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Hey everyone,
Hope you’re doing well.
I saw a tweet the other day that read “I’m tired of living in unprecedented times.” Who can relate? Sometimes things are a bit too bumpy. Endlessly addictive feeds run by algorithms that have long outsmarted us continue steering us farther and farther away from our naturally gray zones towards thinking in blacks and whites … zeros and ones.
As always, books offer an escape from the matrix. We are what we eat and we are what we read, after all. Here's to pushing back against the tiny boxes we're constantly ushered into and slipping back into an embrace of our all-over-the-place-ness ...
Keep turning the page,
Neil
1. The Hidden Lives of Owls: The Science and Spirit of Nature’s Most Elusive Birdsby Leigh Calvez. (L/I/A) “As an engineer, I marvel at their adaptations that allow them to do what they do,” says an owler named Jamie early in this book, “From special feathers that channel sound into their ears, to their eyes that see so much better in low light than ours, to feathers on their leading primaries that break up the airflow into small turbulences to reduce noise. Even their talons are arranged to support maximum efficiency.” A wonderful book following science writer Leigh Calvez as she slowly wades into the 67-million-years-and-counting evolutionary history of owls. Chock-full of endlessly fascinating owl insights and the history of the thousands of years long human-owl relationship. Broken up by species by chapter, the book swivels 270 degrees towards Snowy Owls, Burrowing Owls, Great Gray Owls, and eight others. By the end it starts veering more memoir and less field guide but ultimately it opens up a world we all live beside and, for the most part, just ... never know. I saw the first owl of my life a couple years ago and since then have been growing enchanted with these near-mystical creatures. Beautiful illustrations by Tony Angell throughout. Highly recommended.
2. Scarborough: A Novelby Catherine Hernandez. (L/I/A) Toronto is the fourth largest city in North America after Mexico City, New York, and Los Angeles, and is made up of five boroughs. Scarborough is likely the most diverse of the five -- culturally, ethnically, racially – and this book folds every corner of the sprawling community into a raw and mesmerizing read. When Leslie and I first started dating she was a Kindergarten teacher in a low-income neighborhood in Scarborough and the book feels like it could have been written by a handful of kids from her class. Every chapter alternates viewpoints, Babysitters Club Super Special-style, and the result is a portrait of deep poverty, urban blight, and soaring and (often) sinking hearts in the Kingston-Galloway neighborhood of Scarborough (where 41% of residents live in subsidized housing and 29% live in poverty). The fine point detail in this book is stunning and if you're from Toronto or have visited you'll get a double-whammy. Stories are loosely held together by the narrative of Hina, a young woman who runs the local literary center, as she jousts with decision-makers far from the community she serves. A poetic masterpiece. Highly recommended. (Also turning into a movie!)
3. Bug Boysby Laura Knetzger. (L/I/A) Charming, strange, heartwarming graphic novel series aimed at 7-10 year olds featuring two sensitive beetle friends named Stag-B and Rhino-B as they grow up in Bug Village. After buying a book from old Dung Beetle they find a strange map. What is it? They can’t ask old Dung Beetle because he was eaten by a bird (cue a tiny interrupting frame popping in with a beetle with a long white beard and a cane in a bird’s beak screaming “Avenge me!!!”) so instead they visit the Great Chrysalis, which has been around since before Bug Village was formed, to wish for success in finding treasure. This is just the first two pages. All the little stories are unpredictable, meander in interesting places, and offer endless childlike wonderings, all wrapped inside an insect wonderland. Non-conformist, emotionally available, and lots of fun.
4.Cultish: The Language of Fanaticismby Amanda Montell. (L/I/A) In 1975 Sam Walton heard the employees at a Korean tennis ball factory open their day with a company cheer and when he got back to Bentonville he tried the idea out at Walmart. It stuck and became one of the ‘cult-like culture’ totems profiled in Built To Last, the 1994 Jim Collins mega-hit. Jim said companies who succeed often have cult-like cultures featuring fervently held ideologies, indoctrination, tightness of fit, and elitism. Now, in today’s hijacked mind era, most tribes, communities, and organizations follow many of these cult-like principles. This book takes a modern blog-post- style approach to examining how everything from SoulCycle to Trader Joe’s to Instagram influencers wield elements of cult conditioning. I would have really loved a detailed Table of Contents. Amanda's voice sounds like a close (and very articulate) friend long-texting you in real time. Pairs well with How To Do Nothing by Jenny Odell and Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino.
5.How Animals Understand The Worldby Ed Yong. I fell in love with the prolific Ed Yong during the pandemic. As The Atlantic’s Science Editor I found his articles clear, research-based, and always spot on. (Here’s the archive.) I wasn’t the only one! He won the Pulitzer Prize last year for his covid work. What's he up to now? Well, the current issue of The Atlantic features his cover story, adapted from his brand new instant bestseller An Immense World, about how human noise and light is crashing all kinds of ecological systems globally. As just one example, the annual 9/11 “Tribute of Light” where New York City flashes two beams of light up where the twin towers stood … kills millions of migratory birds. This article taught me the wonderful word umwelt and is yet another baby-step towards helping us see outside our species. Highly recommended. Click here to read the full piece and click here to check out his book which has a much wider scope than this piece.
6. Where I Belong: Small Town To Great Big Seaby Alan Doyle. (L/I/A) The very last province to join Canada was Newfoundland – a great big island way out in the Atlantic Ocean. The culture in Newfoundland is unique with its own 30-minutes-off-everything time zone, endless small fishing towns, a deep sense of community and kindness (Come From Away wasn’t an anomaly!), and, of course, the tradition of having visitors ("mainlanders") get ‘screeched in.’ I tell you as someone who got screeched in recently that it turns out kissing a cod isn’t as bad as it sounds. Big thanks to book club reader Marj Mossman for recommending I pick up this wonderful Newfie memoir by Alan Doyle. Alan was born in Petty Harbour in a big, poor, happy family, and he’s probably best known as the lead singer of Great Big Sea. Have you ever wanted to read a whole chapter on how to chop out cod tongues? Now you can! Wrapped in endless warm storytelling and Newfie charm. A great book to read if you're curious about Newfoundland or planning to visit.
7. Birds of Newfoundlandby Ian Wakentin and Sandy Newton. (L/A) And I can’t talk about Newfoundland without recommending my favorite bird book if you’re going. Newfoundland has such a unique combination of thick boreal forests, wide-open tundras, and soaring cliffs for nesting sea birds like Atlantic Puffins and Northern Gannets. Back in the early 1940s the Dominion of Newfoundland (pre-Canada!) began a ten year project called The Birds of Newfoundland and invited famed ornithologist Roger Tory Peterson to come take a look. He ended up watercolor painting an incredible series of plates (including the one on the cover) and they’re featured throughout the book. A wonderful guide.
8. Penthouse Letters: The Down and Dirty Lustby the Editors of Penthouse Magazine. (L/A) According to a 2018 study 98% of men and 73% of women (or 86% of respondents total) report using Internet pornography in the past six months. Combine with the fact that algorithms have outhacked us at this point – reducing content down to its most addictive bits to keep us endlessly clicking -- and it means our broad, vast, multi-dimensional sexual curiosities and imaginations are often neutered at the source. How do kids learn about sex these days besides endless two-minute hardcore clips? Down in Key West Judy Blume and I talked about the virtues of learning about sex from books. I’m not sure a steamy Sidney Sheldon scene is going to cut it now but … what about Penthouse Letters? I picked up a copy at a bookstore – figuring hey, anything in its 48th edition must be doing something right. Less screens, more imagination, and a literary boost back into the wide world of sexuality. On this and other sex topics, Leslie and I sat down with Rebecca the Sex Educator recently and we’ll be dropping the chat on 3 Bookson the next full moon.
9.We Learn Nothing: Essaysby Tim Kreider. (L/I/A) I think one of the best New York Times Op-Eds of all time is The Busy Trap by Tim Kreider. I finally got around to picking up the book of essays containing it and it features wonderful writing exploring all kinds of unexplorables. “What if you survive a brush with death and it doesn’t change you?”, “Why do we fall in love with people we don’t even like?”, “How do you react when a childhood friend suddenly abandons you?” The essays have a David Foster Wallace sense of wildness – and cynicism. Judd Apatow says the book is “Heartbreaking, brutal, and hilarious” and that seems about right. Sometimes they were too harsh, unrelatable, or naval-gazey for me but that’s what I like about a book of essays – it's easy to skip to the next one.
