1. Tetris: The Games People Playby Box Brown. A completely hypnotic 250-page graphic novel sharing the bizarre true story behind Tetris. Yes, Tetris. Full of Russian KGB agents, the centuries-long Nintendo history, giant lawsuits, and screaming fans. If you liked the fast-pace plot of movies like American Hustle, you will love this. The time and love Box Brown put into this book is incredible. Also, funny story. I Skyped into a French classroom a couple weeks ago and was telling them about this book. The teacher then whipped out a tattered copy onscreen and said it’s helping her students enjoy learning English. Something for everyone.
2.It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Beby Paul Arden. A powerful little pump-you-up handbook by the former Creative Director of ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi. Fortunately for us, Paul Arden had an up, down, and winding career path leading to that top job so the book serves as a short quippy collection of career wisdom. Even the design and layout of the book is energizing. Written fifteen years ago (just five years before he passed away) but feels like a scrapbooky Tumblr account from today. He has a great page showing business cards of how you could present yourself with how you should present yourself. A ton of reverse engineering positive feelings about yourself. Loved it.
3.Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me: What Pop Music Rivalries Reveal About The Meaning Of Lifeby Steven Hyden. Pearl Jam versus Nirvana, Biggie versus TuPac, Smashing Pumpkins versus Pavement. This could have been a Wikipedia style summary book of musical feuds but it goes so much deeper. It’s written for music lovers so he skims some details in favor of trying to reflect the rivalry back on our own psychology and the sentiments of the moment. Tough job but he manages to get pretty close to pulling it off. He dissects Blur versus Oasis fans, for instance, and shows how and why Pearl Jam changed the script on their rivalry with Nirvana over the years. Fun read that makes you feel so much more informed on the stories behind the music. Good insight into whether you’ll like it is if you like the blurbers on the back: Bill Simmons, Chuck Klosterman, and Rob Sheffield (who wrote Love Is A Mix Tape.)
4. A Visit From The Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. Imagine I was going to explain to you how baseball was played and I did it by describing how a tree gets carved into a baseball bat, giving you the biography of the guy who built the Green Monster, showed you a black and white reel of a radio announcer singing the national anthem, and then took you to an art gallery featuring close ups of dugout floors after a doubleheader. What the? Yeah, exactly. And that’s how this fascinating novel goes about describing the lives of its two central characters over the decades. A giant anecdote about one of their best friends over here, a little window into a date they once had over there. It feels kind of like watching Mulholland Drive. It helps that every chapter is beautifully written but I had to give myself a few pushes to get through. By the end the sculpture that emerged was pretty exquisite though not totally sure it was worth so many scraps on the floor. Won the Pulitzer Prize in 2011.
5. Frontier City: Toronto on the Verge of Greatnessby Shawn Micallef. I love living in Toronto but can’t say I’m super connected to the goings on behind this great city. This book filled in the blanks and was an incredible primer on all the forces that have helped Toronto become world class and all the forces that could send it skittering off the rails. Great political prodding with lots of manifesto-like pleas but a little too much Rob Ford for my liking (that’s our deceased crack-smoking mayor, for those that don’t know.) Also, really interesting structure to the book. Shawn took a walk with everyone who narrowly lost a city counselor seat to see the city through their eyes. Nice book for a new category for me. Made me interested to read similar books about other great cities so share a reco if you have one!
6. Playtown: A Lift The Flaps Bookby Roger Priddy. Beautiful kids book featuring seven giant pages of scenes like airport, fire station, and hotel and each page has a dozen little flaps opening into the inner workings of those buildings and scenes. What’s inside the ticket booth, control station, newsstand, and sushi restaurant at the train station? A great introduction to the way things work and helped me get my son a bit more into non-fiction, too.
7. The Long View: Career Strategies to Start Strong, Reach High, and Go Farby Brian Fetherstonhaugh. Remember that speech twenty years about how “in the future” you are going to have ten jobs instead of working at IBM for fifty years and you will need constant retraining instead of grabbing a degree and sitting on it? This book reads like an updated view of that speech. It’s somehow simultaneously brand new and obsolete. Skip it.
