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Hey everyone,
It's January! First month to get the reading going. If you’re off to a great start, clap, clap, clap, keep going! If you’re slow out of the gates like, say, Donkey Kong in Mario Kart, well then I hope one of these picks will get you motoring.
Happy reading,
Neil
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1. The Common Good by Robert B Reich. Think of a beautifully safe small town where nobody locks their doors. Now imagine the first person who comes through breaking and entering. Pretty easy pickings! Nobody locks their door. Trust plummets. Arms race erupts. Locks. Security systems. Video cameras. This type of trust evaporation and arms racing has happened everywhere and Robert Reich gives an incredibly lucid portrait of exactly what happened when to get us where we are now. I call it trust, he calls it the common good, but either way, this is a vital read to help understand the world we live in. Strongly recommended. (Sidenote: If this area interests you, my friend Frank Warren (PostSecret) and I are running a panel at SXSW called “Building Trust In Distrustful Times.” Would love to see you there!)
2. Love For Imperfect Things by Haemin Sunim. A Korean monk who’s gone viral! Sounds like a movie plot. But it’s Haemin Sunim’s real life. I like this guy. A beautiful book with simple wisdom. Easy reminders, little insights. Nice addition to our Enlightened Bathroom Reader Series. Check out his Instagram for a flavor.
3. The Strangerby Albert Camus. Disorienting, absurdist, slow-mo psychodrama about a man who kills another man on a beach and is sentenced to death. Short, staccato writing with all kinds of layers and allusions and metaphors, a few of which I actually understood. A good, short, easy reading classic if you’re finding yourself in the middle of some big book quicksand.
4. I’m Afraid Of Menby Vivek Shraya. I often feel like there’s a gigantic emerging world I don’t understand. Worlds, actually. Many worlds. Universes! It’s that Rich Gibbons quote from Chapter 14 of 3 Books: “The more I know, the more I know I know nothing.” I heard a Bill Gates quote when I was a kid that was something like “Whenever I’m at a magazine stand I buy a magazine I’ve never heard of because… that’s how you learn.” Dude is smart. I try to apply that to books, too. The tag on this one is: “A trans artist explores how masculinity was imposed on her as a boy and continues to haunt her as a girl – and how we might reimagine gender for the twenty-first century.” Although it’s one person’s story versus any sort of broader history or societal overview in general, it was a great read. Brave and enlightening on many levels.
5.When You Are Engulfed In Flamesby David Sedaris. About ten years ago my friend Shiv told me she read a David Sedaris essay every night before bed. What? Something felt off about that. But then I tried it. And she’s right! There’s something so soothing about his slow and peaceful writing – especially if I’m traveling on my own. Feels like I’m hanging with a friend. The laughs wash away stress, too. Here’s “It’s Catching” by Sedaris in The New Yorker if you want a sample from this collection.
6. Sabrinaby Nick Drnaso. This is the first ever graphic novel nominated for the Man Booker Prize. I didn’t know that when I bought it, I didn’t know that when I read it. All I can say is it felt like a really moody artsy thriller type of movie. Disorienting. Unsettling. Pretty blood-chilling but you can’t stop reading. A woman goes missing, her boyfriend is a mess, he moves in with an old friend, and the story is told from that old friend’s point of view. As it erupts into a national news headline capturing the attention of newspapers and radio call-in shows and conspiracy theorists we get this full mirroring of all kinds of societal flaws and kinks reflected back to us.
7. The Lottery and Other Storiesby Shirley Jackson. Do you remember Franklin The Turtle? Those kids books sold 60 million copies and have become staples in our house. I interviewed the author Paulette Bourgeois for a recent chapter of 3 Books. I admit I was totally expecting her three most formative books to be children’s books. She wrote Franklin! So, you know, what animals inspired her? Cat In The Hat, for sure. Maybe Pat The Bunny. But no! She surprised me by picking the first horror on The Top 1000. Stephen King says Shirley Jackson was a huge influence and even dedicated a book to her. The namesake story The Lottery was also The New Yorker story to get the most letters… ever. Want to read it right now? Here you go.
8.The Honeybeeby Kirsten Hall. Want a hypnotic and rhyming picture book that will entrance your kids and likely teach you a few things about bees, too? I’ve got just the thing.
