glimpses of what happened exactly here at other times, too. On most pages it’s within that century home but it often goes way farther into the past and future, too. Planet formation to post-apocalypse. It’s no comic book. And there’s no plot. It’s a guided meditation that dilates your brain into zooming way further out from wherever you happen to be. Where are you while reading this email? I guarantee you’ll be somewhere else after reading this book. I loved it. (Wired did a great overview of it, too.)
5. How To Be Successfulby Scott Adams. I reread this Wall Street Journal article by Scott Adams (the creator of Dilbert) this month. I bookmarked it a long time ago because it’s such a great and funny overview of why systems are better than goals.
6. Purityby Jonathan Franzen. 2016 was my Franzen Year. I read The Corrections,Freedom, and now Purityfrom January till now and not a single word he wrote before then. Don’t you love discovering an author and then realizing you’ve got a whole biography of theirs to explore? Purityis all kinds of layered emotional regression after emotional regression. We follow a character for a hundred pages only to regress into the backstory of the person she meets at the end of the hundred pages only to regress into the backstory of the person they meet at the end of the next hundred pages. Even though the book is Franzen’s usual 600 page paperweight there really wasn’t much wasted space until the end. His ability to describe personalities is so strong. You feel like you know these people better than your own family at times. Their secret desires, their shattered confidences, their disgusting thoughts. I felt like a better husband and dad while reading this book – feeling lucky for what I have and more grateful for the love around me in a world of heartbroken people. For anyone who hasn’t read Franzen’s stuff, I’d personally recommend this only after The Corrections and Freedom. Doesn’t quite get to the level of those two though it’s not far off.
7. Both Flesh and Notby David Foster Wallace. For years I tried and failed to get into David Foster Wallace. I tackled Infinite Jest like a mountain and slipped down the rocky hills just above base camp. It taunted me from my bookshelf for years. (Here’s a fantastic piece written recently about Infinite Jest for the twentieth year anniversary.) I loved the little bits and pieces of David Foster Wallace I’d read over the years (like his incredible This Is Water commencement speech) and was always looking for a new way into his writing. Now I have it. This book. It’s a collection of non-fiction essays he wrote for outlets like The New York Times Magazine and they are flabbergastingly beautiful and intense. The title essay is about Roger Federer at the beginning of his tennis career. It’s like nothing I’ve read before on sports. He has a funny essay on the seminal importance of Terminator 2. His collection of “word notes” on commonly misused words. And my favorite is his essay called The Nature Of The Fun which is about the emotional roller coaster of the creative process after having success in the creative process. (Brainpickings did a nice overview of it here.) Any of those essays are worth the price of admission alone. This is truly original, high-flying, mind-bogglingly good writing. Now I really need to tackle Infinite Jestagain…
8. The Verificationistby Donald Antrim. This was one of the strangest, most frustrating, and most emotional novels I’ve read this year. Completely absurdist comedy written by Antrim who is a longtime New Yorker writer, Professor at Brown, and MacArthur Fellow. Tom is a middle-aged psychotherapist hosting all his pschyotherapist buddies for a big night at the local pancake house. When he tries to start a food fight he’s put in a bear hug by a coworker and the rest of the book trips into a hallucination with him flying around the top of the restaurant looking down at the group. I kept wanting to just quit the book (I probably quit three or four books for every one I finish…) but something was strangely gripping about it. Real characters, blunt unflinching dialogue, psychosexual tension. And there are no chapters or any kind of mental resting stops to actually jump out of this car while it’s moving. If this is all starting to sound strange then let me tell you the book is actually a lot stranger than it sounds.
9. Before and Afterby Anne-Margot Ramstein & Matthias Aregui. When I wrote my children’s book Awesome Is Everywhere last year my editor warned me: “Everyone buys the classics.” You know how it is. Grandaddy grew up with Goodnight Moon, Auntie Pat’s Patted The Bunny for decades. So when it’s time for them to buy a gift for their grandchild or nephew, they defer to what they know, and the cycle continues. Kid’s classics get bigger and the cornucopia of contemporary delights gets routinely overlooked. But then, why are there so many new picture books and why are so many so good? I think it’s because even though advances and royalties are much smaller, because of market size and jackpot rate, the people doing them really are doing it for love. You can feel the TLC oozing off the pages. And Before and After is a book oozing with TLC. First off, no words appear at all in the entire book. On the left side of each page is an artistically clean drawing of something before -- like an acorn, caterpillar, or egg. On the right side is something after – like an oak tree, butterfly, or chicken. Some are obvious, some aren’t, all provoke great conversation. The bookseller who recommended it to me said it’s her favorite children’s book because it serves such a wide age, language, and development range. She didn’t mention parents but I love it, too. A great go-to gift for friends with kids because hardly anyone has heard of it. Beats Goodnight Moon any night.
Neil's Monthly Book Club is my oldest and most popular email newsletter. Click here to subscribe.
Hey everyone,
Hope you’re having a good month.
If you’re getting this it means you joined my email list sometime over the past few years through 1000 Awesome Thingsor maybe aBook of Awesomeor Happiness Equationevent. I’ve had fun sending more than 20,000 of you very sporadic updates through this email list … but they really have been sporadic. Really sporadic. Too sporadic.
I feel like inboxes are increasingly sacred spaces in our endlessly buzzing world. Think of how angry we get at spam and how good it feels to unsubscribe from seven email lists all at once. That is true freedom. I know I’m in your sacred space right now so you’ll find no handcuffs, no ads, no spam here. Just me to you. Feel free to unsubscribe below if this isn’t your thing or forward to your mom if you like it.
Why a monthly reading club? Because I love reading and so do you. You are reading this, after all. I’m in your brain right now and I’m not even there. I might be sleeping. That’s amazing. That’s reading. I love reading this much and this much and this much and this much and I feel like books are the greatest bargain in the universe. For a few dollars or a library card you can change a mind, expand a brain, share all kinds of emotions. But there’s so much out there … and we’re publishing more books faster and faster than ever before. So how do we find the gems we end up loving? I know I rely on advice of friends and subscribe to some great lists like Ryan Holiday’s Reading Email and Austin Kleon’s Newsletter which serve as inspiration for this one.
That’s the background on this new email. I’d love to hear what you think. Here goes nothing.
And now this month’s recommendations…
Neil
1. The War of Artby Steven Pressfield. I’ve been hearing about this book for years and finally read it on a flight. Absolutely amazing. A completely simple guide to battling “Resistance” – the single word Pressfield uses to describe the set of emotions and barriers preventing you from doing work you love. Within pages you’ll want to drop everything and tackle a creative project you’ve been thinking about starting. An example? This reading club email. I’ve been thinking about it for a while and The War of Art was the perfect push.
2.Black Swan Greenby David Mitchell. I’m a sucker for coming of age stories. The Fault In Our Stars? The Perks of Being A Wallflower? Sign me up. I visit lists like this often to find new ones. I think because those years are so formative I just feel the need to relive them over and over in different ways. Well, Black Swan Green is my current favorite coming-of-age story. David Mitchell had me at Cloud Atlasand this novel is just blissfully beautiful. We follow 13-year-old anxiety-prone stutterer Jason through a single up and down year in rural England in 1982. Unlike most of his other books Mitchell doesn’t shapeshift voice and characters in this one and I think the narrative voice is (somehow) even stronger as a result. Sample line: “Graveyards’re sardined with rotting bodies, so of course they’re scary places. A bit. But few things’re only one thing if you think about them long enough.”
3.The Black Swanby Nassim Taleb. If I was teaching a course in life, philosophy, economics, motivation, or psychology, this would be a mandatory textbook. I avoid pretty wide swaths of the Business section – have read too many expanded magazine articles with one basic idea on Page 150 – but this gem rises head and shoulders above the rest. The opening paragraph explains how the entire Western world thought all swans were white… until a black swan was spotted. He defines black swan events as events which 1) are disproportionately huge, 2) cannot be predicted, and 3) are mistakenly explained in retrospect with hindsight and fallacies. Examples range from 9/11 to “how you met your spouse.” The book is just absolutely exploding with ideas and reality-shattering views and carries the feeling of being written in “blue collar” language by one of the brightest economics / chaos / risk theory minds in the world. Occasionally the book can be too sprawling or chaotic seeming itself but think of this read as a wild roller coaster, not a slow and straight drive. Absolutely life changing.
4. A Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers. A super quick, tightly written, emotionally suspenseful parable of modern day family tensions against the backdrop of a globalizing world. First person narrative as struggling businessman Alan Clay travels to Saudi Arabia for “the one big sale” and revisits his life up to that point. I love Dave Eggers but really hadn’t heard of this book until it was recommended to me by a great bookseller. One of his fastest reads for sure. It’s slapped with all kinds of awards like Finalist for the National Book Award and a NYT Book Review’s 10 Best. Movie starring Tom Hanks came out in April and looks unfortunately like a bomb ($30M budget, $5M box office, according to IMDB). So, as always, go with the source material!
5. Yo! Yes?by Chris Raschka. Beautiful children’s book showing how easy it is to make friends. My wife Leslie is an elementary school teacher who has been using this book for years. It’s super short with maybe a dozen pages and only a word or two per page. (Yo! Yes? You! Me? Yes, you! No fun. Oh? No friends. Oh! … Me? You? Me! ... Yes! Etc.) Really great to read and discuss with my two year old. Written and illustrated by Chris Raschka who may be more well known for his A Ball for Daisyseries and The Hello Goodbye Window.Both of those are also great.
6. Showerthoughts. Do you remember Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey? Concise, bizarre, hilarious one-liners like “The crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw” or “We like to praise birds for flying. But how much of it is actually flying, and how much of it is just sort of coasting from the previous flap?” I loved those on Saturday Night Live when I was a kid and still have an old Deep Thoughtsbook. I get excited if I see a Jack Handey piece in The New Yorker. A wild and entertaining writer. And funny sidenote: Jack Handey’s has a button on it called “Is there a real Jack Handey?” Okay, where am I going with all this? Well, the Shower Thoughts Subreddit feels like our collective Deep Thoughts. When I’m in a frustratingly long line I click over to the Most Popular Shower Thoughts from the past month and always laugh out loud. One of a few sites I actually bookmark.
7. Be Preparedby Gary Greenberg. Whenever a friend tells me they’re about to become a dad I say “Congrats!” and then send them this book. Looks like a back-of-the-joke-shop flipper for that clichéd “stoopid dad.” But buried within the writing and hilarious drawings is solid parenting advice. It was the only parenting book I read cover to cover before being a dad and still flip through it. Great for any dad to be.
